“Ouch,” Mario says. “I’ll point out that he’s not good enough for you.”
“He was, though,” Lizbet says. She has a hard enough time understanding this herself, much less explaining it to someone else. What she had with JJ was real. Every minute together felt like an investment in their future—breakfast, lunch, dinner, drives, walks, cocktail parties, meetings with food vendors, trips to the post office, ferry rides, the vacations to Bermuda and Napa and Jackson Hole, holidays with her family in Minnetonka and his parents in Binghamton, every movie they watched, every show they binged, every song they heard on the radio, every cookbook they tried a recipe from, every funeral they attended (there had been three), every wedding (six), every baptism (five), every beach day, every text and call, every trip to the Stop and Shop, every house they toured before buying the cottage on Bear Street, the fights and quarrels, the flat tires and dead batteries, the leaks in the ceiling and the power outages and the day the fridge died, the football games, the concerts (Kenny Chesney, the Foo Fighters, Zac Brown), the burns and cuts in the restaurant kitchen and the head colds and stomach bugs at home—all of these things had been like bricks in a fortress that was supposed to keep Lizbet safe and happy for the rest of her life. She and JJ had inside jokes, secret code words, routines and rituals. Lizbet scratched JJ’s back every morning; she knew where his spot was, southeast of the shamrock tattoo in the center of his back that was always extra-itchy. On Sunday mornings in the winter, JJ would draw Lizbet a bath, light her scented candles, and leave her a pile of food magazines. While she was in the tub, he would go to Nautilus to pick up Caleb’s bagels with sriracha schmear and they would eat in the kitchen—Lizbet still in her bathrobe—while they listened to old Springsteen concerts. Those Sunday mornings were sacred, their version of church.
Lizbet had actually thought they would get married someday, despite their cool posturing. She wanted a marquise-cut diamond, she wanted a ceremony on the beach at Miacomet followed by a clambake; she wanted to dance in her wedding dress at the Chicken Box. They had talked about children—they wanted two—and when Lizbet missed her period in January of 2021, they were both giddy and nervous. It wasn’t exactly what they had planned—a baby arriving in September, Lizbet hugely pregnant all through the summer season—but they both grinned like crazy, calling each other Maw and Paw, naming the baby “Bubby”—and when Lizbet started to bleed at nine weeks, they cried in each other’s arms.
The sexting with Christina had started that summer. JJ had bulldozed the fortress. Worse, he’d allowed Lizbet to think that the fortress had existed only in her mind.
The ending, rather than creating a stronger place that Lizbet could launch from into a new, different, better-quality life, was an obliteration, as though fifteen years of Lizbet’s life—her prime years, twenty-three to thirty-eight—had vaporized. She couldn’t salvage anything from them except the knowledge that she had, technically, survived.
Lizbet drinks what’s left in her jelly jar and turns to Mario. “You’re how old? Forty…?”
“Forty-six.”
“Have you ever had your heart broken?”
Mario sighs. “Not like that. Not by a woman, romantically. But when Fiona died…”
Fiona Kemp, Lizbet thinks. Chef of the Blue Bistro. She died of cystic fibrosis at the end of the 2005 season. It’s Nantucket restaurant-world legend.
“…and when the Blue Bistro closed, my heart broke. It’s going to sound pompous as hell, but it was the dismantling of a dynasty. The bistro was the best, not because of the food or the location…it was the best because of the people. It was like a winning football team before the quarterback declares free agency and goes to a different team or like that string of golden summers at sleepaway camp before you get your driver’s license and a job making subs at Jersey Mike’s. We all knew Fiona was terminally ill and that we were living on God’s grace. But even so, when it ended, we were shell-shocked. The dream died with Fiona, a piece of all of us died with Fiona. So yes, I’ve had my heart broken by this island. So badly that I left for seventeen years.” Mario takes Lizbet’s hand and leads her back to the railing. They watch the Steamship ferry glide majestically out of the dock; it’s all lit up, as big as a floating building.
Mario puts his hands on either side of Lizbet’s face. “I’m going to kiss you now, but I think we should both be careful.”
Lizbet laughs. “I’m never falling in love again, don’t worry.”
“Okay, then,” he says and he leans in. The first kiss is just a brushing of lips, warm and soft. Then Mario pulls Lizbet close enough that their hips lock. He kisses her again, and his lips linger on hers but it’s still tentative, like he’s making a decision. With the third kiss, Mario’s lips part and their tongues touch and a second later, they’re kissing like a couple who are destined to fall in love despite their best intentions.
Eventually Mario leads Lizbet to his bed, which is pleasingly (and surprisingly) firm. He takes his time undressing her. His fingertips graze her nipples, back and forth, back and forth, until she moans into his mouth. He kisses her under her ear, sucking a little, then whispering, “You are so beautiful to me, Lizbet.” She soon realizes there is no comparison between Mario and JJ in bed. JJ made love like a bull in a china shop—all power and bluster, no finesse; he liked to get it done as noisily and raucously as possible. Mario tends to her; he makes her ache. She wants him inside her and just when she thinks she can’t wait another second—she’s a dish on the stove that’s going to burn—he makes the next move. They rock together on the firm bed and Lizbet squeezes her newly powerful thighs around him and he cries out. The surrender in his voice is something Lizbet knows she’ll replay in her head over and over again.
He rolls off her, breathless. She’s dazzled.
“Why do we have to be careful, again?” she says.
He laughs. “I was just wondering that myself.” He stares at the ceiling for a second, then he pushes himself up and kisses her. “I said that because I have only a one-season contract. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, there are no guarantees the hotel is going to make it.”
Lizbet pulls back like he’s run vinegar under her nose. “The hotel is going to make it.” She realizes she has no idea if this is true. Their occupancy, a month after opening, is right around 40 percent. Lizbet is too busy with the day-to-day operations to fret about this like she did at the beginning. Is the hotel losing money? Yes. But will Xavier pull the plug after only one year? Would he spend all that money just to abandon it? He said he was trying to impress two women, and one of them is Shelly Carpenter. Who is the second woman? Lizbet hasn’t wondered about this for a while. (She dearly hopes it’s not Alessandra.) “The hotel is going to be in business next year if I have anything to say about it. The hotel is going to be just fine.”
Mario kisses the tip of her nose in a way that feels patronizing, and suddenly Lizbet wants to swat him. “Okay, Heartbreaker,” he says. He pulls on his boxers and a T-shirt from Cisco Brewers. “Come to the kitchen with me, please. I’m feeding you.”
14. A Desk Thing
It’s the second Saturday of July and the hotel has three checkouts and four checkins. (Alessandra can’t believe the hotel isn’t busier. If she’d known it was going to be this dead, she would have worked at the White Elephant.)