9. Meet-Cute II
Nothing makes Kacy happier about being back on Nantucket than going for a run out to the ocean, then grabbing doughnuts from the Downyflake, still warm in the box. When Kacy gets home, she finds her parents sitting at the kitchen island.
“Is Coco awake yet?” Kacy asks.
“Haven’t heard her,” Andrea says. She waggles her fingers at the bakery box. “Bring those over here, please, darling.”
Kacy sets the box down, Andrea eagerly breaks the tape and helps herself to a sugar doughnut while saying to Ed, “I’d suggest having half of one, Ed, and not the chocolate.”
“Oops, sorry, Dad,” Kacy says. “I didn’t mean to bring temptation into the house.” She selects a chocolate doughnut so there’s one less for her father to stare at. “By the way, Coco moves into Triple Eight on Monday.”
“I’m glad the Richardsons were true to their word,” Andrea says.
“Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Well,” Andrea says, “nobody knows them.”
“Phoebe and Addison know them.”
“As clients, sweetheart, not as people.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Kacy asks. “God forbid this island should have some new blood. Would it kill you to welcome them?”
“As a matter of fact,” Andrea says, “Phoebe, Delilah, and I are having lunch with Leslee Richardson next week.”
Kacy isn’t sure why she’s picking a fight with her mother; it’s as though the house is turning her back into a teenager.
Ed breaks a plain doughnut in half and stands up. “I’m going to work,” he says.
When Coco finally comes downstairs at ten thirty, Kacy makes her coffee and offers her a doughnut. She feels bad about sending those pictures of Coco to Isla. It was pathetic.
“I thought we’d go to Great Point today,” she says. “I’ve packed a picnic.”
Coco dunks her sugar doughnut into her coffee and takes a bite. “My god,” she says.
“Downyflake,” Kacy says. “Best in the world. So anyway, I made chicken salad and BLTs—I hope those are okay? And I packed two bottles of rosé, but do you drink rosé? It’s kind of a Nantucket summer thing. I also have beer if you’d rather—”
Coco waves a hand. “I eat and drink it all, but, Kacy, please stop catering to me.”
“It’s no trouble,” Kacy says. “I just want to make sure this weekend is fun for you. Before you start working.”
Coco wipes the sugar from her fingers and reaches for Kacy’s hand. “You’re amazing, Kacy Kapenash. What would I have done if I hadn’t met you?”
“Thankfully,” Kacy says, “we don’t have to worry about that.”
They drive out a winding road, rolling past a farm on the left with fields of flowers and knee-high corn. It’s country, Coco thinks, like Rosebush (but minus the hot rod up on blocks in her next-door neighbor’s yard; the screen door falling off its hinges at her friend Tash’s grandmother’s house; the Rawleys’ Doberman chained up in their yard). Here, they pass weathered split-rail fences, round ponds that glimmer like green glass, a girl riding a bike with a basket on the front and, in the basket, a chocolate Lab puppy. They’re headed out to a lighthouse, Great Point, which is at the end of a long curved arm of sand. It’s a nature preserve, a big deal, apparently, Nantucket’s only true destination. The top of the Jeep is down; the wind is rushing through their hair. The music on Kacy’s playlist—“Love on the Brain,” “Anti-Hero,” “Waking Up in Vegas”—isn’t quite Coco’s taste, but she sings along like a teenage pop queen.
Kacy points to the left. “There’s Pocomo Road.” Coco snaps out of her reverie. There’s no street sign, just a white rock at the corner with POCOMO painted on it. Coco almost asks Kacy to turn down the road. Wouldn’t it be fun to get a peek at the house where Coco will be spending the summer? But Kacy is driving full speed ahead.
At the Wauwinet gatehouse, Kacy pays a hundred and sixty dollars for a beach sticker for her Jeep. The woman working for the Trustees of Reservations—her name tag says PAMELA—has steel-gray hair clipped short and a weathered face and seems utterly humorless. “Kapenash?” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You related to Chief Kapenash?”
“I’m his daughter.” Kacy wonders if this entitles her to a discount or if maybe Pamela will waive the fee altogether, but the woman only frowns more deeply. She must have some kind of grievance against Ed. “Do not go over ten miles an hour, respect all signage, and take your tires down to fifteen pounds, minimum.”
