Chapter 3 #3
Outside, I turn toward my house, expecting to walk alone, but Jordan falls in beside me like it’s a given.
Their hands are shoved in their pockets, and their pace matches mine, slow and easy.
The air is thick and soft, the kind of July evening that presses against your skin and makes your shirt stick.
The streets are quiet; the market crowd has scattered, probably lining up for dinner or a beer at the diner.
Our footsteps echo a little on the sidewalk.
We talk about nothing important, but we don’t need to.
The tote bag guy, obviously, and then the woman who spent twenty minutes comparing every single shade of white in our fan deck before picking the exact one she grabbed first. The band on the bandstand—a trio of retirees, surprisingly good covers of ‘70s folk songs.
Jordan tells me about a raccoon nest in a chimney, so elaborate it had different rooms, and I tell them about the time I tried to patch the bathroom ceiling crack and wore plaster in my hair for three days straight.
Conversation slips between us the way it always does: unforced, familiar, zero resistance, until somewhere on my street it slows, trailing into pauses that feel more comfortable than any words.
My house sits at the tip of a little row of Victorians.
By Sleighbell Springs standards, it’s modest, but to me it’s still too much house.
White clapboard, blue shutters, porch light already glowing because I forgot to turn it off this morning—which is a pretty good summary of my housekeeping philosophy.
The garden is a riot, tomatoes heavy on the vine and the zucchini working hard on a unified front to take over the universe.
Drew’s roses bloom along the walk, pink and stubborn, determined to thrive just because they can.
We stop at the foot of the porch. Jordan turns, and I notice that the space between us is smaller now, not by much, but enough that my brain catches on it.
The porch light casts this hazy golden halo, brushing Jordan’s hair with gold and sharpening the lines of their face so they look almost carved.
Neither of us says anything. One second. Two.
I look up. Jordan’s already looking down at me, and the moment lengthens, elastic, pulling itself out farther and farther.
Their gaze is steady, the same as always—seeing everything, giving away nothing unless they want to—and for the first time I realize I can’t read what’s underneath, which is terrifying, because I thought I’d always been able to read Jordan Vale.
But right now, something’s shifted, and I missed it happening.
My chin tips up. I’m not aware of choosing to do it. My body just does, and my brain gets dragged along for the ride, three seconds behind. Jordan moves closer, barely—a tension, a tilt, weight shifting from heels to toes—
And my chest locks up. Not a flutter, not a skip—a full seize, like somebody hiked all the air out of the room, and instead of anything poetic or breathless or romantic, what pops out of my mouth is, “Goodnight,” two octaves up and way too fast, and I’m up the porch steps and through the door and I slam it shut before the word’s even finished ricocheting off the porch.
The latch clicks. Quiet. Final.
I stand there, back pressed to the wood, the dark entryway swallowing me up, and my heart is doing something they’d probably put me in a study for. My fingers fly to my mouth, pressing hard like maybe I can undo the thing I just did, or at least confirm I still have a mouth attached to my face.
“Oh no,” I whisper.
But it doesn’t land like it should. It should feel like dread, like I ruined something, like every mortifying decision I’ve ever made. This morning, it would have. Jaw tight, hands twitchy, the acid sting of regret coiling up under my ribs.
But that’s not what’s here.
Here, there’s hope, bright and irrational and alive, flickering in my chest like a candle.
And hope is so much worse than regret, because I know how to sit with regret.
Regret is familiar, old, something that moves into your bones and settles in at 4:45 a.m. when the world is too quiet and you have nothing to do but remember everything you wish you hadn’t done.
Hope is new. Hope is dangerous. Hope is the thing I’ve spent three years building levees against, because the minute you start hoping, you’re admitting you want something, and if you want something, it can get taken away from you. I have already lost enough.
The house is just as I left it. Drew’s mug in the rack, Drew’s handwriting on the key hook, Drew’s garden out the kitchen window, midsummer wild and uncaring if anyone notices as long as someone waters it now and then.
I rest my palm on the door. Wait. Listen. Maybe there will be a knock, footsteps, some sign that I didn’t just hallucinate that whole moment.
Nothing.
Just the hush of the house, my own heartbeat, and that relentlessly hopeful little flame, like it’s been hiding in me waiting for permission. Like it belongs here.
One month, Jordan said. One month to prove this place is really mine.
And already, after one day, one market, one almost-kiss on a porch in the amber light, I am standing here with my hand on a door I closed too fast, wondering what would have happened if I’d stayed.
“Oh no,” I say again, to the empty house, to Drew’s ghost, to whoever might be listening.
But I can tell the words aren’t what they used to be.
Not even close.