But when they pull up to the cottage, Coop hears laughter and conversation coming from inside. He hears a woman who is not Leland. It sounds like…
Coop throws open the screen door and steps inside. Fray and Leland are sitting at the narrow harvest table with Stacey.
Stacey?
She stands up and smiles at him. She’s wearing a flowing white strapless dress and a pair of barely-there sandals. She’s every bit as captivating to Cooper as she was the first time he saw her in the basement of the Phi Gamma Delta house.
“Stace?” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve had a change of heart,” she says. “So if your offer still stands…？”
Coop sweeps her off the ground. He grins at his friends. “I’m getting married!” he says.
“For the last time,” Stacey says.
Jake
On Monday, Fray generously offers to fly Jake back to South Bend on his private jet.
“It’s on my way home,” he says. “It’s no problem to make a stop. I’ll have my pilot add it to the flight plan.”
Fray and Jake part ways with the others outside the terminal. Leland is heading to New York, Cooper and Stacey back to DC. Jake gives Coop and Stacey each a hug as Fray and Leland share a very long kiss goodbye.
“Wow,” Stacey says, elbowing Coop. “Why don’t you ever kiss me that way?”
“I do!” Coop says and he pulls Stacey closer.
“Time for me to get out of here,” Jake says. He feels a lump rising in his throat as he recalls all the Labor Days that he kissed Mallory goodbye. No offense, but they put Fray and Leland to shame.
Jake has never flown private before. It isn’t something he’s ever aspired to, and even when Ursula was an arm’s length from the presidency, he never pictured himself aboard Air Force One.
Good thing.
Fray’s plane is a Gulfstream 550, which Jake understands is a big deal. The plane has a pilot, a co-pilot, and a bubbly flight attendant named Heather. After Fray and Jake take seats in the living area—they’re facing each other in buff leather chairs with a high-gloss table between them—Heather asks what they would like to drink.
Jake is about to ask Heather for a Bloody Mary—why not celebrate this crazy experience?—when she says, “We have Classic Black, the Platinum, and—” She pauses dramatically. “This jet is one of the few places in the world where you can get a bottomless cup of Frayed Edge Select Reserve.”
Coffee. She’s talking about coffee, of course.
“We’ll have two cups of the reserve, thanks, Heather,” Fray says. He looks at Jake. “Do you take anything in it?”
“Cream, two sugars.” As soon as the words are out, he wonders if Fray will disapprove. Maybe drinking the reserve with cream and sugar is like dropping an ice cube into a glass of Chateau Lafite.
Takeoff is smooth. Fray gazes out the window as Nantucket slips from view.
“Now that was a good weekend,” Fray says. “I had no idea that was how things would turn out.”
Heather appears with two mugs, the signature silver pot, and a pitcher of cream and tiny bowl of organic sugar cubes for Jake. She winks at Fray. “I saw you on Page Six, Mr. Dooley.”
“That was me with Leland!” he says. “I can’t wait to introduce you to her.”
“I’ve subscribed to Leland’s Letter for over ten years,” Heather says. “I didn’t know the two of you were friends.”
“It’s a long story,” Fray says. “Literally.”
Jake sips his coffee. It’s by far the best coffee he’s ever tasted.
Fray says, “Heather, would you pack up a couple pounds of the reserve for Jake to take home?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dooley.”
Once Heather leaves them, Jake says, “So will you and Leland continue to see each other? Aren’t you worried about the distance?”
“I’m going to New York next weekend,” Fray says. “I have a brownstone on East Third Street that I had renovated and I’ve never spent the night there. That’s about to change.”
A brownstone in the East Village that he’s never even slept in? It’s only sinking in now just how wealthy Fray is. This is his jet, those pilots are his pilots, Heather is his flight attendant. Whenever Jake has thought about Frazier Dooley in the past thirty years, his mind always conjured the angry young man who disappeared down the beach with a bottle of Jim Beam.
Now, he’s a billionaire who sells the world’s finest coffee in the coolest cafés in the country. Jake has heard that the flagship Frayed Edge café in Burlington, Vermont, has live music twenty-four hours a day. Billie Eilish has played there, Luke Combs, Ingrid Michaelson.