I’ve already waited this long. What’s a few more minutes?
Undeterred by the vortex of wind ripping through the car, Sabrina repeats, “WYN. HOW’S WYN?”
Electrifying, though not necessarily in a good way? Sometimes nauseating? Occasionally devastating.
“GOOD, I THINK.” The I think part makes it feel less like a lie. He probably is good. The last time I saw him, he was virtually illuminated from within. Better than he had been in months.
Sabrina nods and cranks up the radio.
She shares the cottage, and its associated cars, with about twenty-five Armas cousins and siblings, but there’s a strict rule about returning the radio presets to her dad’s stations at the end of a stay, so our trips always begin with a burst of Ella Fitzgerald; Sammy Davis, Jr.; or one of their contemporaries. Today, Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind” carries us up the pine-dotted drive to where the cottage perches atop a rocky cliff.
It never gets any less impressive.
Not the sparkling water. Not the cliffs. Certainly not the cottage.
Really, it’s more like a mansion swallowed a cottage, and then wore its bonnet and imitated its voice in an unconvincing falsetto, Big Bad Wolf–style. At some point, probably closer to the year 1900 than to now, it was a family home. That part of it still stands. But behind it, and on either side of it, the expansions stretch out, their exteriors perfectly matched to the original building.
Off to one side there’s a four-car garage, and across the creek on the other, a guesthouse sits tucked among the moss, ferns, and salt-gnarled trees.
The car glides right past the garage, and Sabrina cuts the engine in front of the front door.
Nostalgia, warmth, and happiness rush over me.
“Remember the first time you brought me and Cleo here?” I ask. “That guy Brayden had ghosted me, and you and Cleo made a PowerPoint about his worst qualities.”
“Brayden?” She unbuckles her seat belt and hops out of the car. “Are you talking about Bryant?”
I peel my thighs off the hot leather and climb out after her. “His name was Bryant?”
“You were convinced you were going to marry Bryant,” Sabrina says, delighted. “Now you don’t even remember the poor guy’s name.”
“It was a powerful PowerPoint,” I say, wrestling my bag out of the back seat.
“Yeah, or it could have something to do with one Ms. Cleo James giving us free psychotherapy that whole week. My dad had just gotten engaged to Wife Number Three before we took that trip, remember?”
“Oh, right,” I say. “She was the one with all the dogs.”
“That was Number Two,” Sabrina says. “And to be fair, she didn’t have them all simultaneously. More like she had a revolving door that magically brought new designer puppies in as it swept her adult dogs straight back to the pound.”
I shudder. “So creepy.”
“She was, but at least I won the cousins’ divorce betting pool that year. That’s how I scored access to the cottage during Lobster Fest. Cousin Frankie’s loss was our gain.”
I clasp my hands together in a silent prayer of thanks. “Cousin Frankie, wherever you may be, we thank you for your sacrifice.”
“Don’t waste your gratitude. I think he lives on a catamaran in Ibiza these days.” Sabrina yanks my bag free from the crook of my elbow, taking my hand to haul me up to the front door. “Come on. Everyone’s waiting.”
“I’m last?” I say.
“Parth and I got in last night,” she says. “Cleo and Kimmy drove up this morning. We’ve all been sitting on our hands and vibrating, waiting for you to get here.”
“Wow,” I say, “things descended into orgy territory pretty quickly.”
Another Trademark Sabrina Laugh. She jiggles the doorknob. “I guess I should’ve specified we were all sitting on our own hands.”
“Now, that changes things considerably,” I say.
She cracks open the door and grins at me.
“Why are you looking at me expectantly?” I ask.
“I’m not,” she says.
I narrow my eyes. “Aren’t lawyers supposed to be good at lying?”
“Objection!” she says. “Speculative.”
“Why aren’t we going inside, Sabrina?”
Wordlessly, she nudges the door wider and gestures me through.
“Okaayyyy.” I creep past her. In the cool foyer, I’m hit with the smell of summer: dusty shelves, sun-warmed verbena, sunblock, the kind of salty damp that gets into the bones of old Maine houses and never quite dries out again.
From the end of the first-floor hallway, back in the open kitchen–slash–living room （part of the extension, of course）， I hear Cleo’s soft timbre followed by Parth’s low chuckle.
Sabrina kicks off her shoes and drops the keys on the console table, calling, “Here!”
Cleo’s girlfriend, Kimmy, comes bounding down the hall first, a blur of curves and strawberry blond hair. “Harryyyy!” she cries, her tattooed fingers grabbing for my face as she plants loud kisses on each of my cheeks. “Is it really you?” She shakes me by the shoulders. “Are my eyes deceiving me?”
“You’re probably confused because she got a new face on Etsy,” Sabrina tells her.
“Huh,” Kimmy says. “I was wondering what Danny DeVito was doing here.”
“That probably has more to do with the edibles,” I say.
Kimmy doesn’t cackle; she guffaws. Like every one of her laughs is Heimliched out of her. Like she’s constantly being caught off guard by her own joy. She’s the newest addition to our little unit by years, but it’s easy to forget she hasn’t been there since day one.
“I missed you so much,” I tell her, squeezing her wrists.
“Missed you more!” She claps her hands together, her red-gold bun wobbling like an overeager pom-pom. “Do you know?”
“Know what?”
She glances at Sabrina. “Does she know?”
“She does not.”
“Know what?” I repeat.
Sabrina threads an arm through mine. “About your surprise.” On my right, Kimmy catches my other elbow, and together, they perp-walk me down the hall.
“What surpri—”
I stop so hard and fast that my elbow hits Kimmy’s ribs. I only dimly register her grunt of pain. My senses are fully concerned with the man rising from the marble breakfast bar.
Dark blond hair, broad shoulders, a mouth improbably soft when compared to the hard lines that make up the rest of his face, and eyes that shine steel gray from afar but, I know from experience, are ringed in mossy green once you get up close.
Like, for example, when you’re tangled with him beneath a blush sheet, the diffused glow of your bedside lamp painting his skin gold and giving his whisper a texture.
His shoulders are relaxed, his face totally calm, like being in the same room as me is not the worst thing that could have possibly happened to either of us.
Meanwhile, I’m basically a walking, breathing bottle of soda into which a Mentos has been plopped, panic fizzing up, threatening to spew out between my cells.
Go to your happy place, Harriet, I think desperately, only to realize I’m literally in my happy place, and he. Is. Here.