Chapter Six – Crew
The morning after tastes like dry cinnamon and a decision I didn’t let myself make.
Sun slams through the east windows as if it owns the place while the kettle screams like it’s filing a complaint with management. The old farmhouse floors carry every sound the way Coral Bell Cove carries a rumor—straight through the bones.
I stand at the sink in yesterday’s T-shirt, pour coffee that could file a restraining order against water, and try not to run last night on a loop.
It runs anyway. Her laugh tripping over steam.
The soft click of porcelain on old wood.
The way our knees touched and pretended not to.
The lantern room catching our breath and keeping it.
I take a swallow too big, burn my tongue, and mutter at the mug like it started this.
The air smells like butter, salt, and the faint iron of rain that might or might not happen.
Every wire inside me hums like the lighthouse lamp before it flares.
This is ridiculous. I’m a grown man. I’ve broken ribs, separated shoulders, stood in front of eighty thousand people, and told a defense to come and get me.
Yet one woman in a blue sweater says honest questions, and I’m a live wire with legs.
Move. That’s the rule. When thinking gets loud, you move.
I grab a sweatshirt, and head out to the porch where the morning is trying like hell to be charming.
Early fall at Otter Creek tastes like apples and diesel.
Pecan trees stand black and confident against a sky that’s already forgetting summer.
Cows move in the lower pasture. Somewhere, a tractor coughs awake like an old man with opinions.
I breathe it in and pretend there isn’t a lighthouse-shaped outline stamped against the inside of my eyelids.
Marcus shows up at eight with resistance bands and that smug monk patience that makes me want to be better and punch him, in that order.
“Morning, prodigal shoulder,” he says, stepping into the barn gym like a man entering church with snacks.
The barn’s cool and smells like hay and lemon disinfectant.
Dust floats in the light slats, polite as parishioners.
“Mobility, not machismo,” he adds, which is rude because I haven’t even made a poor decision yet.
“You flirting with me?” I ask, hooking the band around the post, rolling my shoulder like I’ve been taught.
“You’re not my type,” he says. “Too tragic.”
“I’m a delight,” I groan through the first rep. A burn kisses across the front of the joint—clean, mean, honest.
“You smell like shame and drugstore coffee,” he says, setting a timer on his watch.
“It’s called cologne—Eau de Quarterback at a Crossroads.”
He smirks without looking up from the clipboard. “Notes from yesterday: external rotation improved; internal still tight; scapular winging decreased. Notes for today: stop trying to win rehab. And for the love of your grandma, take it easy, Crew. You’re overdoing it.”
“Winning is a lifestyle.”
“Not when your rotator cuff is one sarcastic comment away from spitting you out like a sunflower seed.”
We work. The barn breathes with us. Band pulls, spine stacks, breath drops lower when the burn gets sharp. I close my eyes and look for the click—when the motion stops being a fight and starts being a conversation. It arrives, late and worth it, like most good things.
“How’s the lighthouse?” he asks, casual as a loaded question.
“Tall.”
“Girl?”
“Woman,” I say, automatically. “Bossy. Dangerous. Good with rope.”
“Sounds like a country song.” He tips my elbow half an inch. “You two talk?”
“Yeah.”
“Kiss?”
“No.”
He whistles low. “Voluntary?”
“There were rules,” I say. “And tea.”
“Wow. Tea. You two are wild.” He stares, not blinking. “And you didn’t die.”
“Define ‘die’.”
He raises his hands and steps back. “My bad. I’ll update your chart to Alive, reluctantly.”
We move into YTWs, and my shoulder vibrates like an overcaffeinated phone. “You ever screw up so bad you still taste it?” I ask, eyes on the rafters because I won’t hold his.
“I coach men who think pain is a proof of masculinity,” he says. “So yes. Daily. Tell her.”
“She’s not a garbage can,” I mutter.
“Right,” he says, softer. “She’s the reason your face looks ten percent less haunted.”
The next rep falters. Just barely—a tremor most people wouldn’t catch. Marcus does. He always does. He adjusts the angle of my wrist, not the man, guiding me back into the line of motion.
Something in the quiet of it pulls at a loose thread inside me.
The barn fades for a breath—not in a cinematic way, just that split-second slide into memory I never asked for.
Friday before playoffs.
Tile floors slick with Gatorade and ego. Tanner kicking the locker room door like he owns the place.
He had a note in his hand—folded twice, blue-lined paper, the crease worn from someone worrying it. Her handwriting, even then, was soft around the edges.
He read it out loud with a grin he didn’t earn.
Good luck in the big game. I’ll be in the stands cheering for you. Stay gold, C. -B.
