22. The Summer Day
Falling in love,Sharon thinks, is even better in her fifties than it was in her twenties. Sharon and Romeo are adults. They don’t have to worry about first-time home ownership or raising kids or establishing careers. They have learned how to be present and enjoy a moment.
Romeo loves making romantic gestures. He appears at Sharon’s house with bouquets from the wildflower truck on Main Street; he brings Sharon a bunch of fresh mint from his garden and teaches her how to make mojitos. He picks Sharon up in his truck and they drive out to 40th Pole to watch the sunset with a bottle of wine, two sandwiches from Walters, and an ’80s playlist. Once it’s dark, they make out in the front seat like a couple of teenagers.
Sharon’s twins, Sterling and Colby, are surprisingly supportive of their mother’s new relationship. Sterling helps Sharon pick her outfits; Colby does her makeup.
“You look hot, Mom,” they say. “You’re a queen.”
Of all the kids, Robert is the most enamored with Romeo. Robert and Romeo watch MrBeast videos together, laughing their heads off, and Romeo plays Fortnite with Robert. (How does he know how to do this? Sharon wonders. It seems as esoteric to her as playing the bagpipes.) Romeo even gives Robert a driving lesson on the sandy roads that crisscross the moors behind Sharon’s house.
As July unfolds, Sharon and Romeo spend more and more time together—soon it’s every night except Fridays. Sharon reserves Fridays for her children, and Romeo catches up with his buddies at the Anglers’ Club. Taking one night apart feels healthy and normal—they’re each maintaining their own lives!—and it also makes them crazy to see each other. One Saturday, they go to the movies at the Dreamland and have dinner at the Boarding House bar. After dinner they stroll on Main Street, stopping to listen to a guitar player, then an a cappella group; they peek in the window of Stephanie’s, where Sharon sees a pair of shoes she likes, and they linger outside Fisher Real Estate and gawk at the picturesque estates in Shawkemo and Quaise. Do they imagine buying a home together? Sharon admits that it has crossed her mind. She’ll get the house on North Pasture Lane in the divorce but she has agreed to let Walker use the house for two weeks of the summer (when she made this concession, she’d imagined herself on one of the Mediterranean cruises Heather has since advised her to avoid). Romeo owns a cute saltbox on Hooper Farm Road that has a nice lawn he keeps mowed; there’s a basement apartment he rents out to servers from the Lobster Trap. Maybe next summer when Walker is in residence, Sharon will move in with Romeo.
She pulls him away from the real estate listings; she’s getting ahead of herself.
They pass the Gaslight, where there’s already a line forming; they can hear the strains of live music spilling out the open windows.
“Should we go in for a nightcap?” Romeo asks. “Maybe dance a little?”
Sharon has never been to the Gaslight, mostly because she’s worried she’ll feel like everyone’s mother. “Let’s save it for another night. I’m kind of tired.”
Will Romeo think she’s an old fuddy-duddy or that she lacks spontaneity? No. He pulls her close. “The sooner I can crawl into bed with you,” he says, “the better.”
On Wednesdays, Romeo gets off work at noon, and one day—is it already the seventeenth of July?—Sharon invites him to meet her at the Field and Oar Club for lunch. He hesitates, then says, “I won’t be dressed for it,” but Sharon tells him to bring a change of clothes to work; the club is just around the corner, he can walk.
“I want to show you off,” she says.
“If you want to get lunch on the water,” he says, “let’s go to the Brant Point Grill.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says. “The club is much nicer.” What she means is that the club is private and exclusive—and it’s only after Romeo sets foot in the foyer that she realizes he might be intimidated by this. When they take their table for two on the patio, Sharon feels like all conversations pause for one brief second. Maybe that’s because Diane, the piano player, is between songs. Sharon pretends not to notice, though she supposes Romeo’s presence is a big deal—this is the first time Sharon has brought a date to the club.
Diane, maybe as a wink, launches into “Changes” by David Bowie.
“Let’s order a drink,” Sharon says.
