Chapter One Natalie #2
Natalie gratefully accepted and, a few minutes later, felt the stress start to slip away as she sipped the cold, fizzy-sweet cocktail.
She loved it up here in Maine, the one part of Marigold’s world where she felt truly at home.
She loved that you had to take a ferry to reach Sandpiper Island.
(Apart from when she had a wedding dress in tow.) She loved that cars weren’t allowed and that everyone rode around on rusty, squeaky bikes, or lumbering golf carts.
She loved drinking coffee on the porch in the morning, taking deep breaths of pine-scented air while seals splashed in the bay.
She’d even accepted Bill and Lulu’s invitation to stay at the cottage after Marigold and Jonathan left for their honeymoon.
Perhaps she’d finally finish the query letter she’d been rewriting for five months.
Part of her was desperate to send her novel off to agents, but the thought of a publishing professional frowning over her manuscript—dismayed that yet another talentless wannabe had wasted their time—made her want to puke.
After mustering the courage to order the club sandwich, which was, after all, a steal compared with the forty-two-dollar lobster roll (fries not included), she opened Instagram and perused the accounts of her fellow bridesmaids, checking for important life updates so she’d be prepared for small talk.
Liesl had posted another moody black-and-white photo of her smoking on a fire escape; Bri had gotten one of the new salmon semen facials; Richie shared a selfie of her and Margaret Qualley from their Harper’s Bazaar photo shoot, and based on her excitement over their “newest addition!” Hannah was either pregnant again, adopting a puppy, or renovating their house.
Natalie placed her phone on the table as the waiter arrived with the sandwich, but then her phone buzzed and without thinking, she rushed to grab it, jostling the mimosa she hadn’t realized the waiter had moved to make room.
“Sorry, sorry,” Natalie said, using her napkin to mop up the droplets with one hand while she grabbed her phone with the other.
Her brain raced through a variety of scenarios: the hairdresser was sick, the guy delivering the ring had (literally) missed the boat.
Or maybe, just maybe, this was the text she’d been waiting for, the one where he finally admitted that he’d made a terrible mistake…
But it was just a text from Mrs. Friedlander, the mother of Natalie’s least-favorite student.
“No worries,” the waiter said kindly as he cleaned the stem of her champagne flute with a cloth.
Natalie checked to make sure nothing had spilled on the garment bag, then opened the message with a sigh.
natalie r u free today esme needs help with draft of admissions essay due to college advisor monday. can you call her at 4 thx.
Typical. Natalie had told Mrs. Friedlander three times that she’d be unavailable this weekend, but it never made a difference with the Upper East Side families who comprised the majority of her tutoring clients.
They wanted her to be on twenty-four-hour call, just like the rest of their extensive staff.
Hi Mrs. Friedlander, I’m sorry but as we discussed, I’m taking a few days off for a friend’s wedding.
A moment later, Mrs. Friedlander’s reply popped up.
r u serious? esme is freaking out this is very unprofessional.
Natalie rolled her eyes. There was no point in reminding Mrs. Friedlander that Natalie had given her and Esme ample warning, let alone trying to explain why this was an essay Esme needed to at least try to draft herself.
For the past two years, Natalie had sat by Esme’s side for hours at a time whenever she had a paper due, guiding her sentence by sentence until they both grew so tired and frustrated that Natalie eventually grabbed the laptop and cranked out the rest for her.
Their agreement was that Esme would rewrite it “in her own voice,” but of course, that had never happened.
Natalie didn’t have strong moral qualms about enabling Esme’s cheating—everyone at her sixty-thousand-dollar-per-year private school had tutors doing the exact same thing, so the playing field was level.
But college applications were a different story.
Esme would be competing against all sorts of kids, most of whom didn’t have access to this kind of help.
Natalie couldn’t stomach the thought of giving her lazy, entitled, not particularly bright student a leg up.
But if she refused, Mrs. Friedlander would bad-mouth her to every mother north of Fifty-Ninth Street.
God, she really needed to sell her book. Even a moderate advance would be enough to let Natalie quit tutoring for a year, enough time to figure out something that’d allow her to pay her bills without mortgaging her soul.
Okay. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get back to you shortly.
what is bella garfield writing about? I know ur helping her too. she did the same summer program as esme so make sure she doesn’t write about volunteering in mexico that is esme’s topic.
