Chapter Fourteen
Ballpark Hamburger Buns
Colton
Six-year-old me, with his scraped knee and flat bicycle tire, would never have expected to be sitting beside Tripp Kolter’s bedside. Him in a coma and me explaining that I basically became a temporary dad overnight.
And asking him if I can fake propose to his daughter.
But here I am.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, Tripp,” I say to the silence. I glance down at my hands, trembling in my lap. “I mean, when he came into my room last night, I about jumped out of my skin. I’m used to being alone. Sure, I’m around people, but when I go home at the end of the day—if you can call a hotel room home , I guess—it’s just me. I thought I liked it that way.”
I pause to blow out a long breath. My chin drops to my chest. Here lies the man I’ve looked up to since I was six years old, comatose, and here sits me, completely uncomfortable. It’s not the hospital itself that sets me on edge. I’m used to tubes and beeping monitors, whether because of my own injuries or because of circuit buddies. It’s the unknowns.
Not knowing if Tripp will ever wake up.
Not knowing if he’ll remember anything or anyone.
Not knowing why he drove fast on an icy road.
Alcohol would be an easy answer, but he’s been sober since he was in his early twenties. Besides, he would never. Yes, he’s human, and yes, he makes mistakes like the rest of us. But I’ll never forget what he said to me when I did drive under the influence at nineteen years old.
“Colton, the way I see it is that you have a choice,” he said, sitting outside my holding cell at the county jail. He had grease on his hands and dust on his cap, but he’d dropped everything when he heard what happened. “Either you let this moment define you, or you define it. What you did wasn’t just illegal, it was wrong. You know it, and I know it. I can’t condone it and I can’t encourage it. But I also can’t make you promise you’ll never do it again. Only you can make that decision for yourself.”
“Tripp,” I said, tipping my head against the cement wall, tongue heavy from the alcohol. Tiny hammers pounded against my skull and shame washed over me. “I think… I don’t know. I think I’m broken.”
Steady blue-gray eyes held mine. “You’re not broken, Colton, you’re human. Humans make mistakes. But the important thing is whether you learn from them or let them multiply until you aren’t in control anymore. So, I’ll say it again: You let this moment define you, or you define it. It can’t be both. Which one will it be?”
I haven’t touched a bottle since the day I walked out of that police station into the blinding winter sunshine.
Exhaling slowly, I lift my eyes to the closed ones of my mentor. “I just want to give him the best summer I can, Tripp. The kind of summer you gave me.” My voice breaks. I suck in a sharp breath. “I want to define this moment.”
A conversation with a person in a coma is a lot like a conversation with God, the Universe, whatever you call it, Justin had said when I met him coming in earlier. He’d clapped me on the shoulder and smiled sadly. You don’t get a verbal response, but you feel something of an answer in your soul.
I understand what he means now. I also understand why Cheyenne said coming to see her dad had turned sad to happy. I have the chance to talk to him, if only one-sided. My last moment with him wasn’t in the hectic, fearful moments of Christmas.
“Do something for me, will you?” Swallowing hard, I squeeze his hand. “Promise me you’ll at least try to define this moment, okay? From where I’m standing, you still have a lot left to fight for.”
It might not make sense to say that. I don’t have any control over what happens. But for the next half hour, I hold Tripp’s hand and I tell him everything. I talk as if we’re shooting the breeze on the deck at the lake house. As if it’s grill smoke burning my eyes and not stinging tears. As if he’s regarding me through those steady blue eyes and listening with undivided intent. I start at the beginning with the interview, and I continue to share the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly. I ask him permission to propose to his daughter, even though I know I’m not the man he’d want to give that privilege to. Not when he knows my history—my need for freedom and my adrenaline highs and my allergies to commitment.
In my mind, he even smiles a little when I tell him we ate breakfast barefoot, in our pajamas, at the coffee shop this morning. Because that’s something he would have done with me.
I don’t like the look in my brother’s eye.
It takes less than a minute to determine that my baby brother is good looking, elusive, and has absolutely no tolerance for small talk. You comment on the temperature fluctuations or the rising gas prices? Don’t expect a response, because you’ll be lucky to get a grunt out of him. You’re better off talking to a wall.
Which leads me to my point: he’s unusually cheerful today.
I eye him over the top of my menu. My foot rests on the rung of the tall-top chair, and above our heads, a striped blue and white umbrella ripples in the breeze. Across the table, my brother is quite literally grinning at his menu.