Once they sip on a couple of mind erasers—a Field and Oar specialty—Romeo visibly relaxes. He’s dressed perfectly, in a forest-green polo and khaki shorts and the driving moccasins he calls his “fancy shoes.” He’s much more appealing than the other men at the club, all of whom seem a bit effete in their pink oxfords and needlepoint belts, their tidy tennis whites, their painfully close shaves. Sharon could stare at Romeo all day; his profile belongs on a coin. His hair curls up at the collar of his shirt, and there’s just a touch of gray around his ears. When he puts on his reading glasses to peruse the menu, Sharon nearly dissolves into a puddle.
Romeo orders the steak sandwich with onion rings and Sharon the Cobb salad. While they’re at it, they order another round of mind erasers. The first one has made Sharon feel like she’s a soap bubble floating across the club’s impeccable lawn toward the harbor.
This bubble, however, threatens to pop when Busy Ambrose approaches the table.
“Sharon!” Busy says. “I see you’ve brought… a guest.”
Well, yes,Sharon thinks. That’s the only reason Busy would come over. If Sharon is alone or with the kids, Busy ignores her.
“Busy, you remember Romeo,” Sharon says. “It’s his first time to the club.”
“I imagine it would be,” Busy says. “He’s a very lucky man, finding someone like you, Sharon. Very lucky indeed.”
Does Busy not realize Romeo is sitting right there? Any slight is intentional; Busy knows better.
“I’m the one who’s lucky!” Sharon says.
Busy waves a dismissive hand. “The summer I turned seventeen, I had a steamy romance with one of the short-order cooks who worked at the snack bar here. My parents were distraught about it, of course, but they needn’t have worried. It was over the second we said goodbye at the ferry on Labor Day.” She turns to Romeo. “You work at the ferry, don’t you?”
Romeo leans back in his chair and graces Busy with his gorgeous smile. “I do, thank you for remembering.”
Busy’s expression is one of bland amusement, as though a child has spoken. “Sharon,” she says, “we have our membership committee meeting on August fourteenth. I’ll send a reminder to your email.”
“Mmm,” Sharon says. “I think I have a commitment that day. I’ll check and let you know.” She pulls off a frosty tone but Busy will know she’s bluffing. Sharon wouldn’t dare miss the annual membership committee meeting.
“I’ll see you there,” Busy says, “if not before at one of the Richardsons’ magnificent soirées. You seem to be on their permanent guest list.”
“Yes,” Sharon says. “Romeo and I are both on their list.”
“Ta, then,” Busy says. “Good to see you, Roman.”
“Romeo,” Sharon says, but Busy has moved on to her next victim. Sharon takes Romeo’s hand. “She’s awful. I’m sorry.” She feels like an ass for suggesting lunch at the club.
But Romeo seems unbothered; in fact, he looks amused. He leans in, brings his mouth to Sharon’s ear, which sends a thrill right through her. “Subaru Legacy, New York plate BUSY-B,” he whispers. “She’s on the standby list back to the mainland September second, but I have a feeling she’s not going to make it on the ferry that day. Or the next day, or the day after that, poor thing. She might be very inconvenienced.”
Forget the Cobb salad,Sharon thinks. She wants to take Romeo home and eat him for lunch!
On Wednesday afternoon after Leslee leaves for her pickleball game, Kacy comes over to Triple Eight to hang with Coco on the beach. Bull is in his study working; Coco has her cell phone in case he needs anything, but he’s more self-sufficient than Leslee. Leslee can’t seem to change the toilet paper roll or toast a piece of sourdough without Coco’s help.
Kacy loves the private beach. The sand is clean and groomed with a sprinkling of pebbles and shells at the waterline. Two chaises rest side by side, swathed in Turkish cotton towels; between the chairs is a cooler table. Coco lifts the top and pulls out two ice-cold seltzers.
