Swan Song

25. Single Ladies

After nearly three weeks of radio silence, Kacy receives a text from Isla: There’s something going on with Dave.

Daveis Rondo; Kacy sometimes forgets he has a first name.

Something going on?Kacy thinks. What does that mean? She realizes the text is being used as bait; Isla wants her to ask. Kacy clicks on Rondo’s Instagram—nothing new. His last post was on the Fourth of July, the picture of him and Isla and Dr. Dunne and the wife, Totally Tami, with her centerfold breasts and caterpillar eyebrows.

There’s something going on with Dave.Kacy considers the options: Rondo has gotten cold feet. Rondo is having professional trouble; he lost a patient; he has a staffing issue; he’s butting heads with the hospital administration. (Kacy can’t imagine Rondo butting heads with anybody; he’s not a butter.) Maybe Rondo is sick. Does he have terminal cancer? Although Kacy wants him to disappear, she doesn’t wish for this.

While Kacy’s deciding if she should text back—part of her wants to know; part of her doesn’t care; part of her wants to engage with Isla; part of her thinks it’s better to ignore Isla—a text comes in from Coco: We’re going out tonight.

Yes,Kacy thinks. Where do you want to go? she asks.

Everywhere,Coco says.

When Kacy pulls into the driveway at Triple Eight and sees Coco waiting, she whoops. Coco is wearing the white eyelet dress from the Lovely and a pair of sandals that lace up her slim calves. She’s grown her hair out to chin length and she tucks it behind her ears. She’s gotten some sun on her face, which makes her ice-blue eyes even more arresting.

“You’re a total smoke-show,” Kacy says when Coco climbs into the car.

“I’m so happy to be out of my uniform,” Coco says. She points ahead. “I know this is the most overused phrase of our generation but… let’s do this.”

Kacy doesn’t need to be told twice; she peels out of the Richardsons’ driveway so fast that white shells fly into the air like confetti.

Their first stop is the Oystercatcher for buck-a-shuck. This is, in Kacy’s opinion, the best way to spend the golden hour. They order two glasses of rosé and a dozen fifth points from their bartender Carson Quinboro (a legendary Nantucket badass), who directs them to two stools overlooking the scene on Jetties Beach—striped umbrellas and sandcastles, mothers chasing after little kids with bottles of sunscreen. A cover band called Cranberry Alarm Clock plays an acoustic version of “Single Ladies,” which is a little weird but also sort of charming. And, in their case, it’s appropriate. Kacy raises her glass. “To all the single ladies.”

After the first sip of her rosé, Coco explains her get-out-of-jail-free card: Bull is away on a business trip and Leslee and Lamont have sailed to Martha’s Vineyard overnight.

“Overnight?” Kacy says. She doctors an oyster with mignonette and tosses it back. “They’re sleeping together, right? There’s no way they aren’t.”

Behind her sunglasses, Coco squints in the direction of the lifeguard stand.

“You saw them on the Fourth of July?” Kacy says. “She was practically lying on top of him. And at the Pink and White Party, they were skinny-dipping, remember? She was naked on the boat and he swam out there, Coco.”

Coco sips her rosé, though she would like to chug the glass. “They’re not,” she says. “Leslee just flirts.”

Um… okay?Coco sounds defensive, and Kacy wonders if she still has a thing for Lamont. She hopes not—Lamont is definitely getting with the boss lady.

“What are the sleeping arrangements for this overnight trip?” Kacy says.

“Lamont is staying on the boat,” Coco says. “Leslee is staying at the Charlotte Inn.”

Gah! Kacy is dying to stay at the Charlotte Inn. Back when Kacy and Isla used to talk about coming to Nantucket on vacation, Kacy imagined a weekend trip to the Vineyard—staying at the Charlotte Inn, hanging out at clothing-optional Lucy Vincent Beach, drinks at Nancy’s, dinner at the Red Cat, dancing at the Ritz, breakfast at Morning Glory Farm. “How much is that place per night?”

