Holly
“About ten times already today,” she replied snippily. “No luck.”
“Then I must be a four-leaf clover.” Linus dropped the magazine on the desk with a hearty whack. “Congratulations!”
Linus winced, putting a hand over his ear. “I can see that. Even if I can no longer hear. Well, don’t just gawk at the cover. Open it.”
“Am I going to see it?” Linus asked impatiently.
“Hang on. I want to see which photo they used of me.”
“Why?” Linus threw up his hands. “It’s not like you can change it if you don’t like it.”
Ignoring him, Holly hurried to the sitting area and paged to their feature.
There was a full-page photo of the inn, taken from the front with the hydrangea bushes in full bloom on either side of the cranberry-red front door.
On the adjacent page, beneath the headline, was another photo of Holly sitting on the patio in one of their Adirondack chairs by the fountain.
Through the treetops the bay glimmered. At least she wasn’t the focal point, she decided.
The rest of the photos were interiors of the Harvest dining room and the Captain’s Suite guest room.
They’d photographed beautifully. Holly exhaled with relief.
“Can I look now?” Linus called impatiently from the desk.
“Almost.” Quickly Holly read through the article, which was beautifully written and managed to capture all the highlights of the inn’s new offerings. Then she flipped the page.
“No!” Holly knew the face staring back at her. She scanned the headline, then returned her attention to the photo. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Across the lobby Linus leaned over the desk. “What? Is it your hair? I told you that day, I’m not a miracle worker.”
Holly strode over, holding the magazine open. “It’s not my hair.” She shoved the article under his nose.
Linus looked between the article and Holly. “The Oyster Boys? This article isn’t about us.”
“No,” she said, jabbing her finger at the photo. “It’s about Ben.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Your Ben?”
She dropped the magazine on the desk. “Not anymore.”
The last time Holly saw Ben they’d been sitting on the beach, in almost the exact spot she sat now. That was the thing about Ben: her memories of him were all over this place. It was impossible to come back to Chatham without being reminded of him.
They were twenty-six years old. Ben had graduated law school the year before and was living and working in Providence, Rhode Island.
She was living outside of Boston and working in corporate hospitality.
It was summer, the time of year they always reunited, no matter where they were in their lives or what was going on.
Summer was forever their season. Their bond began as children, when they were summer friends.
As teens, Ben became Holly’s first love.
It was an innocent love that ebbed and flowed like the tide, separated as they were each school year but reunited once more come June.
Then they both went off to college. But always, each summer, they came together again, one way or another.
Holly knew it sounded na?ve. Her friends had always teased her about it, after all.
Still, despite the years and the geographic distance, she’d always believed that the tender connection that had survived all those early years was building to something more.
Like a good lead sentence at the start of the chapter hints at some event yet to come, Holly believed her chapter with Ben had no end.
Though both had other relationships over the years, from high school prom dates to college courtships, Ben had always been the end of her love story. It was just a matter of time.
That’s why, when college and law school were over, and when they’d both whet their appetites in the professional world just two cities apart from one another, Holly had an inkling that the summer she last saw Ben would be different.
After all, there was a deeper reason beyond summer that they’d stayed in touch all those years.
Whether it was a tattered postcard from Australia when she left to study abroad, or a call from an airport to say he’d flown into town and could he crash at her place, their connection had never been severed.
Their communications had been sporadic, but that was to be expected.
Ben had just landed a dream job as a first-year associate in a big Providence firm.
Holly was traveling, always on the go, running corporate retreats for clients in far-off destinations like the rainforests of Costa Rica or golf courses in Scotland.
She was toying with the idea of graduate school for her MBA.
In his last call, Ben had mentioned that he liked his new firm and was looking to plant some roots.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the future,” he confided, when he called to coordinate his Cape visit with hers.
“Oh?” Holly said. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest, thinking back to their first kiss.
To the summers spent under the stars when they talked about moving back to Cape Cod one day.
Where they’d want to live. How many kids they’d want to have.
That sweet, dreamy teen-talk had with first loves, making wishes on stars that were so far away you felt safe saying them out loud.
“Are you thinking about buying a house?”
“No, not yet anyway. I think I want to wait until there’s a significant other to weigh in on that.”
“That’s rather old-fashioned of you,” Holly teased. Ben had always been like that, and she loved it about him.
“Well, I’m not quite there yet. But I think I’m getting close.” He’d paused, and she held her breath. “When are you going to be in Chatham?”
Holly gave him her dates, and he said he’d see her then. “It’s been a big year, Holls,” he said. “I can’t wait to tell you about it.”
When she’d hung up, Holly thought about all the years leading to this one. Maybe this time their summer would not end with goodbye.
Sitting on the dock now, Holly thought back on all of this.
About how restless she’d felt waiting for Ben to arrive that summer, when she got to her grandparents’ inn.
How she’d look across the bay at night toward his house, knowing that in a few short days he’d be back.
That his bedroom light would flick on and off, once more at bedtime.
When he finally arrived, there was a strange shyness to their reunion.
They met on the dock, like they always did.
Holly still remembered how they bumped noses when they went to hug each other hello.
When they sat down, a box of pizza and a bottle of wine between them, as was customary, Ben didn’t eat.
Their small talk felt hurried, as if there was some urgent news to get to.
Holly thought she knew what it was. She drank a little too much wine to steady her nerves.
“There’s something I want to tell you,” Ben said. He leaned over the pizza box, his face close to hers. Holly leaned in, too. Already his blue eyes were sparkling with anticipation. They did this when he was excited.
“So say it.” She was smiling, unable to hide her joy in seeing him again. Eager for him to get the words out into the salt air between them.
Ben’s gaze flicked out to the water, then back to hers. He swallowed hard. “I’ve met someone.”
Holly had little memory of what Ben said after that.
He mentioned something about a woman named Laura, a fellow associate at the firm.
About Laura’s parents’ place in Connecticut, where she’d brought him home to meet them.
The rest was fuzzy. What Holly remembered most was the suffocating thickness in her throat as the rush of hurt rose up, and the tightness as she pushed it down over and over until there was no more room for breath in her lungs.
“I can’t wait for you to meet her,” Ben said, reaching across the pizza box for the first time that night. Taking her hands in his.
“What?” Holly managed. Her voice was a mere croak.
“Laura! She’ll be here tomorrow.”
How she’d managed to listen without shedding a single tear she did not remember.
The mind is a funny thing; even as it’s overloading with emotion, it can tell the limbs what to do.
Breathe. Nod. Pick up the pizza box and wave goodbye.
When Ben kissed her cheek once more, Holly inhaled.
There it was, the scent of fresh soap and sunscreen, the scent of their childhoods.
She breathed it in deeply before she walked away.
When Ben called to ask her to meet Laura and him at the Squire for a drink two days later, Holly begged off, saying she didn’t feel well. She did it again when he tried the day after. It wasn’t a big surprise when he returned to Providence at the end of the week without reaching out again.
A few days later, Ben sent her a text. Laura was disappointed not to meet you. Maybe next time.
This she could handle. Sorry. It was a long week.
Is everything ok?
I’m fine, she lied.
When the wedding invitation came six months later, Holly RSVP’d her regrets to be polite and promptly buried it in the back of the recycling bin.
But she could still feel it, burning a hole in the painfully constructed layer of life after Ben she’d worked so hard to fabricate.
So she took the trash outside. Even there, it tapped at the window of her thoughts, surfaced in her dreams at night.