Chapter Four Lily
Eight minutes later, we’re standing in the public bathrooms on Old South Wharf, typically reserved for boaters. There are clean white public showers and three toilets. Like everything else on Nantucket, even the public bathrooms are aesthetically pleasing.
“Can you throw me your bra?” I shout over the stall divider.
“You didn’t wear a bra?”
“I thought I was just going to the store for ice cream and dropping you off!”
“Still,” my mom chides. “You never know if you’ll get pulled over or something.
Every time I leave the house, I think to myself, ‘Is this the outfit I want to get into a car crash wearing?’ If I’d be embarrassed to be seen in the emergency room in it, then I shouldn’t be wearing it out of the house. ”
“That’s a little morbid,” I say. “Also, I sincerely hope your first thought in a car crash wouldn’t be vanity.”
Rose laughs and the bathroom stall creaks open. I finish pulling the sweater over my head and open my own door. She’s standing by the sink, arms crossed, wearing my same outfit from earlier, but on her it looks fun, whimsical even. It’s wacky, sure, but Rose can pull off anything.
In the warped mirror on the wall, I catch sight of my own appearance. What made my mom look like an advertisement for coastal living doesn’t have the same effect on me.
When I was a little girl, I used to go to sleep at night and wish I could wake up looking like Rose.
These days, I’m not terribly preoccupied with my looks.
I know that I’m attractive enough that sometimes baristas flirt with me, and yet not so good-looking that they would ever give me the coffee for free.
Rose’s beauty is different—it’s a magnet.
“How are you feeling, Lily-pad?” asks Mom now.
My face is hot the way it always is when I’m about to cry. My ears feel stuffed and there’s a faint buzzing sound from the pressure. It’s the look in her kind brown eyes. Around my mom, it’s impossible to pretend that anything is okay.
“I’m okay,” I say, but the sentiment is lost to tears.
“Oh, honey. It’s going to be okay.” Mom wraps her arms around me. “Let’s go home. Josie will understand.”
Growing up without any siblings or cousins, I relied on Mom to play the familial roles of an entire clan: protector, nurturer, friend, sister.
Rose knows me better than anyone, and I know that when she says we can go home right now, she means it—she would drop everything at a moment’s notice, turn around, go back to the cottage, and let me wallow.
But I refuse to ruin her night.
“I appreciate it, Mom, I really do. But I’ll be okay.” I grab some tissue paper and dab at my face. My reflection in the mirror is splotchy.
“Are you sure you’re okay, though? You’re not having one of your panic attacks again, are you?”
I watch my expression in the mirror wince.
The attacks began with my job three years ago.
At first, I thought it was vertigo. The world would tilt; the ground slithered.
It was different from dizziness. Dizziness is the unbalanced, woozy feeling you experience when dehydrated or lightheaded.
Vertigo is something else entirely: a dislocation of self, a physical movement.
One shakes you while the other disembodies you.
When I finally went to the doctor, thinking I had some rare neurological disorder or a brain tumor, I was told it was “only a panic attack.” I remember how my ears burned with shame. “Only a panic attack,” the doctor said, as if it were a small allergy.
Rose scans my face now, wearing the clinical guard I’ve seen on her face whenever a client calls with an emergency: a careful, evaluative scrutiny.
“I promise, I’m fine.” I don’t want to be another worry for her. Besides, the tears have subsided. I take a rattling breath.
“Fine, you’re the boss.” Rose claps once, moving her arms as if to physically shake off the seriousness. “Now, let’s go have some fun.”
We stand in line for the drinks at the Gazebo, the open-air bar on the opposite wharf.
It’s a circular pavilion with wrapped around wooden benches.
It is also the only spot on the island with a strict twenty-five-and-up policy, an effort to curb underage drinking.
One-dollar bills are stapled to the peaked ceilings. A pirate’s flag hangs above.
I’ve always liked how there are really only a few bars you can go to at night, so if you’re hoping to run into a certain someone, it’s all but guaranteed, creating the kind of narrative tidiness of a Shakespearean play in which all major events occur on one set.
I shift from foot to foot, trying to get the bartender’s attention. The bar is right by the docks in the middle of town, and tonight it is swarmed with sailors. Someone bumps into me, almost knocking a cranberry drink onto my mom’s white jeans. Correction: It is swarmed with very drunk sailors.