The laughter came fast. Too fast. A pack of boys who didn’t know what to do with sincerity except kill it. Tanner tacked the note dead center on the board like it was a joke. And I…
God help me, I laughed too. Not because it was funny. Because I was seventeen and stupid and thought approval was oxygen.
She didn’t come to the game.
Or the next.
And I learned the cost of choosing an audience over a girl who meant every quiet thing she wrote.
“Wright,” Marcus says softly.
I blink hard, the barn rushing back around me—hay dust, oil, the steady drag of breath.
“You here?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah.”
Too fast to be believable.
We finish in silence that isn’t empty. He claps my back at the door. “Rest this afternoon,” he says. “And by rest, I mean do nothing spectacular.”
“No heroics,” I say.
“Not with your shoulder,” he says, then grins like a man who knows a loophole when he writes one.
The house is empty when I go in. Mom’s left a note on the counter—Market run.
Lila says hydrate. Don’t glower too much.
I pour more coffee against my better judgment, and last night unfurls again like rope from a neat coil.
Her hands. Her voice on the words we read out loud.
The way she said “not yet” didn’t feel like a denial.
It felt like scaffolding. It felt like an adult thing—built, checked, trusted.
Sitting still is a crime, so I take my show on the road.
The coffee shop bell jingles, and the place fills with espresso and milk and the kind of jazz that cleans the corners of rooms. Kelly looks over the espresso machine like a cat at a terrarium.
“He lives,” she says. “You want your usual or something seasonal and humiliating?”
“Just coffee. Strong enough to make my regrets apologize.”
“Got a new roast called Poor Choices at Dusk.”
“Perfect.”
She sets the order in motion, a shoulder/hip rhythm people get when they do a thing they understand. I breathe through my nose and practice not checking the door every four seconds. I make it to seven. The bell rings. The universe has a sense of humor.
Bailey walks in like she paid the light bill and the day’s grateful. High bun, sweater sliding off one shoulder. There’s an ink smudge on her thumb. I want to kiss it off. Jesus. Get a grip.
She sees me. There’s the microsecond of flinching—the muscle memory we both have—then the half smile that means I’m choosing this and don’t make me regret it. “Morning,” she says, stepping into my entire nervous system.
“Morning,” I manage. “You forgot to bring the marshmallow man. I was going to fight him.”
“He’s in HR training,” she says. “Workplace boundaries and such.”
“You ruin everything.”
“Only mascots and men who deserve it.” Her mouth curves like a threat softened by fondness. “What are you doing today besides pretending your shoulder is fine?”
Pretending I don’t want to kiss you in a coffee shop, I say in my head. Out loud, I reply, “Chores. Rehab homework. Avoiding my agent.”
“Busy.” She steps up when Kelly calls her name and receives a cup labeled BOOK WITCH in bubble letters that will haunt me. We stand shoulder to shoulder while a retired couple behind us argues about oat milk.
“Tonight?” The word is out before I agree. She arches a brow at my lack of finesse. “Lighthouse,” I clarify. “After close.”
“Tea,” she says.
“Honest questions.”
“Science,” she returns, eyes bright, and we are such children we walk out before we kiss in front of Kelly and traumatize the oat milk couple.
“Don’t get hit by a gull,” she tosses over her shoulder.
“Don’t fall off your roof,” I fire back.
“Bring better lines,” she says, not turning. “You’re rusty.”
Mom ambushes me at home with cornbread and prophecy. “Your face is at a thirty percent less sulk factor,” she says, sliding a pan on the counter. “Who do we thank? The Lord? The lighthouse? The girl you’ve been in love with since she corrected your grammar in tenth grade?”
“I’m leaving,” I say, already eating with my hands like a man who never owned a fork.
“She was mean about it,” Mom continues dreamily. “It’s whom, Crew. Half the kitchen giggled. You looked at her like she’d invented air.”
“I’m moving,” I say. “New name. New life.” I’m smiling. I can feel it. It feels like breaking a rule and getting away with it.
“Second chances aren’t miracles,” Mom says, softer now. “They’re work. Do the work.”
“I am.”
“Do it with your whole chest,” she adds, tapping the center of me with two fingers. “Not with your helmet on.”
“Please stop speaking in metaphors.”
“Never.” She kisses my cheek. “Tell Bailey I said hi.”
“I’m not—”
“Bye,” she sings, already at the sink, smirking.
I do chores like I’m getting paid by the thought, not the hour. Fence line. Feed. A loose hinge. A tarp that needs a better tie-down. My brother is enjoying having me home and making good use of me.