Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Present Day
E sme hadn’t planned to be awake this long.
It had been a brash and stupid idea, texting Victor and asking him for a nightcap. But now they were ordering room service pizza up to his hotel room and staggering through the hallway like a couple of teenagers. Now Victor was raiding the minibar in his bedroom, hunting for the very best in whiskey, vodka, whatever. Esme probably would have drunk anything at this rate. She was sixty-nine going on nineteen. She felt she had nothing to lose.
Esme put on one of Victor’s massive T-shirts and sat cross-legged on the bed. He was in the chair, tapping through his phone to find songs. The clock said it was one thirty in the morning, which meant it was four thirty in the morning on the East Coast. Esme couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed up this late. She and Larry had always had an early bedtime because they had so many things to tend to in Nantucket. They had a garden. They had the Book Club. They had the veterans. They had each other.
Larry’s death. Don’t think about that now.
Victor started to play a song by Styx that took Esme all the way back to the seventies. Her shoulders loosened, and she had to stop herself from lying back on the pillows and sighing.
Victor handed her a vodka soda and clinked his glass with hers. The pizza would be here soon, and she’d eat two slices, say good night, and head to her hotel room. But where was her hotel room? Which floor? She’d forgotten.
Don’t you dare kiss him, she reminded herself. It was a mantra she’d played in her head all summer long.
A confusing summer. A confounding summer. It was one of the best summers—although she often cursed herself for thinking that. It was their summer after Larry’s death. It wasn’t fair that he’d gone so early. Larry was the love of her life.
What if there are multiple loves in your life?
Shut up, Esme! she thought.
“Do you remember when I sang this at karaoke?” Victor asked, standing as the song crescendoed.
“I remember all right,” Esme said. “I remember half the bar leaving halfway through.”
Victor raised his eyebrows. “Not true.” He then belted out the next line. His voice was a beautiful vibrato, and Esme tried desperately not to hear it for what it truly was. She’d always been overwhelmed by Victor’s singing voice. She’d always thought, why does he get that, too? He has everything else! Looks! Talent! Intelligence! Money! Of course, the money he’d earned was due to his talent, looks, and intellect.
Esme had money, too. Sometimes. Sort of. Larry hadn’t been as good in that department. But gosh, they’d been happy.
Larry. Oh, Larry.
Esme felt her heart shatter.
Suddenly, Victor cut the music and sat beside her on the bed. He put his hand on her upper back. “Are you all right?” He sounded terrified.
Esme winced. She knew she was acting awfully. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just drank too much, and I’m jet-lagged, and I don’t know what’s going on.” She hung her face in her hands.
There was a knock on the door. Victor got up to fetch the pizza and spread it out on the bed next to Esme like a peace offering. Esme’s mouth watered. He’d ordered extra black olives and banana peppers, her favorites. He put back on the music, and Esme picked up a big, gooey, cheesy slice and bit down.
“Oh my gosh,” she breathed. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever had.”
Victor chuckled and handed her a stack of napkins.
Esme thought, This is what intimacy is.
But she reminded herself, We’re intimate because of all we’ve been through. But we have no future beyond this. Friendship and pizza and nights of laughter and a few too many drinks. We’re old. We’ve lived so much.
“I’ve been training for this,” Esme declared with a laugh. “The kids and grandkids love pizza. It’s always around. My belly knows and loves grease again.”
Victor stretched out his legs on the bed and gazed at her. “You remember some of the trash-food eras of our time together?”
“I remember what you ate at your college house,” Esme said. “Every time I came up, the pans and pots on the stove had dried macaroni and cheese in them.”
Victor waved his hand. “That was my roommate.”
“You ate it when it was all dried up!”
“I was twenty-one years old!” Victor said.
“Almost twenty-two,” Esme retorted.
Victor snorted with laughter and took another slice of pizza. “You know, all my roommates were so jealous of me because I was dating you.”
“That is most certainly not true.”
“It’s true,” Victor said. “The first time I had you over, they lost their minds. They were like, ‘No wonder you’ve been so crazy the past year.’”
