“Please make yourself at home,” Eric jokes. “I take it Coco couldn’t come?”
“She has to detail Leslee’s car today,” Kacy says.
“Does she ever say what it’s like working for the Richardsons?” Avalon asks as she tears open a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. (Avalon eats like a stoned frat boy—her favorite foods are meat lovers’ pizza and anything you find in a vending machine.)
“Don’t you know what it’s like?” Kacy asks. “Aren’t you Leslee’s masseuse?”
“Was,” Avalon says. She pops open a Gripah, which is Cisco Brewers’ idea of a breakfast beer. Kacy helps herself to one as well and tries not to let her mind wander to the NICU, to all the preemies fighting for their lives while Kacy is in the sun drinking before noon. “She called me to do an at-home massage, but I said no.”
“I thought you did at-home massages all the time,” Kacy says.
“Oh, I do!” Avalon says. “But the Richardsons give me the creeps. This one night, Eric and I were at the Box and Leslee Richardson started grinding with me, and then in the ladies’ room she asked if Eric and I wanted to come back to their hotel room.”
“Whoa!” Kacy says. Eric is standing at the ship’s wheel, his expression inscrutable behind his wraparound sunglasses. Eric is cut from the same cloth as their father—he’s a man of few words, but steady, straight, and true. “You mean to tell me you aren’t the swinging type, E?”
“That,” Eric says, “I am not.” They cruise out of the harbor, and he cranks up the horsepower. “Billy told me the stripers are biting over by Tuckernuck, so that’s where we’re going. Not that either of you care.”
“So anyway,” Avalon says, licking nuclear-orange cheese dust off her fingers, “that’s why I won’t work on her.”
“Wow,” Kacy says. These are the first negative words she’s heard about the Richardsons. Everyone else on the island is hopelessly in love with them.
Lamont appears on the deck of Hedonism. He waves at Coco on the shore and calls, “What’s good?”
“I have the afternoon off,” Coco says. “Finally.”
Lamont gives her a thumbs-up. Oh, come on, Coco thinks. Don’t make me beg. Coco has learned that Lamont gets paid regardless of whether the Richardsons use the boats. Lamont keeps them clean and maintained and performs safety and equipment checks. When all that is finished, he’s allowed to do whatever he wants.
He disappears below deck. She must have misread what happened when they were skinny-dipping; he’d been drinking, it was just horsing around. She heads back up to the house thinking she’ll drive Baby out to one of the ocean beaches, Cisco or Surfside. But then she hears the putter of a motor and she turns to see Lamont coming to shore in the dinghy.
Coco squints at him. “Do you want to hang?”
He moves his Wayfarers to the top of his head so Coco can see his eyes—brown with flashes of copper. “Didn’t Leslee tell you the rule? We aren’t allowed to date.”
“But we’re allowed to be friends,” she says.
Lamont eyes the house. “Where are…”
“Leslee went to play pickleball and Bull is in his office, working. Bull gave me the rest of the day off. He said they’re going for dinner at the Field and Oar tonight.”
“Leslee will be home between pickleball and dinner?”
“I mean, yeah, but I doubt they’ll need the boats.”
Lamont checks his phone. “I’ll take you out,” he says. “But this has to stay under the radar. I have a very sweet situation here and I don’t want to jeopardize it.”
“I feel exactly the same way.”
He still seems hesitant, and Coco thinks about how she’s never been with anyone she would describe as principled. It’s sexy.
She crosses her heart, locks her lips, tosses an invisible key over her shoulder. Finally, he smiles. “Do you want to sail or speed?” he asks.
“Speed,” she says.
Blond Sharon waits on the town dock, smoothing her blue eyelet cover-up from Cartolina and adjusting her straw hat. She checks her phone: 12:28. Her heart is bouncing around in her chest like a hyper child on a trampoline. She ended up dashing off a quick email to Lucky Zambrano: I’m sorry I have to miss class this week. Unexpected plot twist.
I have a date! she thinks.
At that second, she sees a boat approaching. Yes, it’s a Grady-White with a cute bimini top over the back. Romeo is behind the wheel, shirtless, in a pair of striped board shorts. Gah!