Page 2 of Rock Candy

“Yes. Fine.” Nat sighed.

“Now.” Carter smirked. “Talk to me about dinner.”

We wentto a tiny dive bar in Edgartown and sat in a booth in the corner. Apparently post spats, Alice and Natalie liked to drink beers and eat fries. The place was as you’d expect with a lot of wood and brass and photos of famous people who passed through, but the walls were also covered with signed music posters—both small and big acts—who had played live on the tiny stage in the back of the room. Towns like Martha’s Vineyard where rich people liked to congregate, were weird places because if you had the clout to be there, you could be in the shittiest shithole and still you might just find yourself sitting next to a Grammy winner or the guy who invented Google.

But sitting there with Alice, Natalie, and Carter, I might have been next to the Queen of England and I wouldn’t have known it because the place was busting with people. The whole town was overrun because the Martha’s Vineyard Music Festival started in the morning. It wasn’t the world’s most well-known festival, but it was a festival that Alice had strong ties to so she was able to get me a set playing for a band whose guitarist was retiring, and she thought it would be a great place for me to make connections. So that was the deal. A long weekend in Martha’s Vineyard, networking.

I was not a networker.

I was a musician. I liked to spend hours tuning my guitar and jotting down lyrics. I liked small dinner parties with people I knew well, who didn’t care if I said anything. I liked one-on-one connections about real things. It wasn’t that I didn’t have things to say. I did. But mostly, I liked other people to sing them. Big groups and strangers made me wary. Talking about myself made me anxious. Pleasantries made me uncomfortable. Ideally, I’d just skip all that and jump right into the deep end. Put me on a mountaintop with a guitar and an endless jar of peanut butter and I’d probably be good for life. But you know, I tried to adult like a normal person. So, as practice for the next few days, I found myself asking Carter and Natalie about their lives.

I had to raise my voice because the bar was loud. “How did you two meet?” I asked.

Natalie’s eyes twinkled when she said, “I don’t remember not knowing Carter, really. When you’re born on this island, you just kind of always know each other, but we were bitter enemies most of those years.”

“You make it sound like we were warring factions,” Carter said and then took a sip from his icy-looking pint glass.

“Oh, you were,” Alice joked. She turned to me. “They were one of those hate me because you love me couples.”

“Is that really a thing?” I scrunched my nose, not liking the idea at all.

“Trust me, it’s a thing,” Carter and Natalie said in unison.

I shrugged. “Okay, so how did you get past the hate thing?”

Alice answered again. “I invited Carter to stay at our house.” I laughed, suddenly understanding a lot more about the spat earlier in the evening. Alice added, “Proximity. The magic cure-all for schmucks who can’t see what’s right in front of them.”

“That’s right, Alice.” Natalie shook her head, and her voice was laced with sarcasm when she said, “You solve all the problems.”

Carter leaned back and put his arm around Natale before saying, “Arguably, she solves a lot of them.”

Alice smiled, and winking at her best friend, she admitted, “Nat solves the rest.”

“Sure does,” Carter said. Natalie blushed. She was an odd duck. Somehow commanding and forceful and still shy and humble. I’d never encountered that combo in a single person before.

“And so, now you’re engaged?” I asked. “Is that a cute story?”

Carter grinned. “She asked me.”

His happiness was infectious. I found myself grinning back at him when I said, “Oh yeah?”

“It was totally out of character.” He leaned in toward me, taking on the role of storyteller. Next to him Natalie seemed to blush more and her embarrassment literally made her cover her face with her hands. “I’m sure you’ve already noticed that my girl plans everything.”

I nodded.

“So, I know I want to marry her, right? But I’m trying desperately to figure out how to plan a perfect engagement for the girl who likes plans, and more specifically she likes to plan the plan. Not into surprises at all. Right?”

Natalie was still hiding her face. Alice reached across the table and pulled her hands down. Sweetly, she says, “Come on, Nat. Stop hiding. You love this story.”

Natalie looked adoringly at Carter and said, “I love this man.”

Carter pulled her into his armpit and kissed her forehead before going on. “So anyway. I’m stumped. The only thing I’ve thought to do is get a label maker and put a label on the ring box that says engagement ring because as you’ll figure out over the course of the weekend, Nat labels all things, and since I’m a giant dork, I think that this label I’ve made is hilarious.”

Natalie interrupted him and said to me, “I found it. We share a closet.” She looked up at him all glowy. “Sometimes I think he wanted me to.”

“I swear, I didn’t,” he said, more to her than to me. Then, definitely to me, he said, “She finds the thing in the closet and she’s in her bathrobe for Christ’s sake, but rather than pretend she doesn’t know or wait for my plan, she takes action. None the wiser, I'm standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth and in she comes with the damn label maker.”

“His mouth was all filled with toothpaste.” Natalie laughed.

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