15. The Rhythm of Things
The Rhythm of Things
By the time a week had passed since Caladesi, Jenna had stopped pretending it was a one- off.
It started with the bike.
She’d mentioned it in passing, almost as a joke, how she’d bought a used Trek after remembering all the miles she and Brooks had put on theirs in high school. She’d meant it as nostalgia, something tossed into the air between construction updates and budget talk.
“You ride?” Cole had asked, like that was the most interesting part of her sentence.
“Sometimes,” she’d said, “when I remember, it’s not just for decoration.”
The next morning, his text came before seven.
COLE: Bring the bike. Meet me at the trailhead. Live Oak. Clearwater run. Promise not to kill you.
She’d stared at the screen longer than necessary, heart doing something unfamiliar and unruly. Then she’d typed back, You say that like I’m out of shape.
You’re not, he replied. That was it. No winky face. No follow-up. Just a fact dropped.
They rode twenty miles that day, from Tarpon Springs down toward Clearwater.
The sun was high already, and the trail hummed with joggers and other cyclists.
She pointed out little things she’d forgotten: the spot where the mangroves leaned over the water, the bench where Brooks once nearly passed out after trying to race a triathlete for fun.
Somehow, no matter how often Jenna slowed or sped up, Cole stayed right beside her without ever making it feel deliberate.
Her thighs burned by the time they turned back.
It was the good kind of hurt, the kind she used to chase on purpose.
Cole rode beside her, easy and unhurried, talking about nothing and everything, like music, the best route through hurricane traffic, or why Emmie insisted on hating country songs even when she knew all the words.
By the time Jenna got home that afternoon, Emmie was ready for her.
Every day when Jenna walked through the door, Emmie clocked her with that suspicious teenage squint, half fond, half feral.
“You’re glowing,” she’d announce, flopping dramatically across the couch. “Like aggressively. Did Mr. Bennett tell another joke only you find funny?”
Jenna threw a dish towel at her. “I’m not glowing.”
“Sure, okay.” Emmie lifted a brow. “Whatever you say . . . Jenna Bennett.”
Jenna nearly aspirated on her iced coffee the first time she heard it. “Absolutely not.”
“It has a flow, though.” Emmie grinned, fully committed. “Very Hallmark. Very coastal-town romance energy.”
“Stop it.”
But Emmie only laughed, and Jenna pretended it didn’t rattle her every single time—even though it did. In ways she didn’t want to explore too closely.
And through all of it, Cole never once commented on how she looked.
He didn’t have to.
The way he paced himself to her, shifted to the street side of the trail when traffic picked up, and quietly handed her his extra water bottle without comment lodged under her ribs deeper than compliments would’ve.
She would be lying, though, if she said she didn’t long for them. After that, the invitations kept coming.
Piano night at Sunset Beach—
“You ever been?” he asked one afternoon, scribbling numbers on his clipboard.
When she said no, he just nodded toward the water. “Six thirty. Bring Emmie if she wants, or don’t.”
Emmie immediately told her that she didn’t need to bring her emotional-support teenager on a date.
“It’s not a date,” Jenna insisted while trying, and failing, to braid Emmie’s hair.
“Uh-huh,” Emmie smirked at her reflection. “Tell that to the man who carries extra water bottles just for you.”
Jenna flicked her ear. “He does not.”
“He does! I saw it yesterday. He literally brings the premium stuff for you and peels the label off like no one will notice. That’s love language behavior.”
“Premium water?” Jenna huffed out a laugh.
“Yes. ‘Potentially hazardous levels of microplastics for you, pure mountain spring water for Jenna,’” she said in her best imitation of Cole’s deep voice, and they both laughed.
Emmie did tag along that night, but with friends.
Jenna showed up a little late, sand cool under her bare feet, the sky streaked with the last washed-out purples of dusk.
A glossy black grand piano sat right on the sand, its legs braced for the uneven ground, lanterns scattered around it like fireflies.
Someone played “Tiny Dancer,” the notes drifting over the crowd and out toward the water where the sun was dissolving into the horizon.
People hummed along from their beach chairs, couples swayed barefoot, kids curled into towels.
Cole stood off to the side near one of the tall yellow flags, arms folded, expression loose in a way she’d mostly only seen around his crew.
When he noticed her, he didn’t wave her over or call attention, just tipped his chin, a small gesture that carved out a place beside him like he’d been saving it.
They didn’t talk about big things. They didn’t talk about grief or fear or whatever it meant that her heart sped up when his shoulder pressed into hers.
They talked about Emmie’s latest obsession with iced coffee, about the way tourists always underestimated the power of the tide, and about which songs should be retired from all public pianos forever.
“‘Don’t Stop Believin’,’” Jenna said without hesitation.
He winced. “Strong opener.”
“‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’”
“You just want to watch the world burn.”
“‘Piano Man.’”
He put a hand to his chest. “Low blow, Hart.”
She’d laughed, and he’d laughed with her, and the sound rolled out over the water as if it belonged there.
When the sun finally dropped, and the beach shifted from color to gray, he checked his watch, squeezed her shoulder once in a quick, friendly gesture, and said, “We should get you two home before the no-see-ums put you on the buffet.”
