“Carmella?”
The voice rang out from the right. It wasn’t such a strange thing to run into people at the grocery store. In fact, you sometimes had to plan for it to ensure you weren’t late to your next plan. Carmella blinked away from the French wine selection and found herself facing a very strange sight.
There, all six-foot-three, broad-shouldered with thick dark hair and bright blue eyes, stood Cal — the man she had met all the way in New Mexico about two weeks previous.
Carmella’s jaw dropped. Her heart fluttered with a strange mix of emotions. Fear, excitement, and lust. She shook her head and whispered, “What on earth are you doing here?
Cal’s smile grew wider. Carmella was sent back to that beautiful night they’d shared together. She had felt immediately comfortable with him in ways she’d never been with Elsa or with her father. She’d told him all the inner aching of her heart. And now, here he was at the grocery store she had been to over a million times, probably.
He laughed. It was maybe the best sound in the world, that laugh.
“I wondered if I’d ever run into you out here,” he said.
“Yeah, I mean. The island is small,” Carmella admitted. “We all run into each other eventually. Normally, I’m sick of whoever I run into at the grocery store. But here you are.”
“And you’re decidedly not sick of me?” Cal asked.
“I just think you might be a ghost or something and none of this is real.”
Cal pinched his own elbow and shook his head. “I’m no ghost. Not here to haunt you.”
“Then, I’ll ask again, why are you here?” Carmella lowered her eyebrows with a sudden wave of distrust.
Cal looked uncomfortable. He shifted his weight and then said, “Well, I told you I was a journalist, right?”
“You did.”
“And you might have noticed that there are a number of other journalists here?”
Carmella’s lips formed a round O. “What a funny coincidence.”
“Well, the idea of one of our writers coming out to the Vineyard for Helen’s big visit came up in a writer’s meeting for the magazine, and I have to admit, I jumped at it,” Cal confessed. “You had talked so much about the Vineyard, and I was so tired of the desert.”
“Very strange. I don’t even know what to say.”
Cal shrugged. “I have to admit. I felt like we had a few more things to say to one another. We did talk all night.”
Carmella’s throat tightened. He’d remembered her fondly; he had wanted more time with her. When had a man ever felt that way about her? She could hardly remember the last time.
“Well, I have to admit that I don’t know how close you’ll get to Helen,” Carmella replied. “We have pretty thick security.”
Cal laughed again. “I figured as much, but whatever. My editor sent me out here, and I plan to enjoy the island for all its worth.” He paused and then locked eyes with her. “I don’t suppose you could show me around?”
Carmella’s heart fluttered like a butterfly. “I don’t know.”
“I’m all alone here, Carm,” Cal said. “And you’re the only person I know! Just one drink. I’ll pay.”
Carmella felt her head drop forward into a nod. How could she resist this man?
“Okay. Okay.” Her smile widened. “I’d love to. What about tomorrow, after my last appointment?”
“Sounds great.” Cal lifted his phone from his pocket and said, “Can I get your number, finally?”
“Of course.” Carmella’s smile made her cheeks ache.
Chapter Eleven
Carmella returned to the Lodge in a state of panic. When she reached the parking lot, she realized with a funny jolt that she had forgotten to grab the pine nuts, the entire reason she’d gone out in the first place. She grumbled and headed back to the grocery store, where the teller ogled her and said, “This happens all the time, doesn’t it?” then laughed. Carmella replied, “I’m just flustered. It’s definitely one of those days.”
When she arrived back to the lodge, Carmella handed the pine nuts over to the chef, who asked, “What took you so long?” before she shot back toward the stove top, where several pots boiled. Carmella headed back into the dining room, where she almost ran head-first into Elsa. Elsa’s eyes were wide with surprise as her hands outstretched to stop her from falling back.
“Whoa, sis. Slow down before you trip and fall.” Elsa said, flashing her sister a grin. “Helen just had her first appointment with Janine. Apparently, it went well. But somehow, a cameraman broke into the foyer! Mallory had to block the door before one of the guards could come to take him away. I can’t believe it.”
“What? That’s insane.” Carmella prayed that Cal wouldn’t go to such measures, or would he? Ultimately, he cared about her as a person and had openly admitted that he’d conned his way to the Vineyard. Maybe he would step back and not fully commit to the story. For her.
“Are you doing okay?” Elsa asked, even as she began to duck away to whatever disaster awaited her next.
Carmella marveled at the heaviness of the answer she wanted to give. That no, she had about a million things on her mind and she really needed to speak to Elsa personally to describe everything, to fight for honesty and truth. But instead, she said, “Oh, fine. I have another appointment to get to. See you later?”
“Okay.” Elsa sounded distracted. “See you.”
Carmella returned to her apartment at around six-thirty that night. When she checked her phone, she had two messages, one from Cody and one from Cal.
CAL: It was so wonderful to run into you today. I can’t wait for tomorrow.
CODY: What are you up to? Want to order pizza?
Carmella changed into her sweatpants and a huge t-shirt and waited for Cody to arrive. The pizza delivery driver headed up the apartment steps just as Cody parked downstairs. Carmella paid the driver and waved to Cody as he walked up.
