Slow Dancing on Price's Pier Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Dale.

  All rights reserved.

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  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / April 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dale, Lisa.

  Slow dancing on Price’s Pier / Lisa Dale.—Berkley trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47904-9

  1. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)—Fiction. 2. Newport (R.I.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3604.A3538S57 2011

  813’.6—dc22

  2010036371

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Matt, because I kinda like you a little bit

  From “The Coffee Diaries” by Thea Celik

  The Newport Examiner

  What I love about coffee is this: the dramatic change a coffee cherry goes through before it becomes a coffee “bean.”

  If you’ve ever dumped out a bag of fresh-roasted coffee beans, you’ve probably stolen a sniff of that gorgeous, earthy aroma. You must have marveled at that glossy, dark sheen.

  But that smell and those oils simply did not exist in the coffee cherry when it was little more than a hard green fruit growing on a mountainside.

  It’s fire that forces the transformation from seed to bean. Roasting alters the seed’s makeup—an intense molecular restructuring.

  In that way, I think coffee cherries aren’t much different from people. Heat and pressure change us. When we walk through fire—and we all do at some point—we come out the other side to find ourselves altered. If we’re lucky, we become richer, more complex, more alluring people because of our trials. But sometimes, we just get burned.

  ONE

  By the first day of summer, everyone on Price’s Pier had caught wind of Thea’s impending divorce from her husband—though not everyone had the facts straight. The more conservative among the gossipers speculated that Thea wanted another baby but Jonathan did not. Or that Jonathan wanted to play a bigger part in the coffee shop, and that Thea had shut him out. Some made accusations that took on a tabloid smuttiness within the rumor mill: there was talk of sexual perversion, secret photographs, and dirty money changing hands. One or both parties were often accused of cheating.

  Most of the time, Thea could tell what her regular customers believed simply by the way they looked at her when they came in for their morning coffee. Suspiciously slanted glances and cold I’ll have the usuals meant that the story they’d heard placed the blame on Thea. But shyly raised eyebrows, pitying smiles, and somber nods meant that Thea was the one who held their sympathies in the game of picking sides.

  Thea treated all of her customers—regardless of their allegiances—exactly the same. She talked with them about coffee, the weather, or her latest column when it suited them to chat. Or she let them simply lapse into brooding quiet as she poured their drinks. Eventually the rumors would die down. The strange and sudden silence that had descended on her life like dust after an explosion would begin to feel normal. But until then, her plan was to simply yield to the surreal feeling of time suspended. She brewed big carafes of coffee; she picked her daughter up from soccer practice; in the evenings she swept beneath the tables and turned off the lights. It was business as usual. She pressed on.

  “A toast!”

  Jonathan watched as his brother pushed out his chair and stood at the pub table, nearly sending tequila sloshing onto his poker chips. Six of them—a group of men that Jonathan had never met until he’d moved in with his brother a week ago—sat together at a private booth in a Providence bar. The lights were dim except for a single green lamp that hung over the center of the sturdy round table. In the corner, a man in a flannel shirt stuck out his chin and closed his eyes, reaching for high notes in a Led Zeppelin singalong. The waitresses were gruff until they got tipped and the beer was skunked—but since the bar was nearly empty, it was a great place for long hands of poker on a Tuesday night.

  “No toast,” Jonathan said. “No toast. Let’s just knock ’em back.”

  “No—I insist.” Garret bowed his head, something princely in the gesture. He smiled his wide, genuine smile that had wrapped so many women and congressmen around his little finger. His California blond hair gleamed gold in the light. “It’s not every day a guy gets to throw his brother a divorce party.”

  “But … a toast?” Jonathan said lamely.

  “C’mon! We’re celebrating here. You’re a free man.” Garret laughed and clasped him on the shoulder. “The single life’s the only life. Right, guys?”

  Garret’s friends—unmarried corporate types with their work shirts opened at the collars and their sleeves rolled—gave a hear, hear.

  Jonathan shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Garret said, laughing in his good-humored way. “I’m not gonna stand up here and bad-mouth … anyone. That would be low. Even for me!”

  Some of the men chuckled, and Jonathan could feel them looking at him, watching to see what he would do.

  He hadn’t wanted a divorce party, but once Garret got an idea into his head, there was no sense in arguing. Garret was in the
business of persuasion—a lawyer turned lobbyist. Of course, if he had really known how much the divorce party bothered Jonathan, there was no way he would have insisted. After ten years of little more than Christmas and birthday cards, Jonathan hardly knew his brother anymore. If he could reconnect with Garret, at least some good might come of his impending divorce. He lifted his glass a little higher and motioned for the toast to go on.

