This was true; Hollis cooked Thanksgiving for ten people, even though there were only three of them. “We had leftovers for lunch,” she said. “You two go, keep our reservation, it would be rude not to. I’ll get a cab and see you back at the house, love you, bye.” Hollis then weaved her way through the crowd to where she’d seen Jack standing, but he was gone. She had wandered around searching for him, fully aware that she was acting like a crazy person—she was a happily married woman, a mother—though at the time she hadn’t cared. She’d just wanted to see him. Had he been with someone? She knew this was possible, but if he was alone, they could have a moment. That was all she’d wanted: a moment with Jack, alone.
“I came looking for you,” Hollis says now. “I ditched Matthew and Caroline and tried to find you.”
“I know,” he says. “I was watching you. I thought you might be looking for me.”
“What?” Hollis says. “Why didn’t you say something?”
He sighs. “Oh, Holly, because you weren’t mine anymore.” He reaches for her again. “Come here.”
She leans into him and without even thinking about it, she raises her face to his and they kiss, despite her tears and her runny nose. Hollis’s emotions are heightened, operatic, and tagging right along with her grief and confusion is her desire. How long has it been since she’s been kissed like this? She and Matthew were a long-married couple; they didn’t make out. Somewhere along the way, kissing like this—with hungry, nearly desperate lips and tongues—just stopped happening.
But now, with Jack, it’s ecstasy. Hollis can’t get enough. The years fall away from her, she’s a kid again, seventeen years old, parked in this very same spot in late August of 1987. She’s leaving in the morning for Chapel Hill. She wants—needs—this to be a kiss they both remember the rest of their lives.
Jack pulls away and Hollis thinks, Right—what are they doing? She isn’t ready for this kind of thing (though she does, in the moment, feel very ready). She wonders if Jack just isn’t into it. Mindy, after all, is ten years younger than they are. He might not want to be kissing a fifty-three-year-old woman.
“Headlights,” he whispers. “Over there. Are they coming this way?”
Hollis follows Jack’s finger—through the trees, she sees a car. She wills it to turn off onto another path—the moors are crosshatched with narrow sandy roads—but the lights are coming straight for them. Is it the next generation of young lovers hoping to park here? She waits for them to notice the spot is occupied (by a couple of old people) and move on. Then she says, “Do you think it’s Kyle and Tatum?” That would be funny. It’s possible they guessed where Hollis and Jack would end up, and at Tatum’s insistence (she’s the prankster), here they are.
The car gets closer and Hollis says, “Should we just go?” There’s nothing more incriminating than getting caught in a parked car. But it’s too late now; the car has pulled behind them, blocking their way out of the Round Room.
“Oh, shit,” Jack says.
It’s the Nantucket police.
Eeeeeee! Hollis thinks. This is truly mortifying. In all the times she and Jack parked here, they’d had only two snafus: the dead battery (it was how they learned not to play the radio unless the engine was running) and getting stuck (during a particularly muddy April). They’d never been caught by the police; the cruisers back in those days couldn’t make it down these roads. The vehicle behind them now is an SUV.
The officer gets out of the car—Hollis hears his door slam, though she’s too embarrassed to turn around—and a voice says, “Good evening, folks. How we doing?”
Jack opens the door and steps out and Hollis thinks, Just let me disappear.
Jack says, “Holy cow! Kevin?”
Officer Kevin Dixon can’t believe his eyes. He swings by the Round Room on a routine check (rising seniors Zack Crispin and Abigail Montero have been parking here lately, and he told them next time he’d call their parents), but it’s not Zack and Abby this time, it’s a couple Dixon’s own age. It’s not only a couple his age, it’s Jack Finigan and Hollis Shaw.
What? Dixon thinks. Has he stepped into a time machine? Is it 1987 all over again?
“Holy cow! Kevin?” Jack says. “It’s Jack Finigan, man, how the hell are you?”
Dixon shakes Jack’s hand, then brings him in for a bro-hug. Jack Finigan was a tight end and one hell of a blocker for Dixon at tailback. Dixon hasn’t seen the guy in freaking eons; he never comes to any of the reunions. “Good to see you, man.” He turns to Hollis. “Hey, Holly, how’re you doing?”
