Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (24 page)

Then—though it took everything in him not to tell her to stop acting stupid—he waved to his brother standing on the other side of the room and made himself walk away.

 

 

Garret had never liked English class—the poetry especially.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? How do I love thee? Let me count the . . .
He didn't care. Falling in love had not been part of the blueprint he was drawing of his future. He would graduate high school, get accepted to Notre Dame for soccer, then maybe—once he'd had plenty of time to date and rake in his social capital as a national soccer hero—he might think about falling in love and settling down.

But in his senior year, lying on a single beach towel with Thea, their feet sloping toward the whispering surf and the stars clear and unusually bright above their heads, he was beginning to see that love had taken the plans he'd so carefully laid out and burned them to the ground.

He'd thought, growing up in the shadow of his parents' relaxed companionship, that he would have more say in the logistics of falling in love, like picking the first player for his team in gym class. He'd believed he'd have some authority over
when
,
where
, and
why
. Based on what he saw between Ken and Sue, lasting love meant easy love—love that took afternoon naps, love that exchanged sections of the newspaper over breakfast, love that ran errands to the car wash and the bank.

But what he had with Thea was nothing like what his parents had—the way he felt about her was wild and greedy and intense. This was love that had him by the balls, love that led him like a dog through the hours of his own life. This was love that tormented him, moment by moment, with the threat of crushing his heart into sand.

He adjusted his legs beneath hers, denim sliding along denim. The surf whispered, and the moonlight caught the froth of the waves.

Regardless of what love was or wasn't, Thea had altered his plans. He no longer saw himself as a bachelor. Thea had dedicated herself to taking over the Dancing Goat after high school, and he worried about how they would be able to stay together during his semesters. He had to believe they would find a way.

He closed his eyes, airplanes gliding silently along the black sky, the cooling earth pushing the breeze out to the sea. The moment was perfect. He half thought of waking Thea up to say, “You don't want to miss this.” But then it occurred to him, she was
this
—everything that was beautiful about the moment. All the promise and peace and completeness of it. He guessed that's what the poets were trying to say.

 

 

At the makeshift espresso bar, Thea did her best not to appear hysterical. Most of the guests knew her—or at least they knew Sue and Ken—and so they'd been exceptionally patient, some of them waiting a half hour for a latte or a shot. If Jules were here to help her as the third person on her little staff, she would have had the situation completely under control. But with each moment, the line was more fidgety and impatient. She was furious—and it was hard to tell if her anger was because Jules hadn't shown up, or if it was because he'd left her to embarrass herself in front of Garret—not to mention everyone else in town.

“Miss! Miss! What's an Americano?”

“It's a—”

“Excuse me,” a man with a red bow tie cut in, “but I ordered a café breve ten minutes ago, and—”

“It's not done yet,” Thea said.

“Terrible caterers at this hotel,” a woman said.

Thea cut the flow of espresso when it turned from dark brown to the color of weak tea. She hated this. Failure at the Sorensens' party was more than just a personal disappointment; it was a reflection on her business. It could hurt her reputation among the Sorensens' Newport friends. She needed this to go well—or at least to be passable.

She plucked up her courage, tugged down the hem of her vest. She never broke down while she was working. Never. Rude customers had never made her duck into the back room to cry. Persnickety coffee snobs couldn't hold a candle to what she knew about her craft, and not even undecided customers who stood hemming and hawing while the lines grew long behind them could get under her skin. No, she never broke down.

But today, with the party going so badly and Jonathan across the room oblivious to her distress, and Garret glancing over from time to time as if he was enjoying her struggle—
enjoying
it, the bastard—

She lost her grip on a cup, and hot coffee dripped down the front of her.

“Rochelle.” She put down the half-empty mug. “I'm taking a two-minute break. I'd tell you to hold down the fort, but it's probably too late.”

“Do . . . do you have to?” Rochelle asked, panic showing in her childlike eyes.

“Yes,” Thea said.

She walked out of the party, past Jonathan who had said only three polite words to her earlier and now didn't seem to notice her go. She wound her way down a maze of paisley-carpeted hallways until she eventually found a ladies' room. She leaned her hands on the granite sink, catching her breath. The brutal lighting and large mirror sugarcoated nothing: Her face was flushed, and not from makeup. Her hair was coming out in springy little curls around her face. She pressed a soft paper towel against the spot on her shirt and did her best to blot the stain.

“Come on,” she told herself. “Get it together. You're fine.”