Kacy smiles. “I grew up driving on this beach. I won’t get stuck.” She takes her sticker. “Thanks. I’ll tell my dad I met you.”
“Ask him to do something about the traffic on Old South Road,” Pamela says. “It’s appalling!”
Kacy beats a hasty retreat. She searches for her tire gauge but can’t find it. That’s okay; she can let the air out with her car key, and she’ll just eyeball the tires. She moves around the Jeep, enjoying the satisfying hiss of air being released, the scent of rubber, the tires softening like butter left out in the sun. As she pulls out of the parking lot, Kacy waves to Pamela in the gatehouse, though what she wants to do is flip her off.
Coco drinks in the view. They pass an extremely fancy and beautifully appointed inn. “The Wauwinet,” Kacy says. “Super-bougie.” They hit a sandy road that cuts through the dunes and Kacy shifts the Jeep into four-wheel drive. They bounce around like they’re riding a rodeo horse and Coco grabs the roll bar while Kacy whoops. In another minute, they’re over the dunes and on the most pristine coastline Coco has ever seen. The golden sand stretches uninterrupted in front of them as far as she can see. The ocean is on their right, the dunes topped with swaying eelgrass on their left. Seagulls seem to hover overhead; smaller shorebirds scurry along the waterline, and a few yards off the coast, Coco sees a dark, sleek head.
“What is that?” she says.
Kacy follows Coco’s finger. “Seal.”
“There are seals here?” Coco says.
“Lots of them,” Kacy says.
Ahead in the distance, Coco spies the lighthouse. It’s white with a black top. This is exactly what she dreamed Nantucket would be like.
Kacy hits the gas and they go flying down the beach, sand spraying from the tires. Coco raises her arms over her head and tries to imagine what they look like from above—two women cruising down the beach in a Jeep, leaving tire tracks in their wake, not another soul in sight.
Free.
Later, Kacy will count her mistakes: forgetting the tire gauge, being smug with Pamela, blatantly breaking the speed limit—and drinking so much rosé.
In the moment, however, everything is coming up Kacy. They park just beyond the lighthouse on the very tip of the island. Kacy points out the visible line in the water that marks the cross-rip.
“It feels like we’re standing at the edge of the earth,” Coco says.
Kacy finds a flat spot for a picnic, spreads a blanket, opens the wine. Meanwhile Coco shucks off her shorts and her T-shirt and says, “I’m going in.”
“The riptide is notoriously bad up here,” Kacy says. She served as a town lifeguard as a teenager, but even she wouldn’t swim today. “Plus the seals mean there could be sharks. And the water is freezing this time of year.”
Coco skips toward the water, undeterred. “I’m a good swimmer,” she says. “I grew up in Arkansas with a pond in my backyard where I had to outswim the snapping turtles. Then I moved to the Lake of the Ozarks, where I had to avoid the water moccasins. I’ll take a shark over a swimming snake any day.” With that, Coco splashes into the water and freestyles out. She has a nice stroke and her kick is strong, but all Kacy can think of is the woman who went swimming out here at night—she and her friends called themselves the night swimmers—and disappeared. Kacy keeps her eyes trained on Coco, steeling herself every time Coco goes underwater. Coco dives, flipping her legs up like a mermaid’s tail. She’s down for so long that Kacy is about to go in after her—but then Coco surfaces, holding a sand dollar.
“Can you come in, please?” Kacy calls out, windmilling her arm. She knows she sounds like a mom, but the last thing she wants is for Coco to drown out here on her watch.
Coco rides the next wave to shore, shakes her short hair dry like a dog, and rubs at her face with a towel. “That was sublime,” she says. “Now, what did I do with my wine?”
The first bottle of rosé goes quickly. Kacy opens the second bottle (Andrea gave her a look, but thank god she brought two). She pulls out the sandwiches, the chips, a cluster of frosty red grapes. The wine goes straight to Kacy’s head; there wasn’t a lot of day-drinking in the NICU. “So tell me about you,” Kacy says.
“What do you want to know?”
“What was it like growing up in Arkansas? I can’t even picture it. And the only things I know about the Ozarks, I learned from the show. What about your parents, do you have siblings, why did you go down to the Virgin Islands, what’s on your bucket list, have you thought about the future?” Kacy takes a breath. “I know basically nothing about you.”
