Chapter Sixteen Lily
My sandals dig into the soft, cool sand. It’s just after nine, and the only light is from the stars and the moon, like an eggshell above the water in the distance. The waves are calm as bathwater. I’m wearing an oversized sweater and rolled-up jeans.
The beach looks navy blue in this light, transformed into a foreign planet with unknown divots and grooves.
My mom dropped me off here, which felt juvenile for a twenty-five-year-old, so I asked her to pull over a few yards away to avoid being seen.
That, of course, only made me feel even more juvenile and also like a jerk.
“Have fun, honey!” she yelled from the open car window as she drove off—my punishment. “Be good, Lily-pad!”
In the distance, I can hear the clamor of the bonfire.
I walk past the tall dunes, toward the light of the fire.
It’s bigger than any I’ve been to before.
About fifty people are milling around, chatting in small groups.
Someone brought a speaker, and a popular song from a few summers ago is blasting, drowning out the waves.
At first, I don’t see Theo, so I head over to the pit.
Even in the thick sweater, I’m cold. I place my hands near the flames to warm up.
I spot Emily, the tennis instructor from Hawaii, by the water, but she’s talking to a pretty blond girl.
I search the crowd for other familiar faces and come up empty.
I’m considering leaving, running back to catch up with my mom, when I hear someone call my name.
“Lily?” says a man’s voice. It’s deeper and smoother than Theo’s.
Henry.
Why does this keep happening to me? I know Nantucket is a small town, but these days, it feels more like a movie set: actors popping out from behind props, a jump scare.
“Oh, hi,” I say, turning around to face him. “It’s good to see you.”
He looks good in the dim light. I can’t help but notice that he’s wearing the faded red sweatshirt I bought him several summers ago when I was still working at the shop.
“What’re you doing here?” he asks, smiling through squinted eyes. It’s like he’s making an appraisal.
The intimacy and intensity of his gaze makes me want to duck behind a sand dune.
I can’t look at him and not see the past, everything we used to be to one another.
That’s the weird part about losing someone: the useless memories that no longer serve you.
It’s like knowing a dead language and having no one to speak it with.
I can still recall the way Henry always spoke with his hands, moving them in circles in the air as if solving a complicated puzzle no one else could see.
I know his favorite pair of socks with the soccer balls on them, and the smell of his sweatshirt, stiff from the cold air.
I remember the time I saw him hold out his umbrella to cover someone else’s dog on the sidewalk when we were paused at a New York City crosswalk in the rain, and how it was the sweetest gesture I had ever seen.
Whenever I hear love discussed in media, it’s often described by the concept of tension and lust, dreamy men with “liquid eyes” who smell like pine needles or something else ridiculous.
It was never like that for me. When I think about what I miss most about Henry, it’s the familiarity, the friendship.
It’s the intimacy of truly knowing each other, especially the unromantic bits.
I’m so caught up in the past, I forget his question.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “What did you say?”
Henry laughs. “I asked what brought you here.”
“Oh, Theo invited me.”
“Who’s Theo?” he asks.
From behind him, I hear, “That would be me.”
Theo walks to stand between us, extending a hand to Henry, which he ignores. Theo drapes an arm carelessly over my shoulders, as if he’s done it a hundred times. I try to stop the irrational heat from rising to my cheeks.
“And how did you two meet?” asks Henry, arms folded. He’s built more solid than Theo, who despite the constant tennis playing is still skinny, but Theo is taller.
“We work together,” I quickly answer. “At the club.”
“You work at the yacht club?” His tone is edgier than I’m used to. “What happened to your real job?”
He sounds on the verge of scoffing, and suddenly, I’m embarrassed—not for myself, but on behalf of him. Before I can answer and explain how I was fired, Theo is speaking.
“Oh, she only joined to help us out a bit while she works on becoming the next great American artist.” He squeezes my shoulders as if in premature congratulations.
His words are slightly slurred—I wonder how many beers he’s already drank. There’s a container of Gripah from Cisco sloshing in the hand over my shoulder. “I’m getting my autograph framed ahead of time. It’ll be worth more than gold someday.”
Theo winks at Henry.
“I know all about Lily’s art,” says Henry, his stance widening. “And when exactly did you two meet?”
Theo and I answer simultaneously.
“About two weeks ago,” I say at the same time Theo says, “It feels like forever!”
Henry laughs again. It’s a cold, harsh sound. “Right. Well, Lily and I go way back. We’ve known each other since we were eighteen.”
I look at Theo. “We used to date,” I explain, an apology in my voice.
“I see,” says Theo. I feel the weight of his arm lift from my shoulders. “Well, there are a few people I want to introduce Lily to, but it was nice meeting you, dude.”
Theo takes me by the hand and leads me away from Henry.
I turn to see he’s still watching us, the fire reflected in his eyes.
My sandals catch on the sand, and I almost trip into a log a few people are sitting on.