“I have no idea,” Coco says.

“Didn’t you make the reservation?”

Coco did not make the reservation, a detail that hasn’t occurred to her until this very second.

“They can’t get into too much trouble,” Kacy says, “because the boys on the crew will be there, right?”

Coco’s head falls back. “They couldn’t go.”

“Oh, honey,” Kacy says. “Leslee is definitely staying on the boat.”

Kacy might as well be sticking the three-pronged oyster fork into Coco’s heart. “I don’t care,” Coco says. “I just feel sorry for Bull.”

“They must have some kind of agreement,” Kacy says.

Kacy’s right,Coco thinks. They must. She feels naive, duped, out of her league. There weren’t a lot of open marriages in Rosebush.

Kacy hands her phone to the bartender, Carson. “Would you take our picture?” she asks.

The next stop is Lola 41, where they order hibiscus blueberry margaritas. Kacy says, “I’m going to have my parents come get my car and we’ll walk. Because we are getting drunk!”

Drunk sounds good to Coco. As she’s tasting her margarita, she recognizes two dudes at the end of the bar. “It’s Addison,” she says to Kacy.

Kacy glances over. “This island is too small. He’s with Fast Eddie.”

Eddie Pancik,Coco thinks. Married to Grace, residing at 1313 Lily Street. She’s delivered invitations to their house twice now; it is starting to feel like a small island. “Should we go say hello?”

“Absolutely not,” Kacy says. “I want to enjoy myself.”

When Addison notices Kacy at the bar with the Richardsons’ personal assistant, he lowers his voice: “Bull priced out the difference between on-island contractors and off-island contractors for our project,” he says to Eddie. “Off-island contractors came in twenty percent cheaper. Which, I hardly have to tell you, is a savings of nearly three million dollars.”

Eddie takes a beat. Why did Bull reach out to only Addison with this information? he wonders. This feels like something that should have been written in an email to them both. Are Addison and Bull intentionally sidestepping Eddie? Is he expendable on this project? (He fears the answer is yes, but they have a deal.)

“We know off-island contractors are cheaper,” Eddie says. “We also know we have to add in the cost of transportation over and back every day, which adds up. We have to factor in bad-weather days when the boats and planes are canceled and they can’t work or they get stuck on the island and we have to put them up at a hotel. If there’s an issue after the homes are built, is the off-island contractor going to show up? No! But most important, the on-island contractors are the ones we have the relationships with. They’ll show up. They’ll get it done.”

Addison spins his Aperol spritz. He persuaded Eddie to order one as well—the drink is having a moment, Addison said—but to Eddie, it tastes like the toothpaste they use at a dental cleaning. He ordered a second one anyway, hoping the drink will telegraph that Eddie, too, is having a moment.

“I told him that,” Addison says. “But he still wants to go with off-island contractors and I told him it was okay.”

“You…” Eddie feels himself about to lose his cool. “The three of us are partners, are we not? Why wasn’t I privy to this conversation?”

“Well,” Addison says, and for the first time ever, Eddie sees him squirm. Addison Wheeler is to the manor born; he has an ease in the world that Eddie envies, a combination of pedigree, education, and charm. But right now, Addison looks like he’s holding in a fart. “It came up in a conversation about something else.”

“Which was…”

Addison sighs. “Bull is helping Reed get into his first-choice boarding school. Tiffin Academy. Bull knows several people on the board, and apparently it’s an old-fashioned place where strings can still be pulled.”

“And in exchange for him doing you this favor, he wants you to concede on the off-island contractors.”

“Yes,” Addison says. “But also, Eddie, it’s a lot of money. Three mil, a million dollars apiece. You can’t sneer at that.”

Eddie pushes away what’s left of his Asinine spritz. “I have to go,” he says and then he does, in fact, sneer. “And for the record, that drink sucks.”

