Chapter Eight
By the end of my second week in the cottage, my Google search history is looking truly bizarre.
I’ve googled time travel.
Time loops.
Portals.
Wormholes.
Extremely realistic dreams while in comas.
And at least fifty different accounts of haunted houses. All of which seemed to involve a lot more death and murder and a
lot less “ex-boyfriend won’t leave your bathroom.”
I still haven’t found any plausible explanation for the uninvited roommates. And without any plausible explanation for why
they’re here, I have no idea how to go about getting rid of them. I tried ignoring my dad for an entire day, like he was a
monster in a closet who was only real as long as I thought he was. I tried asking Professor MacAndrew if she had unfinished
business. I tried pushing Jackson bodily out of the bathroom.
None of it worked. My dad was still in the kitchen the next day. Professor MacAndrew replied frostily that the only business she had was talking about my thesis. And Jackson just braced himself in the doorway and demanded to know what the hell was wrong with me.
By the time Rika texts on Friday, cheerfully asking how “beach life” is going and if I can send her a picture of the ocean,
I’m sorely tempted to fling my phone across the room and crawl back into bed to hide.
Instead, I stalk out to the edge of the dune, snap a picture for her, and start googling bars. I’m sad. And lonely. And more
depressed than ever. And I really want to get out of the cottage.
A bar is the obvious answer. I can either meet people and become less lonely, or I can get drunk and feel less sad about how
lonely I am. Either way, it’s a win. Or as close to a win as I’m going to get at this point.
The cottage doesn’t seem to be close to any bars, which isn’t really surprising, since it doesn’t seem to be close to much
of anything. If I want to go to a bar, I’m going to have to drive to Provincetown. Which is fine with me. The more distance
between me and the cottage right now, the better.
When I walk into the Old Colony Tap shortly after sunset, it’s already crowded, dim, and warm, with faintly sticky floors
and thick ropes wrapped in twinkle lights running across the low ceilings. The whole place feels like a cross between a sailing
ship and a frat house. Old-fashioned white lifesavers line the walls, along with buoys, bumper stickers, oars, and a wooden
ship’s wheel. Rusted metal lanterns hang from the ceiling and several guys in various stages of drunkenness are duking it
out on an old arcade machine stuffed into one corner.
It’s practically the definition of a dive bar, which is more or less what the Yelp reviews said: Go here if you want a real bar where locals hang out.
I don’t really know what kind of bar I want, but this seems better than the first place I tried—a touristy, overpriced club full of people dressed for a night out who were clearly there to be seen. Nobody was there to drink and be sad. I walked in, took one look around, and walked back out again.
The decibel level in the Old Colony Tap is somewhere between subway station and cement mixer, but the crowd seems laid-back,
almost everyone in T-shirts and jeans and baseball hats. I have to duck and weave my way to the bar, which is harder than
I remembered. I get swept briefly off course by several gay men with biceps that say gym rat and voices that say they’re several shots in, and definitely trample a number of different hems belonging to a crowd of women
in summer maxi dresses.
I actually haven’t gone out to a bar for a while, but I remember this being easier with Jackson, back when we went out for
Rika’s birthday or to celebrate Yasmin finishing med school or Jackson getting his first interview at the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory, the place that eventually offered him his dream job. Jackson’s height, his cheekbones, that effortless way he
took up space . . . People always noticed him. They got out of his way, and I could cruise along in his wake.
It was easy. Secure.
I manage to flag down the bartender and order a cocktail that’s not as horribly expensive as I was expecting, and find a seat
at the bar to sit and nurse it. It’s pretty clear that everyone around me already has a friend to talk to. So I stab at the
ice in my drink with my tiny cocktail straw, trying to convince myself that getting drunk until I feel less sad isn’t as lonely
as it’s beginning to feel.
“Harlowe?”
The straw slips from my fingers and I look up to find Nathan sidling up to the bar.
He’s shaved recently, his stubble reduced to a five o’clock shadow, his blondish-brown hair falling across his forehead with just a hint of dampness that makes me wonder if he recently went swimming.
The twinkle lights strung across the ceiling catch on his tiny gold earring.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.” He gives me a slightly awkward smile. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“Oh, I haven’t come here before. I just . . .” I weigh my options, since I can’t exactly say I needed to escape the people nobody else can see in your aunt’s weird house. “I decided to explore the local bar scene.”
He glances around. “You here with someone?”
