“And you’re taking time alone, which is so…important.” Lizbet leans forward. Here, finally, is one of the bonding moments she’s been waiting for. “I’m not sure if you know this or not, but JJ and I broke up last fall.” She pauses. “We were together fifteen years and it ended…badly.” Lizbet wants to say more, but she won’t. “I did exactly what you’re doing. I got in shape, I found this job, I took the time alone to process and rebuild. I haven’t gone out with anyone socially since we split.” She pauses again. Should she tell Edie? Yes, she thinks. “But tonight, I have a date.”
This brings a smile to Edie’s face—because she is the kind of sweet, generous soul who wants other people to be happy even when she isn’t so happy. “Really?” she says. “With whom?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” Lizbet says. “If it goes well.”
If it goes well. Lizbet is going on a date with an extremely hot famous chef who is taking her to the restaurant that is owned by her former boyfriend and managed by the woman he betrayed her with. Some might say this can do nothing but backfire, but Lizbet has other ideas.
She’s wearing a white crocheted sundress that she bought at the ERF boutique on lower Main Street and that she knew looked good on her even before she stepped out of the dressing room and the sales manager, Caylee, whom Lizbet has known forever, shrieked, “Girl, yes!”
Girl, yes! Right after her conversation with Edie, Lizbet leaves the hotel both physically and—maybe for the first time since the place opened—mentally. She heads to the R. J. Miller Salon for a blowout. Lorna, her stylist, makes her hair look like blond silk; it hangs in straight shiny sheets. At home, Lizbet puts on mascara, shimmering face powder, and red lipstick. She wants to wear stilettos but she has witnessed dozens of women catch their heels between the deck boards (one time, in July 2016, it resulted in a gruesomely broken ankle), so she slips on wedges.
Looking in the mirror she thinks: Breaker, not broken.
She thinks: A hundred times hotter than you’ve ever been.
She thinks: Girl, yes!
Mario knocks on her door at quarter to eight, his silver pickup idling in the driveway. He’s wearing jeans, a white linen shirt, a slate-blue blazer, and flip-flops, which in Lizbet’s opinion is the perfect outfit on any man. His smile when he sees Lizbet is so…naughty that Lizbet flushes.
He whistles. “Do I need to say it?”
“Yes.”
“You look…wow. Just wow.”
Lizbet’s flirting skills were dormant during her years with JJ, and she needs to wake them up now. She winks at him. “I brought something for later.” She hands him a cooler bag and hopes he doesn’t think she’s being presumptuous.
He peeks inside and grins. “I like where your head is at.” He reaches for her hand. “Let’s go make people jealous.”
When Mario pulls into the parking lot of the Deck, Lizbet panics.
She’s back.
She sees JJ’s big black Dodge parked in its usual spot, and next to it is the juicy orange Jeep that belongs to Christina. Lizbet can recall dozens of times when that Jeep would pull into the Deck and Lizbet’s spirits would lift. Lizbet had liked Christina; she was charming, funny, modest. She and Lizbet would talk about wine, of course, but also about trips they wanted to take to Italy and South Africa, restaurants they wanted to try the next time they went to New York, and they both loved celebrity scandals (they were verklempt when JLo and A-Rod broke up, and Christina called Lizbet, screaming, when JLo was spotted with Ben Affleck).
Lizbet’s eye is drawn beyond the restaurant itself to the Monomoy creeks. She misses this view—the meandering paths of shallow water through the reeds and cattails, the dinghies tied up to colorful buoys, the distinctive cupola of the Nantucket lifesaving museum in the distance. There are a few kayakers out tonight, paddling through the creeks as the sunset turns the sky a soft pink. Lizbet can hear the laughter, the clinking of glasses and silverware, the happy chatter that was the soundtrack of her former life. It’s surreal being an observer, being an outsider. This isn’t her place any longer. What is she doing here?
Well, it’s too late to back out now. Mario reaches for her hand again; he must understand how difficult this is for her.