At Cru, which is perched on the very end of Straight Wharf, Kacy and Coco order the Crucomber, which is icy cold vodka, cucumber, lemon, and toasted sesame. It’s served by a bartender named Shawn, who is so fine, Coco forgets about Lamont for a moment. She thinks Shawn might be checking her out as well because when he sets down their drinks, he says, “You have zombie eyes.”

Coco laughs. This is a new one. “Is that a good thing?”

“Yeah, they’re otherworldly,” he says.

Coco raises her glass to him. She’s terrible at flirting.

The woman on the other side of Kacy is holding a tiny baby, Kacy would guess only three or four weeks old; she can see the pulsing of his anterior fontanelle. She’s whisked right back to the NICU—the beeping of the monitors, the whoosh of the respirators, the squeak of the nurses’ sneakers. In the midst of all this, Kacy suddenly hears Isla’s voice. She would address every baby formally—“Good afternoon, Mr. Defazio.” “Good evening, Ms. McQuaid”—in a way that lightened the mood in the unit but also indicated a future where these teeny-tiny babies would become adults. Isla is such a good doctor that she inspires every NICU nurse to be just like her. This brings Kacy to the question she’s been asking herself since she left San Francisco: How can a person so impeccable in her professional life have such a messy personal life?

She has reached the conclusion that this must happen all the time.

Kacy hands Shawn the bartender her phone. “Would you take our picture?”

Shawn obliges and when Kacy gets the phone back, she laughs. “I think he’s into you.” She shows Coco the picture: It’s all of Coco and just a sliver of Kacy.

“Here, I’ll take it,” says a pretty, dark-haired girl who has just popped in between them. “Shawn takes terrible pictures. Trust me, I know—he’s my brother.”

Coco recognizes this chick. “You’re Olivia from the Lovely,” she says. “You’re the one who sold me this dress!”

“Oh, hey!” Olivia says. She looks from Coco to Kacy and back. “Yes, I remember you.”

Because Coco and Kacy are four cocktails in, bumping into Olivia seems like the world’s most insane coincidence, and they order shots of Fireball all around.

“We need food,” Kacy says. They’re now too drunk to sit down at anyplace respectable, so off to the Strip they go. Coco says she might want Steamboat pizza or a Reuben from Walters but Kacy calls her an amateur and yanks her into Stubbys. Ten minutes later, they’re across the street on a bench scarfing down double cheeseburgers and a pile of hot waffle fries. Has food ever tasted this good? Coco wonders. A stream of cars passes them, people just off the ferry.

“The August people are arriving,” Kacy says.

The vehicles are mostly Jeeps and luxury SUVs; they’re filled with kids who point at the Juice Bar and golden retrievers that hang their heads out the windows. One car has boogie boards strapped to the top; another one has three bikes hanging off the back. Coco sees lacrosse sticks, golf clubs, Proven?al-print duffel bags. She can’t help but think back to how bewildered she was the day she arrived—and now look at her!

“Let’s take a selfie,” Kacy says.

Thank god she met Kacy, Coco thinks. And she smiles.

Coco feels like she’s entered the cantina in Star Wars, but really, it’s the Club Car. Instead of aliens, Coco finds a woman in a lime-green linen sheath and pearls and a gentleman wearing a bow tie embroidered with watermelons. Kacy weaves through the crowd until they’re standing by Mike the piano player. He’s singing “Rich Girl,” and everyone singing along agrees that she’s gone too far but they know it don’t matter anyway.

Kacy says, “You stay here, I’ll get drinks. What do you want?”

Coco wants Lamont to call her and confirm that Leslee is staying at the Charlotte Inn, where she’s seduced the bellman, and Lamont is heading back to the boat alone. She wants him also to say that he misses her and wants their romance to be public, that he’ll tell Leslee in the morning, come what may. “Whatever you’re having,” Coco says.

Mike the piano player glissandos an end to the song and calls out, “Requests?”