“No.” I try to look cool and confident about this. “Just out by myself.”
“At a bar,” he says.
“Yeah.” A faint flush rises up my neck. “I’m not actually looking for a date or trying to pick someone up, if that’s what
you’re wondering. I’m just . . .” I try for an easygoing shrug, because I can’t quite make myself say I had vague hopes of
making a friend.
“Right.” Nathan studies me for a minute, and then he waves at the bartender. “Well, I’m here with a few friends, if you want
to come join us.”
I blink in surprise. That sounded like a genuine invitation. Almost like he’s forgotten what happened the last time we were
in the same place. “Sure. I mean . . . if I wouldn’t be butting in.”
“You wouldn’t be.” He grabs the pitcher of beer the bartender slides across the counter, along with several stacked glasses,
and jerks his head. “We’re over this way.”
I slide off my stool, picking up my glass and following him.
Nathan isn’t as tall as Jackson. His shoulders aren’t as broad.
He’s leaner, and his face, though thinner than that of his younger doppelg?nger in the cottage, is still softer than Jackson’s.
People don’t naturally drift out of his way.
But he sidles and ducks and leans in to say excuse us, all of it with the affable and easy demeanor of someone who comes here regularly.
“Here we go.” He leads us to a table tucked under a fishing net draped across the ceiling. A woman with a mass of strawberry-blond
curls and a cute, upturned nose is leaning on her elbow, shoulder idly resting against the arm of a Black man with an impeccable
fade and deep ebony skin.
“Katy and Marcus,” Nathan says, “this is Harlowe. He’s renting Dina’s cottage for the summer. I just ran into him at the bar.”
The woman—Katy—straightens up, giving me a bright smile that reveals front teeth that slightly overlap. “Hey, Nathan was just
telling us Dina had rented that place again.”
I shake her hand, which is covered in freckles. “Nice to meet you.”
“Please, join our celebration!” Marcus knocks his gold-wire glasses up on his nose with a knuckle and sweeps out a hand. “For
I am employed.”
“Congratulations,” I say, pulling out the chair by the wall. “What’s the job?”
“Newest veterinarian at the animal hospital in Eastham,” Katy says proudly, squeezing Marcus’s arm in a way that immediately
tells me they’re a couple.
“Yes. Sadly, the commute is not cause for celebration,” Marcus says, taking the stack of glasses from Nathan as he sets the
pitcher down on the table.
“It’s fine.” Katy waves a hand. “We’ll find someplace between the salon and the animal hospital. We need a new apartment anyway.”
“Are you guys in Provincetown?” I ask.
“Wellfleet,” Katy says. “Not that far from Nathan.”
I nod, even though this means nothing to me since I have no idea where Nathan lives.
“Yeah, if you need a haircut this summer,” Nathan says, sitting down next to me, “Katy’s the person to see. I bet she’d give you the locals’ discount too.”
Katy gathers her hair off her neck, tying it up in a messy bun. “I will, but only if you tell Nathan to stop offering it to
everyone he meets.” She leans her chin in her hand, looking at me with a smile. “So you’re out here for the whole summer?
For vacation?”
I open my mouth, all ready to give the carefully prepared response I already gave at Dina’s cookout: needed a change of scenery, have a remote job. But this time, I can’t quite do it. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or the number of times I’ve had to see Jackson in the cottage
bathroom today, or the fact that I’m only just remembering the last time I went to a bar—when Jackson took me out to celebrate
finishing the thesis that Professor MacAndrew keeps asking me about in the dining room.
But suddenly I’m saying, “Actually, I broke up with my boyfriend after seven years, and he’s keeping the apartment and all
the furniture, and since we basically know all the same people and go to all the same places in Boston, I decided I needed
to be . . . elsewhere. So here I am.”
Silence. Katy and Marcus are looking at me with twin expressions of surprise, eyebrows raised. I have a feeling Nathan’s looking
at me too, but I don’t turn my head to check.
“Oh, wow.” Katy recovers first, her forehead wrinkling in sympathy. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It’s . . .” I’m about to say it’s okay, but it’s not, so I change my mind. “It was time.” I manage a wobbly grin. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring down the mood.”
“Oh, you’re fine,” Marcus says. “You should have seen me about two weeks ago. Before I got the interview for the Eastham clinic,
I thought I was screwed. Not exactly a lot of jobs for vets out here.”
“Anyway, you’re obviously winning the breakup,” Katy says. “You’re the one living by the beach.”