Chapter 5
Nantucket Island, Six Years Ago
It was Lily’s idea that Shelby go on another date immediately. “Hank wasn’t right for you,” Lily assured her. “I was wrong to match you up in the first place. That was my bad! But now, you have your first date under your belt. You know what it’s like. You can dig into the fun stuff, now.”
Shelby wasn’t sure if any part of dating seemed fun to her, but she was willing to give it another go, if only to prove to herself that she wasn’t half as much of a loser as she felt.
Shelby agreed to meet Baxter Balms three nights after her disastrous date with Hank the lawyer.
Baxter suggested they grab a couple of beers and head to the beach to talk.
It felt low-key in all the ways her restaurant date with Hank hadn’t been, so Shelby agreed immediately.
This time, she decided, she was going to have one beer, if only to loosen up.
Maybe she’d been too much of an alien before, bug-eyed and unable to articulate who she was. She hadn’t known what to say or think.
Baxter was slightly cuter than Hank, but he was a bit more awkward, too.
When he picked her up from the Sutton Book Club, they walked for a while, as the beers he’d bought for their date clanked around in his backpack.
Baxter explained that he was a grad student at NYU, which was perfect, as they were both New York City-bound at the end of the summer.
It meant there was an opportunity for a future.
He was also a prolific reader, and he explained that he’d read all of Knausgaard over the previous two weeks, which led Shelby to conclude he was a book freak.
She’d read only one Knausgaard, and they got into a pretty good discussion about him, arguing lightly, until they reached the beach and cracked open their beers.
She could see from his expression that he sort of liked her, or at least enjoyed her reader-brain. She sort of liked him, too.
Was that all it took to build a life with someone?
For a little while, Shelby allowed herself a swell of hope.
Maybe she and Baxter would hit it off. Maybe they’d have a summer of romance before returning to New York City and getting serious not only about one another but about their schooling.
Maybe they’d be professors together and have intellectual children and host dinner parties.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. It was like a song in her brain.
But about an hour into their date, when Shelby felt a little woozy from the three-quarters of a beer she’d drunk, Baxter let it slip that he still wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend.
Apparently, she’d gone to get her master's in Argentina, and although they’d agreed to stay together, she’d met someone else.
“She calls me every few weeks and says she’s not happy there, that she wants to come back,” Baxter said, his eyes darkening. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Shelby’s tongue felt fat and strange in her mouth. She tossed back the rest of her beer.
“But I don’t know,” Baxter went on. “My mom thinks I need to move on, so she sent me Lily’s contact, and yeah, now I’m here with you. And it’s pretty fun? Don’t get me wrong. But I think we’re just friends, right? You feel it, too?”
“Yeah. Just friends,” Shelby agreed, although at that moment, she wanted to melt into the sand.
Later, Shelby lay on Lily’s bed and wept, while Lily reminded her that dating was always like this. “It was only your second time out!” she said. “Plenty of women go on first dates constantly, for years, and only find ‘the one’ when they stop looking.”
“I’m not even looking for the one!” Shelby scowled at her sister. “You told me I had to start dating! So I could be like a real person! But maybe I don’t want to be like a real person?”
Lily sighed and lay down next to Shelby, and for a moment, the two sisters were like the little girls they’d once been, arguing and laughing at intervals.
“I’m just embarrassed,” Shelby admitted.
“That’s what living is,” Lily reminded her. “It’s embarrassing yourself over and over again. It’s opening yourself up to heartache and experiences. Living doesn’t happen in the pages of a book.”
Shelby sighed. “I think I’m retired.”
“Don’t retire yet,” Lily said.
But Shelby asked Lily to stop matching her up. She wanted to focus on work at the Sutton Book Club. She wanted to focus on her own heart and her own mind.
The following evening, their mother Rebecca hosted yet another Sutton family party.
Shelby found herself out on the sand beneath the delicious summer sun, listening as her Grandma Esme and Aunt Valerie bickered happily about something inane, and Lily and her boyfriend Mick teased one another, and Chad and their cousins played with a soccer ball, nearly losing it in the waves.
Shelby’s heart was full with her love for her family.
Soon, Grandpa Victor came out with an accordion, introducing them to a talent he’d thought was long dormant.
He played old European tunes, and the Sutton family laughed and clapped along.
Seeing their usually so serious and intellectual grandfather acting playful, musical, and foolish was remarkable.
Kade, especially, couldn’t stop laughing.
“I didn’t know you were like that, Dad,” Kade said.
Shelby wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard him refer to Victor as “Dad” before.
Later, after they’d eaten, Shelby helped her mother clean the plates and bowls and serving spoons in the kitchen.
The windows were open, and they could hear Victor playing the accordion again, while Grandma Esme and Lily chatted about all things matchmaking.
Shelby winced, praying that Lily wouldn’t talk about Shelby’s failed attempts.
She could feel her mother’s eyes on her, studying her with a quiet intensity.
