Chapter 17
“Wow,” Will said as Rachel walked up to him. “You look ...”
That was as far as he got. She’d picked out a dark-blue sundress with white polka dots that turned sheer the farther it went down her legs and paired it with hot-pink wedged espadrilles that tied around her ankles, and she looked so gorgeous he couldn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he took her in his arms, his hand gently passing over her partially exposed back, and let the people passing by them on the sidewalk fade into the background, catching a whiff of lavender as he did so.
After a few seconds, Rachel took a step away and gave him an appraising, satisfied once-over. “I have to say, you didn’t do too bad yourself.”
Will had gone with a lighter-blue button-down, the long sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and dark-green shorts with a wool-blend slip-on sneaker. He’d also made what for him was a bold fashion decision:
Shoes without socks.
If they were going to get found out at the Marquise, it wouldn’t be because they weren’t playing the part. They looked like one of those couples you see who seem to levitate just above everyone around them, how Seth and Francesca had looked when Will had seen them approaching at Summerfest. In his mind, Rachel always occupied that rare air, with or without him, but his minimakeover had given him a confidence in his outward coolness that he didn’t always possess.
Internally, things were a little less settled.
Not an hour before, not only had he been attempting to change the direction of Rachel’s career without her permission—not just without her permission, actually, but in direct contrast to her stated wishes while impersonating her over email—but he’d also followed that up by texting his sister-in-law and lying to her too.
Rachel told me about the doctor and Owen. I’m sorry.
He and Isa had a good relationship, so he had known it wouldn’t strike her as odd that Rachel had told him this.
Thanks. He’s just so difficult sometimes. I so appreciate Rachel going with me.
I know. And I hate to ask this, but I have a surprise planned for her at the end of the trip that’s going to extend it by a few days, so we won’t be home by Tuesday.
Oh. I had no idea.
Neither does she.He’d grimaced as he’d typed. Would you be willing to tell her the appointment got moved to help me keep it a secret?
The I’m typing bubble had appeared right away, disappeared for the better part of a minute, and then popped back up. It hadn’t felt like a particularly happy interlude for either of them.
Yeah, I can do that. Good luck, Romeo.
Thanks, Isa. I owe you.
Will had felt awful doing it—for pulling Rachel away from her sister when he knew she was going through a tough time, for involving Isa in what he was doing, for lying to them both. But after he had confirmed with Beatriz, what other choice did he have?
“I got you something too,” Rachel said, reaching into the shopping bag where she’d transferred the clothes she’d been wearing (Will had stuffed his into the tote from the fudge shop).
Her hand reemerged holding a black hat. It was a wide-brimmed fedora. Like the one Taylor Swift wore in the “22” music video.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“It’s for Saturday night in Nashville.”
“Yes, I put that together. And look, I love her too. But no.”
“Are you sure?” Rachel asked, dipping into the bag again. This time she pulled out a new flowy purple midi dress and held it up in front of her. “Because I’m going to wear this, and I don’t think your standard wardrobe can keep up.”
Will didn’t have to think that hard to imagine her in it. It was a striking image.
“Still,” he managed to say. “You get to look like that, and I’m going to be some nerd trying to pull off a hat he has no business with.”
“But you’re my nerd,” she said, happily putting her purchases back into the bag. “It’s gonna be great.”
“What era even is yours? I feel like you just got to pick out a hot dress.”
Rachel’s expression turned serious. “Are you saying you don’t know purple is unequivocally indicative of the Speak Now album?”
“Uh . . . no?”
“Good answer.”
They took their time walking down the street toward the Marquise, their bodies just an inch or two apart, and he didn’t need to see her face to know how happy she was. They were laughing and talking, sure, but he could feel it coming off her. She was practically radiant, a far cry from the person who’d wanted to spend the week watching reality TV. He didn’t want that spark to go away when the trip ended, and he believed the best shot of keeping it alive wasn’t waiting for them back in Chicago. Viewed in that light, his plan didn’t appear quite so reckless. He was swinging for the fences, sure, but with good reason.
That he still wasn’t revealing anything to her was more telling than he was willing to admit.
“All right,” she said when they arrived outside the restaurant. “The key in situations like this is confidence. If we believe I’m Annie, they’ll believe I’m Annie.”
“Situations like this,” he repeated. “Have you often stolen other people’s dinner reservations?”
“Not at five o’clock. I mean, it’s four fifty-six right now. I feel like my parents. I’m afraid it’s going to affect my performance.”
“Just use it as part of your backstory. We know she—”
“You mean me.”
“Right. We know you made these reservations months ago, presumably because this place is very popular, and you probably picked five o’clock because ... ever since you’ve been pregnant, you’ve liked to eat dinner earlier?”
