On the Rocks (39 page)
Authors: Erin Duffy
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Literary, #General
“Did you have a good time this summer? Are you happy I forced you to do it?” Grace asked.
“Very. I didn’t realize how badly I needed it.”
“I did. I finally feel like I have the old you back. I missed you.”
“I missed me too.”
“Are you worried about Ben?”
“Nope. Are you worried about Johnny?”
“A little.”
“Well, just remember: they’re just lobsters, they’re not love.”
She elbowed me in the side as we walked up the steps and discovered that the boys were there, sitting on the porch as always, drinking our beer. Summer was over. A new season was starting, and it didn’t include Bobby and Wolf living down the block. And that made me sad. I smiled as I turned to say good-bye to them.
“So we will get out for drinks next week maybe?” I said to Wolf as I hugged him.
“Yes. I’ll call you, and if you don’t feel like drinking, maybe we can play some more Scrabble. I’ll use English words this time.”
“Better let him win, Abby,” Grace warned. “Or else he might take a picture of you in the shower and throw it on his website.”
“Gracie, I said sorry!” Wolf said, opening his arms and enveloping her in a giant hug. “Please don’t hate me!”
“I don’t hate you, Wolf,” Grace said. “But from now on, I’m off-limits to you and your website, deal? In return, I won’t tell everyone on Facebook that you’re the one running the website. I still can’t believe that, by the way.”
“Deal!” Wolf said, his huge smile making it impossible for Grace to stay mad at him.
“Bye, you pain in the ass,” I said to Bobby as I hugged him. “We’ve come a long way in a few months, haven’t we?”
“Well, you enjoy talking to me now, and I actually remember your name, so yeah, definite progress was made.”
“When will you be back in Boston?”
“I don’t know. Later this month probably. September is the best time down here, after all the summer people leave and the weather’s still warm. I’m going to hang here and wait and see what happens on the job front, you know?”
“I’m jealous.” I sighed.
“I always knew you were.”
“Let me know what happens with the job stuff, and give me a call when you get back to the city.”
“Did you just ask me on a date?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Do you want to?”
“No,” I said, forcefully.
“Okay, well, that was pretty similar to the first conversation we ever had, so it appears we’ve come full circle.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” I said. I meant it.
“I won’t. Drive safely. Don’t try and pick up any dudes on the way out.”
“Right back at you.”
“Couldn’t just let me have the last word, could you?”
“Now what fun would that be?”
We waved good-bye as we exited the driveway, turned left onto Thames Street, and headed for home.
T
WO DAYS LATER
I
WAS
finishing up the last of my summer laundry, organizing my closet, and mentally preparing to return to work, when my door buzzed. I trembled for a second, afraid it was Ben pulling another surprise guest appearance. I hesitated before I hit the button on the intercom. “Hello?”
“Took you long enough. What are you doing up there?” Bobby asked.
“The better question is, what are you doing down there?”
“Buzz me up, come on.” I pressed the button and opened the door, listening to the sprightly footsteps on the stairs as he climbed the three flights.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when Bobby reached my door.
“I think you said the same thing the last time I showed up here.”
“That’s because you always appear unannounced.”
“What, we’re not friends?”
“We are. I’m just surprised to see you. I thought you were staying in Newport through September.”
“I think it might be time for me to reenter the grown-up world,” he said.
“When were you ever a member of the grown-up world?”
“Once upon a time I wore a suit to work and everything.”
“I have a hard time picturing that,” I said as he followed me into the den.
“Well, hopefully, you’ll see it for real soon enough. I have an interview on Thursday. The firm has a great reputation, so I’m hoping it goes well.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah. I need to start mentally preparing myself to go back to work, you know?”
“Believe me, I get it.” I noticed he didn’t have a gym bag with him. “What, no margaritas?”
“Margaritas are like white pants; they’re verboten after Labor Day,” he quipped.
“Wow, how very metrosexual of you.”
“Two words for you . . .”
“Fashion maven?”
“Renaissance man.”
“Good Lord.” I so should have seen that one coming.
“Can I have a beer?”
“I don’t have any. I do still have that bottle of wine from the wedding that I never opened, or I can run down to the corner and get you a six-pack if you want.”
“I have a better idea.”
“I never liked your ideas.”
“Let’s go to that jazz club in the Back Bay that I told you about.”
“Right now? I’m not really dressed to go out.”
“It’s not like it’s a date, so who cares? Do you have something better to do? You’re not knitting, are you?”
