15
Now
I’m sitting in a Muskoka chair by the bonfire pit at Summer Wind, but instead of watching the setting sun cast the cliffs in an even more spectacular shade of red, I’m texting with Lillian about our meeting, away from Bridget’s judgment. We’re turning our expensive breakfast into expensive cocktails Monday evening.
I’m so looking forward to this, Lucy, she writes. Let’s get this done!
So this is good news. Great news. I could double the business in a year.
But there’s that quiet, questioning voice. Can I handle that? Do I want to?
Who is my success for?
I set my gaze on the horizon, where the sun is dropping quickly. It will take the warmth with it when it dips below the horizon.
“Live your life for you, and no one else” was one of my aunt’s signature pieces of wisdom. But what if you aren’t sure what you want? Or what a full life looks like? I wish I could ask her.
I return to the house, melancholy, but then Bridget waltzes into the kitchen. She tells me that Felix will be home soon with oysters. He needs to practice for the shucking competition tomorrow night, and he’s invited Zach to help us eat them. She’s wearing sweat shorts and a tank top. There’s a mustard stain on her left boob.
“There’s a mustard stain on your left boob,” I tell her.
She looks at herself and shrugs. “Meh. It’s only Wolf and Zach.”
I met Zach on my first trip to the island. He’d introduced himself as Bridget’s future husband and, when she wasn’t looking, gave me squiggly eyebrows that let me know he had a fairly accurate idea of what had happened between Felix and me. They’re business partners, but they’ve been inseparable since they were in diapers. Zach is basically the third Clark sibling, and Felix tells him everything.
Bridget takes the rye out of the cupboard. “I’m looking forward to having a bit of fun,” she says. “The four of us haven’t hung out in years—it’s a special occasion.”
“True,” I say, watching her pour two generous glasses.
For a second, I let myself imagine what it might be like to spend all my nights like this, here with these people. Drinks with my best friend. A fully stocked fridge. Waiting for Felix to return home with seafood. It would be a nice life.
Bridget lifts her glass to mine as the mudroom door opens. Felix walks in, carrying several boxes of oysters. His eyes meet mine, and my heart hums
happily.
Felix is home.
I give my head a shake because I will never spend all my nights like this.
There can never be anything deeper between Felix and me. I don’t want anything deeper. He’s my best friend’s brother. He lives on Prince Edward Island. My life is in Toronto. Felix has a track record of sleeping with tourists, and I’m simply one of them. I’m here to support Bridget and nothing else. I should memorize it, repeat it at the top of every hour, tattoo it on my forehead so I don’t forget.
“What’s going on here?” Felix asks, eyeing our drinks and then the two of us. “Lucy looks like she’s seasick, and you look like you’re up to no good,” he tells Bridget.
She tilts her head to me, eyebrows lifted. It’s a silent, You okay?
I nod.
“We’re celebrating,” Bridget says, turning her attention back to Felix. She takes out another glass and fills half of it with rye, handing it to him.
“What are we celebrating?” he asks, assessing his very large tumbler of brown liquor with skepticism. The stubble on his face is darker than it was yesterday. I wonder what it would be like to see him every day, to watch his beard grow in. I need to stop this.
I take a long sip of the rye. Maybe I can whiskey my fantasies into oblivion.
“You and me and Bee and Zach,” Bridget says. “All of us together.”
Felix and I lock eyes.
Bridget clinks her glass against ours. “Cheers.”
Her phone pings, and she scowls at the screen. She types furiously, muttering to herself, then sets the device onto the counter with such force, I check whether she’s broken the screen. She hasn’t, but I see Miles’s name at the top of a text chain, and a message that reads:
This is crazy. We should talk it out in person.
I look to Bridget.
“It’s fine,” she says.
“Umm . . .”
“I don’t want to discuss it right now.”
Felix leans over to peek at her screen.
“Stop looking at my phone.” She snatches it away.
“I don’t like it when the Clark family parties without me,” Zach calls from the door.
“What timing,” Felix says under his breath as Zach strides across the living room.
He’s a tall Black man with close-cropped hair and dressed in a polo and khaki shorts. He’s so preposterously handsome that the thought of him and Felix bashing around the island together as two single guys makes me want to put them both in a corner and give them a time-out.
He hands Felix a bag of peanuts and a bottle of rye “for the stash,” then holds his arms out for Bridget.