It’s disconcerting.
“All right.” I clear my throat. “What gives? You don’t smile at me , your favorite brother, so I know you sure as heck aren’t gonna smile at—” I glance at the menu “—the mouthwatering description for shrimp scampi.”
Graham doesn’t even look up at me. “Who says I can’t smile just to smile?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say dryly. “The Laws of the Universe? Physics? Studies done over the twenty-five years of your life where, in situations where normal people smile, you frown?”
That should wipe the grin right off his face. It doesn’t. He lowers his menu and turns his phone to face me, thumb pressed down on the screen.
“I wasn’t smiling at shrimp scampi.” Ah, there’s the brother I know and love . He glances at the screen and shakes his head, eyes crinkling. “Ember sent me this reel. You probably won’t get it since you haven’t picked a book up since—”
“I read Ember’s before it was published, thank you very much.”
“—high school,” he continues. “But it’s hilarious.”
He lifts his thumb to let the video play. I don’t look at it. My gaze is locked on my brother’s face, on the smile I have never seen him smile. I feel like I’ve missed an entire chunk of his life—the one where he went from quiet and brooding to this . To being in love and trying to communicate more openly and planning his wedding.
“You’re laughing because your fiancée sent you a reel about books,” I say evenly. “Graham, you never watched all the funny ones I sent you.”
This gets his attention. He sets his phone face down on the table and frowns. “What are you talking about? I watched every single one you sent.”
“You did.” It should be a question, but it doesn’t come out that way.
“I did,” he confirms, and he reaches for his menu. “What are you going to order?”
I blink. I stare at him for a minute longer, and then look at my own menu. It’s unnecessary; I know I’m going to order the Prime Rib Panini. I need a minute to digest this complete personality change in my little brother. To comprehend that he did see what I sent him because I wanted to make him laugh. He just never mentioned it.
And then it hits me.
Graham seems suddenly different, but it’s not because he changed overnight. It’s because I haven’t been here.
My shirt collar feels constrictive, and I resist pulling at it. It’s hot, but the breeze off the lake keeps it comfortable temperature wise.
My discomfort is because my world is shifting on its axis. It’s from wondering how much I’ve misunderstood over the years. How many opportunities have I missed just because I haven’t been around? Lunch with Graham, hiking with Jordan, tea parties with Jolene.
It chills me. I’ve become just like my mother.
Our waiter comes by to take our order, and then I don’t have my menu to hide behind anymore. I could pull my phone out, I guess, but I’m not that kind of guy. If I’m going to sit down with someone, it won’t be with a phone between us. Even if it would be significantly easier than talking after my realizations.
“Before I forget,” Graham says, reaching into the pocket of his gray suit jacket, “Ember asked me to ask you to give this to Cheyenne.”
He slides a pale pink envelope with Cheyenne written on it across the table to me. It’s sealed with a tiny magenta wax seal that has a tiny heart in the center. Definitely Ember’s handiwork.
I look at him questioningly.
“Why are you looking at me ?” He spritzes fresh lemon into the mouth of his glass—water, extra ice, one slice of lemon. “I’m just the messenger. Well, I was. Now you are.”
“You actually don’t know what’s in here?”
“My best guess? An invite to her bachelorette. She gave one to Syd and Indi too.” He shrugs and leans back in his chair. “Otherwise, I have no idea. Why? Do you want one too?”
I roll my eyes and tuck the envelope under my phone. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
“So.” Graham clears his throat. He drops his Oakleys over his eyes and taps his thumb against his perspiring glass. “You probably guessed that I didn’t invite you to lunch today just to give you that.”
“I probably did.” I lightly knock my knuckles against my temple. “Big brain bucket in here.”
“Well. That’s debatable.”
I toss a crumpled up straw wrapper at him.
A chuckle rumbles in his chest. He grabs the wrapper and folds it between his thumb and forefinger. “The real reason I asked you to meet is because I have a job offer for you.”
I don’t move. I don’t blink and I don’t swallow. I’m not even sure I breathe. Of anything he could’ve said—Pluto is a real planet again, pigs are flying, paper straws are banned—that is the very last thing I’d have ever expected.
But by the time my brain starts catching up, he’s talking again.