Jenna had forgotten how vicious the little gnats could be at dusk, the way they swarmed your ankles and somehow found every inch of exposed skin.
As soon as the sky turned from dusk to full night, he was gone. Every time. It became a pattern.
First Friday downtown in Tarpon Springs was filled with music on the street, vendors lining the sidewalks, and kids running around, sticky-fingered, with shaved ice.
He met her by the fountain, hands in his pockets while wearing a faded Tarpon Springs Spongers T-shirt that did unfair things to her concentration.
They wandered the booths, shared a cone of garlic Parmesan fries, and argued good-naturedly about which bands were actually good versus just loud.
Her phone buzzed halfway through their walk. A single message from Emmie: How’s Mr. Bennett? Misbehaving I hope
Jenna’s answering groan made Cole glance over. “Everything okay?”
“Teenagers,” she said, waving her phone like a white flag. “She’s . . . observant.”
He only smiled, and it made something warm loosen in her chest.
On the hottest day of the year so far, he showed up outside her office door at noon and said, “We’re taking a break. Non-negotiable. Orange Cycle Creamery?”
She’d lifted an eyebrow. “You’re kidnapping your client?”
“Court-ordered,” he said. “Judge ruled you’re a danger to yourself if you keep answering emails in this heat.”
She’d gone, of course, she’d gone.
They sat on the curb with their cups of ice cream dripping down the sides—hers pistachio, his salted caramel—talking about nothing in particular while the asphalt shimmered and the cicadas buzzed in the trees. At one point, he nudged her knee with his.
“You’re allowed to enjoy this, you know,” he said.
“I am enjoying it.”
“I mean,” he clarified, spoon hovering, “this, being home. Being here. It doesn’t have to feel heavy all the time.”
Guilt flickered in her chest. She still hadn’t told him everything she should’ve.
Not about the distance. Not about the decade between them, where she’d built a life five hundred miles away and let Grace carry too much.
Since Caladesi, since his quiet confession about his mom, she’d thought about it differently.
She wasn’t the only one walking around with loss folded into everyday life. “Working on it,” she’d said finally, softer than she meant to.
He didn’t push. Just bumped her knee again, gentler this time, and changed the subject to the precise merits of sprinkles versus no sprinkles. He was pro, whereas she was loudly against.
The days blurred in a way that didn’t feel like survival anymore.
In the mornings, she woke to voices drifting through the house and the muted thunk of work starting up, the place no longer suffocatingly still.
Her days were a blur of finalizing her former life, making renovation decisions for both the house and the bakery, getting Emmie ready to go back to school, and balancing a checkbook that was hanging on by a thread.
Afternoons brought small rituals like sharing a sandwich on the porch steps, while the crew took lunch, trading sarcastic commentary with Travis about football versus baseball, and listening to Cole gently correct one of the newer guys instead of tearing into him for a mistake.
He managed his crew the way she wished more people managed teams in her world: direct, calm, no theatrics.
Evenings belonged to whatever he invited her into.
Sometimes it was nothing more than a walk down to the bayou from Athens Street with plastic cups of sweet tea.
Other nights, they stood in the driveway while he pointed out little things he’d quietly fixed outside of his scope.
A loose rail. A sagging section of fence.
The side gate hinges he’d oiled so they wouldn’t squeak every time Emmie slipped in after curfew.
Once, they sat on the back steps and watched a thunderstorm roll in from the Gulf, the air thick and buzzing.
“No roof heroics tonight,” she warned.
“Already checked your tarp twice,” he said. “You’re good.”
She’d looked at him then, really looked, at the set of his mouth and the constant way he held himself. She felt that familiar swell of gratitude and something warmer tangle together.
Guilt pressed in quickly on its heels.
She’d been so focused on how much she was losing . . .
Most people carried grief . . .
But they moved anyway. Like her. Like him.
The funny thing was, it was getting easy to be around him now. Easier than it had been with anyone in a long time. The more they did “non-date” things, rides and ice cream and First Friday crowds, the more her body forgot to panic. Her chest didn’t seize up every time he laughed.
Even Emmie noticed the shift.
Some evenings, Jenna would come home from a bike ride or a walk with him and find Emmie waiting in the kitchen, arms crossed, trying and failing to hide her grin.
“So?”
“So what?”
“Jenna Bennett,” Emmie whispered theatrically, like sharing a forbidden secret.
Jenna covered her face. “You’re insufferable.”
But the teasing had softened something between them, widened the space where they could laugh together again, where grief didn’t swallow the entire room.
Jenna kept trying to tell herself that was all this was.
Sometimes, when he was talking to Travis or Emmie or some vendor on the phone, she’d catch herself watching him and wonder if friendship was supposed to feel like this, like a moth circling a flame and pretending not to see it, not to be drawn to it.
She knew better than to lean closer.
One wrong move and he’d remember she wasn’t meant to get attached to. One wrong confession and she’d have to admit she already was.
So she joked. She teased. She agreed to bike rides and beach pianos and sticky summer evenings downtown because the truth was she just wanted to be around him.