Rachel weighed the merits of his lie. He hoped he hadn’t come across as too knowledgeable about how to temporarily assume someone else’s identity.
“I think I can work with that,” she said. “Shall we?”
They entered the Marquise, the interior of which was bright and airy thanks to the white walls, the light hardwood floors, and the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out to the patio seating and the lake beyond. It was busier than either of them had expected given the early hour, but a quick glance around the dining room suggested most of the others were indeed their parents’ age or older.
“Hi, there,” Rachel said cheerily to the young woman at the host stand, whose tattoo of Pikachu on the inside of her left wrist peeked out from under the sleeve of her white linen shirt. “Annie, party of two.”
Like the kid from the beach, this person appeared to be working a summer-break job and offered a weak smile as she looked down at her tablet, doing her best to be pleasant and hide her boredom. She started to scroll the screen with her index finger, first up and then back down.
“Huh, I’m not seeing it,” she said with a frown. The tag on her shirt said her name was Skye, and Skye seemed to come a little more alive now that she’d been confronted with a mystery amid the doldrums of her shift. “What’d you say the name was again?”
“Annie,” Rachel replied, calm as ever. Meanwhile, there were two couples who could’ve been their grandparents waiting behind them now, and Will imagined the cracks beginning to form in their story. Maybe Annie or her ex had called and canceled, maybe the reservation was only under her last name, or maybe there really were restaurant police and the two of them on the boat had been undercover.
Their entire conversation could’ve been a setup from Jump Street, he thought, only partially aware of how lucky he was no one could hear how ridiculous that sentence sounded.
Okay, undercover restaurant police was a stretch, and not just because that theory hinged on a college girl named Skye with a Pokémon tattoo working a sting with Mackinac Island law enforcement. But the longer she looked for “their” name, the more uneasy Will got—never mind that he had just perpetrated a far more consequential email deception with relative ease. Given the circumstances, you would’ve thought he would’ve held it together better when the only stakes would be getting embarrassed in front of some random early birds. So it was probably just the accumulation of the various schemes. Because the threat of face-to-face condemnation from four retirees wearing really sensible shoes loomed bigger than it should have.
He was readying himself to grab Rachel’s hand and make a break for it when Skye said:
“Oh, there it is. Right this way.”
She was going to seat them at one of the windows, but Will asked if they could sit outside instead. As luck would have it, there was one table left out there, a two-top at the far edge of the patio so that there wouldn’t be anyone between them and their view of the lake, which was sparkling in the early-evening sunlight.
Rachel sighed once Skye had left them with their menus. “This turned out sorta great.”
“I thought the jig might be up when she couldn’t find our name back there.”
“Just a blip on the radar. Who’s going to say no to a pregnant lady at dinner?”
“A hot pregnant lady.”
She smiled. “So you’ve said.”
“It bears repeating.”
She rubbed her foot against the inside of his shin under the table. “Seriously. I know sometimes I tease you about your Rachel goggles”—her term for how Will had a tendency to describe her like she was Helen of Troy—“but pregnancy can have a way of making you feel ... less than your best. So, yeah. Thanks.”
Will thought back to what his mom had said again, only this time, the wisdom of her words overshadowed how awkward they had made him feel when she’d said them.
The server appeared before he and Rachel had taken a look at the menu, but they were ready with their drink order: gin and tonic for him, virgin daiquiri for her.
It took everything in them to act like they’d never seen him before.
“Oh my God,” Rachel said as soon as he was gone. “Is that ...?”
“Vending-machine-of-bullshit guy? Yes!”
“And did he say his name was Lane?”
“I thought he said Blaine.”
“No, I think he said Lane. And if so, that begs the question: Was he in a relationship with someone also named Lane—which, amazing—or was he calling himself a vending machine of bullshit in the third person? Which would also be amazing but slightly troubling too.”
They started reviewing the appetizers while all they could really talk about was how they were going to get visual confirmation of the name via Lane’s or Blaine’s name badge. They landed on the spinach-artichoke dip and the shrimp tartlets—because it was vacation, so why choose one, and because Rachel was technically more pescatarian than vegetarian—and Will checking the name while she pretended to examine the menu as she ordered for them.
The server returned with their drinks, and Rachel made sure she had his full attention by pointing at the entry for the dip and asking a question about the cheese. Will scanned his shirt once, and then again, but, to his dismay, discovered that unlike the people at the host stand, the waitstaff did not wear their names on their chests. Or at least this guy didn’t. Will would have to improvise.
“I’ll get those started for you,” the server said once Rachel had finished. “Can I get you anything else at the moment?”
