Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) by Leila Howland

Author:Leila Howland [Howland, Leila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Published: 2014-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-five

LATER, I COULDN’T SLEEP. As I watched the sky lighten from black to purple, I debated as to whether I was making a big mistake by staying in Rhode Island for college. I pulled the sheet over my eyes and wondered if I even cared about lacrosse anymore. It was not like I’d even read the last two e-mails from Coach Stacy. I hadn’t gone running in over a week. What did that mean? I asked myself as I breathed under my cotton tent.

At three thirty I got out of bed, pulled out my acceptance letter to Brown, and turned on the kitchen light. I smoothed out the letter on the kitchen table, reread it, and remembered what it had felt like to get in. How Mom had screamed as the mailman called, “Congrats!” over his shoulder. How I’d slipped the letter to my dad at Jake’s Diner, telling him very casually that I had something interesting for him to read. He hooted, then popped a quarter in the jukebox and jitterbugged me around the restaurant. I remembered the new looks of respect I received from everyone I told. Mrs. Hart, the ancient English teacher, kissed me on the forehead. Jim and Rosemary were offering me eight thousand dollars so that I could have the full Ivy League experience. I remembered the speech Dad gave in my mom’s driveway at my graduation party, saying that he “couldn’t be prouder.”

How could going to Brown University, the Brown University, ever be a mistake? That was impossible any way you looked at it. And of course, I cared about lacrosse. Of course, I loved it. I poured myself a glass of cold water and drank it all. I closed my eyes and remembered the rush of scoring a goal, the smell of warm grass on a spring afternoon, the pasta dinners with the team the night before a big game. I laid my head on the cool, indifferent kitchen table and repeated the words I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing the right thing. I’m doing the right thing. I crawled back to my bed, the sofa, and fell asleep as the first birds were starting to sing.

“He’s going to propose!” Jules said as she flew through the door of the inn’s laundry room.

I was so in my own world, so exhausted, nursing a coffee as I folded yet another load of the inn’s signature cranberry-colored towels, and Jules was so out of context that it took a minute to register her as real and not a figment of my imagination. My arrangement of covering for Liz two mornings a week was great for my bank account, because I wasn’t paying rent, and I was still very grateful to her, but it was almost impossible for me to catch up on rest.

“Cricket, hello; did you hear me?” Jules asked, her fingers rigid and fully extended. She was dressed for work at the Needle and Thread in a white miniskirt, Tory Burch flats, and a scarf tied artfully around the handle of her purse.

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