Nantucket Blue

Forty-five





I SHOOK as I walked up to the door at 4 Darling Street. I took a deep breath and knocked. After the longest thirty seconds of my life, Jules appeared at the door. She must’ve checked out a window or something, because she didn’t look shocked to see me.

“What do you want?” she asked, a hand on her hip. “Or, Oh, I’m sorry, are you looking for Zack?”

“No, I want to talk to you.” I handed her the bouquet of flowers that I’d picked from the backyard at the inn, but she didn’t take them. “Please.”

Jules sighed, stepped outside, and plunked down on one of the little benches. I sat opposite her and put the flowers next to her on the bench.

She crossed her arms and looked at me like she didn’t know me, like our history had been wiped from her memory. I wanted to remind her of how I’d practically lived at her house for the past year, or how I’d taught her to drive a stick in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. Or how we’d danced in her old gymnastics leotards for hours to the same Rihanna song on REPEAT, laughing until we almost wet our pants. I wanted to find the notebook with all the notes we’d ever passed, tear the pages out, and cover her with them like a quilt. I wanted to play her the three-and-a-half-minute voice mail she left me when she got her period, in which she laughed and cried as she went back and forth between being excited and sad.

I wanted to remind her of the time I’d called her, frozen with fear, when I’d found a hair growing someplace it shouldn’t, worried I was a werewolf or a late-blooming hermaphrodite, and she didn’t laugh or make fun of me; she made me feel better. I wanted to thank her for that. I wanted to tell her how, even though it was funny now, in that moment I’d been as scared as I’d ever been. Or the time we drove to that boarding school outside Boston for their spring weekend and pretended to be Finnish exchange students. We called sodas “fizzy fizzy pop pop” and declared everything to be “extra cool” in weird, pseudo-European accents. I wanted to read our story to her like a book. In those moments, she’d made it feel like the world was ours. Now she was looking at me like any world I inhabited was one she’d flee.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes filling. “I know what I did hurt you, and I’m sorry.”

“I was trying to be nice to you at the Even Keel. I thought I’d been the bitch all summer.”

“I should’ve said something then,” I said, tears dripping into my lap.

“I told you I needed space from you, and you slept with my little brother.” She shook her head. “He’s a sophomore. Don’t you think he’s a little young for you? Don’t you think he’s a little young for anyone?”

So, Zack had told her that we’d had sex. I wanted to say that I wasn’t his first, but that wasn’t my information to share. It was Zack’s. “I can’t help how I feel. Besides, senior guys go out with sophomore girls all the time,” I added quietly. I had to point it out. “Are you mad that I lost my virginity first?”

“You didn’t.” She smiled. “I had sex with Fitzy in like, June.”

“Oh.” It made me sad for Jules. Fitzy had flirted with me when I’d run into Jay and those guys just a few days ago. Maybe it was okay that they weren’t in love. But I don’t know. I wanted something else for her. “That’s great.”

She drew a deep breath. “Is there anything else?”

“Do you think you could accept my apology?” She looked away. “I hope you at least know that I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Zack and I didn’t mean to fall in love.”

“Maybe you’re in love with him, but he’s really pissed off at you.”

“I know,” I said.

“And so is Parker. And Jay. He said you were a tease. You led him on.”

“Do you know where Zack is?” I asked. “I need to talk to him, too.”

“No. Anyway, tomorrow he goes to soccer camp. He’ll be at Fitzy’s party tonight.”

“I guess I could try to find him there,” I said. “Fitz lives on Cliff Road, right?”

“I wouldn’t go if I were you. Nobody wants to see you, Cricket. Not Jay, not Parker, not Zack. And not me.” Jules stood up and opened the front door, leaving the flowers on the bench. “Seriously, I’m telling you this as a friend. Don’t go.” She went inside and shut the door. And then she did something very un-Nantucket. She locked it.