“I have some news,” she said.
“The island has been nuts with news of this celebrity,” Cody said. “There were helicopters overhead earlier, circling the Lodge.”
“What?” Carmella cried. “That must have been after I left.”
“Is it crazy there?” Cody asked. He slid into the only chair in the kitchen and opened up the box of pizza. Extra cheese, sausage, green pepper — it was the recipe they always ordered together, ever since they’d been teenagers.
“Elsa looks on the verge of a mental breakdown. But I guess that’s how we’ve been in the Remington family for a while now, so, nothing so different,” Carmella said with an ironic laugh.
Cody arched an eyebrow and splayed two pieces of pizza on his plate, then loaded up one for her, as well. Carmella opened the bottle of red she’d purchased at the store and poured them both hefty glasses. They then headed into the little living area and sat on the floor on either side of the coffee table, as they traditionally did.
“How is therapy going?” Cody asked. He was the only person Carmella had told about her stints with Dr. Clemens.
“Hmm. I’m not sure yet. I feel a bit whiny, just sitting there talking about my problems.”
“That’s what therapy is,” Cody remarked. “I don’t think you should feel whiny. Besides, you have a lot more to whine about than most people. I always feel like I’m outside my element when I’m there. Like, oh, boo-hoo, my ex-wife is mean to me.”
Carmella laughed. “Come on. It’s good that you go and get that stuff off your chest.”
“I have noticed a difference,” Cody confessed. “And I hope you do, too, eventually.”
“Yeah, but she’s right about some stuff. Like, I really need to speak with Elsa. I need to find the strength, to be honest. Otherwise, I’ll never get over any of this. I’ll never find a way to move on.”
Cody nodded. “And you really, really deserve to find peace.”
Carmella let a moment of silence pass. She chewed her pizza contemplatively and then said, “Something crazy happened today.�
�� She then described the run-in with the journalist from the Southwest. Cody’s eyes grew enormous.
“That is seriously weird.”
“I know,” Carmella admitted.
“But you’re going to see him? Even though he’s a weird tabloid journalist?”
“He’s not weird. And I mean, people have to do something to make money, right? Maybe I would agree to a job like this if it meant I could travel so much. Sounds exciting.”
“Exhausting is more like it. And invasive,” Cody corrected.
“I don’t know.” Carmella grabbed her computer and looked up Cal’s name. A second later, a number of articles appeared. Several were trashy like, the health and fitness regime of Jennifer Lawrence, and what Michael Douglas did “in secret” in the ‘80s, and “Which Celebrities Have Had Secret Plastic Surgery.” But beyond that, there were a number of articles with more insight, like, “What It’s Really Like To Live in Alaska Alone.” For the article, Cal had actually lived in a cabin beneath the mountains, by himself, for three months.
“He’s clearly very smart,” Cody admitted as they read the Alaskan article. “His prose is really wonderful.”
Carmella’s heart ballooned. “Maybe he does all the trashy tabloid stuff so that he has money to do this other stuff, too? The tabloid stuff is cash in hand, and the other stuff is his art.”
“Maybe. It’s a viable point.” Cody shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe I can talk to him more about it during our date tomorrow,” Carmella said, beaming.
“A date. Wow.” Cody clucked his tongue.
“You sound doubtful.”
“I just don’t know how much I trust this guy. He sounds like he’s stalking you.”
“I mean, he kind of is. He admitted to it, though.”
“So admitting it means that it’s okay?”
Carmella laughed nervously. “Nobody has ever given me the time of day before. Just let me have this, okay? I’m sure he’ll run off the island the moment he realizes what a mess I am.”
“Or he won’t. And you’ll fall in love and run around with him on all his tabloid adventures,” Cody said.
“Sure. If he wants to stalk Mariah Carey through London and take photos of her drinking green smoothies or something, I would be totally fine carrying his camera equipment,” Carmella teased.
“You’d give up acupuncture for him?”
“I would give up everything for him,” Carmella joked. “I mean, what else am I doing here? Just living out my days alone and working for my dad’s business. Big whoop. Not like I have kids or even an ex-husband to go to therapy for.”
Cody turned his eyes toward his pizza. He looked nervous somehow, as though he wanted to say something that he kept inside.
“What?” Carmella asked.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Cody swallowed a sip of wine, then asked, “Do you want to practice how you’ll talk to Elsa?”
“With you?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
Carmella placed her tongue at the edge of her teeth. Her heart swelled with anxiety. How could she even put any of this into words? All those years of resentment and sorrow? All her fears of being not good enough to even be a Remington?
“I guess I could begin by telling her that I ran into Karen? And it brought up a lot of trauma for me?”
Cody nodded. “Not a bad way to start.”
“My therapist says that that was particularly bad luck.”
“And now, you’re running into this journalist. You’re just running into everyone,” Cody said.
“Yeah. Lucky me,” Carmella said sarcastically.
“I don’t know. Do you believe in fate?” Cody asked. “Sometimes I think about what I thought when Fiona got pregnant, even though we’d already talked about splitting up. At the time, I thought it was God telling me that I needed to stick it out with her. Now, I don’t know what it meant. I guess it just meant I was allowed the gift of that beautiful little girl.”
