Chapter 3 #2
We were loud and overlapping as we ate, passing plates with the efficiency of a kitchen line.
Austin and Iris Holloway, now fully part of the Coleridge chaos, filled their plates with their heads tipped toward each other.
It should’ve shifted me back into the groove carved from years of these dinners.
Instead, I felt slightly out of place, like I was watching through a window.
Mom waited until plates were cleared and the second pot of coffee poured to slide into the chair next to me. “So Eli tells me Tessa is back in town.”
I set my mug down carefully. “Of course he did.”
“He also tells me you’ve been avoiding the dive shop like it’s a swarm of angry bees.”
“He needs to stop talking.”
“He won’t.” She folded her hands. “Now I understand the dark smudges under your eyes. You can dodge her for a while. Dove Key is good at giving you the illusion of space. But it’s an island, so there’s only so much room to run.”
I lifted a brow. “You’re making a compelling case for moving to Nebraska.”
“Please. You’d be bored by lunch and start a brewery in a cornfield.” Smiling, she tipped her head. “Are you all right, honey?”
I should’ve said yes. Years of watching her shoulder everything had trained that answer into me. But maybe Eli had knocked something loose, in his weird, original way.
“Not sure. I saw her. She fell off the dock in front of me, and I laughed.” An amused huff. “Then her staff called her Dr. Donovan, and I got… weird.”
Mom’s mouth softened. “People become what they need to survive the path they choose. And sometimes they become it so completely they forget where they are.”
The words sank like a stone in my gut. “You think Tessa forgot?”
“I think she left when she was eighteen, thinking everything was bigger somewhere else. It takes time to understand what small can hold.” She squeezed my hand. “But you don’t get to decide that for her.”
The protest died on my tongue. Of course she was right.
She smiled at whatever she saw on my face. “You know, I look at you now, and I don't see the teenage boy who sat on the end of the pier for a month after she left. I see the man who built a business against long odds. I see the man who is an anchor to this family and this community.”
The conviction in her voice made me straighten in my chair.
“You’ve spent twelve years proving you’re enough, Braden. You have nothing to hide from her. You’re not the one who should be worried about this reunion, you know.”
She patted my shoulder and went to help Harper with putting away leftovers like she hadn’t just handed me my spine back.
I drifted to the steps. The sky was a twinkling carpet of black velvet, and wind moved through the palm trees. Austin stepped out and leaned on the railing beside me, looser than he used to be before Iris wedged blue sky into his ribs.
“You’ve got that look on your face.” His voice was casual as if giving a tide report. “The one that says you just got a lecture from Mom about being a decent human being. Something regarding ex-girlfriends, I’m guessing.”
“News travels fast on the island.”
“Faster when Eli is involved.”
“That’s a given,” I said with a barked laugh. “It’ll be all right. Tessa and I will both survive, I imagine.”
He dug at a floorboard with the tip of his boot. “Braden, I know what it looks like when someone keeps life so neat they don’t have to feel anything that could mess it up.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah you do,” he replied with that unassailable big brother logic.
“All that ambition, all that planning… it doesn’t actually protect you from the messy stuff.
It just guarantees you’ll be alone when the storm eventually hits.
So stop. Stop strategizing how to avoid her.
Be the guy who lives here. She’s the woman who’s visiting for a few months.
That’s it. Stop using the past as a reason to jump off a boat before it leaves the dock. ”
I shot him a long side-eye. “Can we stop with the nautical analogies? It’s hot out here.”
“You chose to live on an island,” he said, not wrong. He clapped my shoulder once. “Take it from a guy who knows—you don’t have to let the past rule your present. Or future. Just interact with her and let her go again.”
But what if I’m not capable of that, Austin? The thought formed automatically, but I kept it from coming out of my mouth. I wasn’t ready to voice that deep, core fear.
When I finally went home, my house felt like it had shifted a half inch. Everything was exactly in place—keys in the bowl, shoes by the mat—but the quiet buzzed like a light flickering in another room.
I poured a beer and set it down untouched. Turned on some Bob Seger. Ran my hand over the back of the sofa and didn’t sit. I told myself I was fine, that the hollow under my breastbone was just indigestion. My phone pinged with a text from Eli.
Eli: Scripps wants to do an early morning survey Wednesday. Can you be at the pier at 7:30?
My thumb hovered. I felt like a cornered animal with no way out. I typed my answer.
Braden: One day, Eli. 7:30.
Ping. He answered immediately.
Eli: Message received. Bring your grumpy face. Scientists will love it.
I snorted and set the phone down. Wednesday was three days away. Three days to pretend my stomach didn’t swoop when I thought about the way Tessa’s voice had softened on the dock when she said my name. Or that the moment of levity between us hadn’t happened.
I didn’t have a plan beyond one day on the water and the promise I’d made in my mother’s kitchen—to stop making decisions for people who weren’t me. Wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“Great,” I told the empty room. “This’ll go totally fine.”
The silence didn’t argue. The ocean out there in the dark didn’t care. And Wednesday would come, no matter how neatly I stacked my excuses.