7. Cap-Ferrat, France
7
CAP-FERRAT, FRANCE
Now
B ee and Dev were up before everyone, so attuned to the needs of their twins back home that the slightest noise sent them jolting awake. By the time Alex arrived for breakfast on the aft deck—at a very respectable 9:15 AM, mind you—they had already finished their meal and were on their second round of coffee, basking in the silence so rarely afforded to them. The glass door sliding closed behind her, Alex took a moment to appreciate the scene before moving over to the table: she had never seen such natural beauty. There were the countless boats bobbing gently, the glimmering sunlight reflecting off the blue-green water, and the coastline dotted with colorful facades. Her heart pinched briefly at the thought of her parents: people who had worked so hard but would never see a place like this, and certainly not from such a privileged vantage point. She raised her phone to snap a few quick photos for them, and, although it was a little braggy, one for social media.
“Good morning!” Dev called over, breaking her solo moment. Alex brought down her phone, smiling.
If Bee were always a bit neutral toward Alex, Dev was the opposite. He respected diligence above all else, which explained his fundamental affection for her and Danial—he knew they had to work that much harder to get to the same place in life that the rest of them seemed to have arrived almost by accident. He was Danial’s roommate in their Columbia days, and she had fond memories of the long afternoons they’d spent watching movies and getting into weedy conversations about whatever news happened to make headlines that week. He was still worlds away from her, a true member of the Club, but he remained one of its more magnanimous ambassadors.
“Coffee?” he offered, looking up at her with a smile. Especially in the mornings, he looked just like his father: his fine black hair slicked back, glasses perched on his nose, a newspaper in his hands. Alex shuddered to imagine the logistics that made it possible for the latest issue of the Financial Times to appear on a boat in the middle of the Mediterranean each morning.
“God yes,” Alex answered, grabbing a cup and saucer from the delicate arrangement on the sideboard before sitting across from them. “Did you guys sleep okay?” She felt the boat move beneath her, anchored in the water, and adjusted her black wristbands.
“We slept okay,” Bee cut in. Like Sophie, she was loath to give full praise to anything. She pulled her sweater up along her wispy shoulders, always a little chilly even in the heat of summer. Her dark hair was swept back into a neat chignon at the base of her neck, and Alex briefly marveled at how utterly adult she looked—a far cry from the astrology girl who once spent an entire summer volunteering on an art commune.
“I slept great,” Dev chirped, pouring the coffee. “But I would sleep well in a prison cell if it meant not getting woken up four times a night.”
“You don’t get up with them,” Bee corrected. Turning to Alex, she added: “But he thinks he does.”
“That is unfair,” he chided, a lilt of frustrated love in his voice. “I do get up with them. Just not as much as you, maybe.”
“He’s been back and forth to Mumbai every other week, I’m surprised he even remembers he has kids.” She glanced at Alex with feminine knowing, inviting her to join in on the eye rolling.
Dev placed his hand on hers, whispering something gentle in Hindi. It was odd to see the effect that so much external stress—the twins, Dev’s father’s illness, the coup d’état at his company—was having on the couple. She busied herself with filling her plate from the cornucopia of breakfast items spread across the table, giving them a moment of privacy. As her hands moved, a calm settled over her, the realization that despite their vast resources, she didn’t feel envious of them at all.
“Anyway, how about you?” Bee asked once they had broken apart, resting her hand on top of Dev’s.
“I slept well, thank you.”
“Have you slept on a boat before?”
This was the kind of question that used to send Alex into a week-long spiral, frequently inspiring her to lie about her experiences. She hated being the only one who didn’t know how to ski, or hadn’t been to Tulum, and she would do anything to avoid the feeling—up to and including credit card debt.
“No, actually, I haven’t.”
“It’s nice, right?” Dev asked, reaching for a second pain au chocolat, which Bee clocked disapprovingly. “Kinda feels like being rocked to sleep.”
“Totally,” Alex agreed, grabbing a rocky sugar cube for her coffee. She found that, once she’d said the truth without embarrassment or explanation, she actually felt kind of good. “How’s the gallery, Bee?”
Silently, Dev’s hand moved back to Bee’s, and she took in a deep breath before responding: clearly she, too, had subjects for which there was a preapproved script.