“Actually, could you take our picture—I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Will asked, instantly sounding as old as every other diner looked.
“Bane,” he said.
“Ah, Bane, right,” Will said, now wanting to ask him how he felt about the Batman character. “Could you take our picture with the lake in the background, Bane?”
“Sure, happy to,” Bane said. He seemed so carefree. You never would’ve pegged that vending machine line coming from him.
“Awesome, thank you,” Will said. He handed Bane his phone and scooched his chair part of the way around to Rachel’s side. They leaned toward each other until their cheeks were touching.
“No name tag?” she whispered through her smile.
“No.”
“Nice work.”
“Say cheese,” Bane said.
“Chee ... sus, Mary, and Joseph,” Rachel replied as he snapped the picture, her expression shifting midsentence from relaxed to horrified surprise, which explained the rare occurrence of the closest thing to an expletive she’d heard in her house growing up. The photo caught Will’s face right as his jaw had finished dropping.
Skye was winding her way through the crowded patio, approaching their table from behind Bane.
And she was approaching with Annie. The real Annie.
“Do you want me to take another one?” Bane asked before moving to hand the phone back to Will. “I think the ... uh ... light might have been weird.” What he should’ve said was that take one had captured them looking like gargoyles, but when you work for tips, you learn to blame all photo snafus on lighting.
“Oh no, that’s okay,” Will said, grabbing it from his hand. He glanced back at Annie and noticed it wasn’t just her with Skye. There was another woman, one who hadn’t been on the ferry. He didn’t know how this was going to go down, and there was no escaping it now, but he was hoping to shoo Bane on his way and minimize the number of spectators.
“Um, excuse me?” Skye said, sounding as sweet as she possibly could. Once she arrived, it was clear Bane wasn’t going anywhere. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, which may have explained what Lane from the phone had been so jealous about. Will would’ve enjoyed sorting through all the layers of this with Rachel if Annie weren’t also there looking like someone who had been stewing over that bad-bangs comment all day.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner,” Skye continued, “but this woman here—”
“Annie,” Annie muttered.
“Right. Annie says that ... well, she says that she had a reservation for five o’clock, and since that was the only Annie in our book for the entire night, I was wondering if, maybe, there was a chance you’d gotten your days mixed up?”
Skye advanced this suggestion in the noncommittal manner of someone who wasn’t paid nearly enough to insert herself into a disagreement between tourists a decade or more her seniors.
Annie exhibited no such hesitation.
“They didn’t get anything mixed up. They heard me on the ferry earlier with ...” She seemed to be catching herself. “That part’s not important. The point is, they heard about my reservation, they thought I was going to cancel it, and then they showed up here, with her”—she jabbed at the air in Rachel’s direction—“pretending to be me.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Rachel said, surreptitiously leaning down toward the table. Will was almost positive she was untying her espadrilles underneath, and that could only mean she was thinking what he was:
This time, she was ready to run too.
“Okay, then prove it,” Annie said. “Show us one piece of ID that says you are who you say you are.”
“That’s really not necessary,” Skye interjected.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Rachel demanded, ignoring the efforts at peacemaking and looking at Annie like she was deranged—while also continuing to take her shoes off.
“Annie, what’s going on?” the mystery woman said from behind Bane.
“Nothing to worry about, Amanda. These two were just leaving.”
“Uh, it’s Manda? Like panda? I told you that.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Rachel said. She straightened back up, which meant she was done untying her shoes and was now barefoot, and inhaled the air of the moral high ground—or at least the moral flatlands. “You picked someone up the same day that you dumped your girlfriend, and now you’re taking her to what was supposed to be your anniversary dinner? That’s super classy.”
“Aha!” Annie shouted. “That proves you were on the boat with me and overheard our whole conversation! I knew it!”
“You broke up with your girlfriend today?” Manda who rhymed with panda said in disbelief.
“Me too,” Bane said, staring straight at Skye, who seemed kind of panicked by the information.
“Aman ...,” Annie tried, turning toward her date. “Dammit, sorry. Manda, it’s not like that. We’d been growing apart for a long time.”
Rachel snorted. “That’s your line? God. What’s-her-name did get out just in time.”
Annie looked back to the table. “You know, you got a lot of nerve acting like Miss Holier Than Thou while stealing people’s dinner reservations.”
“Didn’t you stay on the ferry and go back?” Will asked. He was genuinely curious, and he figured since they’d come this far, he might as well know.
“We met at the casino in St. Ignace,” Manda volunteered.
“So you took the boat back,” he said, still talking to Annie, “thought ‘My relationship’s over, so what the hell; let’s shoot some dice,’ met someone new, and then took the ferry back to the island, like, five hours later? All to eat here?”