“And she really is so beautiful,” Carmella said.
“Maybe nothing means anything,” Cody continued. “And it’s all random and weird. And we have to hold onto the things we care about for dear life until it all fades away.”
“This conversation is already getting dark,” Carmella said as she tried to laugh.
“Dang. Sorry. I wanted to help you with your Elsa convo and now, it’s just turned into my own thing,” Cody said, grinning.
“Typical men. Always making it about yourself,” Carmella teased.
“Yeah, yeah. I told you I’d go to that women’s march with you, remember?”
“Yeah, but we didn’t go and we just ate grilled cheese at the diner instead,” Carmella pointed out.
“Sure. But we ate grilled cheese in honor of women everywhere,” Cody corrected, arching a brow. “And then you played ABBA on the jukebox and talked about how scummy the guys in the band were since they made the women sing the songs they wrote even as they divorced them.”
“Yeah. Wow. Men can really act like garbage, can’t they?” Carmella held Cody’s gaze as they both burst into laughter.
“We try our best,” Cody finally said. “But our best just isn’t good enough.”
“Hear, hear,” Carmella said as she lifted her glass of wine.
The best friends continued on into the night. Carmella was careful not to drink too much, as she wanted to save her face from dehydration. After all, despite her teasing with Cody, she was terribly excited and nervous about her date with Cal the following day. She wanted to look and feel her best. She wanted it to mean something. Gosh, how she needed some kind of meaning in her life.
Chapter Twelve
Elsa sat at the edge of the acupuncture table and muttered about the various things that had gone wrong over the course of the day. Carmella listened as best as she could, despite the fact that her thoughts raced at a thousand miles a minute. Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down to find yet another message from Cal.
CAL: Looking forward to seeing you later :)
Immediately, Carmella dropped the cup of tea she’d been holding. It tumbled to the ground and splashed brown liquid every which way. She shrieked a bit too loudly, and Elsa dropped to her knees with a package of Kleenex and began to dot at the stain.
“Are you okay?” Elsa asked. “I thought I was on edge.”
Carmella heaved a sigh. “I don’t know what got into me. Guess I’m just clumsy today.”
“I feel you. I nearly tripped on my way up the stairs this morning. I feel off-kilter. I can’t wait for Helen Skarsgaard to get done with all her therapy and head back to her mansion in LA.”
Carmella rose back up and wiped her forehead. She felt dizzy. She longed to tell Elsa about Cal, about therapy, about all of it, but she didn’t want to burden her with even more information. Elsa staggered toward the door and said she had another meeting with Jennifer Conrad, who was handling their social media that summer. She heaved another sigh and said, “Good luck with the rest of the day. Will I see you for dinner later?”
“No. I have plans tonight,” Carmella told her.
Elsa arched an eyebrow. “What kind of plans?”
Carmella fumbled for a moment and then said, “I have to clean my apartment.” The lie was so weak that she nearly laughed at herself.
“You can clean any time. We need to get through this week together,” Elsa said.
“I promise. I’ll be around tomorrow,” Carmella assured her.
“All right. Fine. If I can’t entice you with fresh, home-cooked dinners, then I don’t think anything will work.”
At six-thirty, Carmella checked herself in the mirror, added another layer of lipstick, then headed out into the warmth of the summer evening. It was mid-August, somehow, and already, there was this sinister feeling to the air, a reminder that soon, summer would be only a distant memory. She had to grab onto it and make something of it before it was too late. Gosh, it already felt too late for so many things.
>
Cal had texted to say he had parked his car along the line of the forest, in a little outcropping from the main road that stretched out toward Katama Lodge. She spotted his rental, then watched as he stepped from the driver’s seat. He had seen her in the mirror. He wore a black V-neck and a pair of black jeans, as a direct contrast to all the white and light blue of the ritzy people of Martha’s Vineyard. He looked more like a rock star than a tabloid journalist. Carmella reminded herself of the Alaskan article he’d written about the tremendous insight he’d had after three months in the tundra.
“Hi there.” His voice was cultured, deep and smooth.
“Hi.” By contrast, she sounded so innocent. “Should we walk?”
“Yes. It’s a perfect time for a walk,” he replied.
They headed back toward the Lodge. Carmella felt clumsy again, as though her legs were too long for her body.
“I had such a great day today, Carmella,” he told her, without skipping a beat. “I swam in the sea, walked in the woods and ate the best breakfast ever at this place called the Sunrise Cove Inn Bistro. I liked the place so much that I actually decided to move over there for my stay.”
“I know it well,” Carmella concurred. “The inn has been on the island for generations.”
“That’s what the chef said. I talked to him for a while. His name is Zach.”
“Yeah! He’s great. He caters some of our events at the Lodge,” Carmella said.
“What a tight-knit community this all is,” Cal said.
“Sometimes it’s too tight-knit. Everyone in everyone else’s business,” Carmella offered.
They stood before the Katama Lodge. Carmella caught sight of a few paparazzi people off to the side, between the trees. The guards eyed them darkly as though they hunted them for sport. They just waved at Carmella.
Summertime Nights Page 7