“I’m taking some time away from the gallery,” she started, adjusting her sweater. “I sold my ownership stake before the twins were born, and I’ll revisit things at the end of the year.”
“That makes sense!” Alex replied, perhaps a little too cheerfully.
“It does,” Dev agreed, giving his wife’s hand a gentle squeeze.
There was quiet again, and under them, the boat caught an unexpected wave, rattling the china on the table.
“Can someone tell them this is the quiet car?” Dev joked, blotting a little coffee that had spilled from his cup.
“We were on a Benetti last year for the Grand Prix, it was a lot more stable.” Bee’s hands wrapped around her coffee cup, an almost mindlessly defensive position.
“The Grand Prix?” Alex asked, not even bothering to ask about the word “Benetti”—she assumed it was another purveyor of extremely fancy boats.
“Formula One,” she responded. “It’s basically car racing. He and Danny are obsessed,” she nudged her shoulder into Dev’s.
“It’s a little more than car racing.” He nudged her back. “But yes, I do enjoy it.”
“I’ll have to check it out.”
“It’s not more than car racing,” a distinct male voice called from the sliding glass door.
Danial.
He was clad in a cropped pair of swim trunks and a short-sleeve button-down shirt that had been left wide open, revealing beautifully developed chest muscles covered by an expanse of fine, dark hair. Alex immediately averted her gaze, willing herself to focus on his callous comment about running away to Greece, instead of his sculpted torso.
“Good morning, sexy,” Dev responded, smiling. “All this for me?”
“You know it.” Danial walked over, kindly declining the crew member who’d seemingly materialized to offer him coffee. “No, I’ve got it. Thank you very much, though.”
He sat down next to her on an upholstered blue dining chair, an unexpected gesture that flushed her body with chills. It felt insufferably smug, invading her space like this when he had so callously broken their pact the night before. She stood up, walking over to the sideboard coffee station to add more sugar to her cup while Danial cleared his throat, shifting slightly in his seat. After stirring in the sweetener that she didn’t actually want, she took a seat on a bench opposite the dining table: close enough to remain in the conversation, but far enough from Danial.
“You don’t want your food?” he asked, gesturing at her full plate on the table.
“I do,” she replied, mindlessly smoothing the fabric of a throw pillow. “I just wanted to take in the view a bit.”
“Hmm,” he responded. “You’ll let us know how it is.”
“Don’t you dare start,” Bee ordered, peering over the top of her Loewe sunglasses. “I’m not spending my vacation listening to you two argue.”
“Okay, but I am,” Paul replied, closing the sliding door behind him. If Danial’s unbuttoned shirt was a bit of a statement, Paul’s floral silk robe hanging open over a bright green speedo was a manifesto.
“I’m not arguing,” Alex clarified, feeling surprisingly defensive. “I just want to sit on the bench.” She hated this dynamic: the way she always became so serious around this group, because nothing was serious to them.
“I’m talking to Danny,” Bee responded.
Paul sat down in Alex’s chair, popping a blackberry from her plate into his mouth and winking at her. Next to him, Danial’s phone began to buzz on the table. In one swift motion, he swiped to answer the call, stood up from his chair, and walked toward the far side of the deck. His head was tilted slightly downward as he walked, and she could hear the gentle flow of his deep voice as he moved. He was speaking Farsi, undoubtedly to his mother, whose calls he always took without hesitation.
His entire demeanor changed when he spoke to her: even his physical presence became delicate and tender. From behind her sunglasses, Alex observed him intently.
“It’s late for his mom to be calling,” she muttered, more to herself than anything. “It’s after midnight for her.”
“She’s always worried when he’s traveling,” Dev answered quietly, removing a few sections from his newspaper and placing them in front of Danial’s seat. “I’m just surprised he has service here.”
Alex clicked her own phone next to her, which she was studiously keeping on WiFi only to avoid roaming charges. The deck fell silent, only the tinkling of forks and spoons against china filling the space, the water lapping at the hull beneath them. After a few minutes, Danial returned to his seat, looking slightly worried.
“Can you believe this?” Dev asked him, tapping his finger on one of the pages he’d handed over.
“Oh, it’s been coming for months,” Danial answered, taking a sip of his sparkling water.
“What has?” Alex asked, a little too eager to join the conversation.