Coco is reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles. “The real tragedy of this book,” she tells Kacy, “is that there isn’t a single woman in it.” Kacy is paging through Vogue when, unfortunately, she sees an ad for Grand Soir, the perfume Isla wears, and this immediately dampens her mood. She and Isla haven’t texted since the Fourth of July, when Isla messaged her at midnight with Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together, the first line of “America” by Simon and Garfunkel. It brought back memories of rainy Tuesday nights, the two of them lying in Kacy’s bed, indulging their shared love of ’70s soft rock. But when Kacy checked Rondo’s Instagram, she saw a picture of Isla and Rondo with Dr. Dunne and his wife, Totally Tami, on a roof-deck in Nob Hill where they were watching the fireworks.
Kacy responded to the text by sending the selfie of herself and Coco aboard Hedonism, and Isla sent back a one-tear crying emoji. But more than two weeks have passed and there’s been nothing else—no texts from Isla, no posts on Rondo’s Instagram.
Kacy is tempted to reach out now—the ad for Grand Soir feels like a sign—but then she hears a motor and looks up to see Lamont puttering in from Hedonism in the dinghy. Kacy isn’t sure where things stand between Coco and Lamont, but once Lamont pulls up on shore, he ambles over, grinning.
“Look at you two, living your best lives,” he says.
“Take our picture,” Kacy says, holding out her phone.
Coco and Kacy hoist their drinks and Lamont snaps a few photos.
“Thanks,” Kacy says. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I’m going home to check on my mom,” he says. “You ladies have fun.”
“We will,” Kacy says. When he’s out of earshot, she turns to Coco. “He’s so wholesome. That’s exotic.”
“He likes spending time with his mother,” Coco says. “That’s exotic.”
They’ve reached the point in their friendship where they can enjoy a companionable silence, and Kacy feels herself drifting off to la-la land until Coco says, “Can I ask you a question?”
Her tone can only be described as portentous, and Kacy thinks, She’s going to ask about the selfies. “Sure,” Kacy says. She has to stop sending the selfies to Isla. It’s not fair to Coco. It’s worse than not fair, it’s gross.
“Why haven’t you said anything about my screenplay?” Coco says. “If you hated it, I want you to tell me.”
Kacy feels like a fish released from a hook. Not the selfies after all—the screenplay! “Oh, Coco, I haven’t read it yet.” Though this, she realizes, might be an even greater infraction. Kacy asked Coco to let her read the script, Coco dutifully sent it, and Kacy has allowed it to molder in her inbox. Kacy has all day free, so what’s her excuse? She isn’t quite the reader Coco is—Coco is reading a classic while Kacy snacks on Vogue—but that’s not the reason. Kacy belatedly realized that she wouldn’t know what to say if she didn’t like it. She would have to fall back on I’m a nurse, what do I know about writing? Or she could lie and say she loved it regardless, but what if Coco sensed she was patronizing her? Don’t do business with friends is a rule for a reason, and another one should be Don’t offer to be the first reader of your friend’s screenplay because it could end awkwardly. “But I’ll read it tonight, I promise. I’ll start it as soon as I get home.”
“Will you?” Coco says. “I’d really love some feedback before I… send it out.”
“Where are you sending it?” Kacy asks. “Do you have any connects?”
“I have one,” Coco says. “But I’m keeping it a secret because I don’t want to jinx it.”
Kacy is true to her word. When she gets home, she takes her laptop out to her parents’ back deck and clicks on Coco’s attachment: Rosebush, an original screenplay by Colleen Coyle.
An hour and twelve minutes later, she’s wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. The script is… breathtaking. It’s raw and honest and poignant. It’s very clearly about Coco’s life growing up in Arkansas (the main character is named Coco), but Kacy wonders if everything in it is true or if Coco embellished. The overall arc is Coco’s desire to escape her small town: Can she do it? Coco the character yearns for the world outside of Rosebush, but everything conspires to keep her there, especially her narrow-minded mother and the family’s lack of resources. Kacy wants to know if Coco really robbed the cash register at the diner where she worked; she wants to know if her mother teased her for bringing home library books. The most powerful scene is Coco’s senior banquet. The senior banquet at Rosebush High School includes a father-daughter dance. Coco is supposed to dance with her mother’s boyfriend, Kemp, but the day before the banquet, Coco’s mother picks a fight with Kemp and kicks him out (the viewer learns that she does this with some regularity). The scene follows Coco as she climbs into a pickup in her banquet dress and drives to each of the remote camping spots that Kemp frequents when he’s been banished, but she can’t find him. She ends up missing the banquet and the next day accuses her mother of intentionally sabotaging her big night. Her mother says, “You act like you have some right to be happy when the rest of us are miserable.”