  Garret cleared his throat. “Sometimes a man has to take the long way to find out a woman isn’t who he thought she was. You know what they say. It’s hard for a man to lose a woman. Sometimes, it’s damn near impossible. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “Jeez, Garret.” One of his friends cut in. “Whose divorce party is this anyway?”

  Garret turned his eyes a bit guiltily toward his brother, and for a split second Jonathan saw what the other men did not. The nervousness. The frustration. The too-wild, too-bright glare in his brother’s eye. Garret’s bravado was usually unpracticed and carefree, but tonight something in his words rang false.

  “I’m really screwing this up here, aren’t I? The point is”—Garret lifted his drink to the height of his shoulder, his voice faltering—“the point is, you made the right decision. This isn’t the end of a marriage; it’s a new beginning. This is the first day of the rest of your life. And nobody deserves happiness more than you.”

  For a moment, he and Garret locked eyes. Solid. Loyal. Like they used to be. And it occurred to Jonathan that only the two of them—him and his brother—knew what this toast was really about. Garret wouldn’t have told any of these men about his past. His pride was too big, his ego too fragile. Tonight was supposed to mark the end of an era in Jonathan’s life with Thea—but it was closure for Garret too.

  Jonathan nodded at his brother solemnly. “Cheers,” he said.

  They lifted their glasses and threw their heads back.

  The way Thea told the story to her daughter was this: Your father is going to stay with Uncle Garret in Providence for a little while. No, it’s not that he doesn’t like us. He would just rather stay there than here right now.

  The way Thea told the story to her mother was this: Jonathan and I are taking a break. Because we are. No, I don’t need you to move in with me—and I’m not going to live with you either. Well, partly because Irina and I don’t speak Turkish. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.

  The way Thea told the story to Jonathan’s father Ken was this: These things happen. Yes, I’m sorry too. I understand that this is going to change things for all of us. Thank you. That’s very kind. I’ll always love you guys too.

  The way Thea told the story to herself was this: He says it meant nothing, and I don’t think he’s lying: I don’t think there’s anything between them. I feel like she’s just an illusion. Like there’s two of us in the room—me and Jonathan—and we’re fighting over a third person who doesn’t even matter and isn’t even there.

  The way Thea told the story to her friend Dani was this: I can’t say I’m completely surprised. And what’s strange about it is that I don’t feel devastated. I should, but I don’t. Is that wrong?

  The first time Thea met the Sorensen boys was in the salt-crusted gloom beneath Price’s Pier, where the shifting softness of beach sand rose up and met the dark, hard underside of the planks along the pier. Occasionally Thea would encounter a couple making out or some high schoolers smoking cigarettes or getting high. But mostly, no one knew how to get beneath the pier, and those who did were put off by the smell of dead fish and the decaying bodies of crabs.

  She’d heard about the Sorensens before she saw them—the new neighbors who lived in the old Pinker place on the richest side of town. One of her girlfriends had made up a system for grading guys on their hotness: The Sorensen brothers were “totally rated R.”

  In the safe anonymity of the hallways between classes, Thea watched for them. There was Jonathan, the tall, smart, older one—the one who always wore shoes instead of sneakers and who was in honors math. And there was the one in her grade, Garret, the one who played soccer. The one who allegedly left a hickey on Annie Reed’s thigh. She listened to her girlfriends’ gossip about the new kids with giddy speculation, but she had no information to contribute. Just a funny knot in the pit of her stomach, eagerness and fear at the same time.

  Yet, when Thea finally met them—the legendary Sorensen brothers squatting low in the shadows beneath the old pier, their spines hunched and their heads bent in concentration—they didn’t seem so adult and mysterious at all. Instead they seemed like little boys. In school they were royalty, practically men. But in the smelly shadows of the pier they were no different from any of the other boys. They were playing with little green army men—practically baby toys—with utter seriousness and concentration. Their words were furtive and rushed.

  The crash of the tide climbing up the beach filled the cavern between the damp, smelly sand and the high pier, and it took a few minutes before she understood what it was they were doing. She saw a cigarette lighter winking gemstone blue in slatted sunlight. And the pile of army men, a lumped green heap, weapons and body parts melted down.

  These Sorensen brothers were not the experienced and sexy vagabonds her girlfriends had so badly wanted them to be. They were just boys—boys playing with fire as kids were known to do. She wanted to see their toys melting, to watch their soldiers’ bodies wilt and puddle like wax. So she simply stepped out of her hiding place and said, in the clearest and loudest voice she could, “Hello!”

