Chapter Twenty-Four
The week before Rika and Yasmin’s arrival flies by, a blur of work and apartment listings and phone calls to real estate agents
and landlords. I google for gay shit to do in Provincetown, hoping maybe if I come up with a long list of activities, I can
keep Rika and Yasmin away from the cottage and avoid the awkwardness of trying to hang out with my friends while the uninvited
roommates keep trying to bother me. And all I discover is that gay shit in Provincetown is definitely winding down for the
season, along with everything else.
None of the apartments I call about pan out either. Already rented. Full of hidden fees. Shady landlord. And each time, I
feel strangely relieved.
I tell myself it’s just because I didn’t really want those apartments anyway. And not because I still can’t picture myself
moving back to Boston.
Rika and Yasmin are due to arrive on the Friday afternoon ferry, so Nathan and I head to Provincetown early so I can look
for presents for them.
I know the presents are really just to make myself feel better.
To try to assuage the guilt I feel over just how unexcited I am to move back to Boston and be closer to my friends.
But if my guilt results in something nice for Rika and Yasmin to take back with them, I figure that can’t hurt.
They don’t have to know it’s a guilt present.
Nathan and I wander through various stores along Commercial Street, but, perhaps inevitably, we end up in Queer Punx, rifling
through T-shirts and bumper stickers. Dina is “out,” Sharon says (she doesn’t say where), so it’s just the three of us, Sharon
turning the pages of another magazine while the fan on the counter creaks.
“Anything look good?” Nathan asks, studying the art prints on the walls, his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t know.” I turn in a circle, surrounded by feminist postcards. “What says I’m glad you’re here and not at all overwhelmed by your presence?”
“Um . . . art?” He turns, walking past a collection of greeting cards. “Or maybe a woven blanket?”
I leave the postcards and follow him to a few blankets set on a shelf near the back. “Yeah, one of these might be nice.” I
pick up one of the blankets, carefully unfolding it. It’s mostly black, with vibrant silk threads running through it in spiraling
rainbow colors. “This is pretty.”
“Yeah, they’re made by this lady over in Eastham,” Nathan says. “Dina’s carried them forever.” He frowns and then glances
at Sharon. “Did you sell a bunch? You’ve only got three here.”
She glances up from the magazine, squinting. “The blankets? No. We’re just not restocking.”
“Why not?” Nathan asks. “Is Tina still weaving? I guess she must be getting up there.”
“Ninety-two,” Sharon says with a smile, shaking her head. “But she’s still going. We’re just not restocking a lot of stuff
these days.”
I glance around the store. There’s an empty spot on the wall where an art print used to hang. The T-shirt rack seems a little
sparse.
Nathan’s eyebrows pull together. “Where’s Tina going to sell these if you don’t stock them?”
Sharon snorts. “Tina doesn’t need us. She has an Etsy store. She goes to art fairs. Trust me, she sells way more that way.
Dina’s just trying to cut costs. We need to if we’re going to stay open.”
Nathan lets his breath out, and I feel his shoulders tense. “There’s an easy fix to all of this,” he says.
“Don’t start,” Sharon says pointedly. “It’s not easy for Dina to just up and sell her houses to put the cash into Queer Punx.
You know that.”
Nathan shakes his head and turns away, running a hand through his hair. “I’ll wait outside.”
He leaves without looking at me. I watch through the window as he goes down the steps to the sidewalk, pulling a pack of cigarettes
out of his pocket.
A knot forms in my throat. When did he get a pack of cigarettes?
I look away, rubbing my forehead, and pick up the blanket with the rainbow threads. “I guess I’ll take this, please.”
“Good choice.” Sharon punches at the cash register, glancing at me, and then out the window. In a low voice, she asks, “How’s
he doing?”
“Nathan?” I lower my hand. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Why?”
“He can spin out a bit, this time of year.” The cash register lazily prints out a receipt, and Sharon folds the blanket into a paper bag.
She hesitates, a line deepening in her forehead.
“He didn’t start smoking till that summer he lived with Dina.
That first August he was here . . . right in the middle of it, he drank too much and drove his car into a ditch.
Put himself in the hospital for almost a week.
” Sharon sighs. A slow, heavy sigh. “That’s why Dina’s always so worked up about him driving if he’s had a beer.
And why Dave and Bill have gotten so into seltzer.
We used to sneak a bottle of wine onto the beach for the Fourth of July toast, before Nathan’s accident.
But after . . .” Sharon shakes her head. “Dina always worried, after.”