Kacy can’t in a million years imagine either of her parents uttering anything so hurtful. How did Coco make it out of that life with any self-esteem intact? Kacy wants to drive to Triple Eight and give Coco a hug, but that would be weird, and Coco wouldn’t want Kacy feeling sorry for her, so Kacy calls instead.
“I loved every word,” Kacy says. She doesn’t have to make her voice sound persuasive because she’s telling the truth. “It’s brilliant, Coco. You’re a genius.”
There’s a pause, then: “Really? Really-really?”
“Really-really,” Kacy says.
Coco isn’t sure when, why, or how, but at some point in the middle of July, everything clicks. She learns to go to the Stop and Shop at seven in the morning when it’s been freshly restocked; she discovers a secret parking spot in town that’s a stone’s throw from the Born and Bread bakery; she becomes friends with Chris from Pip and Anchor, and he texts her when they have sandwich specials so that she can combine her marketing and lunch stop.
After she pays off her Visa balance, she has sixty-two hundred dollars in the bank, a veritable fortune. She returns to the Lovely and buys a few things from gorgeous Olivia—a tank, a skirt, a couple of dresses, a pair of cute sandals, a new beach bag. She makes an appointment at RJ Miller, even though the idea of spending a hundred dollars on a haircut kills her when she can simply do it herself. She tells the stylist, Lorna, that she wants to grow it out. Lorna is so skilled with her trimming and shaping that Coco vows never to cut her own hair again.
The Richardsons have also hit something of a sweet spot. The Fourth of July sail solidified their position in Nantucket society—they have invitations every night. Leslee is now a regular fourth at pickleball with Kacy’s mother and her friends, and Leslee confides in Coco that she and Bull have secured a nominating letter for the Field and Oar Club from Phoebe Wheeler and four seconding letters, including one from the commodore herself, Busy Ambrose.
“If all goes according to plan, we’ll be members as soon as next month,” Leslee says.
“Great,” Coco says—but this response isn’t enthusiastic enough for Leslee.
“The Field and Oar was founded in 1905,” Leslee says. “Its membership includes Nantucket’s oldest and most established families. You can’t just buy your way in; you have to be accepted based on personal merit. This is a very big deal.”
If it’s true that the Richardsons can’t buy their way in, then this is a very big deal. It’ll lend Leslee and Bull legitimacy. Leslee is obsessed with fitting in, with stature, with who’s who, and she’s critical of people she calls wannabes. She shows Coco an invitation she received from the dentist Andy McMann and his wife, Rachel. They’re throwing a summer cocktail party with a Preppy Handbook theme.
“They’re copying us,” Leslee cries, thrusting the invitation at Coco. “I’m surprised Rachel didn’t hand-deliver this, but I’m sure even she knew that would be a step too far. As it is, she’s stealing our idea for a themed cocktail party.” She sounds offended but also sort of delighted.
“A Preppy Handbook theme feels redundant,” Coco says. “It’s Nantucket in the summer.”
Leslee beams. “I could hug you,” she says—and then she does hug Coco, and Coco gets a full inhale of Leslee’s Guerlain Double Vanille perfume and a mouthful of her barrel-curled hair.
“So will you go?” Coco asks. “To the party?”
“Absolutely,” Leslee says, “not. Dr. Andy and Rachel are imitation crab. I could smell their weakness the moment I met them. Besides, I hear Jessica Torre is a far better dentist.”
Coco recalls that the McManns were the first people struck from Leslee’s invitation list for the Fourth of July. Cutting the invite list by half was a strategy that has made the Richardsons’ stock rise. It’s classic supply and demand: Everyone wants what they can’t have.