A dude in a navy polo and a pair of dusty-pink Nantucket Reds (not only can Coco identify the pants now; she also knows if they’re authentically weathered) puts a hundred-dollar bill in the tip jar. “Would you play ‘Just Like Heaven’?” he says. “And dedicate it to Sharon?”

Mike’s eyes light up when he sees the blue Benjamin drift down on top of the fives and tens in his jar. “Sharon!” he calls out. “This song is for you!”

Blond Sharon and Romeo are enjoying a tequila cocktail called the Mr. Brightside and a plate of light, cheesy gougères at the Club Car bar when Sharon hears Mike the piano player say, “Sharon! This song is for you!”

“Ha!” Sharon nudges Romeo. “There must be another Sharon here.” She and Romeo have already planned to request “Hooked on a Feeling” once they finish eating.

“Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick,”Mike sings.

Good god,she thinks. It’s “Just Like Heaven.” That used to be her song with Walker.

It was the early nineties. At a bar called the Mill on the Upper East Side, Sharon and Walker danced to “Just Like Heaven” and ended up making out on the dance floor with all their friends watching. When the lights of the bar came up, Walker asked for Sharon’s number, which she wrote on a cocktail napkin; Walker shoved the napkin in his back pocket. Sharon figured the napkin would end up lost or go through the wash, but—surprise, surprise—Walker called the very next day. He invited Sharon to a West Side pub crawl with the rest of his Columbia MBA classmates. (Sharon almost didn’t go because she hated taking the crosstown bus.) During the pub crawl, they stopped at a bar called Wild Life, and Walker asked the DJ to play “Just Like Heaven.” Then he said in Sharon’s ear, “We’ll dance to this song at our wedding.”

And they did.

Romeo lifts the plate of gougères. “Do you want the pope’s nose?” This is what Sharon’s mother used to call the last remaining hors d’oeuvre on the platter. Sharon told Romeo this at the Richardsons’ Pink and White Party, and it’s cute that he remembered. She pushes thoughts of Walker from her mind and pops the last gougère into her mouth. That one warm, cheesy bite while sitting next to Romeo is just like heaven.

Sharon feels a hand on her back. The Club Car bar is narrow—it was originally one of the Pullman cars on the old Nantucket railroad—and hence there’s no such thing as personal space. All night, people have been jostling Sharon and Romeo and saying, “Vodka soda, close it,” right between them. But Sharon and Romeo don’t mind; singing at the Club Car is a Nantucket tradition.

The hand presses; someone wants Sharon’s attention. She turns just as Mike sings her favorite line: “Why won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you?”

Standing there is… Walker. It’s as though she conjured him.

Sharon is so stunned, she can’t speak. She looks past Walker for a person who might be Bailey from PT. Did he have the gall to bring the little vixen to the island? It doesn’t appear so. In the next instant, she understands that she’s the Sharon this song is dedicated to. Walker appeared on the island unannounced, found her at the Club Car, and requested their song as some kind of… grand romantic gesture?

“What,” she says, “are you doing here?”

He holds a hand out. “Dance with me.”

Sharon is immediately swept back four and a half months to the Day Her Marriage Fell Apart.

It’s a typical March day in Connecticut—dreary, raw, raining sideways—and Sharon is parked in front of Centrality Physical Therapy and Wellness, waiting for Walker to emerge from his final appointment. Sharon mindlessly scrolls through her phone, but she’s also recalling how reckless Walker had been on their Christmas vacation in Breckenridge—he’s nowhere close to the skier he thinks he is—and how he’d torn his ACL ten seconds into a run down George’s Thumb. Sharon doesn’t have anything planned for dinner, so after they pick up the twins from debate and Robert from basketball practice, the whole family can go to Tequila Mockingbird to celebrate Walker’s healed knee. This improves Sharon’s mood; she could use a margarita.

When Walker gets into the car, his expression is a tragedy mask. Has someone died?

“Are you okay?” Sharon asks. “Did they add another week? Two weeks?”