“The far-right populist party is going to win in Spain.” Dev leaned forward to hand her the paper, which she took without looking. The word populist sounded almost more pointed than far right in his tone.
“It’s that guy, right? Machado?”
“Miranda,” Danial corrected, not looking at her.
Her heart rose into her throat with a familiar frustration—he was trying to punish her for her earlier avoidance of him.
“No, I know who I’m talking about. Machado is the ex-television host who started holding those big rallies down in Granada.” Her voice was steady and unapologetic.
“That’s not the guy who is going to win.” He was looking at her now, his dark eyes piercing into hers. Suddenly, she was twenty-two again. “You’re thinking of Miranda.”
“Guys, what did I—” Bee started.
“Shh,” Paul insisted. “This is good for them.”
He leaned back in his chair, smiling at the two of them with an encouraging openness. He used to love their political sparring matches, and was undoubtedly hopeful that another one might mean things were returning to the way they used to be.
“I didn’t say he was going to win. But he’s not the leader of the movement, Machado is.” Alex scooted herself forward on the bench, leaning in slightly.
“What exactly is a leader of the movement, if it’s not the literal guy leading the literal movement?”
His tone had a bitter edge to it: the condescension no longer felt like a heated game they played, but rather the pure language of disdain. Paul’s face dropped as another anxious silence overtook the group.
“He is the figurehead of the party, Danial, but that doesn’t mean he’s the reason it’s successful. He’s just a puppet: Machado is the reason they’re all out to vote. And I think I would know better than you, I—”
“Make TikToks about eating the rich, we know.”
A tiny gasp emerged from Paul, whose gaze was now fixed squarely on the horizon.
“ Excuse me?”
“Don’t listen to—” Bee started to interject with a pointed finger, but Dev gently brought her hand back to the table. He looked over at Danial, silently imploring him to apologize.
“I’m sorry, you work in politics. You’re right.” He seemed to understand the inappropriateness of his behavior, but his chest was still flushed with anger, rising and falling with breathless intensity. He couldn’t stop himself. And she understood, because neither could she—not when they got like this. When he resumed, his tone was calmer, more measured. “But that doesn’t mean you’re an expert on the situation in Spain.”
“And you are, somehow?” She pushed on, pettier than ever. “What, did you figure out a way to increase their profits by euthanizing everyone over the age of sixty-five?”
“Very funny.”
“Oh, I’m not joking.”
Her eyes flitted over to the sliding doors, where the latecomers, Sophie and Guy, were looking on in horror. She should have been embarrassed for getting into another argument but, in her current state, their presence barely registered.
“I actually worked with Santander for three years on their initiative for—” he continued, before she cut him off with a venomous intensity.
“Oh, that’s hilarious, because Santander bank was the one that gave my dad that predatory business loan.”
“I wasn’t giving out small business loans.”
“Right, of course,” she hissed, “you were just destroying people’s livelihoods from a distance. My father always said that Santander—”
“That’s exactly what we need right now, a cab driver’s take on international finance.”
As soon as the words left Danial’s lips, his face crumpled in remorse. The group seemed to sit back in unison as they registered the gratuitous cruelty of his comment.
“Come on, man,” Dev whispered, shaking his head.
Alex was stunned to silence, still perched forward on the bench but unable to formulate a sufficient defense of her father. Sophie and Bee shot each other a meaningful look from across the deck.
“Alex,” Danial opened, standing up to walk toward her. The sun was behind him, casting his wavy hair in a crown of light as he approached, illuminating the warmth of his complexion. She felt herself rise with an impenetrable tangle of emotion at this beautiful man, who could have been so much more than what he chose to become: the emptiest version of himself.
When he spoke again, it was in a whisper only she could hear. “Can we go somewhere to talk, please?” A pause, as their eyes locked wordlessly and his forehead knitted with regret. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.” He was full of pleading intensity, soft the way he had been with his mother.
She stood up slowly, willing herself to be stoic and devoid of emotion. He would get nothing from her, not even her pity.
“My father.” Her voice was almost silent, inches from his face. She chose her next words carefully. “The cab driver — My father is ten times the man you will ever be. And I remember the Danial who had respect for hard work. Should we call your mother back and tell her what you just said to me?”