Everyone, that is, except for Coco, who relishes each second of her new life. She throws her head back as she cruises along the Polpis Road in Baby. The top is down, the sun is shining, she’s playing her favorite song: “I Wanna Get Better” by the Bleachers. But everything is already better, she thinks, because Lamont Oakley is her sneaky-link.
He comes by her apartment at the literal crack of dawn when both Bull and Leslee are fast asleep (they are not early risers). He parks all the way out on the Wauwinet Road, then jogs down Pocomo. (Coco has disabled the driveway alarm, with Leslee’s blessing—they both agree the chiming is obnoxious—but even so, Coco checks daily to make sure Leslee hasn’t turned it back on.) Lamont sprints along the grass on the side of the driveway so his footsteps don’t make noise on the shells. When he arrives, breathless, at her door, Coco feels like they’re working for the CIA. But the last thing either of them wants is to get caught breaking the rule now.
They’ve perfected the art of acting cordial-bordering-on-indifferent when they bump into each other at work. “Hey. S’up.” There are no winks, no lingering looks; it drives them both crazy.
When Lamont enters Coco’s bedroom in the apricot light of dawn each morning, Coco rolls over, warm with sleep, and instantly starts glowing with desire. Lamont kisses just beneath her ear; he nibbles on her hip bone. She cannot get enough of him.
The best part of the morning isn’t even the sex, it’s the talking afterward. One morning, Lamont tells Coco that every child on Nantucket is eligible to take free sailing lessons through Nantucket Community Sailing. Lamont showed a talent for it right away; he had the adaptability, the patience, and the independence. “Plus, I love being on the water,” he says. “I love weather, I love wind, I love the sound of the sails, I love tying and untying knots, I love the boats, especially the very simple Optis we learned on.”
When he got older, members of the Field and Oar asked him to crew. It was at that point he realized there weren’t a lot of Black people in the sailing-verse. “I was usually the only person of color at the Field and Oar,” he says. “Which prepared me, I guess, for the whitewashed world of sailing. When I was in college, most of the teams we sailed against were all white.”
“Did you feel like a trailblazer?” Coco says.
“Sort of,” Lamont says. “But then the kids behind me in school—like Javier and Esteban, for example—saw what I did and their parents heard about all the places I’ve been able to travel. The Nantucket sailing program is way more diverse now.”
Coco tells Lamont about her home growing up. “Nothing in our house was ever correct,” Coco says. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Something was always breaking—the porch light would go out, the downstairs toilet would overflow, the battery of my mother’s Accord would die. My mother would wash our clothes and hang them on the line, but she never folded them or put them away; we’d all just pull stuff crumpled from the laundry basket. Even my mother’s name, Georgi—that’s her whole entire name, on her birth certificate—it’s just not finished. Like, why not add the final e or a?” Coco sighs. “I remember this one time, my mother brought home steaks for dinner, these thick rib eyes that the butcher at work gave her. She mashed potatoes and boiled up some broccoli, and I made brownies for dessert. I was so excited to have a family dinner like you’d read about in a book and it was one time when Bree and her kids were in a good mood—no one was crying, no one was fighting. Just when everything was ready, my mother’s phone rang. It was Kemp, saying he’d forgotten that darts league started that night and Bree’s boyfriend, Larch, was meeting him at the bar and they wouldn’t be home until late. Georgi got so mad they were missing dinner that she carried the platter of steaks out back and threw them into our pond for the snapping turtles. She just tossed everyone’s dinner. I ran into my room with the tray of brownies, and I invited Bree’s kids in, and we locked the door and ate the brownies straight out of the pan sitting on the floor.” Coco tears up. She had been fourteen years old when this happened. She remembers because she wrote a “personal narrative” about it for a ninth-grade English assignment, and the teacher, Mrs. Buckwalter, asked Coco to stay after class. Coco thought Mrs. Buckwalter was going to report their family to child protective services—in a way, Coco wanted this to happen—but instead, Mrs. Buckwalter told Coco that she was a “very talented writer.”
Coco laughs. “I’m sorry that story doesn’t have an inspirational ending like yours. I didn’t triumph; I only survived.”
