Four Ways to Wear a Dress Read online

  God, I need to get out of here. But the waiter has returned, so while I might not have the sun, sand, and surf that my best friend has, at least I have tater tots.

  “You guys want some?” I ask my friends while ignoring the texts I hear rolling in on my phone.

  “You do realize how disgusting that looks don’t you?” Bree asks, while still helping herself.

  “Who cares what it looks like?” I ask her, shoving a few more of the cheese-covered tots in my mouth. “It’s just us who have to look at it, and we know better than to judge something on outward appearances, don’t we?”

  Bree laughs. I love throwing her teaching methods back in her face whenever I get a chance. She’s a kindergarten teacher at a fancy Upper East Side private school. Luckily, parents love her no-bullshit approach to their kids. It really could have gone either way there.

  “So, do you have any idea what you’re going to do now?” Kate asks.

  “She just lost her job thirty seconds ago. Give the girl a chance to catch her breath,” Bree says.

  I wince. Just hearing the words makes my vision blur with shame and unshed tears.

  “I don’t know. I have a little saved. Plus, the lease on my apartment is up next month. If I have to, I can find a cheaper place.” I really don’t want to talk about this right now.

  “Or move in with us!” Kate exclaims. I smile at her because I know she would happily take me in if I needed it, but I don’t want to need it. What I really need is to find a new job right away so my parents don’t start panicking and pushing me to get my real estate license so that I can work with them back in Nantucket. I may not love the city, but that tiny island life isn’t for me either.

  “What are you going to do? Get bunk beds? You guys are squeezed in as it is.” I appreciate her offer, but no, bunk beds will not be in the next chapter of my life, and I’d prefer if endless days shut in an office weren’t either. “Maybe it’s time for a change of scenery?”

  Kate looks around the city streets, but I shake my head. “Bree is right. While everyone else worked remotely from somewhere better, I stayed here and busted my ass in my tiny apartment trying to help the company. Maybe it’s time I went remote myself. Like really, really remote.”

  I jiggle my foot against the leg of my chair. People leave the city all the time, especially in the last few years. It’s actually stranger that I didn’t, but I didn’t have a reason. Maybe this layoff could be my reason. A reason to start fresh, to begin again and to do something completely different than before.

  I pick up my phone, thinking this over. I scan a few texts from my mom, who predictably is freaking out about her newly unemployed daughter, and a few more on the group text. I only see the most recent one from Quincy that just reads YESSSSSSSSS! so I open that one up to read the entire chain from where I left it.

  Quincy: That sucks, Millie. I’m so sorry!

  Quincy: Let me know if I can do anything to help.

  Quincy: Maybe now would be a good time to take that trip out to visit us you’re always hinting about.

  Pete: Yeah, Mills. Waves upon waves out here. You know you want to. Unless you can’t surf anymore.

  Pete. Pete Santana. The third what-if. My entire body goes cold, even with a belly full of gravy and covered by a wool poncho. He doesn’t pop into the text chain much, but when he does, my stomach plummets like I’ve just dropped into a twenty-foot wave. Everything stands still, my blood stops running, and my heart floats in my chest waiting for another sliver of his attention.

  Quincy: Of course, she can still surf, Peter. Give the woman some credit.

  Pete: Prove it. Get out here.

  Quincy: YESSSSSSSSS!

  Get out here. Just reading those words is enough to melt the clothes off my body. He might as well have told me to get in his bed. Which is unlikely. He’s Quincy’s brother, older by just over one year, and another of our best friends from college. I spent a lot of college hours thinking of ways to casually cross those boundary lines, but my feelings of longing always appeared to be firmly one-sided. However, I can’t really argue with Get out here, can I?

  “What’s with the face?” Bree asks. I have my hand fisted over my mouth, and I must be grinning like a lovesick schoolgirl. I nod my chin toward my phone. She picks hers up and reads the messages too.

