“Great,” Fray says, his eyes flashing with what Leland understands then are his “issues”—rage, jealousy, alcohol. “Ask your buddy Penn to get you home.”

“Fray,” Leland says. “We weren’t doing anything.”

“He had his arm around you,” Fray says, swigging from the bottle again. Just the smell is enough to make the room spin. “I didn’t see you fighting him off.”

“You left me by myself for over an hour!” Leland says. “What did you think would happen?”

He shrugs. “Just goes to show I can’t trust you.”

Leland would like to say that this is an isolated incident, but the entire three years that Leland and Fray date are marked with similar explosions, like firecrackers on a string. She becomes only too used to what she comes to think of as Fray’s “white-hot sulk.”

But there is love too, real love, desperate love, Frazier clinging to Leland, pressing his face into her neck and murmuring, Please, baby, don’t ever leave me.

Now, as Cooper turns down the no-name road that leads to Mallory’s cottage and she sees the ocean glittering in the distance, Leland marvels at how much time has passed—and how much has happened. Leland went on to have a decade-long relationship with a woman. Fray became a billionaire. (A billionaire! What must Penn Porter think about that?) Leland’s father, Steve Gladstone, went on to divorce Leland’s mother and marry Fray’s mother, Sloane Dooley. Technically, now Leland and Fray are step-siblings! These are the kinds of things that only happen in novels. In fact, Fifi wanted to write about it—but Leland put her foot down.

“Where’s Jake?” Leland asks when they pull up to the cottage.

“Inside,” Coop says. “He wanted some time to himself.”

No doubt, Leland thinks. If what happened between her and Frazier is one novel, then what happened between Jake McCloud and Mallory is another. Oh boy, is it.

When they walk in, there’s music playing—Cat Stevens singing “Hard-Headed Woman”—and Jake McCloud is standing at Mallory’s bookshelves, running a finger over the spines.

“I’m glad you’re listening to this song now,” Frazier says. “Get it out of your system so we don’t have to hear it again.”

Jake turns, smiles, and the men shake hands. Leland follows up, hugging Jake and kissing him on the cheek. “Don’t listen to him,” she says.

“Leland, you’re in Mal’s room,” Cooper says.

“You can have Mal’s room,” Leland says to Jake.

“I’m in the guest room,” Jake says. “That’s where I was the first summer.”

“Fray, you can take Link’s room,” Coop says. “I’ll take the sofa.”