“It’s been too long,” she says.
“Your fault,” he tells her.
He greets me with a short “Lucy.”
“Good to see you again,” I say.
Zach stares at me, unblinking. “You too.”
“When was the last time you were home?” he asks Bridget as we gather
around the kitchen island.
“I was out for a week at Christmas.”
“That’s right,” he says, as if he’s only now remembering. Felix rolls his eyes. Zach’s crush on Bridget began before his seventh-grade growth spurt, and he’s not subtle. “Wolf and I slaughtered you and Miles in Trivial Pursuit.”
Bridget looks out the window, and Zach winces. Felix has obviously filled him in on the little we know about Bridget’s situation.
“I’ll marry you, Bridge,” Zach announces after a minute.
“Obviously,” Felix and I chime at the same time.
The room is silent for a moment, and then everyone laughs, even Bridget.
“I mean it, though,” Zach says after we quiet down.
“We know,” Felix and I say in stereo again. I glance at him, and he’s smiling, not exactly at me, but at least in my general direction.
“I don’t think Lana would mind, Bridge,” Zach goes on. “She’s pretty
liberal-minded.”
“Who’s Lana?” I ask.
“New girlfriend,” Felix says.
“Not that new,” Zach corrects. “But definitely out of my league.”
“Is Lana aware of your crush?” I ask, pointing between him and Bridget.
“Of course.” Zach claps his hands. “But it’s not a crush. Loving Bridget Clark is a lifestyle.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Bridget says. “Wolf said she’s a nurse?”
“Best one in Montreal,” Zach says. “But she’s coming out in September.
Trial run. We’ll see if she still loves me after living with me for a month.”
“Of course she will,” Bridget says. “Hopefully the island wins her over. I don’t think many people from away can picture what it’s like to live here
after Labor Day.”
Prince Edward Island is swarming with tourists in the summer, but just as people “from away” come and go with the warm weather, so do a lot of the businesses, which close for the off-season.
“It’s better after Labor Day,” Zach says, and Felix nods.
I pour Zach a drink while Felix begins lining up oysters on the counter.
Zach is showing Bridget photos of his girlfriend.
“Can I help with anything?” I ask Felix. I will be the most normal, least thirsty version of myself around him, if it’s the last thing I do.
He glances at me. “Want to do the lemons? And grab the hot sauce from the cupboard?”
I’m slicing the citrus when Felix says, “You’re chaos with a blade.”
“Hey,” I say, pointing it in his direction. “I’ve improved. At least it’s not a steak knife.”
“You’ll take your fingers off. Do you remember how I showed you?” His voice is low, and it rasps from his lips to land right between my thighs.
I nod. “I can’t do it the way you do.”
“Like this.” His fingers curve over mine, and I hope he can’t tell that they’re shaking. “You need to protect yourself.” He adjusts my grip, then steps back, satisfied.
“Stop telling secrets over there.” That’s Bridget. “Wolf, are you ready or
what? I’m hungry.”
He looks at me. “You’re on.”
As Clark tradition dictates, I’m the newest guest and am therefore assigned stopwatch duties. It’s a specific form of agony to stand directly across the kitchen island from Felix, staring at his fast hands, trying not to think about the other things they can undo. It’s cool this evening, but after the first round, I’m so overheated I have to strip off the fuzzy pink cardigan I’ve put on over my white sundress.
“You’ve lost your touch,” Zach says to Felix. “Two minutes and forty- five seconds? Pathetic.”
“Shouldn’t have had that whiskey,” Felix says. “Let’s go again.”
He’s halfway through the next batch, and Zach’s heckling so loudly I have no idea how Felix manages to better his time. “Two minutes and twenty-nine seconds,” I say.
Bridget pulls a face. “You’re out of practice.”
“Apparently.”
“And with added penalty time.” She clucks her tongue.
“Penalty time?” I ask.
Felix explains: “The judges add additional seconds onto your time for any mistakes, like if there are bits of shell or grit left behind.”
Bridget wiggles her fingers in Felix’s direction, and he hands her his knife. She bends close to the platter, narrowing her eyes as she studies the oysters. She pokes at each with the knife and wrinkles her nose.
“This one isn’t fully severed from the muscle,” Bridget says, peering up at Felix. “And there’s grit in two of them, some shell in another . . . So that’s twelve seconds of extra time for a total time of . . .” She points at Zach as if they’ve played this game many times before.
