Chapter 8 Easton
EASTON
We reach the Airbnb a little after noon. It’s a two-bedroom condo, sitting right on the ocean.
There’s a deck extending across two rooms, with thick terracotta pillars. It’s the Ritz-Carlton of rentals, and in West Palm, Elijah probably could have bought a car for what it cost.
I walk back out to help him carry Kelsey’s gift bags inside.
It’s probably unnecessary, but she worked ridiculously hard on them.
Which in and of itself is over the top because her future husband could easily buy every guest a new car and not notice the hit to his checking account.
Kelsey has been insisting that she doesn’t want them to have a “rich guy” wedding, nor does she want them to have a “rich guy” life.
Hawk, her fiancé, is so whipped he’d go along with anything she asked for, but some of this is unavoidable.
Their non-rich-guy wedding, for instance, is being held at his parents’ mansion.
And she’s going to get accustomed to that life, whether she wants to or not.
Like the home steam closet Hawk sent the one time she mentioned that there’s no dry cleaner in town.
She insisted it was unnecessary and now she can’t live without it.
Same with that Range Rover he bought her.
Eventually they’ll have three fully-staffed homes and take a monthly trip to places rich people go because that’s just the way it works.
She’s the only Cabot who wants anything to do with me.
Will she still, once she’s got her tennis team set and her St. Barths winter friends?
I don’t know. I’m trying not to get my hopes up.
“This place is too nice,” I tell him, taking the box he hands me. “I feel bad, and I shouldn’t have to feel bad about anything where you’re concerned.”
“Oblique though that was,” he says, walking beside me with three boxes stacked in his arms, “it was definitely the third time you’ve brought that up today.”
“I was going to suggest that you could have moved out of your mom’s house for what it cost, but I restrained myself.”
He sets the boxes down, raises a brow and folds his arms over his chest. It’s the same look he used to give me when I was a kid, a look that says, “I’ll wait for you to stop.
” It never fails to make me laugh, even now.
“Fine! I’m done. I’ll wait until tomorrow to bring up your aforementioned flaws. ”
His mouth twitches. Our eyes meet and there’s a half-second where I just forget. I forget every-fucking-thing that happened and I’m fourteen again, waiting for him to come around, and I’m twenty-four again, realizing he’s about to.
It’s only on the back half of that second that I remember I’m twenty-nine—and he once broke me in half.
There should be no half-seconds in which I forget that fact.
I don’t know how to maintain my distance when we’re going to be spending each day a foot apart, but I’ve got those advanced degrees. I’ll figure it out.
“I need to eat something,” he says. “You want to walk down the street?”
This is where shutting him out starts. “You go ahead,” I tell him. “I’m not hungry.”
He frowns, as if he wants to argue, but walks out with a shrug. Which is good. I’m no longer his problem—not that I ever was. But it would be better for everyone if he could stop this fiction in which he’s the wonderful protector who lives to keep me safe.
Once he’s gone, I take a book out to a terry-covered lounge chair on the shaded deck.
Even this requires five minutes of careful sunscreen application plus a long-sleeved shirt, while the Easton of a decade ago would already be down in the water, too eager and careless to bother with sun protection at all.
I’d follow it up with a greasy burger and fries—back before I knew I had this issue with iron and before I was dating someone who calls seed oils “the new smoking.”
I was so eager to be an adult, once upon a time, but I didn’t realize how much I’d need to give up in order to make it happen successfully.
Is it worth it? Absolutely. Thomas has helped me grow into a better version of myself—one who gets enough sleep and doesn’t drink and might be that first person to live to one hundred and fifty but will look eighty when she gets there.
These are good things, accrued over the course of two fulfilling years.
What did I get from Elijah, by contrast?
He had me for a matter of hours and did enough damage for a lifetime.
I don’t know why I keep bringing it up, however.
Or maybe I do.
If I don’t remind myself what happened, if I don’t continue to pick at the scab so it can never heal, I might forget. And God only knows what would happen then.
Just after sunset, I shower, apply careful makeup and blow out my hair, then don the dress I brought for the rehearsal dinner—I don’t have much else to choose from, given that I’d thought I was going to be in Oak Bluff for the bulk of my break.
