10. Our Boy Did It
OUR BOY DID IT
COLE
By Sunday morning, I’m engaged to Juniper Mercer, and the whole Haven knows about it.
Stanley has already updated his newsletter, including a congratulatory edition with a header that reads: Our Boy Did It, and a poll asking residents to vote on a reception venue.
The clubhouse is winning by a landslide.
Marley left a voicemail at 6:55 requesting I fill out the proper cohabitation paperwork—section nine, subsection C of the community handbook—and submit it to her office by end of day Monday.
And Nana Mae—the architect of this disaster—is humming in my kitchen as though she didn’t detonate a social grenade in the middle of a lemonade stand yesterday.
“You look tense,” she says, sliding a plate of eggs and a bagel in front of me. “Look at it this way, you’re a shoo-in for that award now because once word spread, everyone was over here lookin’ to congratulate you.”
“That award means nothing.”
She sighs heavily. “I’m sorry I entered you without your approval, Cole, but it does mean something. You’re just not willing to admit it yet. But I’m not sorry it’s pushing you out of the ties that bind you. You truly are your father’s son.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, he chose to run into that building, Cole. He wasn’t on duty, and he didn’t have his equipment.
You’re doing the same thing, just without the flames.
” She shakes her head, and it’s only the sadness in her eyes that keeps me from lashing out.
“You’ve been trying to carry burdens alone since the day they died.
I’ve never been able to get through to you. Maybe she can.”
I don’t talk about my parents, and I’m not about to start now. “She?” I grind out. “The she I’m supposedly engaged to? The woman who currently wants to murder me?”
“Dramatic.” She waves her spatula. “You should’ve seen your grandfather the day I told his mother we were married. He didn’t speak to me for three days.”
I pause with my bagel suspended in midair. This woman gives me whiplash. “You told his mother you were married before he did?”
“Details.” She points the spatula at my chest. “The point is, he got over it. You will too.”
It’s not me I’m worried about.
Junie and I are not the same as Nana Mae and Arthur. We’re not even in the same category. Arthur didn’t spend six years hiding from his future wife because he was terrified of what loving her would cost the only family he had left.
But I can’t say that, so I eat my bagel and eggs, then check my phone.
Fuck. Me. This day just keeps getting better.
Fen & Tonic:
Fen: So. Something interesting happened at a lemonade stand in South Carolina yesterday.
Hudson: I’ll need some context before I draft the prenup.
Fen: I’m on Stanley’s newsletter now! I knew my little Spite-Berry could pull some strings for me. Congrats to the happy couple!
Fen: There’s a poll, Cole. For the reception venue. This is priceless.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Nolan: What?
I stare at Nolan’s single word for a long time. There are exactly zero ways to explain this that don’t end up with him on the next flight home.
Cole: Nana Mae. Long story. It’s handled.
Nolan: …
Nolan: Is it?
Fen: It’s absolutely not handled. I’m screenshotting the newsletter for posterity.
Hudson: Is the ring real?
I lock my phone and shove it deep into my pocket.
Yes, the ring is real. It’s Nana Mae’s ring from my grandfather, and it’s currently stuck on Junie’s finger, and every time I think about it—the way it shined, the way she kept twisting it, the way it looked like it had always been there—my chest cashes a check I can’t afford.
Junie hasn’t come down yet. Her light was off when I checked. Not that I checked a lot—just most of the night and all this morning.
When she does show up, she’s in full armor. Hair up. Laptop bag over one shoulder. Her blazer buttoned all the way to her neck. And the ring is still on her finger—clocked that immediately—even though she’s turned the diamond inward, so it rests against her palm.
She doesn’t look in my direction at all.
“Morning,” I offer.
“I’ve completed the preliminary reconciliation for the Q3 vendor accounts.” She sets a printed report on the kitchen island without breaking stride.
No good morning. No Mr. Whittaker. No snark or spite or even hostility. Just…cold efficiency. As though I’m a task on a spreadsheet she’s checking off.
This is so much worse than Spite-Berry energy.
With fire, I know where I stand. Fire means she cares enough to burn. This—this professional emptiness—means she’s decided I’m not worth the heat.
“Junie, it’s Sunday.”
“And? What the hell else am I going to do? The county assessment templates are downloaded. I’ll have the first draft of the filing by Wednesday. The sooner we clean this up, the sooner—”
The sooner she can leave.
