2. The Invitation
The next morning, Hollis sends each of her four “stars” the same text (separately): Would you be up for a girls’ weekend at my Nantucket house, July 28 to July 31? All you have to do is show up. I’ll take care of everything else.
Brooke Kirtley is the first to respond (no surprise there): Girls’ weekend? Oh, Hollis, good for you. Are you sure you’re ready? If you’re ready, DEFINITELY count me in!!!
Hollis’s heart aches a little; Brooke loves nothing more than to be included.
Dru-Ann is next: How flexible are your dates? My life is… a blender.
Also no surprise. Hollis’s college roommate Dru-Ann Jones is the country’s premier agent for female athletes, and she’s the cohost of an ESPN show called Throw Like a Girl that airs on Tuesday afternoons, and she writes for New York magazine about race and gender politics in sports.
When Matthew died, Dru-Ann was in Fremantle, Australia, signing an Olympic-bound swimmer. She’d asked Hollis what she could do to help and offered to drop everything and fly halfway around the world to Boston, but Hollis told her to wait. “I’ll need you later,” she said. “After all these people have gone.”
“I trust you’re telling the truth and not just being a martyr,” Dru-Ann said.
“When you need me, I will show up.”
When Matthew died, you asked what you could do for me, Hollis texts now. You can do this.
There’s no response, and Hollis experiences a moment of desperation. If any of them can’t make it, she’ll cancel the whole thing, but she knows Brooke will want to come anyway, and can Hollis do a weekend with only Brooke? (Frankly, no.) She texts Dru-Ann again: I have a Peloton. And I’ll get your tequila. And organic limes.
Tequila, yes, but don’t worry about another thing, Dru-Ann texts. I’ll
be there.
Two down, Hollis thinks. She tries to imagine a weekend with just herself, Brooke, and Dru-Ann, and a different panic envelops her. Dru-Ann and Brooke met a few years earlier at Hollis and Matthew’s Marathon Monday brunch—Dru-Ann was in town because she represented one of the elite runners from Kenya—and afterward, Dru-Ann described Brooke as the “human equivalent of something stuck in your teeth. Just. So. Annoying.”
Meanwhile, Brooke developed an obsession with Dru-Ann. She watches Throw Like a Girl every week and she thinks it’s so cool that Hollis went to college with someone who’s on television and who, last year, appeared at number 74 on Forbes’s Most Powerful Women list.
A little while later, Hollis’s phone lights up with a text from her best friend from when she was growing up, Tatum McKenzie, who still lives on Nantucket year-round: Does “girls’ weekend” mean I would spend the night at your house in Squam?
Hollis writes back: Yes, won’t that be fun?
Okay, Tatum says, which isn’t really an answer to the question. But it sounds like she’s a yes, and Hollis feels cool relief pass through her. Every summer since Hollis and Matthew built the new house on her father’s property, Hollis has invited Tatum and her husband, Kyle, over for dinner, and every summer, Tatum comes up with an excuse for why they can’t make it, so Tatum has never been inside Hollis’s house. Once, a few years earlier, Hollis got a text from Tatum out of the blue: Kyle and I went for a Sunday drive and ended up at your place in Squam. We peeked in the windows, danced on your pool cover, and had sex in your outdoor shower. (Just kidding!) You have officially become a Summer Person, Holly. Just like you always wanted. This was followed by the one-tear crying emoji.
Hollis wrote back, trying to be funny: You did have sex in the outdoor shower. I know you did.
Tatum responded with the middle-finger emoji.
Hollis has bumped into Tatum a few times since then—once at Dan’s Pharmacy, once at the post office, once at St. Mary’s (where Hollis and Tatum used to be altar servers together)—but if she’s honest, Hollis would admit that things haven’t been good or right between them since she left for college.
Forget the Hallmark movie, Hollis thinks. Her Five-Star Weekend might be more like Real Housewives.
But three of the four are definitely coming. There’s no turning back now.
When the hottest part of the afternoon has passed, Hollis takes Henrietta for a walk, leaving her phone behind. The hydrangea bushes that line Hollis’s driveway have filled in, just as Anastasia promised, though Hollis can’t appreciate their pink and periwinkle beauty the way she should.
By the time I get back, she thinks, Gigi will have texted.
But she hasn’t; the only text is from Brooke: I’m so excited!!! I booked my ferry, I get in at 4:05 on Friday!!! Now, tell me, what can I bring??!!?
Hollis nearly texts back Nothing, just yourself! But texting with Brooke is like one of those woven finger traps: the more you engage, the harder it is to extricate yourself. Brooke will react with the heart or double exclamation point to Hollis’s text (what kind of sadist dreamed that feature up?), then she’ll text a question, like How about Fells steak tips?, which Hollis will feel compelled to respond to, and Brooke will like or emphasize that text… and this will go on until, in exasperation, Hollis stops replying (hint, hint), at which point Brooke will send a string of emoji hearts and kissing faces.
Hollis leaves Brooke’s text to bleed out. She clicks on Gigi’s name just to double-check that her invitation text went through; the service in Squam can be spotty.
Yes, it was delivered at 9:38 that morning.
Clearly, Gigi is done with her. Hollis isn’t sure why this bothers her so much. It isn’t as if Gigi is a soul mate; you don’t meet soul mates on the internet. (Well, some people might, but not Hollis.) But when Hollis wakes up the next day, a text is there, sent at three fifteen in the morning: I feel so honored to be included. Are you sure about this?
Hollis stares at the words, blinking, rereading, double-checking that this text is really from Gigi Ling. The text sounds like Gigi: lovely and gracious.
It’s all Hollis can do not to respond with Where have you been? Why have you been ghosting me?
Instead, she types: Very sure. Can’t wait to meet you IRL!!!! Then she deletes that (all the exclamation points make her sound like Brooke) and types: Very sure. Looking forward to getting together.
She hits Send.