  “Pete and Quincy think I should go out to Peacock Bay to visit them.” I shrug, trying to keep my cool and not run from the bar directly to the airport. They’ve invited me before, but I was always too busy or too out of cash. Plus, I’d always hoped Pete might drop any kind of hint that he was looking forward to me moving out to his hometown with Quincy after graduation, but it never came. Which may have been another reason why I took the safe job in New York. But safe hasn’t lived up to its name, now has it?

  “Oh my god, how hot is Pete these days?” Kate asks. She picks up her phone to begin what I know will be a fruitless search.

  “Don’t bother,” I tell her, while scrolling through my mom’s panicked messages. “He’s unstalkable online. It’s infuriating. No Facebook, no Instagram, nothing. He’s like a ghost.” I flip my phone facedown after scanning my mom’s texts. God, does she really think I wasn’t trying at Butterfly Bridge? I can’t deal with her right now. I tried it her way and ended up out of a job and missing my best friend. Why can’t I try it my way for once?

  “But what about the hotel?” Bree asks. Pete is a part owner in his family’s business, a chic beachside boutique hotel, but you’d never know it because there’s no mention of him on the website or anywhere else online.

  “I think their older sister, Amelia, runs the website and social media. Pete does more of the operations from what I understand,” I explain. Pete and Quincy are the fourth and fifth kids in their family (Quincy is number five, like quint. They’re very cute, this family.)

  “Whoa, you’re right. You can’t find anything about Pete when you google him. Santana is a pretty common last name, I guess. Some guy in Birmingham is all I can find, and that is not the hot Pete I remember,” Bree says.

  Although the five of us were really close in college, Kate and Bree don’t keep in touch with the Santanas the way I do. Quincy and I were roommates all four years, and being without her now is like missing a limb. Luckily for me, my (former) job required me to create contacts with influencers and Quincy unexpectedly found herself becoming one. So, except for the group text, Kate and Bree get their information on Quincy and her siblings from me. The group text also has the benefit of being the only way I could stay in touch with Pete because of his social-media darkness. If I want to know what’s going on with Pete, I have to actually ask.

  “So, do you think you’ll go?” Kate asks. She’s grinning from ear to ear. My crush on Pete isn’t much of a secret, and it’s one of Kate’s favorite daydreams. But I’m here and he’s there. It’s not like there is much to do about it.

  “Plus, it has been a while since you’ve been surfing. I know you miss it,” Bree says.

  She’s right, I do miss surfing. I miss having a place to tuck myself away and let everything go. Everything loosens up on the water. Pressure from my parents, losing my job, missing a friend. It all fades into the background. I don’t have to try to concentrate because I already am. There’s no other time my entire body and brain will focus so completely without a struggle than when I’m surfing.

  Not to mention Peacock Bay looks amazing. Quincy’s hometown is a small coastal town full of surfers and small-batch iced coffeehouses. A town that’s also, oddly, launched a number of influencers’ careers since Alana moved there years ago. I hustled for three years at Butterfly Bridge and look where it got me. Unemployed and sitting at a bar stuffing my face with consolatory tater tots. I followed my mom’s advice three years ago and shoved aside my blog while Quincy’s took off. I watched her and the other influencers I’ve been sending toys to live their dream li
ves out there with their perfect husbands and beautiful children all under a clear blue California sky. Why couldn’t that be me too?

  “Maybe I could visit Quincy for a little while. Aside from you guys, there’s not much for me here. Maybe…I don’t know, but maybe there’s a job for me there.”

  “Maybe you could be an influencer like Quincy.” Kate beams.

  “Doubtful. That kind of thing takes years, but it would be nice to visit for a while.”

  “You might as well,” Bree adds. “You’re not doing anything else.”

  “Thanks,” I snipe. “That’s probably not the key to all successful new experiences, but I can work with it.”

  At the very least, I can justify an extended stay in Quincy’s hometown by saying I’m firming up my contacts with those influencers I’ve only met through email. If and when I’m interviewing for marketing jobs in the future, I can describe the trip and honestly say my connections with the top lifestyle bloggers are neatly within my grasp. It actually makes perfect sense.