Esme cackled and wiped her hand with a napkin. She suddenly remembered when she’d visited Victor in his college house for the first time: so skinny, so scared, shaking as she went up the walkway and rang the bell. She’d baked cookies for Victor and his roommates. She’d felt so pedestrian. So boring.
Little did they know I went on to attend Harvard. Much later.
“Do you keep in touch with any of those men?” Esme asked, remembering their pimply faces, their strange bodies—strings of arms and legs with rotund bellies from too much beer.
“Not really,” Victor said. His face soured for a moment. “They all got married, went to grad school, and moved across the country.”
“And you came back to Nantucket,” Esme said.
“I did indeed,” Victor said.
Esme crinkled her brow. “Do you regret it?”
“What? Not for a moment.”
Esme’s heart lifted. It surprised her that he’d answered that so quickly, so easily.
“That was where our life was. That was where we raised our children,” Victor stammered. His eyes were on the darkness outside.
“It was also where our families were,” Esme breathed.
Victor raised his eyebrows.
Esme thought back to earlier this summer when Victor found the old German books Thomas had given him. He’d donated them to the veterans Doug and Ben so that they could fix their staggeringly damaged home and remain there for good. He’d crawled through his memories and his memorabilia and gifted something that mattered to him. Esme hadn’t remembered that Victor could be so good-hearted.
In fact, when she’d first realized he’d returned to Nantucket, she’d thought, Not this again. Get this man out of my life, please.
But he’d surprised her every step of the way.
The fact that he’d been planning to write a book about the family and their “reunification” in the wake of Joel’s death bothered her. But Victor had tried to explain everything. He’d said that that plan was in place long before he’d actually returned and spent time with his family.
He’d said so many times, “I was a monster.”
It was so hard to know if anyone could really change. People were fallible. And Victor Sutton would always be Victor Sutton. That was either a beautiful thing or something very strange.
Esme had long since stopped trying to make sense of reality.
This was why, maybe, she decided on another drink. On another slice of pizza.
“What would you have done if Valerie had called to say she was going to get married in Vegas by Elvis?” Victor asked now. His lips were greasy from pizza.
Esme burst with laughter.
“Come on. I want your honest answer,” Victor urged.
Esme filled her mouth with vodka soda and genuinely considered it. She imagined herself on the couch with Larry. She imagined Valerie’s late-night call (because of the time difference between San Francisco and Nantucket). She also took a moment to appreciate that Valerie was the only one who’d kept in contact with Esme over the years. That was why Esme came to San Francisco after Larry’s death.
“Okay. I probably would have freaked out,” Esme said.
Victor sputtered with laughter into his hand, narrowly avoiding spraying whiskey across the bed and pizza. Through laughter, he said, “You would have cried and cried.”
Esme swatted him, although she knew he was right. “I would have cried. And probably driven to the airport immediately and asked for a flight.”
Victor hung his head and gazed down at the pizza. “I think that’s really sad.”
“What do you mean?” Esme asked.
“It’s just sad that we’ve missed so many big moments of the kids’ lives,” he breathed. “It’s sad that Valerie got married—to someone we basically raised in our house—and Bethany got her medical degree and got married and had three kids—and Rebecca became a renowned chef and also had three kids and got married—and we just weren’t involved.”
Esme’s throat filled with sorrow. She closed her eyes tightly and fell back against the bed.
Victor reached across the bedspread and took her hand. He held it tenderly.
It reminded Esme of when they’d first been dating—really dating—and they’d held hands when they fell asleep.
She hadn’t been able to believe it back then. She’d thought, Who is this guy? He’s obviously messing with me.
Esme pressed her free hand to her chest and breathed all the air from her lungs. A second later, she was having a full-on panic attack. It felt as though there was cement in her chest.
“Are you all right?” Victor got up and wrapped his arms around her. Esme tucked her face into the crook of his neck and focused on her breathing, in and out, in and out.
This isn’t romantic love, she reminded herself in the fog of her panic attack. But it is a version of love. And I’m going to cling to it as long as I can. Because what else do we have in this world? What else do we really have that matters?