“But you did triumph,” Lamont says, kissing her eyelids, her nose, then her lips. “Because you’re here.”
Every morning when Lamont gets up to leave, Coco longs for him to stay.
“Why can’t we go to dinner one night? I know where Bull and Leslee have reservations. If they go to the Galley, we can go to the Sconset Café.”
“If anybody sees us…” Lamont says, and Coco realizes he’s right. The Richardsons know everyone now.
There is one place Lamont is willing to take Coco: to his house to meet his mother, Glynnie. At first, Coco can’t believe it. “You’re sure?” she says. It feels like they skipped a step.
“She wanted to know why I suddenly seemed so happy all the time. And I can’t lie to my mama, so I told her about you. She asked to meet you.”
Coco and Lamont arrange to go to his house at nine o’clock on Saturday morning. Coco has a little more leeway with her errands on the weekends because the Richardsons tend to sleep in even later than usual. Lamont lives in a saltbox cottage on a cul-de-sac over by the Miacomet Golf Course. The house is neat and tidy, with hydrangeas on either side of a yellow front door. As they approach, Coco hears a dog barking.
Lamont opens the door. “Molly!” he says to an English cream golden retriever who is as white and fluffy as a polar bear. “Molly, meet Coco. Coco, Molly.” He ushers Coco inside to a mudroom that is giving Martha Stewart vibes—there’s a rainbow of foul-weather jackets hanging on wooden pegs, and beneath a tastefully weathered bench are a row of boat shoes and flip-flops. They step into a bright kitchen with white glass-fronted cabinets and a white marble island with a bouquet of lilies in a green glass vase and a bowl of peaches and plums sitting on it. There’s a pie underneath a glass-domed cake stand. On the far side of the kitchen is a breakfast nook with windows that open to the backyard. And at the round table sits a petite woman wearing earbuds with her phone in front of her. Her eyes are closed behind the lenses of her glasses, but her posture is as straight as a ballerina’s.
“Mama?” Lamont says.
Lamont’s mother opens her eyes in surprise. She presses the screen of her phone and removes her earbuds. “Darling!”
“I brought Coco,” he says. “Coco, this is my mother, Glynnis Oakley.”
Coco steps forward and offers her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Oakley.”
“Dear girl, call me Glynnie,” she says. She scoots out from behind the table and gets to her feet. She’s wearing white capris and a blue-and-white-gingham sleeveless blouse with a ruffled collar. Her skin is the same light brown as Lamont’s and she has a few pronounced freckles on her cheeks. Her nails, Coco notes, are perfect ovals polished to look like milk glass. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be so I can’t get a good look at you, but you sound just beautiful.”
“Thank you for inviting me over,” Coco says.
“Lamont will make coffee. I was just listening to my audiobook—it’s quite gripping.”
“What’s it called?” Coco asks.
“Oh…” Glynnie says. “I forget the title, it’s one of those… you know. You sit down here next to me and tell me all about yourself and about this crazy couple you’re both working for. All the girls at church want the inside scoop. You wouldn’t believe the rumors that are flying around this island. All anyone wants to talk about is the Richardsons, but Lamont won’t tell me a thing about them.”
Coco looks to Lamont, who shakes his head. Coco takes the seat next to Glynnie. “Well,” she says, “I’m from a place called Rosebush, Arkansas.”
“Rosebush, Arkansas!” Glynnie says. “That sounds made up.”
If only,Coco thinks.
The best way to avoid gossiping about the Richardsons (though Coco is tempted to tell Glynnie about the Amalfi lemons; that would incite a spicy riot among the girls at church) is to ask questions about Lamont. Once Glynnie gets talking about him, she can’t stop. She tells Coco that Lamont nearly quit sailing after his first lesson at age seven because there was a bully on his boat. Coco mentions that she’s friends with Kacy Kapenash, and Glynnie leads Coco into the living room so she can show off Lamont and Kacy’s pictures from the junior prom and senior banquet. Coco wants to scream, it is just so cute; they’re so young, they’re babies. She studies Kacy’s dresses: a dusty-rose sheath for the junior prom, a black strapless gown for the senior banquet. Kacy had impeccable taste even then.
