Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) (19 page)

Forty-three

I FELT ZACK BEFORE I SAW HIM.
I approached Altar Rock and shivered, even though the evening air was soft and warm and beckoning. I’d taken the bus and the fast ferry and then ridden one of the inn’s bikes to Altar Road. I ditched it when I realized it’d be easier to walk on the wide dirt path. I felt Zack here, but when I climbed to the top of Altar Rock and saw him waiting for me, I lost my breath with surprise.

“No,” I said. “You need to go. Because I’m not leaving until I see this comet, and we can’t both be here.”

“There’s room for two,” he said, fanning out his arms.

“Zack, come on.”

“I needed to see you.” He shifted his weight. “Jules called me. She told me that you’d be here. Because of Mom.”

“You could’ve warned me. Is Parker here? Is your
girlfriend
here?” I covered my face and shook my head. “I came all the way from Providence. Please, Zack. Don’t ruin this for me. Just go away.”

“She’s not here. And she’s not my girlfriend. Look, if I told you I was going to be here, you would’ve run away.” He stepped toward me. I stepped back. “Jules told me that you got back in?”

“Yeah,” I said, “after fighting like a warrior.” Zack smiled, and I felt a flash of embarrassment at my word choice. “But what Parker did? It’s not okay. It will never be okay. And the fact that you didn’t break up with her, that will never be okay with me, either. Ever.”

“I did break up with her. This morning. There’s a lot you don’t know about her.”

“Don’t ask me to have sympathy for her, Zack. Jesus Christ. Don’t do that.”

“She tried to kill herself this year.”

“Oh.” I covered my mouth.

“You can’t just break up with a girl like that. You have to make sure she’s stable. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like if she tried it again, right after I broke up with her? If she’d actually done it? I’d have to carry that my whole life.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I had no idea.”

“She’s got a real problem,” Zack said. “I tried to tell you without telling you. Jules did, too.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“When a United States senator asks you to keep your mouth shut”—he shook his head—“you keep your mouth shut.”

“But I still don’t understand why. Why does she care about me?”

“She saw the video I took of you,” he said, “and it was so clear.”

“What was?” I wanted more than suggestion from him. I wanted him to spell out his thoughts for me in plain, brave English. No more high fives. No more drunken almost-kisses. No more meaningful underwater touches. I crossed my arms. “What was clear?”

“That I’m still in love with you!” He sounded almost pissed off about it.

“Oh.” The words I’d dreamed about and hungered for didn’t come out the way I would have expected. I stood there, stunned, trying to absorb them.

“She shouldn’t have tried to sabotage you,” he said. “It was really messed-up. She’s really messed-up. But it’s not so simple. She was there for me last year. I was all alone. My mom died. I was at a new school. I was lost.”

The idea of Zack alone, in pain, felt like a pill stuck in my throat or a splinter on the verge of infection, too tender to touch. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “I was lost, too. I was alone.”

“I tried to tell you,” he said. “That call before Thanksgiving?”

“You interpreted that all wrong. I told you.”

“Parker actually showed up, in person.” My blood pressure dropped below sea level. “Everything changed. I had friends. I had fun. And one night it just kind of happened. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know how screwed up she was. I don’t think she did, either. The doctor said depression can come on suddenly at this age.”

“This is a lot to deal with. Do you have any idea what the past few weeks have been like for me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” he said. He wrapped his hand around mine. I closed my eyes. It was
his
hand. Zack’s hand.
That person’s
hand. “I understand if you don’t feel the same.”

“I do, though. I do feel the same.”

He took my other hand and leaned in so that our heads touched. “I’ve missed you. That night. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to kiss you so badly.” He stepped closer so that our cheeks were touching, so that he was whispering in my ear. “I wanted to do more. I wanted to do everything.”

He turned to kiss me. I kissed him back, but pulled away when I felt tears rising. “This whole thing really hurt, Zack. I think we need to just be friends for a little while.” I said this even as my whole body was sending me another message. He met my gaze and nodded. “I’m so confused. About so many things.”