I look good. If Melissa should happen to take a photo of me and Elijah—I hope she does but I’m not sure how to subtly request it—Thomas will know I’ve made an effort, even if I have to endure the idiot Thomas groupies who will say something like “PhD in what? Giving blow jobs?” I block them, but they just come in with a new account to announce that I’m blocking people.
If you want to despair of humanity, spend a little time in someone’s Instagram comments.
I walk into the living room, where Elijah waits. We went through a period of time—college or med school—where I’d catch him looking at me. One of those involuntary, head-to-toe glances, something a little predatory and possessive there before he blinked it away.
Now, however, the look is ten percent bafflement and ninety percent disgust.
“So, what exactly am I supposed to be doing here?” he asks, tossing his keys from one hand to the next. “What have you told this couple about us?”
“Nothing,” I reply, throwing my phone in my purse. “Just that we’re hanging out. Seeing how things go. Just be yourself, and keep our history, bad and good, to yourself.”
The night I’m not supposed to reference hangs there, between us.
“Got it,” he says, after a moment.
We reach the restaurant and manage to find parking on the street. The trim black type on the white sign and the gaslit lanterns warn this place is expensive. One more debt going on a credit card with a twenty percent interest rate.
I reach out to stop him before he exits the car.
“Look,” I say, my shoulders sagging, “can you just throw in your credit card for our half and I’ll pay you back? If I pay, Melissa and James will definitely mention it to Thomas, and it doesn’t scream you might be replaced.”
“You don’t have to pay,” he groans. “I’m not sure what your understanding is of my profession, but I actually do pretty well. And, obviously, I don’t pay rent.”
I laugh. “Did you just say that so I wouldn’t?”
He grins. “You can’t, remember? You’ve already thrown it in my face twice today.”
I’m giggling like a teenager as we walk inside. Melissa rises, all wide smiles, hugging me and then Elijah in turn, mouthing the word “wow” for my eyes only.
“James couldn’t make it,” she says. “Some family issues.”
My smile hangs stiffly on my face. “Oh, that’s too bad,” I say. “I hope everything’s okay.”
She waves her hand, not quite meeting my eye. “Something with his mom. I’m sure it will be fine.”
She’s lying.
Even Elijah can tell something is off. His gaze darts between us, trying to identify the source of the tension.
The hostess leads us to a table on the porch in back, past all these people sharing wagyu beef and ahi tuna by candlelight, and I take small, shallow breaths the whole way, reaching up to massage the corner of my jaw.
I picture how much worse this could get, how I might wind up shunned because no one wants to piss off Thomas.
They’re probably all texting each other now, some kind of early detection system—Thomas Prescott broke up with Easton. Proceed with caution.
And if they are...how unbearable will it be around the lab? Could it extend to my funding?
I cannot unlock my jaw as we are seated.
I open my napkin and spill my flatware onto the floor—already I’m reverting to that third in family of useless Walsh kids—try though we might, we never transcend our circumstances.
We always end up getting hit with remotes, being dragged out of bed to help someone conceal a crime.
Jesus, pull it together, Easton.
“Sorry, it’s been a long day,” I say with a laugh that is bright and false. I start to lean over to retrieve it from the floor and Elijah’s hand lands on my thigh.
“I’ve got it,” he says. There’s a warning there—just hold still. Let me fix this.
It probably also says What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you suddenly clumsy? What’s with that fake laugh?
He rises to go get me a new place setting, and Melissa’s gaze drifts over him appreciatively.
“Okay,” she whispers, leaning close. “I see why you were able to move on so quickly. Tell me what he does?”
“He has a construction company.”
She nods appreciatively. “A nice little blue-collar fling before you head back to school, huh?”
I bristle at the words, though I know she didn’t mean to offend me. “He has a master’s degree in engineering.”
I have no idea why I’m bothering to defend Elijah.
It’s certainly not on behalf of my mission to make Thomas jealous.
But no matter what Elijah did to me personally, I’m not going to let anyone call him a blue-collar fling.
There’s a sort of casual snobbery in academia—a classist thing they don’t even know they’re doing.
It’s the tone they use when they refer to vocational school or community college.
The way they will be truly upset when a college student is harmed, but apathetic when it’s a high school dropout.
She elbows me. “I’m sorry. That was obnoxious. But...is it a fling? Or is it more?”