“No more knitting. From now on, I’ll buy my pot holders like every other woman my age.”
“Good. Maybe learn how to cook first. Wait, that reminds me.” He went into my kitchen and opened my freezer. “Wow,” he said as he nodded at me in approval. “You dismantled the ice cream shrine.”
“Yup. All gone. I’ve lost most of my post-Ben depression weight. I don’t want it back.”
“Good girl. You look great. I’d like to say you look like your old self, except I don’t know what the old you looked like.”
“I was starting to forget her too.”
“Since you don’t have any beer, there’s no use in hanging out here. Let’s go.”
“Wait, there’s one thing I want to do before we leave.”
“You don’t need to primp for me. I’ve seen you at your worst, believe me.”
“That’s not true,” I said, pretending to be offended.
“In one summer, I’ve seen you beat flowers to death, hit Wolf in the face with a shoe, and let’s not forget that oh so very special pink dress. The jig is up.”
He had a point. “That’s true, but still, that’s not what I meant,” I said.
I walked over to my laptop, which was sitting on my kitchen table. Only this time I was going to use it for good and not for evil. I didn’t even need to consult my pros and cons list first.
“Come here,” I said to Bobby as I pulled out the chair next to me. He sat down as I opened Internet Explorer.
“Oh, Jesus. You’ve been back for two days. Please don’t tell me you’ve relapsed.”
“Just be quiet for once in your freakin’ life, would you please?”
“I don’t like where this is going,” he said as I uploaded Facebook and began to re-create a profile. It had been almost a year since I deactivated my account, and I decided it was time I stopped hiding.
“I thought you hated Facebook. Now you want to put yourself back on there?” Bobby asked. “What happened to the whole ‘I won’t let strangers stalk me’ thing?”
“That was the old me.”
“I still don’t think I like where this is going. I don’t know if I trust this new version.”
I re-created my profile and uploaded a picture, a shot Wolf took of the four of us with his phone. We were sitting at our outdoor table, smiling at the camera, surrounded by Johnny’s lobsters. I had no idea if Johnny was still Facebook-stalking Grace, but if he was, he’d see the picture, see all of us enjoying our summer, see Grace smiling and happy, and know that he could never, ever have her back. And that would piss him off royally. Finally a reason to be happy that Facebook was created.
“That’s a good shot,” Bobby said.
“It’s a good group,” I added.
“Can we go now?”
“One more thing,” I said. With a single mouse click, I gave myself a status: single. And I couldn’t have been happier. “There,” I said as I closed the screen. “Let’s go.”
Bobby and I left my apartment and strolled down Hancock Street on our way to the jazz show, two friends with no significant others, no baggage, and no agenda. It felt like something I’d never had, but had somehow always been missing.
I’d spent the entire summer trying to fill the void left by Ben, thinking that a boyfriend would make me happy and somehow validate my existence. I didn’t find one. And I didn’t care. If being married meant that I’d have missed out on spending the summer at the beach with Grace and meeting new guy friends who made me laugh and brought me beer in Solo cups and made me margaritas to cheer me up, then I was happy I wasn’t. What I had now was way more important than a boyfriend or a ring. My priorities were finally in order, and for the first time in a long time, having a guy in my life didn’t even make the list.
I already had everything that really mattered.
And that was more than enough.
T
HANK YOU TO
my family for being patient with me while I wrote this book, and for reassuring me that I would finish it on time.
Thank you to all of my friends. Some of you inadvertently gave me material for this book, and some of you intentionally gave me material for this book, and I can’t thank you guys enough.
Once again, thank you to my agent at William Morris, Erin Malone. Your early input and amazing comments were invaluable. Thank you a million times over.
Thank you to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, and the rest of the team at HarperCollins, for all of your hard work, for your wise input, and for publishing my second book!
Last, thanks to my husband, Dan. Thank you for making everything better without even trying.
Much love and many thanks to you all.
ERIN DUFFY
graduated from Georgetown University in 2000 with a B.A. in English and worked on Wall Street, a career that inspired her first novel,
Bond Girl
. She lives in New York City with her husband (whom she met the old-fashioned way—in a bar).
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Cover design by Mary Schuck
Cover photographs: woman © by Nick Onken/UpperCut
Author photograph by Elena Seibert
Waves provided by StudioSmart/Shuttershock, Inc.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ON THE ROCKS.
Copyright © 2014 by Erin Duffy. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-220574-2
EPUB Edition APRIL 2014 ISBN 9780062205759
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