My fingers move instinctually to my phone to text my best friend, Jade, about seeing Henry, but I pause.
Ever since I bailed on the lease for our apartment in NYC and left her stuck with a subletter, we haven’t been speaking.
Even before that, we were getting into petty arguments about cleaning and whose turn it was to call the landlord about the latest problem.
The truth is, ever since Jade got a boyfriend, she’s been spending all of her time with him.
Somehow, during the pandemic, all of my friends found partners and hunkered down.
It feels like everyone else is moving on, growing up, and I’ve been stuck alone, wishing I still had Henry.
No one warned me that my twenties would be this lonely.
If I reached out now, maybe Jade would answer, but I don’t want to disturb her. Currently, my life feels like a ticking time bomb, and it’s all I can do to shield everyone else from the inevitable mess of its explosion.
Finally, I get the attention of the bartender.
He looks barely seventeen, skinny, and tan even though the summer has just begun.
He has bright blue eyes and sand-colored hair.
Is he old enough to serve liquor or is my perception of age worsening?
Everyone looks like babies to me these days: beautiful, stupid babies.
Just like Henry and I were when we first met.
“Can I have three mudslides, please?”
The bartender nods and takes my card. I try not to think about the bill. I have savings, but my former assistant job at a magazine didn’t exactly pay well to begin with. Now, without the income, I only have so much runway.
“Nice order.” A man appears behind me. “I like your style.”
He’s not so much unattractive as unsettling. The stranger has blond hair, a crooked smile, and a smooth, shiny forehead that suggests his nightly skin-care routine is longer than mine. He’s wearing a striped blue-and-white sweater over his shoulders.
I press my lips into what I hope is a dismissive smile and turn away.
“How long are you on island for?” he says to my back.
With an exhale of impatience, I spin back around. “I’m here all summer. My mom lives on island year-round.”
What I don’t say is that I have nowhere to return to.
My apartment in New York has already been packed up, all of my belongings either sold to the subletter or put into storage.
Many of my friends are still in the city, but they’re preoccupied with their own lives—careers and partners and futures to tend to, a problem I don’t share.
“Oh, nice, I’m just here for the race. My buddy is the captain of the boat Liquid Assets. But I’m coming back in August for a wedding. My sister is getting cuffed.”
He holds his wrists together like they’re in invisible shackles. When locals say they hate summer people, this man is exactly who they mean.
“Very cool,” I say, turning back to the bar again. To my left, I can hear the blender churning: a mix of vodka, coffee liqueur, Bailey’s, and chocolate drizzle waiting for me.
“So, should I get your number or what?” The man appears to my left, leaning against the bar so we’re now at eye level. His breath smells sour.
“Um, actually…” I search for an excuse. “I have a boyfriend.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Shock makes me stupid. “Oh, uh, thanks?”
An older man walks into the Gazebo and approaches him.
He looks like an age progression of the younger guy: sleek, gray hair, Nantucket-red pants, an almost identical sweater tied around his own neck.
I’m convinced that the worn-down “Nantucket reds” are just an excuse for insecure heterosexual men to wear pink without saying it’s pink.
The two embrace in that weird, masculine ritual I’ve never understood: half hug, half push.
“Wait.” I tap the younger man’s shoulder before the two can walk away together. They are already in the midst of a conversation, gossiping about someone named Chuck cheating on his girlfriend last night at the bar Straight Wharf. “Why would you say that about me?”
“Uh, what?” The man exchanges a look with the newcomer—are they father and son? Boss and employee? Captain and first mate? He’s smirking as if to say, This chick is nuts. It’s an expression I’m familiar with these days. “What are you talking about? I don’t even know you.”
“Why would you say that you don’t believe I have a boyfriend?” It’s as if loser is written across my forehead, as if he can smell the reek of fresh heartbreak.
“I don’t know, dude. You just give off a single vibe.”
“Well, I’m not,” I say, raising my chin stiffly. “In fact, I’m engaged. We’ve been dating since we were eighteen.” Why am I still talking?
“Okay?” The man laughs. “Whatever you say.”
The bartender appears with the mudslides, saving me from further humiliation. My ears ring as the men continue to laugh.
“I’ll come back with your check in a second,” the bartender says, but I can still hear the cackling. I can’t wait. I have to get out of here. I balance the drinks—one in each hand, another resting against my chest—and hurry back to the wobbly round table Josie and Rose are sitting at.