Coco reaches for her wine. “Well, for parental figures, it’s my mom, Georgi, and her live-in boyfriend, Kemp. Georgi works the deli counter at Harps, and Kemp owns a tobacco shop, which has become all about vaping. Both Kemp and my mother vape nonstop and will probably end up with popcorn lung. No siblings unless you count Kemp’s daughter, Bree, which I don’t. Their idea of vacation is survivalist camping. So when I was growing up, I learned how to make a lean-to, start a fire, track animals, shoot a bow and arrow, purify water—”
“You are kidding me,” Kacy says.
“Forage for nuts and berries and wild greens, identify trees, stuff like that.”
“That is so cool,” Kacy says.
“Or so lame,” Coco says. “My dream was to stay in a hotel with AC and a pool.” She sighs. “A pool with a sliding board. As a kid, I was always reading—my mother used to make fun of me for it. Then in high school I became close with Ms. Geraghty, the town librarian. My mother approached her at my high-school graduation and accused her of corrupting me by giving me so many books, but books are what saved me. The only reason I’ve even heard of Nantucket is because Ms. Geraghty gave me Moby-Dick.”
Kacy feels embarrassed that she’s never read Moby-Dick. Like all the other nurses on her unit, she reads Colleen Hoover.
“What about now?” Kacy says. “What do you want to do? You’re going to work for the Richardsons this summer and then… what? Go back to St. John to bartend?”
Coco shrugs. “I guess if things don’t work out, yeah.”
“Work out how?” Kacy asks.
Coco hesitates. She has been keeping her script a secret; like making a wish on birthday candles, she fears that talking about it will jinx it. But now that the script is finished and she has somehow managed to score a job with a movie producer and she seems to have made an actual friend, why not? “I’ve written a screenplay.”
“Oh my god!” Kacy says. “You’re kidding! What’s it about?”
“It’s about growing up in Rosebush, Arkansas,” Coco says. “It’s basically my life story.”
“Would you let me read it?” Kacy asks.
“Would you want to?”
“Are you kidding me?” Kacy says. “I’ll be able to say I knew you when.”
Coco lets herself get swept up by Kacy’s enthusiasm for a second, though she’s terrified. Kacy will be her first reader. What if she hates it? Worse, what if she pretends to like it?
A bank of clouds rolls in, and the wind picks up. “Should we head home?” Kacy asks.
“Already?” Coco says. “We drove all the way out here. And I could use a nap.”
Kacy is feeling dozy as well. If Coco isn’t complaining about the weather, Kacy shouldn’t either. She’s the native Nantucketer, hale and hearty. She lies down on the blanket next to Coco and closes her eyes. But the wind whips sand into Kacy’s face, which feels like ten thousand tiny needles.
“Let me move the Jeep,” Kacy says, “so that it blocks the wind.”
Coco has her eyes closed and doesn’t answer.
Kacy climbs in the Jeep and throws it into reverse, but it won’t budge. She senses she’s about to face a reckoning. She hits the gas a little harder; the tires spin, chewing deeper into the sand. She shifts the car into drive, though she has to be careful because the front of the Jeep is dangerously close to the water. Was she really that careless, or has the tide come in? Both, she thinks. The Jeep edges forward a few inches and Kacy is heartened. She moves up a bit more, thinking, Forget the wind block, I just need to get the Jeep on firmer ground. But she succeeds only in putting her front two tires into wet sand, which is very bad. She tries to back up—nope. She turns the wheel, but this takes her closer to the water.
No!she thinks.
Coco is now on her feet. “Can I help?”
Kacy says, “I’ve got it,” and her voice is still sort of cheerful because she’ll figure it out. Let’s not forget, she grew up driving on this beach! Her father taught her that if she ever got stuck, she should let more air out of the tires. Kacy does this only in the back because the front tires are in a sucking wet morass. Her only hope is to back up.
She throws the car in reverse with her teeth clenched. Her tires spray sand all over Coco, who shrieks and jumps out of the way. The car doesn’t move.