He looked at Skye and Bane. “No offense. It seems lovely.”
“We had a Groupon,” Annie said. “Sue me.”
“The shrimp tartlets are the best on the island,” Skye said, desperate.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Bane said to Skye.
They all stopped. Bane looked at Skye. Skye looked at the ground. Annie and Manda looked at each other. The rest of the patio didn’t know who to look at.
Will and Rachel’s eyes locked over the table.
“Now?” he mouthed.
“Now.”
The two of them threw their wrought iron chairs back with a clatter and booked it for the exit, Rachel’s bare feet gliding across the concrete with her hot-pink shoes in one hand and her bag in the other, Will following with a tote full of clothes and fudge.
He was right behind her until they got to the sidewalk wrapping around the building and leading to the street, at which point he hit the brakes and sprinted back to the table, where the other four hadn’t yet entirely processed what had just happened.
“For the drinks and appetizers,” Will said, half gasping as he threw down two 20s. He looked at their bewildered faces. “Peace be with you.”
He spun back around and was gone again.
When he got to the street, he didn’t see Rachel right away. He looked right and spotted her two doors down outside the building that was in front of the ferry dock.
“Oh my God,” she said as he jogged over, hardly able to get the words out because she was laughing so hard. “Oh my God. What just happened?”
Will put his hands on his hips to catch his breath. “I think we learned why you don’t steal dinner reservations from people who break up with other people on boats.”
Rachel reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder for balance as she put her shoes back on. “This might be the greatest night of my life, and it’s not even five fifteen. Manda, like panda? C’mon!”
“Poor Bane, though. I couldn’t let us dine and dash on him, especially not after that.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you thought to pay. When we tell this story to our friends, we have to be the heroes.”
“Heroes might be a little strong. Let’s go with people who were there.”
She finished retying the first shoe and moved on to the second. “Hey, speaking of Bane, please tell me this photo is as big of a train wreck as I want it to be.”
Will got his phone out to check. There it was. He stared at it while he waited for Rachel to stand up.
“And?” she said when she did.
“It’s a ... it’s a definite vibe,” he said, showing the screen to her. Bane had taken the shot at the exact moment both Will and Rachel had spotted Annie. Peak Cheesus.
She busted out laughing all over again, and so did he.
“Holy shit, that’s perfect,” she said, wiping the tears out of her eyes. “This would absolutely be our Christmas card if we were Christmas card people.”
It took a while, but their giggling finally subsided (more or less), and it struck Will how close they still were to the Marquise.
“I know it’s not like we stole a car or anything,” he said, “but I would feel better if we, like, fled the scene a little more definitively.”
“That’s probably fair. I also hate to admit it since I made fun of the reservation time before, but I am pretty hungry now.”
“Must be our brush with the law.”
They walked a few more minutes down the street and found a low-key place that could seat them immediately if they were okay with the bar, which they were.
“Weird,” Rachel said, looking at her watch.
“What?”
“Isa said never mind about the doctor; it got moved to the following week.”
“It doesn’t seem that weird,” Will said a little too defensively.
“I just meant it was kind of late in the day to be scheduling and then rescheduling doctor appointments.”
“Yeah, well, we’re on eastern time here. So, you know, it’s an hour earlier there.”
Rachel shrugged, clearly not interested in spending any more time on a subject she had remarked upon only in passing, and Will was grateful for that. They were having too much fun to let real life intervene.
It was as good an excuse as any.
He ordered a replacement gin and tonic, she switched things up and went with an Arnold Palmer, and they both got fish-and-chips. It wasn’t the glitz and glamour of shrimp tartlets, but it’s hard not to be content when you’re dunking something that’s been deep-fried into tartar sauce.
“Let’s see here,” Rachel said when they were done eating and had paid their bill with considerably less flair than at their last stop. “It’s almost seven o’clock. What do you think? Should we catch the next ferry back so we can get to bed while it’s still light out?”
“Actually, I have a surprise for you,” he said. “Out front.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“I mean, don’t get too excited. It’s just a little thing.”
They got up and went from the noise of the bar to the murmur of the packed restaurant waiting area to the evening hum of the street. There, at the curb, was a horse-drawn carriage awaiting its passengers.
Will had let Rachel walk out in front of him, and she turned back, clearly smitten with him and his idea. “Is this for us?” she asked.
“I figured we could take it out to the Grand Hotel and watch the sunset,” he said.
She took a step toward him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
“I love it,” she said quietly. “And I love you. Thank you. For all of this.”
Sometimes when you swing for the fences, you do in fact hit a home run.