“It’s nothing permanent—I mean, technically, it’s not even an official position. But since you’re gonna be around, I didn’t think you’d want to just sit idle.” He has me there. Unfortunately. “The Yacht Club over on the northern side of the lake—which is actually the sailing club for kids—is looking to rebrand their space. Between the wedding, Em’s shop, and my other projects, I can only give it my partial attention. Our first meeting is after the Fourth, and I know you have Milo, but…” He shrugs. “I thought maybe we could work together. Just this once.”
I don’t want to say yes. In fact, I want to bolt from the table. I want to get in my truck and drive until I can take a proper breath again. Until it doesn’t feel like change bullets me every which way I turn.
I thought maybe we could work together. Just this once.
The words knock the breath from my lungs.
I don’t stay in one place longer than four days, I don’t commit, and I don’t even know if I’m good at anything other than rodeo. Because I’ve never had the chance to find out.
Just this once.
“Graham—”
My brother holds up a silencing hand. “Don’t give me an answer without thinking it over. I brought a better description for you to read when you can. Most of it could be remote, but I’d like it if you could be in the Omaha office for team meetings on Mondays. We’ve implemented them over the last few months and have received positive feedback. Your position would mostly be handling communication between potential contractors and the Club, meeting with the president to understand their vision, and, of course, paperwork. Less physical than you’re used to, but also more flexible because you could technically make your own hours.”
I open the manila folder he passes me, but I don’t read any of his neatly typed words. I don’t pause at the semi-outrageous dollar amount Del Ray Development is offering me. I don’t even linger on my father’s signature scrawled at the bottom of the page, even though the blue ink is splotchy like his pen was fizzing out.
Three things stop me from saying no outright. I truly cannot sit idle, Graham wanting to work together, and Indi’s words. The ones about Milo and boats.
Especially sailboats, she’d said.
I know nothing about working in development. I don’t know how to be a team player. I definitely don’t know anything about sailboats or sailing or yacht clubs that are improperly named.
Either you let the moment define you, or you define it.
Tripp’s words. The ones I’ve clung to for nearly twelve years.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell Graham. “I’ll have my answer by this Friday.”
Graham nods, his expression unreadable once again. But it’s not the unreadable I’m used to, because this time, he doesn’t look unapproachable.
I go back to the lake house after lunch. Cheyenne is putting clean dishes away, and Indi is coloring at the table with Milo. I’ve never been good at staying in the lines, but I lower myself into a chair and let Milo choose a picture for me to color. The girls don’t ask me why I have a folder with the Del Ray Development logo on it, but I know they want to.
Jordan texts to ask if we want to walk to Palmer’s Park for ice cream, and Indi teases me about showing her the mile markers on the seven-minute walk to Dad’s house. Milo gets tired halfway to the pier, so I lift him onto my shoulders. Something unfamiliar, something warm, knots in my chest when Cheyenne smiles up at us.
Something that feels a lot like contentment.
We eat at Dad’s house on the deck. A true all-American meal—grilled cheeseburgers on Ballpark buns, cracked black pepper and lime potato chips, and cherry red watermelon. Fresh flowers that smell sweet adorn the middle of the table from Hazel’s shop. When Hazel asks for help with dishes, I volunteer myself and Jolene. I wash, Jolene stands on a chair beside the sink to dry, and Hazel puts dishes away. We talk about Graham and Ember’s wedding, the temperature of the lake water, and the tree branches downed from last night’s storm.
At the lake house, Indi gives Milo his bath, Cheyenne puts him in his pjs, and I sit on the edge of his nautical themed bed to look at Sailing: The Basics . Milo smells like soft children’s shampoo and clean pajamas, and when he wraps his little arms around my neck for a good night hug, I feel my throat tighten up.
I don’t wait until Friday to give Graham my answer about the job. I talk to Indi on the back deck. I tell her we would like her to spend the summer here with us, and then I text my brother to tell him I’ll do it. We’ll work together, just this once.
At breakfast the next morning—perfectly golden blueberry pancakes made on a brand-new griddle—I tell Cheyenne and Indi about the job. They don’t believe me at first, but the look they exchange is rife with silent communication. Indi gets up to take Milo to the bathroom, and Cheyenne quietly tells me she’s proud of me.
When Indi sits back down, their communication is no longer silent. They tell me we’re going to plan a day trip to Omaha, because if I’m going to do this job, I apparently need a business appropriate wardrobe, and they’re determined to help me curate precisely that.