“I always secretly hoped something more would happen between them,” Glynnie says. “But for some reason, it never did.”
From there, Glynnie shows Coco Lamont’s school pictures starting in first grade, when he was missing his two front teeth, all the way to his senior portrait in his cap and gown. Next, it’s on to his sailing trophies and the collections of postcards he’s sent her from around the world. Coco keeps turning to see how Lamont is taking all of this, but he’s just chilling on the sofa with his coffee, playing with Molly, smiling and rolling his eyes.
Finally he stands up, washes out their mugs, and fixes Glynnie a ham and cheese sandwich that he covers with plastic and puts in the fridge. “We have to get back to work, Mama,” he says. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Can’t you leave Coco behind?” Glynnie says. “We’ve barely gotten started.”
Lamont walks Coco out to Baby. “She loved you.”
“I loved her. She’s so proud of you. I know you take that for granted, but…” But what? she thinks. Should she tell him that her mother never ordered Coco’s school pictures because she thought it was a rip-off? “You shouldn’t.”
Lamont takes a step closer to Coco, and Coco stage-whispers, “Are you going to kiss me in broad daylight?”
“I’m not,” Lamont says. “But I want to, very, very badly.” He comes in even closer; his hips bump against hers and she moans softly. Then he steps away and says, “I’ll see you back at the base. Thank you for doing that with me.”
Lamont gets into his car, and Coco takes a moment after he drives away. She desperately wants to text Kacy and say, Lamont just took me to meet his mother. He must like me! But she’s not sure she can trust Kacy to keep it secret. What if she slips and tells her mother, then her mother tells Phoebe, and Phoebe tells Leslee? It would be all over.
Coco is eager to give her screenplay to Bull, but Kacy has had it for weeks and hasn’t said a word about it. When prompted, Kacy admits she hasn’t read it. But she will, she promises. She will!
At dinnertime the same day, Kacy calls to say: “It’s brilliant. You’re a genius.”
It’s brilliant,Coco thinks. I’m a genius.
The next morning, she prints out the script (the Richardsons are pen-and-paper people) and knocks on the door of Bull’s office.
“Come in!” he says.
Coco takes a breath. This, she thinks, is it. This is why she’s here. She remembers back to the night at the Banana Deck—the paradise playlist, Harlan from WAPA, Give us all the appetizers—and thinks how astonishing it is that, only two months later, she lives on Nantucket and is indispensable to Bull and Leslee. Everything has gone exactly as she planned. Bull is going to agree to read her script, she just knows it.
She steps into the room. Bull is behind his desk, looking tan and relaxed in a navy polo shirt. He isn’t on the phone, isn’t screaming in English or any other language. In front of him is a green juice from Lemon Press that Coco procured for him earlier that morning, and he’s working the New York Times crossword.
“‘Actress Ellen in Same Time, Next Year,’” he reads. “Seven letters.”
“Burstyn,” Coco says, and spells it for him.
“You’re a whiz,” he says. He looks up. “Everything okay?”
For a second, she can’t speak.
He notices the script in her hands. “Is that a… did that come for me?”
“It’s a screenplay,” Coco says. “It’s called Rosebush.”
He waves his fingers and she sets it down on his desk. “Who wrote it?” he asks.
“I did,” Coco says.
It takes him a second to process this, but then he reads the cover page, lifts it to inspect the second page. He raises his eyes to hers. “You wrote a movie?”
“I’ve been working on it for a while but it’s finally finished and I thought you might want to read it.”
He’s searching her face, but what is he thinking? Does he realize she’s his assistant solely because she wanted access? He could shut her down, say he’s too busy, say, How dare you. But he’s not going to. She can tell he’s intrigued.
“Well,” he says. “This is certainly unexpected, but not unwelcome. I can’t wait to dig in.”
“Okay,” Coco says, and she leaves the study, trying to act natural. Before she closes the door, she peeks back in and sees that he’s already started to read.
Coming to Nantucket is the best thing she’s ever done.