Chapter 67
JOEL
The banging hammered into Joel’s dream—their nanny urging him to get ready for school, her fist insistent at his door—and then, finally, it woke him with a start.
It was still nighttime, but he could tell dawn was approaching, and he was not in Swampscott; he was still on the island, with someone pounding at his door like they wanted to splinter the wood.
“I’m coming,” he said, but the banging didn’t cease.
He stumbled toward the dresser, fishing for a pair of underwear and his glasses.
After walking home from the reception, he’d stood under the showerhead for a few minutes, opening his mouth to swallow some of the water he hadn’t waited to warm, and then collapsed naked onto his bed.
When William had seen him on the lawn, he’d nodded in recognition, and Joel could tell from his face that Shay was safe.
In his room, sleep had come like a curtain drop.
“Who is it?” he asked, pressing his forehead against the doorframe. The pounding stopped.
“Is she in there?”
Still drugged by sleep, it took him a moment to recognize Andrew’s voice.
He unlocked the door and found the groom in the hallway, still in his tuxedo shirt, still sallow-faced, though now there was an anger that pinkened his cheeks.
Behind him, there was another open door, an old man in periwinkle pajamas peering out to see what was happening.
“What?” Joel asked.
Andrew shoved the door open, barging into his room.
Joel shut it behind him, not wanting the old man to bear witness to the scene.
Andrew flicked on the lamp and tore the duvet off the mattress, then furiously pulled the shower curtain back.
He threw aside the heavy damask curtains and knelt to peer below the bed.
“She’s not here,” Joel said.
Andrew rose from the floor, pressing his palms against the unmade mattress, and then pulled them back as if he’d been scalded, perhaps imagining what could have happened on the bed. At his full height, he met Joel’s eyes. “Was she here?”
“No.” Joel became conscious of his nakedness and folded his arms over his bare chest. He was unsure how long he’d slept, but the unsteadiness of all the liquor he’d drunk had lifted, and he felt grounded to his feet.
“She hasn’t been with you?”
“She’s with William.”
“William? Why?”
Joel remembered how Shay and William had appeared walking back from the cliff. Outside of the look he and William had shared, their faces had been inscrutable, altered. It was as if Shay were on the telephone in the hallway again, Joel unable to hear the words they shared. “I don’t know.”
A tension in Andrew’s shoulders had snapped, and he sagged forward, running both hands through his fine, light hair. To Joel’s surprise, he started to laugh. “I can’t believe,” he began. “I can’t believe I lost my bride on my wedding night.”
The words my bride were a hard pinch in Joel’s chest, and he remembered how it had felt, knocking on Shay’s door the first day of their senior year, how desperate he had been to see her, his head floating up the stairwell and his blood singing, and then he’d found Andrew perched obediently at her desk.
In the hotel room, he bit his cheek.
“I’m sorry I woke you up. I just—I thought—” Andrew began.
“It’s all right,” Joel said.
Andrew began to make his way to the door, but he stopped before he reached the handle.
There was a jam stain on his cuff, and Joel realized that Andrew had eaten a slice of his wedding cake.
He could see it, Andrew’s mother handing him a small china dessert plate, tucking him into his seat at the dining room table before he’d realized Shay was not sleeping upstairs. Before he’d even thought to look.
“Have you—ever?” Andrew asked, and from how he held himself, as if he was preparing to absorb a blow, Joel could tell exactly what he wanted to know.
“Yes.”
Andrew nodded, looking down to the floor, though Joel could tell he was not taking in the room any longer.
Joel felt that same hum from the prior evening, the desire to wrestle Andrew to the ground, but it quickly quieted.
Since that day in early autumn of their senior year, Joel couldn’t stand the sight of Andrew.
Whenever he saw him cutting across the lawn in his polished loafers, he’d imagined Andrew kissing that same spot on Shay’s throat, brushing a strand of hair from her bare shoulder.
In New York, this hate had lessened in intensity but become more opaque, because Joel no longer knew him.
It was simple to hate someone you never saw.
To vilify a stranger. But here was Andrew in front of him, with his strawberry stain and rumpled clothes, and he could not hate him any longer.
“But that’s in the past now,” Joel said.
Andrew lifted his gaze to Joel, and though Joel could tell he was not sure whether to believe this, Andrew clearly decided he would.
He said something in response, some small word of assent, and, looking down at his waistband, he tucked in the loose flap of his shirt.
The hotel was hushed still, but outside the window there was the coo of a mourning dove, signaling that the night was almost over.
Andrew shut the door behind him.