“Junie—”
“Is there anything else you need from me today?” She’s already halfway to the conference room. I glance at Nana Mae, hoping for some help, but even she lowers her gaze to the floor. “I’d like to get ahead of this filing so I can have a clean draft for your review.”
My review. I’m now a client to manage instead of a man who kissed her head yesterday with a longing so visceral I thought my heart would combust.
“No,” I manage. “That’s—fine.”
Junie’s got me uttering the worst word in the English language.
She disappears into the conference room. There’s not even a door to slam, but I don’t think she’d do it anyway. The silence she leaves behind feels more like a wall than any door could provide.
Nana Mae sips her tea. “You want to fix that?” She nods in Junie’s direction. “You’re going to have to show her something real.”
“I showed her real yesterday.” Calling her my fiancée felt real. Kissing her head, that was real. Telling her about my parents was real. Holding her to me as though she belonged there, that was fucking real.
It’s as real as I can get without ruining her life.
Isn’t it?
“That wasn’t real, Cole. That was reactive.” Nana Mae sets her mug down. “Show her something you normally hide. Something you don’t show everyone else. That’s what Papa did. That’s how he showed me who he was in a way that finally made me listen.”
I don’t respond because the only things I hide are things that would hurt her more.
Show her something you normally hide.
I handle the freeze-out until eleven p.m.
Today was a masterclass in avoidance. Junie worked in the conference room.
I worked in my downstairs office, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
We occupied the same house without once being in the same room, which shouldn’t be possible in a building I designed for open sightlines, but she managed it with precise efficiency.
She communicated exclusively through email. Three of them. All formatted with headers and bullet points and her signature block that reads Juniper Mercer—Financial Consultant.
I never even gave her a fucking title, so she created one herself.
And she didn’t sign it. Not even Juniper. She gave me a cold credential, a title, and a woman I don’t recognize and don’t want to know.
I want my Viper back—even if I don’t deserve her.
Now the house is quiet. Nana Mae took off after breakfast, but Junie’s light is on across the driveway. She’s probably still working too.
If things were different, we could be working side by side. If things were…
They’re not different though. Things are this way because of choices I made.
And now I’m staring at the Meridian Architectural Design Award website—the award that Nana Mae entered on my behalf.
The same one Paula Van Holten’s firm has won three years running.
The same one my work won when I was twenty-three and the world hadn’t yet taught me that talent is something people take from you when you’re not paying attention.
Nana Mae even forged my signature, which is ironic given the Devin situation, and she submitted a portfolio I didn’t approve containing work I’ve never shared with anyone—Viper’s childhood home.
The only design from happier times that wasn’t used as collateral—because the collateral was already constructed.
She also left the confirmation email printed out on my drafting table with a Post-it note that said: Stop hiding and fight for what you deserve.
Stop hiding. As if it’s that simple. Every time my work has entered the world, it’s come back wearing someone else’s name.
But Nana’s note does what they always do—it burrows and festers. So at eleven p.m. on a Sunday, I pull the file drawer open and toss my old designs across the drafting table for the first time in six years.
Stop hiding. How can I stop hiding designs that now bear someone else’s name? I stare at them with a mix of emotions that are too intertwined to decipher. Then I open the archival tube.
The smell hits me first. Vellum and graphite and the particular mustiness of paper that’s been stored in the dark too long. Then, as I roll them out, I remember the lines themselves—clean, deliberate, drawn by a version of me who still believed the work could speak for itself.
And it did—just with someone else’s voice.
There’s the coastal library I designed for my senior thesis.
Cantilevered reading rooms suspended over a tidal pool, floor-to-ceiling glass angled to track the sun’s arc so the light moved across the interior like a slow hand.
My thesis advisor called it “impossibly ambitious,” and then spent three weeks helping me engineer the load calculations to prove it wasn’t.
There’s the veterans’ memorial I drafted during my first summer after college—the dark age, as I’ve come to call it. That period between what I lost and what I gained here with The Haven.
I designed this memorial with an open-air corridor, so the wind played different tones depending on the season.
The building literally sings. It’s the first piece I ever designed that I had a true, personal connection to, and it’s the first piece that disappeared from my portfolio and reappeared under a different name.