Kacy climbs out and gazes down the beach. There’s normally a ranger making sure that nobody hangs out in the delicate ecosystem of the dunes or lights an illegal bonfire or gets herself stuck at the water’s edge like a person who has never driven on a beach before. But it might be too early in the season for a ranger. Kacy grabs her cell phone, thinking she’ll call her father and he’ll contact the gatehouse, and Pamela can come to their rescue. Kacy will have to eat a big plate of Look at Miss Smarty-Pants, but fine, whatever.
Kacy’s phone has no service.
“Do you have service?” she asks Coco.
Coco checks her phone. “No. Why, are we in trouble?”
The Jeep is stuck in soft sand and the tide is rolling in. Yes, they’re in trouble.
“Someone’s coming,” Coco says.
Sure enough, in the far distance, Kacy sees a truck trundling up the beach, probably settled in the tracks Kacy blazed. Kacy hopes the truck drives all the way out here instead of turning off to Coatue or Coskata Pond. She’s tempted to jump up and down and wave her arms. Then she does—because what are their options? Walking the three miles back from the beach? Hoping a boat comes close enough to notice them?
“Hey!” Kacy shouts, but the wind carries her voice out to sea. Coco joins her, the two of them flailing their arms. Suddenly the truck flashes its lights and speeds up.
“He sees us,” Coco says.
“Or she,” Kacy says. “It’s probably Pamela.”
But it’s not Pamela. The truck is a black F-150 pickup with a couple of casting rods sticking out of a PVC pipe rack on the front grille. Behind the wheel is a guy, and not just a guy, but… Kacy blinks… Lamont Oakley, who was her date for both the junior prom and senior banquet in high school. What is Lamont Oakley doing here? Last Kacy heard, he was off sailing in places like the Whitsunday Islands and Capri.
Lamont jumps out of the truck. He has… wow, definitely changed—matured, grown up, gotten smoke-show hot. He’s completely ripped; his white polo strains over his broad chest and biceps, and his jeans fit perfectly. Ha! Kacy can’t believe Lamont Oakley is now giving leading-man when all through high school he was a math nerd. He was also the best sailor the island had ever seen, though ironically, hardly anyone at Nantucket High School cared about sailing. They’d all taken free lessons in second grade but for the most part, it was viewed as a pastime for summer people. Lamont’s sailing commitments kept him very busy and regimented; he was, therefore, the perfect match for Kacy. They’d gone home early from the junior prom because Lamont had a regatta in Newport the next day. The following year they went to the senior banquet together, but it was just as friends. At that point, Lamont was dating the skipper for the Georgetown sailing team, a woman he’d met on a recruiting trip, and Kacy was relieved because that meant she didn’t have to worry about kissing him.
“Kacy Kapenash!” he says. When he hugs her, he lifts her off the ground, which is sort of thrilling. “You’re the last person I expected to see out here. I thought you lived in California.”
“I do,” Kacy says. “I did. Long story.”
“Hey,” Coco says, extending a hand. “I’m Coco. Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Lamont.” He smiles, and Coco thinks, Definite swipe right. She feels like a Jane Austen character when the heir to the neighboring estate enters the drawing room. Lamont has tawny skin, close-cropped black hair, and a shredded body. He’s wearing Ray-Ban Wayfarers and a belt with a brass buckle shaped like an anchor. He’s part Michael B. Jordan, part JFK Jr.
“So what’s happening here?” he asks.
“We’re stuck,” Kacy says.
Lamont strides over to check out the situation with the Jeep. “You mean you don’t want to be featured in tomorrow’s Nantucket Current because your car got swallowed by the sea?” He laughs. “I got you. I have a tow rope.”
Oh, thank god, thank god. Kacy doesn’t deserve this stroke of luck; whatever price karma exacts from her later, she will happily pay.
Lamont knows what to do. It’s almost as if he grew up driving on this beach, Kacy thinks. He backs up his truck, attaches one end of the tow rope to his trailer hitch and the other end to Kacy’s bumper.
“Get in,” he says. “Put it in reverse. I’ll tell you when to hit the gas.”
Five seconds later, the Jeep is out of danger, back in established tracks, and pointing in the right direction.
“I’m not sure how to thank you,” Kacy says.
“You just did,” Lamont says. “Will you ladies be hanging around for a while?”
Kacy is about to say, No, we have to get home. They avoided disaster, her adrenaline high is fading, and a headache from the wine is setting in. But Coco jumps in: “Yes, we just got here. Are you hungry? We have extra sandwiches, right, Kacy?”