“Two minutes and forty-one seconds,” Zach says.
Felix runs his hand through his hair. “Not good enough.”
“What’s the goal?” I ask, realizing how little I know about this part of Felix’s life.
“One minute and thirty seconds. A minute forty, max.”
“If Wolf shucks them cleanly, that should get him in the top five,” Zach
says.
Felix glances my way. “I’m very clean.”
I don’t know what it says about me, but I find these three words intensely sexual.
We finish the tray of oysters, and Felix pulls another box from the fridge, picks out eighteen, and arranges them on the wood surface. When he’s suitably pleased with his setup, he meets my eyes. He’s so focused on me, it’s like Bridget and Zach aren’t even in the room. He gives me a nod, and I count him down from three.
I can feel Zach watching me watch his best friend. Felix finishes the batch, and everyone breaks for another round of drinks and oysters. When
Bridget steps outside with her phone and Felix excuses himself to the bathroom, Zach turns to me and says, “What’s the situation with you two?”
“What do you mean?”
He gives me a steely-eyed stare. He knows I’m full of crap.
“There’s no situation, Zach.”
“That’s what Wolf says, but I don’t think that’s true. You’re single. He’s single.”
I have to school my expression at this news. “How do you know I’m not seeing anyone?”
“I have my ways.” I lift my eyebrows. Zach shrugs, then says, “Bridget.”
Before I can interrogate him about that, he adds, “And I’ve seen the way you look at each other—you’re both so obvious.”
I cannot fathom what he thinks is obvious.
“There’s nothing between us,” I tell him. “Same as always.”
He snorts. “I can’t tell if you’re lying to me or lying to yourself.”
I ask Zach a question about outdoor living walls because I know it’ll distract him. Zach has more hobbies and interests than anyone I know. He’s telling me about biodiversity in urban environments when Felix returns to the kitchen, and my eyes find his across the room.
“See, that,” Zach hisses. “It makes me want to take a cold shower.”
• • •
TRIVIAL PURSUIT COMES OUT SOMEWHERE BEFORE BRIDGET’S FOURTH GLASS OF RYE and after she holds Zach’s cheeks between her hands and says, slushy- mouthed, “I missed you so much.”
Zach is trouncing the rest of us. He’s the reigning champion and takes sick pleasure in making everyone else look like fools. When he scores a fourth piece of pie and runs around the room with his arms above his head, Bridget throws a pillow at him. “You’re an overgrown encyclopedia.”
“I have to impress you somehow, Bridge,” he says, flopping on the sofa between us and slinging an arm around her shoulder. “So tell me—is this
wedding happening or not? No pressure, but Lana and I have our hotel room booked, and I need her to see me in my suit.”
Bridget’s shoulders inch toward her ears, the pink of her cheeks deepening as she stares down at the game board.
Felix and I share a look, and I know by the determined set of his eyebrows and the steadiness of his gaze that he’s done giving her space.
“What Zach is trying to say,” he starts, “is that you have guests traveling from as far as Australia in a couple of days, and if you’re backing out of this thing, it would be considerate of you to let everyone know sooner rather than later.”
Bridget cuts Felix a razor-edged look. “I do not want to talk about the wedding.”
He leans forward in his chair, hands clasped between his knees. He looks straight at Bridget. “You made Lucy drop everything and fly out. I’m staying here because you asked me to. You can at least do us the courtesy of letting us know why you’ve summoned us.”
Felix doesn’t raise his voice, but he speaks with quiet force. I’ve never heard him talk like that to Bridget. Or anyone.
The Clarks stare at each other, neither one speaking.
“We’re just worried about you,” I try. “The wedding is a week away. Did something happen between you and Miles?”
“Can I not, for once, let loose?” Bridget says, her voice shaking. “Am I not allowed to do something spontaneous?”
“Of course you can,” I say. “But, Bridget, this is obviously not about being spontaneous. If something’s wrong, maybe we can help you figure it out. You don’t have to solve all your problems on your own.”
Her eyes begin to well, and I motion for Zach to get off the couch.
“Talk to us, Bridge,” I say, putting an arm around her. “Or I can send these two hooligans away, and you can talk to me. I’m worried about you.”
She looks at me, her deep brown eyes glistening, and shakes her head.
“I can’t,” she says. “I’m not ready to tell you.”
