It’s not as if Charlie didn’t know that Jude and Cybill had hooked up in the past, but hearing that they still did, and the extent of it—sleeping together on a regular basis, and she was worried about them going to New York for the night without her, Jesus, what an idiot she was—was painful for her. It hit her like a fist to the gut, knocking the wind right out of her. And while she understood she should have been angry with Jude and Cybill for doing what they did, she was angry with the guy standing in front of her for making her know it.

Charlie was silent for a beat or two, then she took a step toward Stan, moving in so close that their hips and shoulders were almost touching, and she could smell his skin, a mixture of soap and sweat and the coconut candles he must’ve handled at the luau, could see the pupils expanding in his pure green eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard of personal space?” he said, but he liked having her this close to him; it was turning him on. She could tell by the way his mouth clenched, the way the muscles in his neck knotted when he swallowed.

“You’re paid to work here, aren’t you, Stan?”

This wasn’t what he was expecting her to say. He blinked, confused. “What?” he said. Then, “Yeah.”

“Well, maybe that’s what you should stick to doing. Quit getting involved in your employers’ private lives. Because that’s what we are to you—employers. That’s what Jude is to you, that’s what Cybill is to you, that’s what I am to you. It’s creepy. And it’s kind of pathetic.”

He stared at her, mute and unmoving, as she plucked the cigarette from between his fingers, took a deep drag on it, then flicked it to the grass. Letting it smolder there, she turned around, continued on her way to the beach.

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter

• FOURTEEN •

Alice entered the dining room for breakfast the next morning a few minutes early. She was surprised to find her sister already there. The two girls sat across from each other at the table, slumped low in their chairs, not talking, waiting for Richard and Maggie to come downstairs. Luz bustled in and out, carrying the basket of zucchini-pear muffins that Richard had become so addicted to lately, was eating instead of brioche, a little bowl of ketchup for Charlie and Maggie to smother their eggs in, a box of Grape-Nuts for Alice, and a small bowl of blueberries.