And by the time she was making her way down the hall toward the party, she thought she was fine—really—until she got back to the espresso station, where Garret had taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the pale gray sleeves of his shirt and was pouring cold milk into a silver pitcher with such concentration that he didn't even notice when she stood by his side.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He glanced at her over the hiss of the steam wand. A lock of blond hair fell across his forehead. “Making a dollop of foam for an espresso macchiato.”

“You can make espresso?”

“I spent some time in Vienna. Long story.”

She touched her forehead. Vienna? It sounded like such a crucial part of his life. How had she missed that?

He shot her a grin that would have felled a lesser woman. “You going to just stand there? Or you going to deliver that caramel latte to Mr. Richardson?”

She didn't need to be told twice. She picked up the latte, smiling as pleasantly as she could, and brought it to Ken's friend.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, she found that everything was sliding slowly but steadily into place, the deluge becoming a more manageable trickle. Garret, to her amazement and consternation, awed her with how cheerfully and efficiently he'd taken on the jobs that needed to be done. At first, she bristled each time he handed her another drink for delivery—hating that he'd bailed her out, hating that the ship was sinking and needed bailing. But as the fast-flying minutes grew slower and less frantic, she realized that she liked the way he worked, the way he picked up on her system quickly, the way he joked with impatient people and put them at ease, the way he needed to be told something only once, if at all. Silently, the three of them tackled one drink after another, until at last the line dwindled down to nothing, and Thea felt as if the very air around them had gone slack with relief.

“Can I have a break?” Rochelle asked.

“Absolutely,” Thea said, and she hadn't completely formed the word before Rochelle was walking away.

She stood with her hands on her hips, watching Garret tidy up a tray of abused sugar packets, and she felt the slight disorienting shift of going from insane busyness to having little to do. Though her body wanted to keep pressing frantically forward, she forced herself to breathe out, to consciously relax. She had one last thing to deal with before the madness was over.

“Garret.” She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I don't know how to thank you.”

He straightened up, abandoning the sugar. His perfect hair was mussed and his face was slightly sweaty. His pristine and expensive gray shirt was speckled with flecks of brown. “Don't worry about it.”

“I've got it handled from here.”

He wiped his hands with a cloth towel. “Are you going to fire the barista?”

For a moment, she thought he was talking about himself. But then she realized: “Jules? Nah. I have a feeling it was just a miscommunication.”

Garret shook his head. “You're too easy on your employees.”

“I've been running this business since I was nineteen,” she said. “I think I do okay.”

He frowned a little, and she could tell he hadn't meant to make her mad. Seeing him working—doing the menial job of taking orders and preparing drinks in front of the crème de la crème of Newport—something inside her opened to him. She wondered: Was this a peace offering? Or was he just trying to save the party from being an embarrassment to his parents?

“Last order,” Garret said, and he handed her a mug of steaming coffee. It was warm against her cupped hands. Her body ached with tension, her head pounded. She pulled her shoulders back, scanning the crowd. “All right,” she said, calling on her last reserves of energy. “Who does this go to?”

“No one,” he said. “It's for you.”

For a moment, she said nothing. When she looked up at him, his understated smile, his kind eyes, what she saw nearly undid her.

She took a sip of coffee, feeling strength return. “Thanks, Garret,” she said.

The city of Newport could tell by the color of the Narragansett that tourist season was officially gone. The friendly summer blue of the harbor had deepened, becoming a stark and uncompromising cobalt. The sidewalks and piers emptied out, boutiques along Newport's busy thoroughfares closed their doors earlier and earlier, and Thea too felt the shift in energy at the Dancing Goat that signaled the slow decline toward winter.

Claudine and Jules had cut back their hours to go back to school, and after a teary going-away party, Rochelle had left for the season altogether. The glossy veneer of summer tourism had worn down to a dull film, and on Price's Pier the rough-and-tumble, workaday roots set down by generations of New Englanders began to show through once again. Strangers were replaced by men and women who had known Thea since she'd been too small to see over the countertop of her own shop. Bins of notebooks and pencils went on sale, and all over the city parents laid out their children's new clothes for the first week of school.

Like Newport, Thea too could feel herself changing with the season—or at least, she felt herself itching for some kind of change. She tried kickboxing with Dani, and though she'd wound up falling flat on her butt and knew that she would never be quite the jock that Dani was, the experience had been worth a shot. Claudine had pressured her into going with her to see a French movie—since Thea had accidentally confessed that she'd never actually seen a foreign film—and though she ultimately decided she would rather watch her movies than read them, she couldn't shake the persistent need to try new things.