“How’s your summer going, honey?” Rebecca asked finally, as though she couldn’t resist.
Shelby told herself to keep her voice light and airy. “It’s going great!”
“Yeah?” Rebecca dried a dish and set it aside. “Have you met anyone on the island? Any new friends or…”
“I’ve been so busy at the Sutton Book Club,” Shelby said. “And I’ve read more this summer than I ever have, I think. The Goldfinch was incredible. You have to read it.”
“I’ll try to get to it.” Rebecca’s eyes echoed their worry. “Honey, you know how proud I am of you, right?”
Shelby flipped her hair behind her shoulders. “Mom, you don’t have to do this.”
“But I want to. I want to say how proud I am. And also to tell you…” Rebecca trailed off. “Life is really for living, honey. It is. I hope you won’t be too afraid to open your heart.”
Shelby rolled her eyes into the back of her head. It was clear, now, that Lily had told their mother everything. She’d told her how upset Shelby was about dating, about how doomed she was in the world of romance. Shelby was not only pathetic. Now, her mother thought so, too.
Shelby told herself to be strong in the face of this. She told herself to say something like, Guys are a waste of time, Mom. But instead, tears bubbled up from the depths of her, and she found herself sobbing on her mother’s shoulder. Pathetic!
“I just can’t connect to people,” Shelby said between gasps. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Nobody knows how to do it, honey,” Rebecca said gently.
“But it’s something you get better at with practice.
I promise you that. But remember, there is no timeline in this life.
You can meet and date and break up with many, many guys before you find the one you want to spend your life with.
I mean, look at our family. Your grandma and grandpa were divorced for years and have now gotten back together!
I lost your father, which nearly killed me, but I met Ben, who’s been such a godsend, not only to me, but to the rest of our family, too.
And your Aunt Valerie, and your Aunt Bethany, they’ve all found happiness later in her life. ”
Shelby closed her eyes. She felt faced with many years of loneliness and regret.
“I don’t want you to be afraid,” Rebecca said gently.
“I’m fine,” Shelby told her mother, but of course they both knew she was not.
Four days later, Shelby was alone at the Sutton Book Club, filing away books that Nantucketers had returned.
It was a beautiful day outside, eighty-two degrees and sunny, so she didn’t expect many people to come in today.
This would give Shelby plenty of time to work on her novel, which she kept in a notebook tucked away in her Sutton Book Club desk.
When the bell jangled over the door, Shelby didn’t turn around when she said, “Good afternoon! Welcome to the Sutton Book Club.” She half-expected it to be Grandma Esme, here to tell Shelby to close up for the day and get to the beach.
“Hi.” A man’s sturdy voice filled the library.
A shiver went down Shelby’s spine. She set a stack of books on a nearby table and turned to find one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen up close.
With black hair and black eyes and six feet and four inches of stature, he towered over the shelves, looking as though he’d stepped out of the pages of one of the romance novels in the section by the wall.
“Hi,” Shelby said. “Can I help you with something?”
“Is this just a library?” the man asked. “Or can you buy books, too?”
“We’re both,” Shelby said. “The books over there are all for sale, both used and brand-new. Are you looking for something special?” She guessed he was a tourist passing through, which meant he had to buy a book rather than borrow one.
“Honestly, I lost my copy of Moby Dick and need to replace it as soon as possible,” the man said, smiling sheepishly.
Shelby laughed. “We have six different versions. Over here.” She led him to an area of the Sutton Book Club that dealt exclusively with whaling, which had previously been the number-one source of income on the island of Nantucket.
The history was dense and dramatic, with countless deaths and missing men.
“How do I choose which copy I want?” The man crossed his arms and shook his head, as though the task were too arduous.
“It’s tough,” she said. “But I’d go with something more classic.” She pointed at the one with only the outline of a whale, in a Gothic-looking font that spelled out the book’s name.
“Good idea.” The man picked it up, feeling the texture of the spine with his fingertips.
“What part are you at?” Shelby asked.
The man told her he was about a hundred pages in, and that he was amazed by the artistry of the prose and fascinated by the everyday mechanics of being on a boat. “I feel romantic about that time period,” he explained. “I wish I could be out there on the water.”
“Are you a sailor?” She asked, because so many on the island were.
“I’m not very good,” he admitted. “I learned later in life. I wish I’d learned as a kid.”
Shelby felt a bubbling in her stomach and chest, one unlike anything she’d felt before.
Together, she and this stranger stood in the center of the bookshop, discussing Moby Dick and Melville’s prose and what else they’d read that summer.
She found him intellectually interesting and incredibly good-looking and—and maybe?
—into her. He certainly never broke eye contact, not once.
It frightened her. But she found she couldn’t look away.
After more than an hour, the man introduced himself. “I can’t believe you don’t know my name, since you already know so much about me,” he said, laughing. “But I’m Jared. Jared Kissinger.”
Shelby laughed. “I’m Shelby Vance.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Shelby Vance,” Jared said. “Do you mind if I get your phone number?”