  “So, I guess I’m going.” I grin at my friends. “I might have to store some stuff with you guys.” My lease is up next month, and I might as well wait until I get back to find a new place.

  “Of course,” Kate exclaims. “How long are you planning to go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a month? Quincy has always said I could stay at the hotel whenever I wanted. Now sounds like the perfect time for an extended vacation.”

  “Slash blogger trip, right?” Bree adds.

  I give her a finger point and a wink. “Exactly.”

  I pick up my phone and form my response carefully.

  Millie: Fuck it, I’m in.

  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that careful.

  Chapter 2

  I prop my phone on my newly vacant bookshelf so I can regain the use of my hands. What’s left of my crap isn’t going to pack itself.

  “But what are you going to do about money?” my mom asks via FaceTime.

  I slowly exhale and try not to take the concern in her voice the way she probably intends it. To freak me out enough to do things her way. Leave it to parents to press that one spot you’re already worried about.

  “And you’re just leaving New York after you worked so hard to build a career there?” my dad asks.

  “Is sleeping your way to the top still considered hard work?” I ask out loud and brace myself for their reactions. Sadly, my shock-and-awe approach to distracting my parents no longer works. Not when I changed my major three times in college and had to suffer through two consecutive summers of classes just to graduate on time. Though there was that summer when Quincy, Pete, and I had a class together, which wasn’t terrible.

  “Millie, please. I’m not in the mood. I have a ton of my own work to do, you know. And we’re catching the four o’clock ferry. We need to check on our rentals after the storm last night,” my mom responds. My parents are never in the mood for my jokes, but even less so when the Nantucket ferry is boarding. My mom has been a real estate agent my whole life, but after I went to college, she and my dad moved off island to Boston. Instead of retiring, however, my mom decided she was tired of making money for other people and wanted a piece of the rental market for herself. So they sold the house we lived in when I was a kid and bought two small beach houses that they rent out for the summers. She still works the rental market all winter, and my dad’s years as a plumber really help now that they have two rentals to maintain.

  As for me, I would rather die than be trapped on that tiny island for another second. Sure, the summers are beautiful and the surf is pretty good, but it’s an island. You’re cut off from everything there, which I get is the point for people there for a week in the summer. But try growing up with the same fifty kids on one hundred of the same square miles and let me know if you might spend the rest of your life with a fair amount of wanderlust.

  “Guys, New York will still be here. It just so happens my lease is also up. I’ll stay with Kate and Bree if and when I’m ready to come back.” I’m trying to sound confident about it all, but inside I’m churning with nerves.

  I look up at my friends, who nod and continue to help pack the last of my tiny closet. Which isn’t much after the purging that took place this week.

  “Plus, I have some money saved, and I sold a ton of my stuff online this week.”

  “You sold your things?” my mom exclaims. She trades a look with my dad, and I know they’re thinking this is a sign I’m spiraling into chaos. Which I could be, but a tiny part of me is okay with that. Let me be chaotic for a minute and see what comes of it. I’ve always had to fight against the tide of my own personal spaz. What would be so bad about seeing what happens when I don’t for once?

  “Just my old work clothes, stuff I don’t wear anymore anyway. A few pieces of furniture. Nothing important. Don’t worry, Mom, the family jewels will still be passed down to your future heirs.” Bree titters in the background. My family has no jewels to speak of. Not even fake ones. “I can replace what I need when I come back, and Kate and Bree have very kindly offered to store a few boxes for me at their place.”

  “But isn’t this just a vacation? Why are you selling so much?” my dad asks.

  I don’t really know how to explain it to my parents without causing alarm bells to ring out over my apartment in Bed-Stuy. It might look to them like I’m selling my stuff to go live on an ashram, but Peacock Bay isn’t a commune. It’s a fresh start. It felt horrible to work so hard and still feel like a failure at Butterfly Bridge. And I don’t care if it freaks my parents out this time. I’m leaning into my failure, or maybe leaning out. I don’t know, but I have to do something else.

