Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nantucket Island - October 2001
I t was the last bonfire of the season and Stella’s twenty-second birthday. Bundled up in a coat, gloves, hat, and scarf, Stella huddled beside her friend Trish and listened to the Nantucket winds howl across the beach. The bonfire itself was pathetic. It needed fresh timber and would probably go out in an hour or less. But it was late; most people had already gone home. There was no reason for Stella to still be at the party, save for the fact that she didn’t want to go home and think in her room alone all night.
“It’s so weird you don’t want to tell anyone it’s your birthday,” Trish muttered as she sipped a mug of hot apple cider. “Maybe that would make the party livelier, at least.”
“I just don’t want the attention,” Stella said.
A few other people milled closer to the fire for warmth. Stella recognized them from high school: Hannah Arnold, Max Grisham, and Tony Plath.
“Stella! You’re back!” Hannah hurried around to hug her. “Everyone said you ran away to Greece and weren’t going to ever come back to the States.”
Stella tried to laugh, but it got stuck in her throat.
“You have to tell us about your adventures,” Hannah said. “Seriously. I was stuck waitressing all summer. Where did you go?”
Stella felt the list of islands on the tip of her tongue. But how could she tell them about the most magical time of her life without breaking her heart all over again?
So she just shrugged and said, “I went around Greece.”
“But which places specifically? I have to know. Once I make enough money, I’m going to Europe,” Hannah said.
“She won’t talk about it,” Trish said. Her voice was harsh with annoyance. “I’ve been trying to get it out of her all week.”
“Boo! Was it really that boring?” Hannah asked.
“It changed my life, I guess,” Stella said. Then she had to fight not to burst into tears.
“Ugh. I hate vagueness,” Hannah said, turning toward the fire and crossing her arms.
“What’s up now?” Max asked from across the bonfire. “Like, what are you going to do?”
Stella’s thoughts raced. Now? Now that she was back in Nantucket? Now that she had to face reality?
“I guess I have to make some money,” Stella said. “My parents seem to think I need to use my degree.”
Tony chuckled. “We’re all in the same boat. I had eight interviews in the past month alone. Half of them called to say they aren’t offering the position anymore. There’s a recession coming.”
Stella looked into the fire. She didn’t have anything to say about the recession, either.
“I better hit the road,” she said after a pause. “Good to see you all.”
As she left, Trish gave her a look that meant I’m tired of your moodiness.
Stella was tired of it, too.
But later that week, Stella got a call from the Nantucket tourism board. They’d read her resumé and wanted to chat to her about a potential freelance opportunity. Stella dressed in her mother’s nicest business clothes and went to the tourism office to tell them about her copywriting experience. There wasn’t much to report. But she felt James’s spirit flow through her as she fudged the details of her experience and told them how she could brighten up their website copy. They took a liking to her, and they knew her parents. She had it in the bag.
In a shocking twist, they told her she could write the copy from wherever she wanted to and email her work to the office. It meant she didn’t have to be anywhere at any specific time.
When she told her mother this, she said, “I don’t understand. They aren’t going to give you a computer? They aren’t going to give you a desk?”
But the freedom to freelance from anywhere fit well with Stella’s idea of life. Maybe she would travel again. Perhaps she would really go to London and track James down. Maybe she would defeat her own broken heart with a brand-new story.
Sometimes she imagined herself going to London and getting a crazy-good copywriting job. She’d find an apartment and meet a ton of really cool friends. She’d go out dancing and go to gigs. Maybe she’d meet a really handsome guy—a musician or an artist. And perhaps one night, they’d be out on the town, and James would spot her from across the club, and they’d lock eyes, and he’d think, Wow, I really messed up.
But mostly, Stella just worried she’d die of loneliness. Of missing him.
In late October, Stella went to a coffee shop in the Historic District of Nantucket to read Proust and write in her journal. She still hadn’t returned to writing fiction yet. But she imagined that wherever he was, James had already written one hundred new songs since she’d last seen him. He was alive with creativity.
That afternoon, as October sunlight spilled into the coffee shop, the bell jangled from the doorway, and Stella turned to find a familiar face.
It was her high school boyfriend.
It was Matt Fallon.
