Chapter 5
5
When Sloane directed them to her boyfriend’s yacht slip, Rose discovered that despite a decade in wealth management, she was still capable of being impressed by ostentatious displays of consumption. The yacht that would take them to Martha’s Vineyard was a hundred-foot monstrosity, its three decks gleaming white and new in the sun, its wooden railings whispering that they hailed from endangered tropical rainforests, its custom leather banquette seats confiding that many nonbovine creatures had forgone their bumpy skins in their construction. It was a floating argument for higher marginal tax rates.
“Oh my gawwwd ,” Tom drawled, sinking into a crouch on the concrete pier, palms clasped to his cheeks. He hummed under his breath, a tune Rose hoped Sloane wouldn’t recognize as the international communist anthem.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Rose said with purposeful nonchalance, resisting the urge to take out her phone and look up how much the yacht must have cost. Or to take a selfie in front of it. She never had anything good for the group chat.
She wasn’t pretending for Sloane’s sake, or for her boyfriend, who looked like the love child of Elon Musk and the last root vegetable at the bottom of the discount bin. But Rose was getting a little of her own back in Tom’s reaction now. If he happened to think Rose spent a lot of time lounging on mega yachts, that wouldn’t hurt anything. Sometimes her life took her interesting places.
Not that she and Tom were in competition. He was dating a movie star; he won.
A middle-aged man in an admiral’s hat slid a window open near the bow and waved at them. Sloane blew him a kiss and bounded across the metal gangway to greet her billionaire boyfriend.
“This is obscene ,” Tom murmured, eyes following their host. “What did the guy do to make this much money? Sell a nuclear weapon to the fur seal cartel?”
“Tom,” Rose preemptively warned him, though he wasn’t too far off the mark. “They’re being really nice to drop us off.”
“They’re always nice in person, aren’t they? Very pleasant. Right before they order the AI war bots to destroy the low-income housing development.”
“No, sometimes they’re assholes from the get-go,” Rose told him, thinking about all the coffee mugs that had been chucked in her general direction over the years. “But I’m sure these are the pleasant kind who support the arts, not the kind who murder people in Benoit Blanc movies.”
“Fine. After the revolution, though, I call dibs on this thing for my turn at fully automated luxury gay communism,” Tom said. Still balancing on his heels, he stuck out one hand and petted the hull with reverent fingertips.
Rose sighed, because handmaiden to the ruling class might not be the kind of job people dreamed about, but it was how she paid the bills. “Promise no more eat-the-rich talk until we get to Martha’s Vineyard? Or at least make it clear you’ll eat Sloane and her boyfriend last?” She squinted at the door Sloane had disappeared through, nervous that someone would overhear.
Tom snorted. “As if the resource that most needs to be redistributed is this guy’s dark meat. I bet he’s gamey.”
Rose finally laughed at Tom’s unrepentant grin, feeling a tightness loosen in her heart. Like she’d told Sloane, there was a reason she’d married him in the first place. “I forgot what a dork you are.”
“What, should I be playing this whole yacht scene cooler?”
“No, I actually liked that you never pretended to be cool,” she said, rolling her eyes to cover her reluctant smile. For someone whose career was predicated on the ability to slip into the skin of a leading man, Tom had never cared at all about his dignity, not if he could make her laugh instead.
“Oh, good. I’m still not cool.”
“Not unexpected,” Rose said, finally crossing onto the boat. “But please be charming until we get to Oak Bluffs?”
“I’ll be charming,” he promised, standing to follow her onto the main deck. There were at least a dozen crew members on the yacht who swarmed the pile of luggage, efficiently dragging it off to somewhere it wouldn’t disturb the bleached perfection of the deck.
When nobody told her where to go, Rose shrugged and headed to a vacant group of lounge chairs with her day bag. Tom trailed after her, watching her stage her laptop, her thermos of iced coffee, and her boat snacks on a low table. He bounced on his heels, energy undimmed in the face of a nine-hour boat ride. “So, ah, how would you like to be charmed?”
Rose paused in the middle of setting up her workstation. She’d assumed he’d want to explore the rest of the yacht and give her a moment to collect herself. His interested, beaming regard was making her squirm with confusion. “No, not me. I already know all about you. Charm Sloane. When she gets down here, you can tell her and her personified daddy issues all your best Boyd Kellagher stories.”
“What, you think she wants to hear more about Boyd?” he asked, sounding a little surprised. He unselfconsciously ran his hand through his thick dark hair in a classic leading-man stretch.
“Of course she does. I mean, anyone would.”
“Anyone? Do you?”
“Yeah, why not?” Rose said lightly.
She had the idea that she could toughen herself up to this. The blisters were part of the process. She was not jealous.