“Tell me,” he said. We sat on the rock and he put his arms around me. I looked up. The sky was getting darker now, but it was also getting cloudier. “Tell me what you’re confused about.”

“I don’t want to go to Brown.” I leaned into him.

“What?”

“I’ve lived in Providence my whole life. I want to live somewhere else.” It felt so good to release the truth, to surrender to it. “I don’t want to go. And I love lacrosse. But I also feel, I don’t know, done with it.”

“When did this happen?” he asked, weaving his fingers with mine.

“It’s been happening,” I said, wiping away tears with the heel of my hand. “All summer.” I tried to pinpoint the moment when I had started to want something else; to go somewhere else; to be myself, but different.

“Because of that guy?”

“No, not really.” Was it that night singing on the beach? “I don’t know.” Was it when I first cracked open the Rodin book? Or was it that moment on the ferry, when I’d seen Nina’s list and felt her with me?

“You don’t have to go to Brown,” Zack said, pulling me close.

“People will think I’m crazy. I mean, after all this.” I pulled my knees to my chest and lowered my head. “It’s not like I have a plan. It’s not like I know what I’d even do.”

“You’ll figure it out. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“Oh.” I smiled into my arm. “Do you think we’re going to see this comet?” I looked up, wishing the clouds would part. I thought of something that Ben had said that day we met on the ferry, about how the weather on Nantucket is often the opposite of what it is on the mainland. I probably would’ve been able to see the comet if I’d stayed in Providence. “I can’t believe the one thing your mom didn’t get to do on her list has been in front of me the whole time.”

“Above you,” Zack said. We lay back on the rock in silence for a while, waiting for the sky to clear up. Every minute, we inched closer until we were curled up together. When we were officially spooning, he pulled his arm away and sat up.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to be friends.”

“Don’t try
that
hard.” We laughed as he lay back down and I rested my head on his chest, an ear to his thumping heart. “I need some time, okay?”

Maybe Ben had actually been on to something. Maybe there are times when labels like
boyfriend
and
girlfriend
and
friend
just don’t apply. Maybe what couldn’t be named was just as real as what could be. Maybe sometimes love existed in the spaces in between. Maybe, I thought staring up at the clouds, I just need to let what wants to be revealed appear.

Forty-four

I DIDN’T SEE LARSEN’S COMET
until a week later.

This was after I’d called Brown and asked to defer my acceptance for a year, after I’d broken the news to my family that I needed what Liz called a gap year. It was after Liz and I decided that we would move to New York together and get an apartment, maybe on the Upper West Side, or maybe in Brooklyn. It was after Jules and Jay had started at BU together and Zack had returned to Hanover, and the only people left on Nantucket were the late-season tourists and the people who worked there.

I called George Gust and explained why I would make the perfect assistant. I was organized, passionate, and perspicacious (SAT word). He hired me on the spot. Liz was going to find work in a hotel, maybe go to school for social work. We both agreed she was good in a crisis. She and I decided to stay on Nantucket through early September. She had to wait for Gavin to get back from Bali, and I could make as much money as possible before we moved. I was close to having ten thousand dollars in the bank, which was enough to get me on my feet in New York. Rosemary and Jim were still going to match what I made, but instead of giving it to me right away, they would put it in a bank account for a year where it couldn’t be touched and would gather interest.

I saw Larsen’s Comet when I was walking home from Breezes. I looked up and saw a smudge of light in the moonless sky. It was carelessly bright, naturally captivating, effortlessly stunning. Just like Nina. I had no idea how I’d missed it all summer.

I texted Jules and Zack:
Look up!


Jules texted back:
St. Francis in the sky!


Zack joined in:
Awesome.


I wrote:
True beauty!


A second later, as I was standing with my head tilted all the way back, Zack texted me privately. It was a picture of me the night at Something Natural, looking at the camera, looking at Zack, my eyes wide open, awake with wonder, my smile a little mysterious. Beneath it he wrote:
True beauty.


Later, back at the inn, I opened the journal Mom gave me. I finally knew what to do with it. I picked up a pen, wrote
Cricket’s Life List
, and started to dream.