“I’m in love with Bailey,” he says. “My physical therapist.” He swallows. “I love her, Sharon, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m leaving you.”

In Sharon’s mind, the windshield wipers stop, the car’s engine cuts out, the rehabilitation center crumbles. She feels like a block of ice despite the seat heater toasting her bottom. She has heard all about Bailey: twenty-seven years old, a graduate of Fairfield University, hands of a healer, brought chocolate eclairs from the Silvermine Market every week so she could reward Walker for his hard work. Sharon had thought, Cute, he has a crush on Bailey. She supposed that was typical at their age, and their marriage was strong enough to withstand a crush; it made things a little spicy, even.

Sharon knows Walker is serious by how devastated he seems. He knocks his head against the car window, saying, “I just cannot believe this. I am such a douchebag!”

Sharon gets a text from Colby: Where u at? She starts to drive toward the high school, saying nothing. Walker brushes his tears away, takes a shuddering breath, and manages to collect himself before the twins pile into the car, both of them so deep into their phones that Sharon and Walker could be on fire—they are on fire, Sharon thinks—and they wouldn’t notice. She asks a desultory question about debate that receives no answer. She proceeds to the middle school and picks up Robert, and when he’s settled in the car, jockeying for space with his sisters, who won’t budge, Sharon makes the big announcement: They’re going to Tequila Mockingbird for dinner!

Sharon is shocked at how normal—even pleasant—their dinner is. She allows herself to believe that Walker was experiencing a moment of temporary insanity earlier, that all it will take to right the ship he seems so desperate to capsize are some sizzling fajita platters.

But when they get home, Walker packs a bag. He leaves that very night to stay at Bailey’s one-bedroom apartment in a sketchy section of Norwalk.

“Are you crazy?” Sharon says to Walker now. “I’m not going to dance with you.” The song has come to an end anyway; a few people cheer, and Mike launches into “Philadelphia Freedom.”

Romeo spins around on his stool and offers Walker his hand. “Hey there,” he says. “I’m Romeo, from the Steamship.”

Walker looks from Sharon to Romeo and back and belatedly grips Romeo’s hand. “Hey there, I’m Walker, Sharon’s husband.”

“Ex-husband,” Sharon says.

“The divorce isn’t final,” Walker says. “Legally, I’m still your husband.”

“What is this all about, Walker?” Sharon asks. She’s pleased to note that Walker looks awful. He’s pasty and bloated, and there are some long hairs sticking out of his nose that Bailey from PT must have been too timid to tell him about.

“I’d like to talk to you,” Walker says. “I made a big mistake, an epic mistake, and I want you back.”

Sharon blinks. How many times in the days and weeks following Walker’s departure had she envisioned this moment?

“She isn’t coming back to you,” Romeo says. He stands up so he can face Walker, and Sharon tenses.

Walker huffs. “This is none of your business.”

Sharon has to stop this. The last thing she wants is a scene in the middle of the Club Car; there isn’t room for a confrontation and she doesn’t want to go viral for being part of a Gen X love triangle. Walker is right that this is none of Romeo’s business, but Romeo is right about something too: Sharon has repeatedly told Romeo that she would never, ever, ever go back to Walker.

But now that she sees the two men together, she feels like she has known Romeo for only fifteen minutes. She has never used or even thought the word rebound, though she can understand how the term might apply. Sharon and Walker have thirty-plus years of history, routines, habits, inside jokes, memories; they have a community, neighbors, couple-friends; they have relationships with each other’s families; they have their ways; and, most important, they have their children.

Sharon puts a hand on Romeo’s right biceps. (If there’s a fistfight, Romeo will break Walker in half.) “Let me just go talk to him.”

Romeo’s expression is incredulous; his eyes are wounded. “Really?”

She nods, and Romeo retakes his stool, throws back what’s left of his drink, then throws back what’s left of Sharon’s.