I feel cold. Puzzle pieces slowly fit themselves together in my head. The seltzers at the cookout and on the beach. The look
on Dina’s face when she asked me to drive him home. The scar on Nathan’s chin, the one across his chest.
“I didn’t know,” I say.
Sharon looks up. Guilt flashes across her face, like she’s afraid she’s shared too much. “He’s mostly all right now. Better
than he used to be. We all just worry.” She glances out the window again. “He always seems to go to a dark place around now.”
She shakes her head again and pushes the paper bag toward me. “Anyway, let us know when your friends get here. All of us want
to meet them.”
“Yeah. I will.” But my mind is back in the bedroom of the cottage, with the other Nathan—tired and wan, telling me he was
done. “Sharon . . . do you know what happened to Nathan’s parents?”
She raises her eyebrows. “They died.”
“I . . . I know. Do you know what happened?”
She hesitates. And then she says, “Boating accident. Something mechanical—I don’t know exactly. They were out doing research
and they capsized.”
My stomach turns over so hard I feel sick. “Oh.” I take the bag, swallowing. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”
Rika texts as I’m stepping outside to let me know that the ferry is approaching the dock. I glance at my phone and shove it
back in my pocket without responding.
Nathan is waiting on the sidewalk, oblivious to the crowds around him, halfway through a cigarette.
“I thought you were trying to quit,” I say.
He jerks and looks at me, quickly pulling the cigarette from his mouth with shaking fingers. He taps it, ash falling to the ground. “I was. I am. I just . . . I needed a minute.”
I rub my forehead. I feel sad and guilty and like my head is filling with bees. “Rika says they’re almost here,” I say. “We
should go.”
The weekend crowds seem thinner on Commercial Street now than they were in July as we walk to the pier. The season slowly
tapering off as people go back to work, or back to school, or back to all the prep they need to do for work or school. The
heat isn’t quite so bad and the sun doesn’t seem quite so intense. I tip my old trucker hat back on my head so the breeze
rolling in off the ocean can cool my face.
We turn down the pier, walking past the tiny shacks displaying tourist maps and T-shirts and hats and suncatchers. It’s a
clear day, and I can see the ferry out past the breakwater, chugging slowly toward the harbor.
I pause, turning to Nathan. “Would you tell me if something was wrong?”
His eyes skip to my face, and for a second, there’s something raw and vulnerable in his expression. He looks young. As young
as the other version of him I’ve seen in the cottage bedroom.
“What would be wrong?” He raises the cigarette to his lips again. It’s hardly more than a stub now, but he keeps dragging
at it like he’s afraid to let it go.
“I don’t know,” I say, frustration rippling through me. “But you’re smoking.”
He drops the cigarette to the ground, crushing it under his heel. “What does it matter? You’re leaving.”
His voice is quiet, resigned, but it catches me off guard.
We haven’t talked about that night after Katy’s birthday dinner.
I haven’t said anything else about leaving, and he hasn’t asked.
We both ignored it. “Nathan, I . . . My life is in Boston.” But even as I say it, something twists painfully in my stomach.
“I mean, I just . . . I live in Boston. I’ve always lived in Boston. ”
“I thought you were from Indiana,” he mutters, squinting toward the parking lot.
“What’s that mean?”
He takes a breath, and then his shoulders relax and his face softens. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just a little . . .” He runs
a hand across his forehead. “I’m fine, Harlowe. Let’s go meet your friends.”
I look away, down the length of the pier. The ferry is just pulling in, people crowded by its railings.
I suddenly wish it could’ve been late. Been delayed leaving because of a snap rain shower, just so I would have time to try
to make Nathan talk to me. But maybe that would’ve been pointless too. Maybe he’s never going to really let me in, and maybe
it’s not even fair of me to expect him to.
I’m leaving. So maybe he’s right—what does it matter?
I look back at him—at the shadows under his eyes, at the vague fidget of his fingers, two of them tapping against his thumb.
Tell me. I want to shout it at him. Just tell me.
But I don’t. The ferry is here and there isn’t time. I reach out and grasp his hand instead, like I’m trying to hold both
of us here, and pull him with me toward the ferry.
It’s a weird kind of full-circle moment, picking Rika and Yasmin up in the exact same spot I dropped them off three months
ago. Rika lets out a shriek as soon as she sees me and dashes down the ramp to the pier, ducking past the other disembarking
passengers to fling her arms around me.
“God, it’s been so long! How are you?” She lets go, squinting at my face. “Are you tan? You look tan.”