As Natalie did her best to decipher the text—Mrs. Friedlander tended to dictate while she worked out on the Peloton—a voice behind her made her jump.
“What are you doing?” Natalie whipped around to see Olivia striding toward her.
As usual, Marigold’s older sister looked like she’d come from a work cocktail party in her navy silk sheath dress and heels, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail. “Why is the dress out here?”
“Check-in isn’t until three!” Of course Olivia was going to treat this as the screwup of the century. She was constantly in crisis-management mode, even when there was no crisis. “I couldn’t take anything up to my room.”
“So you decided the best idea was to dump mimosas on it?” She pointed a pinky-beige nail at the single orange droplet that had made its way onto the heavy plastic garment bag. It was so small, Natalie hadn’t noticed. “Are you drunk?”
Natalie could feel her cheeks turning as red as the bottoms of Olivia’s shoes. “Come on, you think I’d get drunk at two in the afternoon?”
“I don’t give a shit what you do on your own time. I just don’t want anything to happen to Marigold’s dress.”
Yeah, right, Natalie thought. You’d love it if something happened to the dress. You’d love to prove that Marigold blew it by not choosing you as her maid of honor.
“Come on,” Olivia said with a sigh, hoisting the garment bag over her shoulder.
Natalie jumped to her feet to follow, then glanced back at her untouched sandwich. “Oh, wait. I need to pay for that.”
“Charge it to the Harding party,” Olivia called to the waiter, ignoring Natalie.
Natalie grabbed her bags and hurried after Olivia, who was moving at an impressive clip given the height of her heels.
She followed her back inside and then over to reception, where the same blond woman was still standing behind the desk.
Natalie shrank, bracing for another rejection, but as Olivia approached, the woman’s demeanor changed.
She looked up right away and greeted Olivia with a smile. “Hello. How may I help you?”
“Yes, hi,” Olivia said briskly. “We’re both checking in. One room under Natalie Pickard, one under Olivia Harding. It’s part of the block for the Harding/Stein wedding.”
“Of course, welcome,” the woman said, fingers tapping on her keyboard. “Just give me one moment…”
“She said I couldn’t check in until three! I swear!” Natalie whispered to Olivia.
“Here you go,” the woman said brightly as she passed each of them an old-fashioned brass key. “Ms. Harding, you’re in room twelve. Ms. Pickard, you’re in room nineteen. I hope you both have a wonderful weekend. If you leave your bags here, I’ll have them sent up right away.”
“Why aren’t you staying with your parents?” Natalie grumbled as she followed Olivia up the wide, gleaming wooden staircase lined with candle sconces and more oil paintings.
“Cell reception is too spotty on that side of the island. I need to be reachable in case a client calls me.”
“You’re working this weekend?”
“I’m always working.” Olivia paused on the first landing. “This is me. I think you’re on the next floor. Do you want me to take the dress?”
“No, I’ll take it,” Natalie said, snatching the bag off Olivia’s shoulder. “I brought it all the way from New York. I think I can handle a flight of stairs.” It came out a little pricklier than she’d intended, so she forced a little laugh. “I’ll see you at the welcome drinks.”
Natalie continued up the stairs, turned into the next hallway, and found room nineteen near the end of the corridor.
She fumbled with the key for a moment before managing to turn the heavy lock.
The door swung open, and Natalie staggered inside with the heavy garment bag, which she carefully draped over the back of a brocaded armchair before collapsing onto the four-poster brass bed.
She needed to close her eyes for a minute before she could muster the energy to head back down to the dock for the ring delivery.
“Jesus Christ!” a male voice said.
Natalie shot up into a seated position and stared wide-eyed at the man who’d apparently just walked out of the bathroom.
His dark curls were damp from the shower, making him seem younger and even more boyish than usual, just like it did back in their dorm all those years ago.
But for once, Natalie didn’t have to imagine what was under the towel, as this time, he was completely naked.
When their eyes met, the shock on his face faded, replaced by a much more familiar expression—the amused smirk that had been making her heart race for the last twelve years.
The one that had kept her awake at night back in college; the one that had lured her to New York years later, causing her to abandon her plans to attend grad school in Scotland.
The one that made her feel like the shittiest maid of honor in the history of weddings.
“Hey, Bumpy,” Jonathan said. “What are you doing in my room?”