Sharon grabs her purse and follows Walker out the door. There are so many people trying to get in that getting out takes longer than she expects. When she reaches the cool air at the entrance, she hears Mike saying, “This one is for Sharon!” And he launches into “Hooked on a Feeling.”

Coco sees Romeo from the Steamship standing in the crowd on the other side of the piano, and where Romeo is, Coco has learned, Blond Sharon is sure to be as well. Coco and Kacy sing along gamely to “Hooked on a Feeling,” but when it ends, Coco wants to go. Everywhere they’ve been tonight, they’ve seen the Richardsons’ friends.

As if Coco needs one more reason to leave, Mike the piano player starts singing “You and Tequila.” No, Coco thinks. No Kenny Chesney for me. She grabs Kacy’s hand and pulls her out the back door.

Every good night out on Nantucket ends at the Chicken Box. Kacy hasn’t set foot in the place since a Christmas break during nursing school, but it never changes—it still smells like beer and lust. The place is crammed with the beautiful people lucky enough to be on Nantucket tonight. There’s a cover band playing the Backstreet Boys and everyone on the dance floor is scream-singing the words: “I! Want! It! That! Way!”

“I’ll get beers,” Coco says, and she dives straight into the crush at the bar.

Kacy heads over to the pool tables, where it’s less crowded, and rereads Isla’s text. There’s something going on with Dave.

It sounds like Isla wants Kacy to give her relationship advice. How unfair is that? Kacy would like to respond: I don’t care about Dave! She wants to say: If you’d just left Dave like you said you would, you would be here at the Box with me! Any issues that Isla has with Rondo are her own problems.

Kacy knows she should continue to wear Isla down with silence, but she’s had just enough to drink that she decides to throw gasoline on the fire instead. She texts Isla three pictures: one of her and Coco at the Oystercatcher, one from Cru, one from Stubbys. She captions this with the two-girls-with-heart emoji and then four dots meaning “end of discussion.”

Coco brings back four Coronas—two for her and two for Kacy—and they enter the fray to dance to “The Sign” by Ace of Base. It couldn’t get any cheesier, but Coco seems to love it. A super-hottie breaks into their bubble. It’s Shawn from Cru! Coco hugs him like they’re long-lost lovers and she turns to Kacy. “Take our picture!”

Kacy snaps a bunch of photos, thinking that Coco is the happiest drunk she’s ever seen. Kacy would like to be a happy drunk too, but she’s too preoccupied with waiting for Isla’s response. It’s midnight here, only nine on the West Coast; Isla is definitely still awake.

“Text me those pics,” Coco says as she spills beer down the front of her white eyelet dress. Kacy notices one of Coco’s sandals is missing. Coco has peaked; now she’s on the downslide and getting sloppy. Kacy should get them both into a cab. Shawn is draped over Coco like a fur coat. In her mental crystal ball, Kacy sees Coco going home with Shawn and having forgettable, regrettable sex.

Kacy hears someone calling her name. She peers into the crowd and sees her brother and Avalon. Oh my god, she thinks. The Chicken Box really is the center of the Nantucket-verse.

Kacy tries to make her way to Eric and Avalon, but Coco yanks on her arm, saying, “Text me the pics!”

“I will when we get home,” Kacy says, but Coco plucks Kacy’s phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll just send them to myself real quick.”

Fine,Kacy thinks, hoping Coco doesn’t drop her phone onto the beer-sticky floor. When she finally gets to Eric, she says, “You have to help me get Coco out of here.” The band is now playing “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe and people are going bonkers. In the midst of this chaos, Eric is a stanchion, a pillar; he is the image of their father.

“We’re leaving anyway,” he says. “Avalon doesn’t feel well.”

Kacy turns around to find Coco, but she’s vanished into the crowd.