“Hi, Kev,” Hollis says. She gets out of the passenger side and comes over to give him a hug as well. Dixon has seen Hollis around, mostly driving—in this very Bronco, come to think of it; it’s a beauty, hard to miss—but they haven’t talked much. One year he saw her at the Pops, another summer he bumped into her at Wicked Island Bakery (she was after the morning buns; he wanted the egg sandwich with short ribs). Dixon’s ex-wife is obsessed with Hollis’s website and actually brags to her friends that Dixon and Hollis went to school together. And of course, Dixon read in the paper that Hollis’s husband died. Was that this past winter or the winter before? Dixon is getting to the point where the years blend. He won’t offer condolences on the husband because it’s pretty clear that Hollis and Jack are here together. Like, together-together. That’s very funny because isn’t this the place where Hollis and Jack used to park in high school? They owned this spot back in the day; nobody dared challenge them for it.
Dixon wants to ask what they’ve been up to, maybe congratulate Hollis on all her success, but it’s obvious he interrupted something out here. Hollis’s hair is mussed and she has dark mascara tracks down her cheeks. The last thing these two probably want to do is chat.
Dixon raises a hand. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m just on the lookout for kids drinking or smoking. It’s so dry this summer that one cigarette butt could set the moors on fire. Anyway, good to see you both.” He laughs. “You were definitely not who I expected to find!” Dixon heads back to his car and as he backs up, he watches Jack and Hollis climb back into the car.
Good for them, he thinks, and he chuckles about it all the way back to Milestone Road.
38. What Happens at the Box
The first person Caroline sees when she walks into the Chicken Box is… Dylan McKenzie.
Wait—what? she thinks.
He’s standing at the bar by himself, and when he sees Caroline, his face brightens and he holds out a cold Corona.
“I hope this is okay,” he says. “They don’t have Pol Roger.”
“Um, hi?” Caroline says. “What are you doing here?”
“We had a buyout tonight, private party, so I finished early and I figured you’d be here.”
Caroline takes a swig of the beer. Did she misread the cues from last night? Dylan has been waiting for her? This is so weird. “That was thoughtful. Thank you for this.”
“You look great tonight.”
It just so happens Caroline does look great. She finally shed her sweatpants and put on cute jeans and a yellow halter top the size of a handkerchief. She blew out her hair and put on makeup because she has a plan, which is to photograph herself having fun at the Chicken Box and post it on her Instagram and Snapchat. She’s sure now that Isaac will see it and she wants him to know what he’s missing.
It would be even better if she posted a picture of herself having fun at the Box with Dylan, she thinks.
“Let’s take a selfie,” she says. She checks with Dylan—does he want to be seen with her beyond the confines of this bar?—and he immediately wraps an arm tightly around her and cheeses (he is so hot, that can’t be denied). She snaps a bunch of pics.
“Is my mother here?” she asks.
“She and my mom are MIA,” Dylan says. “And I’m not unhappy about that.”
The band, Maxxtone, is playing “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, and although Caroline is grateful for music that isn’t off the Sirius XM oldies channels (her mother’s playlists are seriously painful), she says, “I’m going to the ladies’ room real quick.”
“I’ll wait here,” Dylan says. “Then we can dance.”
Caroline threads her way through the crowd of young, aggressively beautiful summer kids. Dylan could hook up with literally any girl he wants to, so Caroline isn’t sure why he’s paying attention to her, though it’s nourishing to her wounded ego. When she’s alone in the bathroom stall, she scrolls through the pictures, picks the one where she and Dylan look (a) the hottest and (b) the most “together,” and for a caption she writes, What happens at the Box… Then she posts. Mission accomplished.
When she gets back to the bar, she sees Dylan waiting with fresh beers, but before she reaches him, someone calls her name.
Caroline’s head swivels—she spies Dru-Ann and Brooke walking in the door. She waves them over to the bar and introduces them to Dylan.
“This is Tatum’s son,” she says. “Dylan, this is Dru-Ann, Mom’s friend from college, and Brooke, her friend from Wellesley.”
Dylan says, “Whoa, Ms. Jones, I watch you every week on Throw Like a Girl. This is so cool. You’re part of the weekend thing with my mom? She didn’t tell me.”
Dru-Ann thinks, Well, dude, there’s a reason for that. Then she thinks, I’ve been fired by ESPN, as you’ll find out when you tune in on Tuesday and find Crabby Gabby in my seat. But she won’t be a buzzkill tonight. “Yes, I am,” she says, offering a hand. She assesses Dylan’s stature and build. “Don’t tell me—college lacrosse.”
“Good guess,” he says. “I played one year at Syracuse.”