Page 77 of 28 Summers
Has Jake returned to Nantucket every year to…seeMallory?To…sleepwith her? That must be wrong. Jake has always been with Ursula. They have a child. Furthermore, Mallory has a child, Link, whose father is Fray.Thatdevelopment was bizarre enough. There is nothing going on with Jake and Mallory. Coop should go back and sit down. He should check that Fray’s best-man toast doesn’t make any references to Coop’s previous marriages.
But instead, Coop pushes into the men’s room.
Jake is at the sink, hands on either side of it, staring into the mirror. He looks…agitated.
“You okay, man?” Coop asks.
Jake straightens. “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s just…a lot.”
“What’s a lot?” Cooper asks.
“My life,” Jake says. “I don’t expect you to understand and I’m not going to bore you with the particulars.”
“Speaking of particulars—” Cooper stops himself. He can’t ask Jake about it. But then again, he can’tnotask. “Does Mallory let you use her cottage on Labor Day weekend? Do you go every summer? Labor Day weekend?”
“Didshetell you that?” Jake asks.
“No,” Cooper says. “Ursula said something. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
He and Jake stare at each other. Cooper finds he’s shaking. Jake is Cooper’srole modeland has been ever since Cooper picked him as a big brother in the fraternity so long ago. And Jake’s relationship with Ursula has been a paragon for Cooper; it’s what he’s been looking for all these years and what he has finally found with Tish. He doesn’t want to hear that it’s fatally flawed.
“No,” Jake says. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
Later, after the first dances and all the garter and bouquet nonsense—Mallory doesn’t catch the bouquet and Coop overhears Kitty scolding Mallory for not even trying—Cooper corners his sister at the bar. The band is playing “Rock Lobster,” and Tish and her bridesmaids are going nuts on the dance floor, so Coop has a minute.
“I want to bring Tish to Nantucket,” he says.
“You should,” Mallory says.
“What about Labor Day weekend?”
“Won’t you be in Italy?” she asks.
“We get back the twenty-eighth.”
“Don’t you have a job?” Mallory asks. Her voice is light. “You’re going on a two-week honeymoon, then you’re going to turn right around and come to Nantucket for the long weekend?”
Cooper shrugs. “Why not?”
“Doesn’tTishhave a job?” Mallory asks.
“Just answer the question, Mal,” Cooper says. “Can Tish and I come up to Nantucket for Labor Day weekend?”
Mallory takes a sip of her wine. Does she look guilty? Is she a homewrecker? A longtime serial homewrecker?
“Labor Day isn’t great for me,” she says.
“Really? How come?”
“Bunch of reasons,” she says. “I like to prep for my first week of school. And Link comes back from Fray’s on that Monday, so over the weekend I clean his room, wash his sheets, sort through his toys, that kind of thing. Any other weekend would work, though.”
“Sort through histoys?” Cooper says. “That’sthe excuse you’re handing me?”
Mallory bumps him with her shoulder. “Wait until you have kids,” she says. “Hey, best wedding so far.”
A week before Thanksgiving Jake calls Cooper and asks if he wants to meet for a beer at the Tombs. Cooper wants to meet Jake very badly—because his marriage to Tish is over. The third time wasnotthe charm; the third time was shorter than even the ill-fated first and second times. Cooper overheard Tish on the phone with her “family friend” Fred, who isnota family friend, it turns out, but an old boyfriend, and actually, not even anoldboyfriend—when Cooper checked Tish’s cell phone, he found sixty-eight calls between the two over a ten-day span. Tish cried and begged for forgiveness when he confronted her. It was only an “emotional affair,” she said. She’d never slept with Fred. Well, okay, she’d slept with Fred once, but it wasn’t memorable. Actually, a handful of times. She had slept with Fred a bunch of times, but she wasn’t in love with him. She was in love with him but he lived in San Francisco. She was moving to San Francisco; she had accepted a position at the de Young Museum.
Yes, Cooper wants to have a beer with his old friend Jake McCloud, but Cooper has a nagging suspicion that Jake and Mallory have some kind of arrangement, and, sorry, Cooper won’t collude. He isn’t able to cut Mallory out of his life, she’s hissister,but he can put his friendship with Jake on ice.