Tom lifted his eyebrows. “Okay, I’ve got one. When he first joined the cast, he used Axe Dark Temptation bodywash. So much of it. Also the body spray. And the deodorant. We staged an intervention when it got unbreathable onstage. Even the bedbugs were fleeing the theater. Ximena Tejeda-Souza and I had to drag him to the bathroom and scrub him down with hand soap.”
“Oh my God,” Rose said, appalled. “Are you kidding?”
Tom smiled crookedly. “Yeah.”
Rose made a noise halfway between a snort and a giggle in the back of her throat and pushed him right between his fancy new pectoral muscles. He reeled back theatrically, arms waving to make her laugh harder. This was a familiar groove to settle into, as easy as her oldest shoes.
The yacht sounded its horn and drew away from the pier, slipping into the Hudson. The sweet silt smell of the river gave way to a hint of brine as they slowly turned into the bay. Rose had been here for over a decade, but she still loved the sight of the city from the water. Tom stilled too, both of their heads tracking the Midtown landmarks as the yacht began to trace around the edge of Manhattan. The yacht could cross deep ocean, but for this short voyage they’d cling to the coast and navigate into Long Island Sound instead of chancing the Atlantic in winter.
They took their seats on a pair of teak lounge chairs flanking an enameled coffee table and stretched out their legs. The wind caught their hair, rubbing it across their cheeks. Tom had managed to get a tan somewhere, and it looked good on him; maybe he’d gone back to California with Boyd at some point.
With a casualness she was abruptly certain he’d practiced in his head, Tom reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. Lightly, so she didn’t feel the weight of it, just the warmth.
Rose didn’t yank her hand away, but she stared down at the point of contact. A kiss on the cheek. Deprecating stories about his boyfriend. His hand on hers. Her heart needed to grow those protective calluses, and soon. She hadn’t gone through a near-death experience. She hadn’t even adjusted to the idea that Tom still thought of her at all. Her head went swimmy with the unreality of the situation. She used to dream about this: Tom turning to her, seeing her, looking like he cared. She might have believed it ten years ago.
“I missed talking with you, Rosie,” Tom said, his voice very soft.
She ducked her face toward her lap, feeling her lower lip tuck in reflexively. That wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
At her expression, Tom released her hand and pulled his arm back to his side of the table, leaving her wrist feeling tingly and exposed.
“Um,” Tom said, tone now vaguely embarrassed. “We should probably do that, right? Talk?”
Rose sighed to anchor herself. “Right.” She pulled out her day planner. “I’m sorry, but I need to send some out-of-office emails and instructions to the foundation’s property managers right now. It’ll probably take me like an hour. But then we can talk. I think the best place to start is the claims estimate, right? Have you had a chance to read that yet?” She opened her purse and found the binder that had the insurance paperwork in it.
“Oh,” Tom said. His face was a muddle.
“What?” she asked. “It’s okay if you didn’t get to it yet. It’s a long boat ride. I’ll walk you through it.”
“No, I read everything you sent. I just meant—yeah. Of course we’ll talk about the inn stuff. But. Everything else too, right?”
“What else?”
“We never really did, you know,” Tom said, when of course Rose knew that. “What happened, why, how you felt—”
“But why? You think we need to—for closure?” It was the only thing she could think of, and she supposed she might owe him that for his troubles here, but if she had to think back to how she’d felt as a scared and lonely twenty-two-year-old, she needed a fifth of whiskey and her therapist on standby.
“No, basically the opposite of closure,” he said, deep brown eyes wide and concerned. “We’re going to talk, and then we’re going to work things out the way we should have ten years ago.” Tom paused. “Isn’t that why I’m here? We’re going to work things out?”
No, she’d thought he was going to help her hang drywall in a suitably apologetic way, and then maybe once a year or so they’d exchange gentle yet emotionally fraught nods from across crowded rooms.
Remember when we thought we’d die holding hands in the same nursing home?
Ah, yes, we were young once, weren’t we?
“You didn’t seriously think we’d just pick up where we left off?” Rose demanded, even though it sounded beyond ludicrous to articulate. She’d thought there was zero chance Adrian or Sloane could be right about why Tom was here.
Tom laughed, the sound bright and startled.
“Um, no,” Tom said. “Where we left off was you tossing my clothes in the hall.” He mimicked her voice. “ I hate you, you bastard, you ruined my life ?” His chin tilted as though he was waiting for her to acknowledge the accuracy of this recitation. She stiffened instead, unable to defend herself but unwilling to say he hadn’t had it coming. “That was not a good place. So, no, not where we left off. Forward? Backward. Not sure which way. But someplace else.”