At first Coco isn’t sure what she’s seeing on the screen of Kacy’s phone. She forces herself to focus. There are texts sent to Isla—that’s the woman that Kacy broke up with back in San Francisco. In the stream are… pictures of Kacy and Coco. Coco scrolls back. So many pictures—three from tonight alone, plus one of the two of them on the Richardsons’ beach, one from the boat on the Fourth of July, one from the Pink and White Party, one from their trip to Great Point, a couple from their first lunch together at the Nantucket Pharmacy counter when they barely knew each other. Kacy has sent Isla literally all the pictures. Coco reads one of Isla’s responses. I’m sick with jealousy. Now I won’t sleep. Thanks.

Jealousy?Coco thinks. Kacy has been making it seem like she and Coco are… together?

No. Please, no.What can Coco think but that all this time, Kacy has been using her? Maybe since the moment they met in the line for the ferry. Is that why Kacy bought her a chowder? Because she thought Coco was pretty and looked vulnerable? Was their so-called friendship premeditated so Kacy could make Isla jealous and win her back?

Coco’s eyes sting. Lamont has left her, and now Kacy maybe isn’t her friend after all. Is this possible? Coco is sober enough to realize she’s drunk, drunk enough to let Kacy grab her by the arm and lead her through the crowd and out the door to the cool, fresh air of Dave Street.

Kacy waves over a cab. “Let’s get you home,” she says.

The morning after their big night out, Coco is so hungover that she messes up her errands. For the first time ever, she forgets to ask for the sourdough at Born and Bread to be sliced thin and by the time she realizes her mistake, it’s too late—she has to go to the back of the long line and order a second loaf. She puts regular unleaded instead of premium unleaded into Baby and she skips Nantucket Meat and Fish altogether because the idea of staring at raw salmon and halibut makes her want to puke.

When she turns into the driveway at Triple Eight, she notices a black Lincoln following her. Her first thought is that she’s in some kind of trouble, maybe for cutting off the chick in the Mini at the rotary. She pulls into the garage; the Lincoln heads straight to the front of the house. A uniformed driver gets out and opens the back door.

Bull climbs out. He’s home.

The Lincoln leaves; Coco hurries over. “You should have texted, I could’ve picked you up.”

Bull waves. “It’s fine, you have other things to take care of.” He strides past the garage to inspect the garden site. “Are you kidding me? This still isn’t finished?”

Coco winces. “No one has been here the entire time you’ve been gone.”

“I’m going to have to break some legs,” Bull says. He nods toward the house. “It’s good to be home.”

Coco wishes she’d known Bull was coming back today; she wouldn’t have blown off the fish market. She’ll unpack his bag, separate laundry from dry cleaning. He may want a bourbon; it’s only ten o’clock in the morning here, but on Bull’s clock, it’s ten o’clock at night.

When they step inside, he calls, “Leslee!”

“Oh,” Coco says, putting down the groceries. “She’s not here.”

“Pickleball?”

“No,” Coco says. She focuses on the arrangement of lilies on the pedestal table in the foyer. Leslee has instructed Coco to remove all the pollen from the stamens with a wet paper towel, but one of the lilies has just opened; Coco will have to take care of that. Her head is as heavy as a bowling ball. She woke up in her own bed that morning but she has no recollection of getting home. When she checked her phone, she saw pictures of her and the bartender from Cru, whose name she’s forgotten, sent from Kacy’s phone. “She’s… well, she and Lamont sailed over to Martha’s Vineyard.”

“When will they be back?”

Coco shakes her head. “I’m not sure.”

Bull smiles at her. “Come to my office. I want to talk to you about your script.”

Oh my god,Coco thinks.

Bull sits behind his desk and Coco takes one of the leather chairs. He brings Coco’s screenplay out of his briefcase. It’s battered-looking, which means… he read it. Coco’s stomach squelches. This is it, she thinks. The moment.

Bull pats the title page. “You’re talented,” he says. “The writing in this is extremely good.”

“Thank you,” Coco says. Her headache is miraculously gone, replaced by a sparkling clarity.