  “This isn’t just a vacation,” I explain. “Spending time with the bloggers in Peacock Bay will be good networking. This is basically a work trip. I could almost write it off on my taxes.” That’s all true, and if I need to come back and interview for jobs sooner than later, this will be the perfect explanation for my time away. But what if I don’t want to explain it? What if I’m okay just being a beach bum selling coconut water or handmade bracelets on the beach? That’s what everyone’s expected of me anyway, and personally it sounds way better than anything I’ve done in the last few years in New York.

  Bree makes a typing motion with her fingers, and I nod as Kate pulls a dusty cardboard box from the back of my closet. She makes a face asking what she should do with the box, and I nod my head to suggest tossing whatever is in the box. I’m guessing I never unpacked it when I moved in, a classic Millie move, so if I haven’t missed whatever is in there by now, I’m guessing I don’t need it.

  “Plus, I’ve got a new Instagram account. It’s called Here to Stay, and I’m going to chronicle my time away. Maybe there’s something I can do with that,” I tell them with a shrug. It’s not as if I expect to become an influencer like Quincy, but it does give my trip a bit more purpose. Not that I need it. I’m doing this, with purpose or without, and I won’t let anyone stop me! I hold up my phone to the computer screen and point to the pretty blue circle on the corner of the screen. “See? Kate designed an awesome logo, and I’ve written a few posts about packing up. What I’m keeping versus what I don’t need anymore.”

  My mom looks at my dad who doesn’t even try to hide the sarcastic raising of his eyebrows. I should be used to this, but it still stings in a way that makes me want to start unpacking and trolling the web for any job that will make me look like someone responsible.

  I hold open my laptop closer to my phone. “Isn’t the logo cute?” I point again to the blue-green circle with the font that took hours to choose. Kate was so patient with me while I made her try what felt like hundreds of different styles of type before we selected the cool seventies-style writing that almost looks like it’s melting from the heat, a nod to what I hope will be many sunny days ahead.

  “Okay, okay, I see. Very nice work, Kate,
” my mom calls to my friend. At least she likes the logo. We can build on this.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ward,” Kate responds, as she ignores my instructions to toss the box she found and digs through its contents. I give her a look and she mouths, “Sorry.” I wave her off because it’s not her fault my parents think I’m a flake. That’s all on me.

  “Mom, it’s going to be fine. Quincy really missed me, and I think she needs some friendly support.” My parents love Quincy. There’s nothing not to love, but it irks me a little that while Quincy married the boy next door, surfed, and worked as a waitress at her family’s hotel for awhile before her blog took off, I was out here freezing my ass off and killing myself in an office—and my parents still think she has things more figured out than I do. Though, she definitely does, so they have a point.

  I know there’s not much hope of convincing my parents this trip isn’t just the unemployment version of breakup bangs. There have been plenty of moments in the last few years when I’ve wondered what might have happened if I had moved out with Quincy like I wanted too. Maybe I could have waited tables somewhere while I worked on building something of my own the way Quincy did. Maybe I wouldn’t be wondering what was going on with Quincy’s extremely hot brother because we would actually talk on a regular basis in person.

  “I guess Instagram is something to do other than just surfing,” my dad says.

  Of course, “just surfing” has been the chorus of my parents’ song to me most of my life. During the summers in Nantucket, it was all I ever wanted to do. I get that I was never going to go pro, but they never even considered that I could do something related to surfing as a job. And I know why. A kid who can’t sit still during class, makes jokes when she “loses” her homework, and just wants to surf all day can only be seen as one thing. A slacker. I know surfers get a bad rap as beach bums contributing nothing to the world, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Surfers are also environmentalists, ocean conservationists, and some of the bravest, most badass people you will ever meet. I’m not saying I’m any of those things, just that being a surfer doesn’t have to mean that you aren’t anything else.