“You’re right,” he offered, defeated. “You’re absolutely right.”
She considered him briefly, scanning this person she used to know so well. In this light, his drawn, regretful expression made him look like an oil painting of some wealthy anonymous merchant, gazing out from a thousand years ago. In another lifetime, it might have flattered her that he even remembered her father’s profession after all these years—but not anymore. Now, his work was just another tool to sharpen the distance between them. With a loud clap of her hands, she broke the spell of the moment, turning to face their small crowd of onlookers. “I think I’m going to go for a swim. Does anyone want to come?”
Still inches from Danial, she lifted her linen dress up and off her body to reveal a structured black suit that looked more like lingerie than swimwear, hugging her chest with an indecent effectiveness. She could barely see straight, could only move forward in her most forceful performance of unbothered, so above his immaturity that she didn’t even notice him. His mouth hung slightly open, looking at her with a slack heaviness that seemed to tilt involuntarily in her direction.
Always her knight in shining armor, Paul stood up and threw his robe over the back of his chair, jumping into the water with a yell of excitement. She followed right after, diving off the side of the boat and into the cool turquoise water of the Mediterranean. Her legs immediately began kicking, propelling her downward and away from the surface toward a moment of privacy.
Being under the water felt like a waking dream, one in which she could be alone with the surging current of her body. Her higher brain was still fixated on her infuriating exchange with Danial, on the arrogant, shallow man he had become. But their arguments always unearthed the desire she was constantly pushing away, reminding her of their former selves. Eyes still closed, she moved her limbs to keep herself submerged and pictured his exquisite body in her hands. She could feel the gentle roughness of his face as she ran her fingers along his shadowed jawline, bringing his mouth to hers. She could nearly taste the glorious release of having him at least once, of showing him how deeply he could have been loved exactly as he was all those years ago. Her pulse radiated throughout her, the intensity of her own imagination drumming in her ears.
Without realizing it, she had drifted toward Paul, whose body knocked into hers as he bobbed along the surface. She swam up to join him, throwing her hair back and letting the sun cradle her face.
“I’m very proud of you.” He laughed, wiping the water from under his eyes. “You finally took the high road.”
“I take the high road all the time.” She shivered with the aftermath of her own thoughts.
“Babe, I love you, but you absolutely do not.” He smiled, sunlight glinting in his eyes. “And look at you now! Telling Danny to kick rocks while serving body!”
“It’s not hard,” she replied, shaking her head to rid her ears of moisture. “He’s honestly pathetic.”
“There you go.”
In her charged anger, she let the truth slip: “We’re actually working on a big video right now with Carter, about his firm.”
“Who is?”
“We are… at my job.”
“Oh, of course, duh.”
“Yeah. About the factories in Pennsylvania—all those layoffs? That’s Danial’s firm.”
“Ugh, don’t even worry about him,” Paul reassured, putting his hands on her shoulders and returning the conversation to the apolitical, here-to-have-fun energy he always preferred. “Tomorrow night, we dock in Positano. And it is my personal mission to find the hottest man in Italy to take you out.”
“I don’t need anyone to take me out, but thank you.” she laughed.
“No offense, but yes you do. You at least need someone to make out with. I don’t think you even remember what sex is , at this point.”
Her eyes moved over to the boat, where Dev had already jumped in, beckoning Bee to follow him. Danial had made his way to the swim platform, down to his black swim trunks, the muscles along the sides of his torso moving under his skin as he extended his body for an elegant dive into the water. Instinctively, she kicked her legs beneath her, moving even further away from their side of the boat.
“You’re right,” she feigned, turning back to Paul, “I haven’t thought about sex in forever.”
He started talking about one of the men he wanted to invite to dinner, running down his resume like he was selling Alex a car. But she was no longer fully listening, her mind already in her cabin where her notebook waited on her bedside table. She set a mental reminder to learn everything she could about Horace Capital’s work with Santander bank. A wave of impatience rippled through her body, wanting to confirm what time it was and how much work she could fit in around the day’s schedule. His hostile words, his derision about her cab driver father, knocked around in her mind like the aftershock of a bell. If he couldn’t see the morally bankrupt person he had become, she would ensure that everyone else saw it for him.
And if she could email Clara before close of business Philadelphia time, she could still make a few last-minute edits to their next video.