“You’re off to the beach?” the judge asks.

“The nudie beach?” Hank crows.

“Lobsterville,” Darren says. “We’re meeting people there.”

They are? This is news to Kirby.

The judge takes his time folding the newspaper and everyone watches as he does so. Kirby can tell he’s deliberating over something. What will his verdict be?

“Go on, then,” he says. “Get out of here before your mother gets home.”

They head out to the car in silence. Kirby feels she owes Darren an apology; it was rude of her to show up unannounced. She wanted to prove something, but what? That she wasn’t afraid? That she could hang out with Darren’s family and fit in? In the end, she has proved nothing and now Darren’s angry. He parks the Corvair in front of Tony’s Market and runs in without a word. Kirby nearly calls out to offer him money, but in the end, she just folds her hands in her lap and bows her head. Get out of here before your mother gets home. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out what the judge meant by that.

When Darren emerges from the store, he’s grinning. He’s himself again. He puts the ice and beer on the floor in the back seat, starts the engine, turns up the radio. It’s Dylan singing “Lay, Lady, Lay.”

“Let’s get out of this town,” he says. “I want to relax.”

It’s Kirby’s fourth time up-island and she’s beginning to recognize landmarks—the Ag Hall and Alley’s General Store in West Tisbury and then the long stretch of Middle Road. They pass the turnoff for Tea Lane, where Rajani nannies the demon twins in the beachfront castle with the Warhol, and then, once Middle Road turns into State, Kirby recognizes the driveway to Luke’s compound on Nashaquitsa Pond. They pass through Menemsha, turn right, and end up at Lobsterville Beach.

“I’ve heard about this beach from guests at the inn,” she says. “One man got such a bad sunburn, he renamed it Turned-into-a-Lobster-Ville Beach.”

Darren laughs and it sounds genuine. The day started out a little topsy-turvy, but Kirby feels it righting itself.

Lobsterville Beach is nearly empty; they are very clearly not meeting anyone else. Darren carries the chairs and the cooler to a secluded cove where they can see the cliffs of Gay Head jutting out into the ocean. It must be the most picturesque spot on the island, Kirby thinks, and he sought it out for her. He sets up the chairs and towels and then he strips off his T-shirt. His skin is such a beautiful color that Kirby wants to compliment it, but she isn’t sure what words to use.

He notices her staring at him. “You ready to swim?”

“Hell, yeah,” she says and she races him to the water.

Darren bought Schlitz beer, her favorite, and it’s icy cold. They crack a couple open, and then, because there’s no one else in sight, Kirby produces a joint that she tucked into her change purse before she left the house.

“Smoke?” she says.

“I don’t usually,” he says. “But today I’ll make an exception.”

Kirby lights the joint, takes a toke, and passes it over to Darren, who inhales with deep appreciation. They smoke the joint down to an itty-bitty roach and then Kirby falls back on her towel, suffused in a cloud of sweet smoke and a sense of great well-being. Drugs are a public scourge and yet they make absolutely everything better, at least temporarily. Before she knows what’s happening, Darren pulls her up by the hand and leads her behind a giant boulder at the edge of the cove. He starts kissing her. It’s novel for them to be standing, with their hips pushed together, and then, as if that isn’t seductive enough, Darren lifts her up. Her back scrapes against the rock but she doesn’t care. She wraps her legs around him and squeezes and gets lost in the kissing and in the pressure and in the heat between their bodies. When she opens her eyes, she sees the green, raging sea beyond and she knows she will never forget this moment.

She breaks away. “I want to wait.”

“You do?” Darren says. He eases her feet back down to the sand. “I mean, yeah, that’s cool. We can wait.”

“I’d like a bed,” Kirby says. “I’m sure that sounds old-fashioned.”

Darren kisses her. “Not old-fashioned at all. I’d like a bed too. You deserve a man who lavishes you with attention, who takes his time with you.”

For no reason, tears burn Kirby’s eyes. Or not for no reason. She is suddenly assaulted by memories of sex with Officer Scottie Turbo. It was fast, it was rough, it was about his pleasure, not hers; it was about his needs, his schedule, his agenda.

He used her, then threw her away.

“Hey,” Darren says, running a thumb under her eye. “What’s wrong?”

“Your parents don’t know we’re seeing each other, do they?” She uses the phrase seeing each other because that’s all it is. It isn’t dating. They never go anywhere together. They are never seen in public. She’s a secret for him, just like she was with Scottie Turbo.

Darren sighs. “No,” he says. “They don’t.”

“It’s your mother who objects.”

“Yes, and she persuaded my father that you’re…I don’t know. Inappropriate? I’m not sure why.”

“I know why,” Kirby says. She squints down the beach; it’s deserted. “Want to walk?”

“Sure,” Darren says.

The story is easier to tell while they’re in motion. Kirby can stare straight ahead instead of at Darren, which gives her some emotional distance.

“Remember when I told you about the policeman I dated?” she says.

“Yes,” Darren says. “He’s haunted me since you mentioned him.”

“I went to an antiwar protest this past winter,” Kirby says. “In Cambridge.”

Darren shrugs. “I didn’t go to any. I mean, I’m against the war, but I had so much work…”

“Protesting takes time,” Kirby says. “You don’t have to explain to me.” She had spent countless hours making signs and convincing other women at Simmons to go. This was in February, after the second year of surprise Tet attacks but before Tiger was drafted, so at that time, Kirby’s opposition to the war had been pure and uncomplicated. She had marched, she had chanted, she had disobeyed police orders to the crowds to stand down, to clear the streets and go home. She had called one policeman a pig and was preparing to spit on his shield just as she had spit on Roger Donnelly’s school desk years before when he grabbed her, pinned her hands behind her back, cuffed her, and said, “You’re coming with me, dollface.”