Page 9 of The Identicals
And then evenweirder—weird bordering on sorcery—Tabitha’s phone pings, and Tabitha (although knowing it’s rude to keep texting when she’s on a sort-of date but thinking it’s a response from Ainsley) checks her phone. It’s a text that is identified only asVineyard Haven, MA.It’s Harper.
“There someplace else you need to be?” Captain Peter asks.
“No,” Tabitha says. She tucks her phone into her clutch. She’ll read the text later.
Tabitha picked Nautilus because it’s a place she never went with Ramsay, and what she needs, more than anything, is a fresh start. She has heard only good things about the restaurant—artisanal cocktails, inventive food—and she has always wanted to try it, so why not tonight?
Nautilus is crowded, and the scene is young. Captain Peter hesitates before they enter. “You sure this is where you want to go?” He seems almost… intimidated, which is not an attractive trait. Tabitha feels her temperature being dialed down from lukewarm to cool. She nearly resorts to asking, “Well, where doyouwant to go?” But she doesn’t want to stand outside hemming and hawing, and she doesnotwant to end up at the Anglers’ Club.
“Yes,” she says, “here.” And she leads him inside.
The music is loud, and the twentysomethings and thirtysomethings are hooting and hollering and ordering drinks at the bar. Tabitha is still a thirtysomething, she reminds herself. She approaches the hostess. “Table for two?”
The hostess says, “Ninety-minute wait for a table. You’re welcome to try your luck at the bar.”
Tabitha strolls to the bar, holding her chin up, scanning for seats. There is one empty seat half hidden among a throng of people. Tabitha wiggles her way in and claims it; she sets her clutch confidently on the bar as if planting a flag and turns to see if Captain Peter has followed her. He has, but he looks miserable, as if she were leading him on a leash.
She beams at the bartender, determined to make this work. “Menu?” she says.
A menu appears. Tabitha peruses it. Normally she orders a vodka gimlet or a glass of rosé, but come to think of it, those are drinks that Ramsay introduced her to. Before Ramsay, she drank a Mount Gay and tonic if she wanted a cocktail, or red wine with dinner, because that was what Eleanor drank.
Tonight she will have something called the Nauti Dog. She hands the menu to Peter and points at the drink. “I’ll have one of these.”
He whistles. “Fifteen bucks?”
Tabitha closes her eyes, dialing down from cool to cold. She’s okay with the fact that Peter isn’t wealthy, but she can’t handle anyone who complains about the price of a drink.
Peter says, “I’ll just have a beer. A Cisco.” He hands the menu back to Tabitha.
Isshesupposed to order? she wonders. She is closer to the bar than Peter is, but Peter is the man. Peter invitedherfor drinks. She turns back to him. He raises his eyebrows expectantly, as if he has never seen her before, then says, “I’m going out front to have a cigarette. Be right back.”
A cigarette,Tabitha thinks. It’s the final nail in the coffin for this date. She gets the bartender’s attention—cute guy, bearded, smiley—and orders the drinks. When he brings them—the Nauti Dog a glorious deep red color, thanks to the Campari and the freshly squeezed grapefruit juice—Peter is still outside. Which leaves Tabitha to pay. She forks over twenty-five bucks. The bartender gives her change, and she says, “Keep it.”
“Thanks, bae,” he says, and he gives her another smile, looking into her eyes.
Bae,notma’am. She loves him for this. Could she date the bartender? Tabitha wonders as she takes a sip of her drink. Hemightbe thirty. Maybe. Is that too young? Tabitha tries to imagine Eleanor’s reaction when Tabitha announces she is dating a twenty-nine-year-old bartender from Nautilus. Tabitha would have to explain it for what it is: a rebound from Ramsay.
But no matter the circumstances, Tabitha doesn’t sleep with bartenders. Harper does.
Tabitha wonders about the text from Vineyard Haven. Tabitha and Harper have barely spoken since the horrible weeks following Julian’s death, fourteen years earlier.
Then Tabitha remembers the voice mail from five or six weeks back, also from Vineyard Haven. It was Harper, saying that their father, Billy, was having trouble with his kidneys and had to go to the hospital. Tabitha had meant to call Billy, but the news had come at a busy time—she was having the carpet in the boutique replaced and trying to finish up all the summer buying—and then Tabitha hadn’t heard anything else, so she’d assumed the problem had cleared up.
Tabitha is tempted to pull her phone out to see what Harper wants, but there is nothing more pathetic in the world, in Tabitha’s opinion, than a woman alone at a bar checking her phone.
She takes a long swill off her drink, and when the bartender swings back by, she says, “What’s your name?”
“Zack,” he says.
Zack: probably he’s younger than she thought. Zack is a name that became popular in the nineties.
She turns around to see what’s become of Captain Peter, but the crowd is thick and she can’t locate him in it. The couple next to Tabitha stands up, and Tabitha wonders if she should snag one of the stools for Captain Peter, but before she has a chance to do so, another couple sits down.
Tabitha blinks. It’s Ramsay and Caylee.
Ramsay grins. “What luck.”
Caylee swivels around. She smiles at Tabitha. “I’m sorry. Were you saving this seat for someone?”