Kacy blinks. “We do. BLT or chicken salad? Don’t say no, it’s the least we can do.”
“Chicken salad would be great, and a very generous payment for services rendered.” Lamont opens a cooler in the bed of his truck. “Would either of you like a beer?”
“I’m good, thanks,” Kacy says. She needs to sober up before she drives home.
“I’d love one,” Coco says.
Lamont hands Coco a frosty can of Whale’s Tale and joins them on the blanket. At that moment, the sun decides to come back out. Lamont Oakley is working all the magic.
He takes a swallow of his beer and asks Coco, “Are you a friend of Kacy’s from California?”
“No,” Coco says. “Kacy and I met on the ferry. She’s graciously letting me stay with her and her parents—”
“The Chief,” Lamont says to Kacy, “and your wonderful mother.”
Kacy rolls her eyes.
“—until Monday, when I start my new job as a personal assistant.”
Is it Kacy’s imagination, or is Coco blossoming right before her eyes? Her body is turned toward Lamont; her expression is bright and engaged. She’s… glowing.
“What are you doing back, Lamont?” Kacy asks.
“My mom has health issues,” he says. “Her eyesight is failing, she has high blood pressure, she’s on oxygen, yada yada. She’s at the top of the list to enter the Homestead, which will be great, all her friends are there, but I’m not sure how long that will take, so I decided to come home. Some random couple just bought a huge house on island and they also bought a hella sailboat. They hired me to be their captain.”
“Really?” Kacy says. “What’s their name?”
“The Richardsons?” Lamont says. “Bull and Leslee?”
Coco spills her beer all over the blanket but barely seems to notice. “I’m working for the Richardsons too! On Pocomo Road?”
“No way!” Lamont says. “Seriously?”
“Seriously!” Coco says.
Kacy leans back on the blanket, face to the sun, head resting on her beach bag, and listens to Coco and Lamont chattering, swapping stories about how they met the Richardsons. Kacy has already heard about how the Richardsons walked into the bar where Coco was working and offered her a job on the spot. In Lamont’s case, someone from Northrop and Johnson recommended him when Bull admitted, after he bought the boat, that he didn’t know the first thing about sailing. Lamont has met the Richardsons only over Zoom.
“I can’t believe that you of all people are the one who saved us,” Coco says. “And that you also know Kacy.”
“Kacy and I went to our junior prom together,” Lamont says.
Kacy rolls onto her side. “And our senior banquet.”
“Stop it!” Coco says. She raises her beer. “Well, here’s to the summer ahead.”
Lamont laughs. “Let’s hope we survive it.” He stands. “I’m going to cast a few lines.”
“Oh!” Coco says. “Would you teach me?”
“Of course,” he says. “Come on.”
Kacy watches as Lamont takes his fishing rod out of the rack, and he and Coco walk to the water’s edge. Kacy can no longer hear what they’re saying but she can tell plenty from body language. Lamont shows Coco the reel, flips back the bail, and holds the line with his finger. Then he executes a gorgeous cast and starts reeling. Coco watches him with an expression of awe.
Kacy misses Isla. They’d gone to the beach together only once, at Half Moon Bay, on a weekend when Rondo was away at a conference. It had been overcast and chilly but they’d rolled up the bottoms of their jeans and strolled along the water holding hands until their feet were numb. They were, Kacy thinks now, like lovers in a movie. Then they ventured into the little town and ate sunchoke soup at the Moonside; they kissed across the table, marveling at being out in the world together, two tourists in a place where nobody knew them.
It’s Coco’s turn to try casting. She flips the bail and holds the line, but when she goes to cast, the line jerks and gets wrapped around the rod. Kacy tries not to laugh. She’s a pretty skilled surf caster herself—her father and brother saw to that—and for a second, she considers showing Coco how it’s done. But she won’t be that person. She will be the person who watches as Lamont steps behind Coco, wraps his arms around her, and shows her how to bring her arm back, then fluidly arc it forward, almost as if she’s skipping a stone across the water. This works: Coco’s line sails out over the waves with a satisfying whiz. Kacy sighs. The sun makes it look as though both Coco and Lamont have been dipped in gold.