Chapter 2 #2
“You ever meet an Italian woman grieving her soulmate dog?” he asks. “They fix grief with food. A lot of it. I was basically raised on carbs and affection. Mostly carbs.”
I can’t help it—my lips twitch.
“So you were the fat kid?” I ask gently.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “The fat kid who sat in the corner eating biscotti from the secret stash Mom didn’t think Dad knew about.”
“What changed?”
“My dad had enough,” he says simply. “One day he walked into the kitchen, looked at me, looked at the cookies, looked at Mom, and said, ‘That’s it. He needs a sport.’”
He shrugs.
“Bought me a pair of ice skates. Signed me up for hockey. And something clicked. Finally had an outlet. Finally felt… capable.”
A gust of wind brushes against us.
He continues.
“Once I hit puberty and got serious—protein shakes, workouts, practices—it all burned off. Then suddenly I was six foot two and jacked and everyone acted like I’d always been that guy.”
He shakes his head.
“It wasn’t easy, though. I trained like a bitch. Ask my basement. Still has my old dumbbell set. I also might have a very expensive bottle of stretch mark cream still in my bathroom cupboard. Not that I’d ever admit it…”
I look over at him.
Not pitying.
Not impressed.
Just… seeing him.
He sees me too, I realize.
Not the girl from the news stories.
Not the deepfake victim.
Not the crown dipped in slime.
Just Jade.
A girl with short hair, a broken heart, and no idea how to be a person right now.
By the time we get back to the house, the sky is almost black, the only light coming from the porch lanterns and the glow spilling from the living room windows.
Inside, Irene immediately pulls out a bottle of red.
“Well,” she says, “if there was ever a day that needed it…”
Thom raises his eyebrows.
“Moderation,” he murmurs.
“I’m fifty-three, Thom,” she says. “I’ll moderate when I’m dead.”
Mason laughs, grabbing a jacket from the hook by the door.
“I’m heading out,” he announces. “Ben and Raj are at the bar at the Chatham Bars Inn. Karoake night.”
Thom gives him one of those father stares—the kind that carries decades of practice.
“No drinking and driving. And don’t bring anyone home.”
Mason groans. “Pops, please.”
Irene snorts into her wine.
Mason shoots me a grin, pushing curls off his forehead.
“You wanna come? It’s a mellow crowd. Old money, tourists, bored locals pretending they have hobbies.”
“I’m seventeen,” I say flatly. “And I don’t have a fake ID.”
He shrugs, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe.
“It’s Chatham Bars. They’d probably give you a tax deduction with your Diet Coke.”
I force a tiny smile, but I shake my head.
“I think… I just want to walk down the beach.”
The room goes quiet.
Irene sets her wineglass down a little too hard.
“Jade, honey, no. It’s pitch-black. And the wind is picking up. Night tide comes in fast on this side of the Cape. Rip currents, rocks… that’s not something to mess with.”
Aunt Susan’s watching me too, her eyes worried, her mouth tight.
I cross my arms.
“I’ll stay on the sand. I just… I need the air.”
Irene looks at me the way you look at a wounded animal—trying to understand how much you can approach before it bolts.
“Why the beach?” she asks softly.
I stare past her, out the tall windows. The ocean is a sheet of black, the cliffs nothing but jagged shadows.
“I don’t blend well anywhere,” I murmur. “So I’m sure I’ll survive the dark.”
The room breathes in.
Aunt Susan steps forward, voice calm but firm.
“If you’re walking, I’m walking with you.”
I lift my chin. “You don’t have to.”
“You’re right,” she says. “But I want to.”
Mason watches me for a moment, the flirty edge gone now, replaced by something gentler—understanding, maybe. He lifts two fingers in a casual salute.
“If you change your mind,” he says, “I’ll sneak you in. Diet Coke on me.”
I huff a tiny laugh despite myself.
He slips out into the night, calling back, “Pops, I swear I won’t bring home any girls.”
Thom mutters, “You brought one home on Labor Day weekend! I almost had a heart attack over my coffee. ”
Irene swats his arm.
“Let the boy live.”
I pull on my coat, still not sure if my legs are ready for any of this—walking, talking, existing—but I open the door anyway.
Cold air kisses my cheeks.
Aunt Susan falls into step beside me.
The wind roars.
The waves crash somewhere below the cliffs.
The night swallows my breath.
Maybe the dark isn’t here to drown me.
Maybe it’s just giving me somewhere to hide while I figure out what comes next.
By the time Aunt Susan and I get back from the beach, my hair is damp from the mist and my boots are full of sand. The ocean is louder at night, almost angry, but it helped. Not fixed anything. Just… helped.
Inside, the house smells like cinnamon and vanilla. Irene already has mugs lined up on the kitchen counter, steam curling from the tops. Thom has disappeared somewhere upstairs, probably into his office. The fire crackles in the living room again.