  She must have startled them. Because Jonathan jumped. The lighter went tumbling. And Garret spent the afternoon in the ER with a second-degree burn. Officially, Thea had scarred him before she’d even known his name.

  The coffee shop was bustling, the summer throngs having arrived in Newport for the season. All along Ocean Drive, tall mansion windows had been thrown open to the cool easterly breeze coming in over the harbor. On Thames Street, where seventeenth-century homes huddled together, the sun baked the cobblestones and tempted tourists to wrap their sweaters around their waists. On Price’s Pier, among the restaurants, boutiques, and bars that clustered in friendly bunches at the water’s edge, some of the newcomers to the area were finding their way down the maze of narrow, shadowy alleyways that led to the Dancing Goat.

  Thea stood at the counter, relishing a moment of temporary quiet in between morning rushes. At the moment, her only two customers were Hollis Cooper and Dean Gray. They sat together at a small chessboard in the corner, one that had been worn down by years of weekly matches at the coffee shop. They’d never claimed to like each other: as far as Thea could tell, one man had never said to the other, “How is your wife?” or “What are your kids up to these days?” And yet neither of them had ever missed a match. It was always the loser who got the bill. “I don’t know why I keep coming here,” Hollis would often grumble. “Coffee used to be a quarter a cup when I was a kid. Not these five dollar an ounce mocha-latte-cchio-split things.”

  Or Dean would complain, “Don’t know why I bother with such bitter coffee if I have to doctor it up with so much sugar and cream.”

  But Thea didn’t mind their complaints, and when they showed up to play their weekly game of chess with each other, Hollis with the old wooden chess case tucked under his arm, she was glad to see them. People like Hollis and Dean were the reason Thea had fallen in love with the shop.

  The Dancing Goat had never been meant for the tourist trade. Thea’s parents had established the business back in the seventies—but not to cater to the blueblood families that still maintained their traditions of summering in Newport. Instead, the shop was intended to be a locals’ place: no designer decor, no menus printed on recycled paper, no waiters to suck up and smile. Thea’s parents had one main goal—to make good coffee at a good price. No frills, no fuss. And over time, as word began to spread, Newport’s summer visitors began to think of the simple little coffee shop as a novelty—their hidden gem—and each man who visited told his
friends about it as if he were the first to have discovered it and wandered inside.

  Thea loved the shop—had loved it since she stood at her mother’s elbow and learned to measure scoops of coffee beans. The clunky old cash register of her parents’ generation held an honored space in her office, though it was no longer used. The smell of coffee would never come out of the curtains no matter how many times Thea washed them. Thea had inherited the coffee shop from her parents when they’d moved back to their home overseas—just like she’d inherited her house from them. But she’d never questioned her love for the place. The doors of the Dancing Goat were open to everyone—enemy, stranger, or friend.

  “So here’s what I’m thinking.”

  Thea looked up from the rosette she was doodling in latte foam to find her daughter squinting at her with sly eyes. At ten years old, Irina’s interest in making conversation never waned. She’d made a niche for herself talking up espresso drinks, many that she’d never even had. With her slightly too-big teeth and perpetually too-short jeans, her specialty was convincing middle-aged men to buy “one for the road.”

  “This better be good,” Thea said.

  Irina crossed her skinny arms, one hip leaning against the counter in a parody of a woman twice her age. Her brown hair fell to her shoulders, straight and ashy as Jonathan’s would have been if he’d ever worn it long. “Here’s my idea. We call up Grandma Sue and tell her she doesn’t need to watch me today. And I stay home by myself while you go to the roasters. Okay?”

  “I don’t think so,” Thea said. She took a quick sip of her latte. “Grandma Sue’s going to be here in a minute.”

  “But why can’t I stay by myself?”

  “Your grandma Sue wants to see you. Don’t you want to see her?”

  Irina’s “Yes” was begrudging.

  I want to see her too, Thea thought.

  For her entire adult life, Sue had been a second mother to her. In the emergency room on the first day that Thea had met the Sorensens, Sue had put her arm around Thea’s shoulders, walked her to the snack machine for a candy bar, and told her that it wasn’t her fault—Jonathan and Garret shouldn’t have been playing with a lighter in the first place. When Thea was fifteen Sue took her aside to explain how to use a tampon so she could go in the ocean with “the boys.” And even when Jonathan had announced that he and Thea were getting married, Sue had never voiced her initial disapproval, though she had every reason to worry that they’d married too hastily and too young.