Page 12 of The Note

“Gross,” Kelsey said. “You did not just call my brother a piece of strange.”

“Technically a stepbrother,” Lauren said. “Come on, you’ve never noticed that Nate is fine?”

“I’m going to jump off this deck into the ocean if you don’t stop talking about him like that,” Kelsey said. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?”

“So apparently incest jokes are a step too far, even for you. Duly noted. I’ll confess though, I’m surprised, May, that you didn’t get back with Nate after he moved to New York. I really did think the two of you might go the distance.”

“Really?” May asked. “A lawyer and an actor?”

“You weren’t a lawyer when you first dated. Youwere a brilliant pianist with a big, bright, bookish brain. And Nate loved the theater but wanted to be a successful real estate developer like his dad.”

“Stepdad, as my father has made it all too clear,” Kelsey corrected, her voice suddenly sharp. May knew how wrecked Kelsey was after her father’s divorce from Nate’s mother broke apart the only family she’d really known after her own mother died, but she always seemed reluctant to talk about the details of the split. Yet the children, through their own commitment, remained siblings for all practical purposes.

“Plus you had little Miss Kelsey over here playing matchmaker,” Lauren said. “She told me so many times how perfect it would be if you ended up being her sister-in-law. You and Nate just seemed to make a lot of sense. And did I mention that the man is fine AF?”

May couldn’t argue with that last part. Nate was and apparently always would be the best-looking guy she had ever dated. And it wasn’t only his looks that were a draw. He was smart and funny and confident. Josh was also all those things, but Josh was a nerd like May. Nate was most definitely not a nerd. He was a cool guy. He had what the kids these days calledrizz. Serious charisma. The way Kelsey could make men stupid? Nate had that effect on women—at least in May’s experience.

“In theory,” she said, “but it obviously wasn’t meant to be. And it’s definitely not going tohappen now. Josh is the one for me. From the first day I met him, we just … clicked.” Her own words surprised her as they came tumbling out. It had been so much bumpier and complicated than that.

“Vomit,” Kelsey said, a sly smile creeping across her face.

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Lauren said, placing a gentle hand on May’s forearm. “But is it okay for us to hate you a little bit for that?”

“Only a little,” May said.

The truth was that it took the lockdown—and multiple lectures from May’s mother—for May to realize she’d be crazy to risk losing a guy as nice as Josh, all because she still wasn’t sure she was ready for such a serious commitment. Josh was solid. He had a good job. He was kind and reliable and loyal. And he adored her. She finally said yes, not just to Josh’s proposal, but to a Fordham law professor’s invitation to apply for a tenure-track faculty position. Apparently they were looking to expand their pool of candidates beyond the usual path that lawyers followed into academia. She went from having a stressful, exciting job and relatively messy relationships to having the rest of her life suddenly all planned at once.

She had no idea why she had poured it on so thick about being certain about Josh from day one. Anything for Lauren to stop talking about how Nate had seemed to be a perfect match forher. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t, but she hated even thinking about the way she had been with him.

Kelsey’s eyes widened as the waitress arrived with a tray containing three gigantic martini glasses filled so high that it took an expert hand to place them on the table without spilling. Kelsey held her phone high above the round of drinks to get a photo.

May leaned forward to take an initial sip before daring to lift the glass. She knew the dangerous mix of sweetened caffeine and alcohol would mean rolling into a new level of intoxication, but she didn’t want to be the one to kill the party, and Kelsey had already promised before they ordered a bottle of wine with dinner that they’d take an Uber home.

“Kelsey, I hope you don’t mind, but can you please not tag me in any posts? I don’t need my 1Ls finding pictures of me getting hammered in Montauk with my besties.”

“As if you need to ask me—of all people—to keep a photo private,” Kelsey said.

May found herself straining to hear Kelsey over the sound of their fellow diners. Were they actually getting louder as the night progressed, or had May reached her limit for being out in public?

“I hardly even remember to take pictures anymore,” May said, forcing herself to focus on their conversation rather than drawing inward the wayshe tended to do at the end of a busy day. “Once I stepped back from social media, I fell out of the habit. Like, what do you even do with a photo if you’re never going to share it?”

Kelsey tucked her phone into her bag. “I still like to have them for my own personal memories. And I meant it about making some kind of scrapbook for all of us—and just us, I promise.”

“I told Josh I wanted to ask all of our friends not to take pictures at the wedding—or at least not to tag us in their posts—but he said he thought it would be rude.”

Lauren’s vicious side-eye made her exasperation clear. “Maybe Josh should let you decide for yourself what you can and want to expect from the friends you choose to share your wedding day with.” Lauren had only met Josh twice, so May didn’t think her distaste for him was personal. Lauren simply didn’t believe in shaping her life around a man’s expectations. She had never said directly that she disapproved of May’s decision to get married, but she didn’t hold her tongue when she thought May was compromising too much of herself in order to please Josh—or anyone else for that matter.

“I told him I thought he was being pretty judgy for shutting me down so quickly, but he said he really didn’t think I even needed to worry anymore. Everything has blown over by now. The guy from the subway didn’t get charged for assault,and I didn’t get charged for filing a false report.” May knew the man’s name, of course—Darren Foster—but rarely used it. She wished it were possible, in fact, never to think about him. If she could undergo a lobotomy to forget that day on the subway platform in its entirety, she’d happily sign the waiver forms. “Now I’m just some boring law professor no one needs to talk about anymore, as long as I don’t write any more viral op-eds.”

“Wish I could say the same thing,” Kelsey muttered.

May cringed inwardly when she realized how self-pitying she had sounded. She had been able to move on from her “incident,” while Kelsey’s situation would never change as long as Luke’s murder remained unsolved. She was wondering how she might apologize when she saw Kelsey searching for the waitress again, her martini nearly gone. This time, she ordered a cosmopolitan. Lauren and May shook their heads, gesturing toward their relatively full glasses. “Don’t listen to them,” Kelsey told the waitress. “Three cosmos. They’re getting drunk and they love it. And no, we’re not driving.”

The waitress stared at May and Lauren, expecting an objection, then left when they did not argue.

Kelsey had always been a bigger partier than May. Even on their Zooms, May had noticed that Kelsey would be making a second drink—a cocktail, not wine—while she and Lauren were still working on their first glass of sauvignon blanc. But what she was doing tonight felt more like self-medication than recreational drinking. May was beginning to wonder if Kelsey was forcing herself to seem fun and carefree, just for their sakes.

When the drinks arrived, Kelsey told them that they at least had to have one sip with her. When they did have an obligatory taste, Kelsey let out a satisfied sigh. “Bless, that tastes exactly like the early aughts,” she said. “And sorry, Lauren, it totally brings back the memory of that night when we thought you just might murder us. You were so pissed. It was honestly terrifying.”

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