“I can’t believe my luck,” Potter says. “I thought about stopping by at the inn when I got on island, but since you never sent my hat, I figured you’d forgotten about me.”
Ava gasps. “I never sent your hat!” She had gotten home from Anguilla and was sucked right back into her real life—Scott/Nathaniel/Nathaniel/Scott—and whatever flirtation she’d engaged in on the vacation evaporated. She had thought of Potter fleetingly a couple of times, but not long enough to remember that she owed him a hat.
Margaret and Drake cut the cake at eight o’clock and by eight thirty, they’re walking hand in hand over the path to where a dune buggy awaits to take them to an undisclosed location for the night.
Potter looks at Ava. “Are we going home, or are we going out?”
“Out,” she says, surprising herself. “Let’s go out.”
Kevin and Isabelle take Genevieve home, and Zack and Shelby do the same with Xavier. Mitzi and Kelley take Paddy’s three boys and they invite George and Mary Rose to join them for a nightcap back at the inn.
“Who’s the woman in the hat?” Potter asks Ava.
“Mary Rose,” Ava says. “George’s girlfriend.”
“And who is George?” Potter asks.
“He’s…” Ava isn’t sure how to explain. “He’s our Santa Claus at the inn every year.”
“Ohhh… kay,” Potter says.
Margaret’s assistant, Darcy, and Drake’s nephew, Liam, are young enough that they want to go to Straight Wharf, but Ava is dressed in a silk sheath and all she can picture is someone spilling a Goombay Smash down the front of it. She lobbies for someplace more adult. She and Potter and Patrick and Jennifer decide to go to the Summer House in Sconset. The Summer House has an old-time-Nantucket feel that Ava loves. There’s a piano player and a log burning in the fireplace and exposed beams and overstuffed chairs.
“I never do this,” Ava says once she settles down to order, “but I’ll have a martini. Dirty.”
“Me too!” Jennifer says, and Ava laughs. She has noticed a huge change in Jennifer since Paddy’s been back. She is joyous; she is loose.
After the first martini, which goes down way too easily, Ava and Jennifer excuse themselves and head to the ladies’ room.
Immediately, Jennifer grabs Ava’s arm. “I love him!” she says.
“Who?” Ava says.
“Potter!” Jennifer says. “He’s the best! He’s so smart! He’s an academic, but he’s not stuffy. He’s funny. And he’s worldly! He’s been everywhere on that sailboat. And he has emotional depth. That story about losing his parents and being raised by his grandparents had me in tears. He loves his grandfather.”
“Gibby,” Ava says. Potter has mentioned Gibby twice that evening. Apparently, Gibby isn’t doing well, and Potter is worried about him. It does give him soul, Ava thinks, the way he is so attached to his grandparents, sailing around in a sloop named after his grandmother. And he is smart, intellectual even—but without making Ava feel stupid. “I don’t know. When I met him, I thought he was too good-looking.”
“So you’re not going to date him because he’s too good-looking?” Jennifer says. “He is so into you! You should have seen the way he watched you when you walked down the aisle.”
Ava blushes. She did catch his eye for an instant, almost by accident.
“You should marry Potter,” Jennifer declares.
They’ve just come from a wedding, so obviously marriage is on everyone’s mind, but for some reason, Jennifer’s comment hits Ava the wrong way. It might be the vodka, or it might be the fact that, right after he delivered Margaret to the altar, Kelley sat down next to Ava and whispered, “I can’t wait to walk you down the aisle.”
Honestly! Ava thinks. It’s as if Ava won’t count as a person until she has settled down with a husband!
“I’m not marrying Potter Lyons,” Ava says to her sister-in-law. “I’m not marrying anybody.”
From the Summer House, they take a taxi to the Bar, where Maxxtone is playing. It’s Scott’s favorite band, but Ava tries not to dwell on this as they walk in. They are able to sidle in through the back door, avoiding the long line, because Kevin managed the Bar for almost a decade.
“Wow,” Potter says. “In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never been able to pull this off.”
Patrick slaps Potter on the back. While Ava and Jennifer were in the bathroom at the Summer House, Patrick and Potter found they had half a million friends and acquaintances in common, the most amazing discovery being that Potter was a fraternity brother of Patrick’s boss, Great Guy Gary Grimstead. And Potter has sailed with guys who went to Columbia Business School with Patrick. Ava begins to see Potter as just another version of her older brother, but then Potter takes her hand as he leads her through the crowd at the Bar. It’s the first time he’s touched her all evening, and although the circumstances couldn’t be more different, Ava has an instant sense memory of walking along the sand in Anguilla and the three kisses on the beached Sunfish. Potter must be having the exact same memories because he stops and pulls Ava close to him. He takes her face in his hands and he bends down to kiss her. It’s wonderful. They are surrounded on all sides by people drinking and laughing. The Bar is pulsing with live music, and Ava feels young and wild for a second. It’s late, she’s drunk, and she’s kissing a near-perfect stranger. It’s been a while since she has experienced this particular trifecta.
Potter stops kissing her as Patrick approaches with their beers.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he says.
Ava accepts her beer. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a guy sitting at the bar who looks like Scott.
Is it Scott? His shoulders are hunched and he appears to be holding his head off the bar with his palm. His eyes are at half-mast. In front of him is a highball glass of brown liquid. Ava blinks; she doesn’t trust her eyes. Could that be Scott, visibly drunk and looking like Eeyore with a whiskey in front of him? She has never known Scott to drink whiskey. He’s a three-beers-and-done man.
It’s not Scott, she tells herself. And even if it were Scott, they’ve ended the relationship cold turkey, and so it’s not as though she can go up and say hello. Nope, even that is off-limits. But it can’t be Scott, because what would Scott be doing at the Bar at midnight when Roxanne is at home, pregnant with their child?
“Do you know the guy in the green shirt?” Potter asks. “He’s staring at you.”
“Kiss me again,” Ava says.
Potter doesn’t have to be asked twice.
Ava breaks away, breathless. “Let’s go dance,” she says.
GEORGE
When Mitzi told George that Margaret Quinn’s boss was married to the editor of Vogue and that both would be attending the wedding, he knew he had to RSVP yes, despite Mary Rose’s objections.
“I feel funny,” Mary Rose had said when the invitation arrived. “This is the wedding of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s husband’s ex-wife, who also happens to be Margaret Quinn. Do I belong?”
George had wondered himself at the source of the invitation. After much pondering, he decided Mitzi had been behind it. The invitation was a peace offering and to turn away an olive branch would mean twenty years of bad luck. They were all adults. George and Mitzi had conducted an affair every Christmas for twelve years, but when they tried to make their relationship work full-time, it had fallen apart. In a way, George’s failings with Mitzi were what had led her back to Kelley. Plus, he could say that he was one of very few non–family members to attend Margaret Quinn’s wedding.
Yes, they had to go. And George would design Mary Rose the hat of a lifetime.
They wouldn’t stay at the inn, George decided. That would be too awkward, returning to the lodging and possibly even the room where Mitzi had secretly come to visit him for so many years. Instead, George booked a room at the Castle, down the street. The Castle had a large, brand-new fitness center, which was a bonus, as both George and Mary Rose have been on a health kick since the first of the year. George has lost nearly thirty pounds. By Christmas, he hopes to be a very skinny Santa indeed.