“It’s too early for bed,” Irene declares before I can even shrug out of my coat. “Spa night. Non-negotiable.”
Aunt Susan groans. “Oh no. Not the masks.”
“Yes, the masks,” Irene says, grabbing a jar from a basket that looks like it belongs on a Pinterest page. “Sit.”
Susan sits.
Irene slathers a green clay mask across her face with clinical precision.
“Look at this canvas,” she mutters. “Fifty-three, barely a wrinkle. You’re welcome, Susan.”
Susan glares at her. “You’re enjoying this too much.”
Irene turns to me.
“And you… I have plans.”
I blink. “Plans?”
She studies me. Really studies me.
The hair. The hollow eyes. The tremble in my hands I keep trying to hide.
“That haircut is perfect,” she says. “Sharp, clean, modern. But tomorrow morning, I want to feather the ends with a razor. Gives it a don’t-mess-with-me vibe no one will question.”
Aunt Susan snorts. “See? This is why I didn’t let her near you with scissors last night.”
“And,” Irene continues like she didn’t hear her, “your brows are already great but could use a lamination. Lift them. Frame your eyes. Make you look like you own a tiny European art gallery.”
I blink.
“You… want to do all that to me?”
She hands me a mug of cocoa.
“That depends. Do you want to feel like a new version of yourself?”
My throat tightens.
I wrap both hands around the mug. It warms my fingers.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Yeah. Tomorrow is fine.”
“Good,” she says, pleased. “Tonight—just cocoa and company.”
We settle in the living room. Susan’s mask starts drying and cracking, which makes Irene tease her even more. She pulls out the paraffin wax warmer and dips both of their hands in it like this is a perfectly normal Sunday night activity.
“Jade,” Irene says, patting the seat beside her, “come here.”
I sit.
Still numb.
Still hovering slightly outside my own body.
And then it happens.
The story spills out.
All of it.
Ohio. Royal Oaks. Leo. The crown. The slime. The deepfake resurfacing. The whispers. The articles. The comments. The room spinning. The scissors. The hair. The bonfire. The drive here.
Everything.
By the time I notice I’m talking, I’m already halfway through the part where I threw his hoodie into the fire.
When I finally go quiet, Irene doesn’t speak right away.
She takes both of my hands in hers.
Warm. Steady. Firm.
She squeezes, hard enough to anchor me.
“Look at me,” she says.
I do.
Her eyes are sharp. Not unkind. Just sharp enough to cut through the fog in my head.
“Jealousy,” she says slowly. “Envy. Insecurity. That’s the root of all of it.”
My brows pull together.
“They hurt you because you have something those girls don’t,” she continues. “Something they can’t buy with their daddy’s donations or their mother’s last name.”
My voice barely works.
“What could I possibly have that they’d want?”
She holds my hands tighter.
“Athleticism,” she says.
“Authenticity.”
“Grit.”
“Heart.”
“Talent.”
“And the one thing privilege cannot manufacture—resilience.”
I swallow hard.
“No,” I whisper. “They ruined everything.”
“Sweetheart,” Irene says, brushing a thumb over my knuckles, “if they ruined you, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
The fire pops.
Aunt Susan sniffles behind her mask.
Even the house feels like it’s listening.
“You survived something most grown women wouldn’t,” Irene says. “Twice. And you’re still standing. Still fighting. Still trying to figure out how to move forward.”
Her voice softens.
“And that scares the hell out of people who’ve never had to survive anything.”
A hot tear slips down my cheek.
Irene wipes it away like she’s done it a thousand times for a thousand broken girls.
“You’re not done,” she says. “You’re just starting.”
I stare down at my cocoa.
I’m not sure I believe her.
But right now, sitting here with their hands in warm wax, the fire cracking, my fingers wrapped around something sweet and hot…
I want to.
I really, really want to.
Irene finishes wiping the last bit of paraffin off my hands and tosses the towel aside.
“Well,” she says, “it’s almost movie time.”
She reaches for the remote, then pauses.
Her eyes flick to me, then to the fire.
“But before we watch anything, I want to tell you a story.”
Aunt Susan groans immediately.
“Oh Lordy. Is this going to be one of your metaphors?”
“It’s not a metaphor,” Irene says. “It’s a memory.”
Something in her voice makes me straighten.
She settles back on the couch, tucks one leg under her, and wraps both hands around her cocoa like it’s part of a ritual.
“There was a girl,” she begins.
Of course there was.
“There was a girl in my school. This was the seventies and eighties, mind you—no smartphones, no social media, no viral videos. If someone humiliated you, it didn’t go global. It just… stuck to the walls of your town forever.”
The fire pops. I flinch.