Page 75 of Swan Song

“I’ll get beers,” Coco says, and she dives straight into the crush at the bar.

Kacy heads over to the pool tables, where it’s less crowded, and rereads Isla’s text. There’s something going on with Dave.

It sounds like Isla wants Kacy to give her relationship advice. How unfair is that? Kacy would like to respond: I don’t care about Dave! She wants to say: If you’d just left Dave like you said you would, you would be here at the Box with me! Any issues that Isla has with Rondo are her own problems.

Kacy knows she should continue to wear Isla down with silence, but she’s had just enough to drink that she decides to throw gasoline on the fire instead. She texts Isla three pictures: one of her and Coco at the Oystercatcher, one from Cru, one from Stubbys. She captions this with the two-girls-with-heart emoji and then four dots meaning “end of discussion.”

Coco brings back four Coronas—two for her and two for Kacy—and they enter the fray to dance to “The Sign” by Ace of Base. It couldn’t get any cheesier, but Coco seems to love it. A super-hottie breaks into their bubble. It’s Shawn from Cru! Coco hugs him like they’re long-lost lovers and she turns to Kacy. “Take our picture!”

Kacy snaps a bunch of photos, thinking that Coco is the happiest drunk she’s ever seen. Kacy would like to be a happy drunk too, but she’s too preoccupied with waiting for Isla’s response. It’s midnight here, only nine on the West Coast; Isla is definitely still awake.

“Text me those pics,” Coco says as she spills beer down the front of her white eyelet dress. Kacy notices one of Coco’s sandals is missing. Coco has peaked; now she’s on the downslide and getting sloppy. Kacy should get them both into a cab. Shawn is draped over Coco like a fur coat. In her mental crystal ball, Kacy sees Coco going home with Shawn and having forgettable, regrettable sex.

Kacy hears someone calling her name. She peers into the crowd and sees her brother and Avalon. Oh my god, she thinks. The Chicken Box really is the center of the Nantucket-verse.

Kacy tries to make her way to Eric and Avalon, but Coco yanks on her arm, saying, “Text me the pics!”

“I will when we get home,” Kacy says, but Coco plucks Kacy’s phone out of her back pocket. “I’ll just send them to myself real quick.”

Fine, Kacy thinks, hoping Coco doesn’t drop her phone onto the beer-sticky floor. When she finally gets to Eric, she says, “You have to help me get Coco out of here.” The band is now playing “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe and people are going bonkers. In the midst of this chaos, Eric is a stanchion, a pillar; he is the image of their father.

“We’re leaving anyway,” he says. “Avalon doesn’t feel well.”

Kacy turns around to find Coco, but she’s vanished into the crowd.

At first Coco isn’t sure what she’s seeing on the screen of Kacy’s phone. She forces herself to focus. There are texts sent to Isla—that’s the woman that Kacy broke up with back in San Francisco. In the stream are… pictures of Kacy and Coco. Coco scrolls back. So many pictures—three from tonight alone, plus one of the two of them on the Richardsons’ beach, one from the boat on the Fourth of July, one from the Pink and White Party, one from their trip to Great Point, a couple from their first lunch together at the Nantucket Pharmacy counter when they barely knew each other. Kacy has sent Isla literally all the pictures. Coco reads one of Isla’s responses. I’m sick with jealousy. Now I won’t sleep. Thanks.

Jealousy? Coco thinks. Kacy has been making it seem like she and Coco are… together?

No. Please, no. What can Coco think but that all this time, Kacy has been using her? Maybe since the moment they met in the line for the ferry. Is that why Kacy bought her a chowder? Because she thought Coco was pretty and looked vulnerable? Was their so-called friendship premeditated so Kacy could make Isla jealous and win her back?

Coco’s eyes sting. Lamont has left her, and now Kacy maybe isn’t her friend after all. Is this possible? Coco is sober enough to realize she’s drunk, drunk enough to let Kacy grab her by the arm and lead her through the crowd and out the door to the cool, fresh air of Dave Street.

Kacy waves over a cab. “Let’s get you home,” she says.

The morning after their big night out, Coco is so hungover that she messes up her errands. For the first time ever, she forgets to ask for the sourdough at Born and Bread to be sliced thin and by the time she realizes her mistake, it’s too late—she has to go to the back of the long line and order a second loaf. She puts regular unleaded instead of premium unleaded into Baby and she skips Nantucket Meat and Fish altogether because the idea of staring at raw salmon and halibut makes her want to puke.

When she turns into the driveway at Triple Eight, she notices a black Lincoln following her. Her first thought is that she’s in some kind of trouble, maybe for cutting off the chick in the Mini at the rotary. She pulls into the garage; the Lincoln heads straight to the front of the house. A uniformed driver gets out and opens the back door.

Bull climbs out. He’s home.

The Lincoln leaves; Coco hurries over. “You should have texted, I could’ve picked you up.”

Bull waves. “It’s fine, you have other things to take care of.” He strides past the garage to inspect the garden site. “Are you kidding me? This still isn’t finished?”

Coco winces. “No one has been here the entire time you’ve been gone.”

“I’m going to have to break some legs,” Bull says. He nods toward the house. “It’s good to be home.”

Coco wishes she’d known Bull was coming back today; she wouldn’t have blown off the fish market. She’ll unpack his bag, separate laundry from dry cleaning. He may want a bourbon; it’s only ten o’clock in the morning here, but on Bull’s clock, it’s ten o’clock at night.

When they step inside, he calls, “Leslee!”

“Oh,” Coco says, putting down the groceries. “She’s not here.”

“Pickleball?”

“No,” Coco says. She focuses on the arrangement of lilies on the pedestal table in the foyer. Leslee has instructed Coco to remove all the pollen from the stamens with a wet paper towel, but one of the lilies has just opened; Coco will have to take care of that. Her head is as heavy as a bowling ball. She woke up in her own bed that morning but she has no recollection of getting home. When she checked her phone, she saw pictures of her and the bartender from Cru, whose name she’s forgotten, sent from Kacy’s phone. “She’s… well, she and Lamont sailed over to Martha’s Vineyard.”

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