Rose blinked at him, her cheeks turning to flame. “You mean you think we could be friends now?” she tried to clarify.
It sounded unlikely. What did he think they could manage? Drinks at their college reunions? Jointly plan Adrian’s eventual bachelor party?
“Friends? I don’t know. We were never really friends, were we?” he said cautiously.
Rose looked down at her lap, clenching her hands where they’d twisted together. “I used you think you were my best friend.” That had been the worst part. There was only so much one kind of love could do to substitute for another, and loving her remaining family and friends even harder hadn’t felt like it could ever fill the giant Tom-sized hole in her life after he left.
She swallowed, thinking about ice cream and cold beer and pickles out of the refrigerator, which was a trick to clear her throat when it felt too tight.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Tom said after a moment, tone abashed. “Of course we were friends. And if I hadn’t been such a dick, I would have tried to at least keep that, if nothing else. If that’s all you want from me, I’ll—I’ll try. But can’t you try too?”
“I don’t know,” Rose hedged. “What about you and Boyd?”
Tom made a face. “Is Boyd really a problem? What you’ve heard probably isn’t even true, and uh…we were divorced.”
Rose had not at all intended to suggest that she judged him for dating Boyd, but rather that Boyd might have some objection to Tom’s ex-wife playing a recurring role in his life.
“Of course I don’t have a problem with you and Boyd,” she hurried to say. “Who would say no to Boyd Kellagher, even if they were still married?”
She was joking, but Tom looked even more uncomfortable.
“He’s not that great,” Tom muttered. “Not everyone likes him.”
Rose snorted. “Come on. Everyone does . I will never have a relationship that is closed to someone like Boyd Kellagher, and I wouldn’t expect you to either.”
Tom now looked like he was about to cringe off the entire boat. “Seriously? That’s how you’d want it?”
Oh, yeah, Rose couldn’t make it between the break room and her windowless office without getting propositioned by a movie star who wanted to be one of her many boyfriends. “Completely serious,” she drawled, covering the hurt with sarcasm. “Give him my number.”
He did not appear reassured. “Well…monogamy is not the hill I want to die on. I guess…we can talk about that too? I’ll get my head around it. Eventually.”
It took her a moment to process that she might have accidentally tripped into some current drama with Tom’s relationship with Boyd. Oh shit. Rose had no idea how people handled open relationships, never having voluntarily been in one, and she was the last person Tom ought to be taking advice from on the subject. She started looking for the exit.
His eyebrows gathered unhappily. “I know that face. What did I say? Babe, I get that this shit is complicated, but it only works if we agree on what we want. What do you want for us?”
Us? Us as in her and Tom?
Her ex-husband patiently watched her, as present and earnest as she’d ever ripped her heart to shreds wishing for before their marriage ended, and it only then snapped into focus that Tom really did think there would be an us involving the two of them in some configuration at the conclusion of this trip, notwithstanding his preexisting relationship with Boyd Kellagher.
Now approaching panic, Rose was prepared to fake an asthma attack to get out of the conversation, but as though sent by angels above, Sloane came clattering down the endangered redwood stairs, crowned with her boyfriend’s admiral’s hat and sporting a knit bikini under a stolen Mandarin Oriental robe.
“There you are!” she crowed. “Everyone’s getting in the hot tub on the top deck. Everyone’s getting stock tips. You get a stock tip, and you get a stock tip, and you get a deferred prosecution agreement if you turn them in for insider trading. Are you coming?”
Rose shot her a silent plea for assistance, telepathing as hard as she’d ever done in her life that she needed a rescue.
“Thanks, but I was just going to keep Rosie company while she works,” Tom said, crossing a foot over his knee and adopting a patient posture.
Sloane looked back and forth between the two of them. She made a dramatic pout at Rose, who imagined Sloane didn’t care to be the only woman in a hot tub full of billionaire bros. Rose put her palms together in supplication beneath the table.
“I guess…if Rose needs to work,” Sloane said slowly, corners of her mouth turning down. “Then maybe we should give her a little space.”
Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m pretty sure that was one of the things I did wrong last time.”
“Not at all,” Rose lied through her teeth. If he’d comfortably ignored her for more than eleven years, he could give her some time right now, when she actually needed it. “Go have fun. Entertain our hosts. Sloane was just mentioning that she loves show tunes.”
“I dooo . Can you sing anything from Cats ?” Sloane asked excitedly. “I love basically anything Andrew Lloyd Webber.” She winked at Rose, grabbed Tom by the upper arm, and paused with her fingers pressed into the muscle. She mouthed Oh my God , and Rose died a little inside. When Sloane recovered, she hauled Tom to his reluctant feet. “Just let me know when you want him back.”