The Sixth Wedding (28 Summers #1.5)(15)

He’s just about to head up over the dunes to the beach when he sees a woman walking a Bernese mountain dog, holding the dog’s leash in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She looks like a goddess from a Greek myth.

“Hey!” the woman calls out. Jake wonders if he’s trespassing.

When she gets a few steps closer, Jake sees that it’s Brooke. Her hair has been let out of its braid and it’s long and wavy under a navy-blue Nantucket Whalers baseball cap.

“Oh, hey,” Jake says. This is like magic, he thinks. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about Brooke the night before and again during his run. He had been looking forward to seeing her on Sunday and had even toyed with inviting her to the CFRF gala in Boston at the end of October as his guest. He’s not sure what he’s thinking; he lives in South Bend, Indiana, and has no plans to move to Nantucket. No, if he’d wanted to do that, he would have done it thirty years ago. He waves at Brooke and pushes himself to his feet. He’s so overheated, he’s seeing stars.

“This is Walter Cronkite,” Brooke says, and Jake laughs. “You can call him Walt.”

Jake spends a minute rubbing Walt’s head. He’s always wanted a Bernese mountain dog, but Ursula pointed out that they didn’t have time to take care of a pet. Jake thinks it’s telling that Brooke has the exact kind of dog that Jake wants. Cool woman, cool dog.

“Would you like some water?” Brooke asks. She hands him the unopened bottle that she’s holding. It’s seductively frosted with condensation.

“Yes, please,” Jake says, and he downs half the bottle in one gulp. “Thank you. You just saved my life.”

“I’m glad I bumped into you, actually,” Brooke says. Her expression grows a little shy. “I had a question.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Jake says. The water has revived him like a plant. He’s sturdy, upright, ready to get to know this woman better. After all, the connection is uncanny—she said she had a celebrity crush on him, she lost a nephew to CF just as he lost a sister, and she took Mallory’s job at the high school. For all Jake knows, Mallory has, somehow, sent this woman to him. Because what are the chances that he would meet her in a crowded bar last night and then see her again this morning?

“I was hoping you would give me Coop’s cell phone number,” Brooke says. “He was really great.”





Fray




He wakes up on Saturday to two missed calls and three text message alerts from DEAD TO ME, who is Anna, his ex-wife. Fray won’t take the bait. He sets his phone down on the nightstand, rolls over, and gathers Leland up in his arms.

She stirs as he kisses her shoulder. “Good morning,” she whispers. “I’m happy to see this wasn’t all just a dream.”

“Not a dream,” Fray says, and he moves his mouth from her shoulder to the curve of her neck. “I’m real.”

They make love again, quietly, because the cottage is small and despite the grand renovation, you can still hear people thinking in the next room. Fray hasn’t felt this kind of unbridled desire in four decades; it’s like he’s back in high school. In the summer of 1985, Fray and Leland used to sneak out in the middle of the night to skinny dip in the country club pool, then have sex on the tennis courts. The difference between now and then is that Fray knows what he’s doing, and so does Leland. She spent over ten years in a relationship with a woman, an idea that Fray finds sexy.

When Cooper told Fray that Leland would be coming on this reunion weekend, Fray never imagined they would end up in bed together. He’d been too wrapped up in the drama and pain surrounding his split from Anna. Getting involved with another woman, even his long-ago first love, was the furthest thing from his mind.

But chemistry is chemistry—and Fray and Leland have always had it.



Things had started to seem promising the night before, after Jake and Coop left for the Chicken Box. Fray didn’t have many rules when it came to his sobriety, but no bars was one, and Leland said she didn’t want to go either. Fray thought maybe she was just tired—they were older now; at home, Fray liked to be in bed by nine, something Anna found maddening— but as soon as they heard the Jeep rumble off down the no-name road, Leland grabbed a blanket from a basket by the sofa and said, “Come with me.”

She spread the blanket out on the beach. She lay down and patted the spot next to her.

The second Fray opened his eyes to the starry sky above and listened to the crash and roll of the waves, he decided to share a realization he’d had earlier but had seemed too private to talk about at dinner.

“It’s the thirtieth anniversary of my sobriety,” he said.

“Tonight?”

“The Friday of Labor Day weekend thirty years ago, yes,” he said. “Do you remember that night? You and I and Mal and Jake went to the Box, and Coop stayed home to talk to Krystel. I went to the bar to get you a chardonnay. You very specifically asked for one from the Russian River Valley, I’ll never forget that, and they didn’t have it, of course, they didn’t have any white wine, only wine coolers, so I got you a beer instead, but then I couldn’t find you. So I checked outside and you were with that preppy kid from the city. You left with him.”

“That was Kip Sudbury,” Leland said.