Page 64 of The Identicals
“That was a friend of yours out there?” Caylee asks, spearing half a strawberry.
“My old boyfriend. He dates Candace now, the redhead who came into the shop during the party.”
“How long did you go out with him?” Caylee asks.
“All of last year,” Ainsley says. “He was new. I made friends with him on the first day of school, and by the end of the week he was my boyfriend.” It seems like a lifetime ago, but Ainsley can remember how jumped up they had all been bya new boy in their grade. Ainsley, Emma, Maggie, probably even Candace—all of them had been excited, and who can blame them? They had all been swimming circles in the cloudy fishbowl that is the Nantucket Public Schools since kindergarten. Over the years they had seen kids come and go, but mostly go. Danny Dalrymple and Charlotte Budd went to boarding school, and Saber Podwats’s parents moved to Swampscott because they couldn’t afford to live on Nantucket anymore.
Emma had seen Teddy first because they had both driven to school and been assigned spots near each other in the parking lot.
Prepare to be disappointed,Emma had texted.He looks like a refugee from the dipshit rodeo #everythingbutthespurs.
As luck would have it, Teddy had been assigned to Ainsley’s first-block English class, and before Mr. Duncombe had given them their permanent seats, Teddy had chosen the chair next to Ainsley’s. He had been wearing Wrangler jeans, a flannel shirt over a plain white undershirt, cowboy boots, and a cross on a leather strap around his neck.
Everything but the spurs,Ainsley thought.Dipshit rodeo.But Teddy wasn’t ugly—far from it. He had auburn hair, freckles across his nose, strong shoulders, long legs. The outfit was off-putting, but Ainsley knew better than anyone that new clothes were an easy fix. Put this kid in a Force Five T-shirt and madras shorts and a pair of Reefs, and he would be hot.
He had his jaw set, his green eyes focused forward on the whiteboard, which was blank except for Mr. Duncombe’s name and e-mail address. Ainsley remembered the stories she had heard—father dead, mother suicidal then hospitalized, kid shipped two-thirds of the way across the country then thirty miles out to sea. He probably felt like a long-horned steer dropped into a tank of killer whales.
Ainsley tapped the edge of his desk to get his attention. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Ainsley Cruise. Welcome to Nantucket High School.”
He had given her a slow cowboy smile, filled with relief and gratitude. “Thank you,” he said.
That first week, Ainsley had made welcoming Teddy Elquot her personal mission. She showed him where the wood shop was, she invited him to sit with her in the cafeteria, she introduced him to BC and Maxx Cunningham and Kalik and D-Ray and the other jocks and insisted they be nice to him.
Emma was as skeptical and crude as ever, joking that Ainsley was working off her mandatory community-service hours by being nice to Sheriff Woody Pride. Either that or she was hoping to finally lose her virginity, and wasn’t it common knowledge that ranch hands were well hung?
Ainsley ignored Emma’s comments—to defend him would only fuel Emma’s fire—and she found that she really liked Teddy. The first days of school were still warm, and Teddy had use of his uncle’s truck, so Ainsley showed him a different beach each day. By Friday, out on Smith’s Point, with the coastline of Tuckernuck close enough for Teddy to throw a baseball at, Ainsley persuaded him to take off his boots and his Wrangler jeans and go for a swim. He had hooted with fear and the cold—although in early September the water was as warm as it got all year—and admitted it was his first time in the ocean.
They sat on a beach towel together afterward, Teddy basking in the late afternoon sun, and he started telling Ainsley things: his father was a hero, a first responder to a huge industrial fire. He had died instantly in a chemical blast. His mother hadn’t been particularly stable before the accident, but afterward she lost her mind.
She locked herself in her bedroom for days,Teddy said.She didn’t cook, didn’t shop, didn’t shower. I finally called nine one one myself. Once my mother had been committed, my father’s younger brother reached out. Uncle Graham. He saved me from foster care.
Uncle Graham was cool, but Teddy wasn’t sure about Nantucket.
It’s cold-hearted here,Teddy said.Yankee.
At home in Oklahoma, he said, there was plentiful sunshine, football, open space—long highways, thousand-acre farms, ten-thousand-acre ranches—barbecue, and good music.
What do you consider good music?Ainsley asked.
He had played her a song called “Head Over Boots” by Jon Pardi, and as the song was ending and the sun setting, he’d kissed her.
They became boyfriend and girlfriend. Ainsley bought him a couple of sweaters from J.Crew and some long-sleeved T-shirts, a pair of new jeans. He traded in his boots for Nikes. Emma allowed him to sit at their lunch table, but she did not fully embrace him. She called him Woody to his face and imitated his accent. Ainsley knew that Emma was jealous, but she couldn’t figure out if Emma wanted Teddy for her own or if she didn’t like losing Ainsley’s time and attention.
Ainsley told Teddy things she had never been comfortable sharing with anyone else—about her parents, their split, her father moving off island and starting a new family, effectively leaving Ainsley to be ruled by a two-woman dictatorship. Ainsley even told Teddy about her brother, Julian, who had been born premature and had, one night, simply stopped breathing, leaving Tabitha an emotional cripple.
Ainsley and Teddy didn’t have sex until Thanksgiving. Ainsley had enjoyed dinner with her mother and grandmother at Ramsay’s house with Ramsay’s family. Tabitha had been in one of her rare happy-drunk moods, taking Ainsley’s face into her hands and calling her honey bear and honey pear. She had been slurring her words, and Ainsley was anxious to get to the driveway, where Teddy idled in Uncle Graham’s truck. Teddy and Uncle Graham had gone to the Faregrounds for their Thanksgiving dinner—full-plate turkey and all the trimmings for $19.95, with seconds and thirds included—but now Graham was drinking with his scalloping buddies at the bar, and Teddy had the truck and no curfew.
They had gone to the carriage house and done it in Ainsley’s bed. It had hurt a little, but the hurt paled to how wonderful it felt to be that close to Teddy.
All these memories zip through Ainsley’s mind as she stares at her fruit salad. She looks up at Caylee, who is mixing dried cherries into her overnight oatmeal with the intensity of a chemist seeking the Nobel Prize. Caylee, she has noticed, isn’t afraid of food. Sherelisheseating, yet she remains slender. Such a thing is also possible, like being cool and going to church.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Ainsley says.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving your scone unprotected,” Caylee says. She grins. “Kidding. Go.”
Ainsley wanders out to the lobby of the inn, looking for Teddy. There is a stunning young woman with thick dark hair and olive skin and a beauty mark working at the front desk, and Ainsley feels a stab of jealousy. Maybe Teddy has left Candace. Maybe he’s dating this young woman now, or maybe he’s having an affair with one of the older, attractive divorcées staying at the hotel alone. For someone like Teddy, Ainsley supposes, the possibilities are endless.
Beauty Mark looks up from her computer terminal. “Can I help you?” she asks.