Epilogue

LIZ AND I MOVED TO NEW YORK
in the middle of September. We found a little apartment in Park Slope, right near George Gust’s. It’s a fourth-floor walk-up with one tiny bedroom, but the windows are big, the water pressure is great, and as former chambermaids, we keep it extremely clean. My dad drove us down in the minivan. We bought a pair of twin beds from 1-800-Get-A-Bed and a kitchen table and chairs that we carried twelve blocks all by ourselves from someone on Craigslist. When we smelled bread baking on our way home, we had to stop for a snack. We bought warm, fresh brioche rolls with butter and jam. We couldn’t wait, so we ate them seated at our new table, right on the sidewalk.

Liz is taking a social work class at NYU and working at the front desk of the Soho Grand Hotel, where people go crazy for her accent. “They think I’m so posh and proper!” she says with giddy delight. “If only they knew I’m a humble Yorkshire lass, with knickers from Target and a ravenous appetite for love.”

I started working for George right away. I organize his office, keep track of his research, run errands, maintain his calendar, and talk things out with him when he gets stuck or wants a fresh perspective. No two days are ever alike, and I love that. I’ve talked to Hillary Clinton’s personal assistant twice on the phone, which is cool any way you look at it. George always has a cup of coffee waiting for me when I show up, and I make sure he has a salad for lunch at least twice a week.

George really only needs a part-time assistant, so I picked up a couple of waitressing shifts at a neighborhood bistro around the corner from our apartment. It’s called Vanessa Jane’s. The walls are painted red and covered with black-and-white photographs of Paris. The onion soup is perfect on a crisp fall day, the coq au vin melts on the tongue, and the crème brûlée is heaven in a ramekin. The owner, the actual Vanessa Jane, is more like a friend than a boss. I don’t make as much as I did at Breezes, but it’s a lot less stressful, and I can always cover for someone if I need a little extra cash to buy a sweater or a dress that I have to have.

Sometimes, when I see pictures of Jules hanging out in her dorm with a whole group of new friends, I wonder if I made the right decision, but then I remind myself that I still have my spot at Brown waiting for me. George told me that Columbia has an excellent journalism program, so I’m applying there as well. “There’s nothing wrong with options,” George said, and I think he’s right.

I ran into Amy/Amelia on the N train last week. I almost didn’t recognize her in her suit and loafers, but when I called her name, she came right over and sat next to me. She’d moved back to New York when she was hired at a high-profile law firm in midtown. She said Ben stayed on Nantucket, which I figured he would. “But I had to move on,” she said. “I’m a city girl.” I gave her my number and told her to call me sometime, but I have a feeling that’s not going to happen.

Zack and I are doing what we swore we never would: long distance. Only, we’re doing it the old-fashioned way, with letters. We write to each other at least once a week. It gives me the space and time to get to know him all over again after our year apart. When I see the white envelopes with my name and address scrawled in his boyish handwriting in our dented mailbox, I rush up all four flights of stairs in seconds flat. The letters inside, written on paper torn from a notebook, are long and full of funny details. He writes exactly like he talks. I write back right away with my tales of Brooklyn, George, the customers at the restaurant, and the people I see on the subway. I’m collecting his letters in a yellow and blue Cuban cigar box I found at an antique store. We’re writing a story together. Our story. When he asked me in his last letter to spend Thanksgiving with him on Nantucket, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake I did last year. I sent a postcard right away from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that said simply, “Yes.”

I can’t stop smiling as the ferry slows, approaching the now familiar shore. It’s a different season now, and the sun washes the island in amber light. Instead of lush green, the treetops are red, yellow, orange, and brown. The late November breeze is cold off the choppy water, but I’m too excited to feel a chill. I throw my duffel bag over my shoulder and search the dock for Zack. I see him and hold my breath. He’s wearing his black peacoat and a red scarf. I can’t wait to show him my new haircut. I can’t wait to be with him in winter, to snuggle next to him under a blanket on the porch and trade stories and kisses. I can’t wait to hold him. He sees me and his face fills with light. As I walk down the ramp, my heart heats to life. It’s a spark, a flame. A fire.