One of the boys looks up to give me a disgruntled look.
He’s wearing a baseball cap despite the fact that there’s no sun to shield.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say but my voice isn’t loud enough to carry over the music and the roar of the ocean and the crackle of the fast-burning wood.
An hour and two beers later, my insides have loosened.
Theo introduces me to a few other employees of the club, and we all talk in a group off to the side downwind from the bonfire.
Emily approaches and asks Theo to go on a walk, and as I watch them stroll away I feel a fissure in my chest like the aftershock of a larger earthquake.
In the conversation with Henry, Theo seemed almost like a possessive boyfriend.
While I didn’t exactly love the obnoxious display of toxic masculinity, it at least seemed clear what his intention was, but now, he’s off with Emily.
I can’t see them in the dim light, but I know they must be only a few yards away.
I check to see if Henry’s fiancée is around.
I don’t see her, but Becca is across the way.
Normally, I’d go over to talk with her, but she’s sitting with a few tiny girls with tight, slicked-back buns and gold, dangly earrings.
I know who they are without needing an introduction: Henry’s home friends.
The only true upside of our breakup is that I never have to force conversation with any of them again.
I wave Becca over, but she points to the girls next to her as an excuse not to get up.
I hope this doesn’t mean she’s mad at me, too.
For not the first time this summer, I wish Jade was here.
If Jade was around, we’d laugh together about the awkwardness of the situation.
She might have called Henry a jerk or made fun of the way Theo postured, but she would be there for me. I know that.
One of the biggest shocks of my adult life has been how easy it is to lose people, to let them slide away. Keeping someone around takes dedication: It’s the exception, not the rule.
“Hi, Lily-pad,” says Henry, appearing behind me. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”
The fire softens his expression, rounds out the angles of his face. He looks like the Henry I know, the one I still love. But he’s not. He is someone else’s Henry now, and I need to remember that.
“Talk about what?”
He steps closer. “I don’t know, anything. Let’s catch up.” Henry reaches for the sleeve of my sweater. “It’s been too long.”
“You’re engaged,” I remind him.
“So, that means we can’t be friends anymore?”
“We were never friends, Henry.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Come on, Lily. You’re being ridiculous! Let’s just go talk over there.” He points to the dunes behind us, half cast in light. “Somewhere private.”
“Why does it need to be private?”
I look over at his high school friends, who I can tell are straining to eavesdrop.
There was always a distance between me and them.
Once, I overheard the ringleader, Julie Evans, say that Henry was “settling” for me.
We were at a house party that first summer and I was rounding the corner of the kitchen.
“She’s a local,” she said with a scrunched nose.
“I think her mom is a social worker or something.”
It took every ounce of resolve I had not to pour a beer over her head.
“It doesn’t need to be private,” says Henry. “I just don’t want a whole audience.”
After my father left my mom when I was a year old, he ended up marrying the woman he cheated on her with.
They moved to Los Angeles together, and his family bought his way into the film industry as a small-time producer.
His wife’s name is Maren but I can only ever think of her as “the Mistress.” The Mistress sometimes came along on my father’s trips to visit us.
As a kid, I didn’t really know any better, so we got along fine.
But once I learned who she was and what she had done to Rose, I was determined to give her the cold shoulder.
Still, I checked her social media sometimes.
She posted dramatic, inspirational quotes about fate and destiny with hot-pink lettering.
My father has been trying (and failing) to get sober since before I was alive.
The Mistress liked to chronicle these various attempts at sobriety on her public page, taking selfies in front of the overpriced rehab centers.
I used to wish the Mistress harm. I didn’t want to be the one who hurt her, and I didn’t want anything truly terrible to happen, but I would stay up in bed at night and imagine small jinxes: fender benders, hair burning off in a freak accident at the salon, a beer bottle chipping her front tooth.
Until one day, I checked her Facebook page and saw she had gotten into a car accident.
She was fine, but I was spooked. I stopped with the hexes after that but kept my grudges.
Psychic or not, soulmates or not, I will not play the role of the other woman. I might be a mess, but I’m not a cheater. I will not, I can’t—
“Please, Lily,” says Henry.
His eyes look red-tinged in the light of the fire, as if he’s been crying. I always liked Henry the most when he wasn’t feeling well; if he hurt himself or was under the weather, it made him more sympathetic somehow.
“Let’s just talk,” he pleads.
He points to a dark spot by the edge of the dunes, pockets of tall seagrass sprouting from the sand, creating a covering of sorts.
Behind us, I can sense Theo watching intently, can feel his eyes on the back of my neck, burning like shame.
Every structure is subject to instability.
That’s what Lottie liked to say. She used to lean on certain phrases to contain truths as if they were the only pillars upholding her moral interiority, keeping her thin understanding of the world from collapsing into itself.
Every structure is subject to instability, and sometimes all it takes is one bad decision to make the whole world fall.
“Fine,” I say. “Let’s talk.”