“I thoroughly enjoyed it,” Bull says. “I learned a lot about you?” He ticktocks his head. “Maybe, maybe not?”

“Maybe,” Coco says. “Maybe not.”

“Well, I very much look forward to reading your next effort.”

“My next?” Coco says. “What about this one? You just said you enjoyed it.”

“Oh, I did,” Bull says. “But ultimately, it’s too… small.”

“Small,” Coco repeats, and suddenly she feels herself shrinking. “I realize it’s about a small town—”

“No one will ever make this,” Bull says. “Maybe back in the nineties it could have been picked up as an indie, but those days died with Kurt Cobain.”

Coco flinches. “What about Hillbilly Elegy?” she says. “What about The Glass Castle?”

“Both of those were bestselling memoirs first,” Bull says. (Coco is impressed he knows this.) “Though you’re right, if I were to pitch this, I’d say it’s Hillbilly Elegy meets The Glass Castle with a dash of Ozark thrown in—and nobody would buy it. You’ve been to the movies, you know what sells—Marvel, DC, Barbie.”

He’s right; she knows he’s right. He read the script, he praised it, she can’t fault him. But neither can she accept his death sentence. She worked too hard. She suffered through the first eighteen years of her life, believing her miserable existence would be worth it when she turned it into art. Her metaphorical blood is all over those pages.

“Doesn’t anyone want to make a movie about people with actual feelings and struggles?” she says.

“There is no story here, Coco. Hollywood loves mystery, suspense, drama. This script doesn’t have any of that.” He comes out from behind his desk and Coco stands to face him.

“There must be someone else you can send it to.” She thinks but does not say: A real producer.

“If I send this to my people, they’ll never take me seriously again,” Bull says.

Coco sucks in her breath. “You could pitch it as the next Winter’s Bone,” she says. “Small, yes, low budget, but we could cast an emerging talent the way they cast Jennifer Lawrence—”

“Calling it the next Winter’s Bone isn’t going to change anyone’s mind,” Bull says. He clears his throat. “Besides which, this isn’t the next Winter’s Bone.”

“Are you even a real producer?” Coco says. “Do you have any influence or are you just the person they come to for money to make you feel like you’re part of something important? I watched Snark, you know. It was dreadful.”

“Agreed,” Bull says. “Dog’s breakfast.” He pauses. “And it bombed and I lost my shirt. Which is why I need the next script I invest in to be a big winner.”

“Please?” Coco says. She can’t have this be the end. That script is not only her goal and her dream, not only her reason for being here—it’s her reason for being, period. She takes a step closer to Bull, which is officially too close. She gazes up at him and considers snaking her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his. Is she that desperate? Would that change his mind? They must have some kind of agreement.

Bull takes a step back. “Come on now, Coco. You don’t want to ruin everything. I’m not going to let you. I’m a married man.”

“Married?”Coco says. “Leslee has been playing house with Lamont the entire time you’ve been gone, which can hardly surprise you because she throws herself at him every chance she gets. And what about the little massage she was giving Benton Coe on the boat on the Fourth of July? He hasn’t come to finish your garden because he’s afraid of your wife!” She takes a breath. “That night I met you at the Banana Deck? She had her hand on that guy Harlan’s thigh.”

Bull nods slowly. “I love her,” he says. “And she loves everybody.”

Right,Coco thinks. It’s their kink. It’s what makes them the Richardsons, that along with the Amalfi lemons and the crazy parties and the boats they know nothing about.

“My advice,” Bull says, “is to give yourself five or even ten years, until you’ve lived a little and you have something more to write about, then try again.”

Coco feels tears blur her eyes. Five or ten years? Is he joking? She flees Bull’s office before she either flips him off or says something she can’t take back. Out in the hallway—of course, of course—Coco rams right into Leslee.

“Hey!” Leslee says, giving Coco an assessing look. “Are you all right?”

Coco smiles through her tears. “Bull’s home,” she says.