Stella closed her book with surprise and got up. He strode toward her with a familiar smile. She hadn’t seen him since he’d left Nantucket at eighteen to attend college in Chicago. Back then, they hadn’t even discussed doing long-distance. They’d wanted to open their hearts to change. She couldn’t even remember crying about it. It had felt necessary.
“Well, well, well,” Matt said now, grinning. “If it isn’t Stella Sutton.”
“I’m sorry. Have we met?” Stella asked.
Matt burst into laughter. “I must have confused you with someone else.”
Stella invited him to sit down. He ordered a coffee and joined her, spreading his large, capable hands across the table and demanding she tell him what she’d been up to lately.
“I was in Greece for a while,” she said.
“That sounds fun,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to go, um, anywhere.”
“How was Chicago?”
“Cold. Windy. Lots of hot dogs,” he said with a laugh. “Midwesterners are the nicest people in the world. But it’s good to be back in Nantucket. I just got a computer job at a little company down the road. I’m making adult money, which feels crazy. But I don’t mind growing up. It feels freeing not to fear the future.”
Stella told him about her copywriting freelance job, and he said, “That’s awesome. You were always a really strong writer.”
Stella grinned. She liked being complimented by him.
She thought, Did James ever compliment me? Did he ever read my writing?
She wasn’t sure.
“Are you staying with your parents?” Stella asked.
“I have an apartment downtown,” Matt said. “I had my freedom for too long out in Chicago. I couldn’t go back to having my parents always know what I was doing.”
This was attractive to Stella—the idea that he wanted to be close to his family, but he wanted to build his own life, too.
Plus, he seemed so open and honest.
So safe.
When he asked her to get a drink with him that weekend, she said yes.
Their first date of their “adult relationship,” as they ultimately called it, was on Halloween. Matt wore vampire fangs out to the bar, and they shared two candy bars and watched trick-or- treaters run around outside. It was cold—twenty-two degrees—and all the kids wore their costumes under big coats.
The bar windows fogged up because it was so much warmer inside than out.
Stella could feel curious eyes upon them. They’d gone to high school with a few people in the bar, and she sensed that they were talking about her, saying how “obvious” it was that Stella and Matt had gotten back together.
But during the date, they talked about how young they’d been when they were first together.
“I feel like we were just kids back then,” Matt said.
“We were, what? Fourteen?”
“Fourteen to eighteen,” Matt said. “Formative years.”
Stella laughed and sipped her beer. “I think I learned more about myself during college and the summer after.” In Greece.
“I know what you mean,” Matt said. “Here in Nantucket, we were our parents’ children; we fit the mold of a Nantucket childhood. But out there, we had to make our own choices. We had to become what we really wanted to become.”
“And now?” Stella asked.
Matt shrugged. “Now we can be a weird mix of everything.”
Stella laughed. “Life is confusing, isn’t it?”
“It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever known,” Matt agreed. He took her hand over the table and gazed into her eyes.
Stella fell in love with Matt far quicker than she’d thought possible.
Her love for James remained in a separate room of her heart, heavy with sorrow and regret and questions. But her love for Matt took over the active part of her heart. It was a different kind of love. It was an everyday love. It was a lived-in love. It was a love unafraid of opening up, talking, and sharing hardships.
Of course, she never told Matt about James.
But something told her Matt already knew something had happened in Greece. He respected her privacy enough to let her keep it to herself.
Knowing that Matt was a man who respected her that much only added to the texture of their relationship.
Women were jealous of Stella. Trish said, “You were always going to get exactly what you wanted.” They didn’t stay friends much longer after that.
But Stella wasn’t sure if that was true. Hadn’t she wanted James with her entire body and soul? Hadn’t she lost him?
When Matt asked Stella to marry him, there was a big celebration at her parents’ house. Her mother and father hugged her and said, “We always knew you’d settle down with someone great.”
And at that moment, James’s face flickered into her mind’s eye. She wondered what her parents might have thought of James if only she’d been able to bring him home. She wondered what kind of life they would have been able to build.
But she knew James just wasn’t the “settling down” type. Not now, anyway. He was the “sailing around the world” type. He was the “staying out all night” type. He was the adventurous type who always forgot to bring the milk home and got caught up in a daydream rather than paying attention to what you were saying.
Matt’s love was sure and strong and steady.
Matt’s love was what she needed.
She wanted to start a family.
She wanted to build a home.