He stops right before the door. “You ready, Heartbreaker?”
She nods and they step inside.
Everything is the same. Off to the left is the arched entryway to the airy, rustic dining room. Other people might notice the cathedral ceilings, the exposed beams, the huge stained-glass window salvaged from a church in Salem, Massachusetts, at one end of the room, the plate glass on the other side offering unimpeded views across the water. What Lizbet sees is tables 25 through 40, including a twelve-top in front of the cobblestone fireplace that the staff fondly calls “the Bitch” because, well, that’s what it is. Peyton is taking orders at the Bitch and Lizbet wonders if it was a mistake not to warn her former staff that she was coming in.
Mario leads Lizbet past the dining-room entrance to the hostess station and Lizbet feels herself hanging back like a child who doesn’t want to start kindergarten. She sees the Robert Stark painting that greets every guest of the Deck—a wide canvas of bottle-green sea with one red-sailed boat on the horizon. They’re at command central, Lizbet’s former cockpit, her Oval Office, a place as familiar to her as her own bedroom. When Lizbet started working at the Deck as a server, they had a standard-issue lectern, straight out of a high-school auditorium, but Lizbet replaced it with an antique drafting table that she found at Brimfield.
“Good evening,” Lizbet hears Mario say. “Subiaco, party of two?”
Lizbet is hiding behind him, trying to summon her affirmations. What are they? She can’t remember a single one, not even the silly one about the pineapple. She hears Christina’s voice, and while she’s too addled to listen to the exact words, she can tell Christina is fawning: My name is Christina…so honored to…I’ll tell Chef…please let me show you…
Mario ushers Lizbet forward. Girl, yes! Lizbet thinks. She smiles at Christina and says, “Hey there, how’s it going?”
Never underestimate the element of surprise. Christina doesn’t seem to recognize Lizbet at first (ha-ha—no braids), but then it lands, and Christina’s eyes ricochet between Mario and Lizbet. She fumbles the menus, and one drops to the floor. Lizbet watches as Christina crouches to retrieve it while trying to make sure her very short, very tight black skirt doesn’t hike up her ass.
Christina leads them to the corner table closest to the water, table number 1, also known as “Dirty Harry.” It’s not surprising that this is where they’re sitting, considering that, for JJ, Mario Subiaco ranks right up there with God, Santa Claus, and Clint Eastwood—though now Christina is probably wishing she could pivot and put them at table 24 in the opposite corner or even inside.
Mario pulls out Lizbet’s chair and Christina hands them menus and says, “We have a Whispering Angel rosé fountain here at the Deck. We sell our signature wineglasses for fifty dollars apiece. They’re yours to take home and you may have as many glasses of the rosé as you’d like.”
Lizbet stares at Christina. Is she actually giving Lizbet the spiel when Lizbet was the one who dreamed up the idea for the rosé fountain in the first place, when Lizbet was the one who repurposed a salvaged garden fountain that she bought from Marty McGowan, the Sconset Gardener? That fountain is hers, not Christina’s. How dare Christina do this; she’s either clueless or being catty.
Mario waits until Christina’s finished, then reaches across the table and squeezes Lizbet’s hand. “Thanks for that, Tina. Would you mind giving us a second?”
Christina blinks. “I’m also the sommelier here…”
Lizbet nearly squawks. What happened to Goose? Did JJ fire him so that Christina could take over the sommelier job? She realizes she’s crushing Mario’s fingers and she eases up a bit. She reminds herself it’s no longer any of her business.
“So let me bring by the wine list—”
“Not just yet, Tina, thanks,” Mario says.
Take the hint, Tina, Lizbet thinks. Scram.
Christina lingers and then very distinctly addresses only Mario. She touches the sleeve of his beautiful blue blazer with her French-manicured fingers. Lizbet realizes that it’s not beyond Christina to throw herself at Mario. “I know Chef will want to come out and say hello.”