39. Thirty-nine
I squint at the bright morning light as I point my toes to stretch my legs with a groan. I’m on the couch.
Ethan stayed here.
I scramble to stand, and my eyes dart around the living room.
“Ethan?” I call.
His name echoes through the quiet house.
I jog to every room, pushing open doors and calling his name.
In the middle of the kitchen, I know I’m alone.
The dappling light that trickles between outside branches and through the windows is the only movement in the house.
He left.
Without saying goodbye.
Again.
The realization hollows me out. I close my eyes and try to piece it all together. We sat on the couch for hours.
“Is your dad any closer to localizing the menu at the Crow’s Nest?” he asked.
I laughed. “My dad gets these ideas sometimes. Who knows?”
“Who takes care of the bar while you’re gone all summer?” he asked.
“Nobody gets behind my bar unless I teach them.” I shrugged. “The bartenders can handle it.”
“That confident, huh?”
I nodded. “I like making drinks, but I love teaching others how to do it.” I paused. “I might even be decent at it.”
“You taught me to make one—you’re better than decent,” he said with a smile.
Then we turned on the TV, the cooking channel, and Ethan criticized every chef on there.
When he yelled, ”What the hell are you doing with all that vinegar?” I couldn’t contain my laugh.
I was already in my sleepshirt when he yawned.
“Stay,” I said.
Then I climbed on him and kissed him as I ran my fingers through his thick, dark hair.
“I thought you said no funny business.” He was smug.
“I’m not being funny,” I said into his mouth.
But it didn’t go any further. I laid my head on his lap, where I must have fallen asleep.
Did he leave then?
No.
I woke up in the middle of the night with his arms around me and thought how right it felt. I watched him sleep, listening to the rhythm of his breath, and felt the cadence of his heart before falling back to sleep.
And after all that, he couldn’t stay.
I rub my temples. Confusion turning to sadness.
I’m still leaving, this is still temporary, and my expectations are still too high.
I stare at the warm light dancing through the window.
There’s a scrape against the front door before the knob turns, and my head jerks.
Ethan steps into the house, arms full of groceries, and my heart flip-flops like a fish out of water as relief pumps it back to life.
“Morning,” he says with an earth shattering full-wattage smile as he puts the bags on the table. “I didn’t want to wake you. I got stuff for breakfast.”
I bite my lip sheepishly, pulling at the hem of my oversized t-shirt. “I thought you left.”
“I guess technically I did.” He pecks a kiss on my forehead. “But I came back.”
His gaze rakes down my nightshirt and bare legs, and the smile I try to hide is fully exposed.
“Sit,” he orders as he covers the counter in ingredients and pulls a French press out of one of the cabinets.
My eyes widen. “Do you know how to use that thing?”
“Yes?”
His chin dips as he scoops coffee grounds out of a canister. My mouth waters instantly as the nutty smell wafts around me.
“Ethan! I’m as bad at making coffee as you are at making cocktails. Teach me, please.”
I put my palms together and bob up and down.
His chest rumbles as his lips lift in amusement, and he lifts his chin in a silent get over here.
“What do you usually do?” he asks.
“I usually fill a coffee filter with coffee and push the button.”
“Fill it?” His eyes widen. “With how much water?”
“I usually drink a cup or so, and now Finn drinks a cup…”
I shrug.
“Nel, no.”
Hands on the counter, he bends at his waist and drops his head between his arms.
“This French press holds 32oz of water. I would use about 8-10 tablespoons—tablespoons!—with this.”
I tap a finger on my chin. “That could be part of my issue.”
He scoops grounds into the French press and then fills it with hot water before putting the lid on.
“How can you make the best cocktail I’ve ever had but not know how to do this?” He’s genuinely baffled.
“I’ve had a life with enablers. My college roommates always made coffee, then Travis, then I spent a year fumbling through it until Finn couldn’t take it and took matters into his own hands.”
I shrug as if to say, don’t blame me.
He slowly pushes the plunger through the dark liquid and grabs two mugs, pouring us each one before sending me to a stool.
“Tell me how you learned to cook?” I ask.
I blow the steam on my mug while Ethan somehow makes chopping bell peppers look pornographic in jeans, a t-shirt, and bare feet.
“I grew up hunting and fishing the way my boys have.” His knife rocks in a steady rhythm across the cutting board. “I realized really young how much I appreciated I could provide food to myself and my family, and that led me to experiment with ways of cooking it.”
He scoops up the pile of diced peppers with the blade and drops them into a bowl.
“After culinary school, I learned a lot of restaurants have no idea where their food is coming from. There’s a lot of ordering from wholesalers with frozen deliveries from some faraway place—it just felt so disconnected to me.” He turns to look at me. “So I decided to open a restaurant and see if I could do it differently. See if I could source things as fresh and local as possible while also building a relationship with farmers. I started out with a menu of five items and was only open for dinner four nights a week while I worked part time with a construction company in town.” He smiles, as if he’s remembering those days in vivid color, and shrugs. “It just kind of grew from there.”
My response is in the form of a quiet nod, surprised at how passionate he is about it. How clear of his purpose.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, whisking eggs in a bowl.
“I don’t know. You light up when you talk about it. Like you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be. It’s… nice. Like you have this special gift and mission that propels you forward with clarity. Everyone doesn”t have that when it comes to their career.”
“Don’t you feel the same way about what you do? You’re a helluva bartender.”
“Maybe?”
I rarely let myself think about my career regrets, and I never talk about them.
“I was basically born behind the bar. It’s what I’ve always known. I got a degree in business so I could help my dad. College wasn’t really what I wanted to do, but it seemed to be the natural progression of things at the time, so I just went along with it because I wasn’t really passionate about any other plan. Then, moving back to Key Largo seemed like the next thing to do because that’s where my family was. Once I met Travis, things just kind of fell into place for me there. My career was the easy choice, I guess.”
Butter simmers in the pan as he pours the eggs in.
“I like creating drinks and seeing people enjoy them. I don’t know if I ever imagined I’d be a bartender with a side hustle of managing my dad’s restaurant when I grew up, but I guess that’s how life is sometimes.”
Giving life to those words seems a bit like stepping out onto a tightrope with no net. I’ve thought of them before, but never once have I said them to another living being, not even Travis.
“How do you mean?” he asks.
“I mean, there are people like you, with passion and vision, that know exactly what they are supposed to be doing. I, on the other hand, did not have any idea what that looked like for me at eighteen when it was time to make grown-up choices. I think I just kind of let the easy route guide me for a lot of those early big decisions. My dad never told me I needed to come back and help him, I just always assumed that would make him happy and it would be easier than forging some life on my own.” I sip my coffee as my thoughts start to spiral. “I don’t know. With Travis gone and the kids getting older, I just kind of wonder if I missed the boat somehow.”
“If you could change it all right now, what would you do instead?” he asks, folding the omelet in half in the pan.
“Is a cocktail consultant a real thing?” I laugh honestly. “I like creating drinks and making specialty cocktails. I love that. Maybe I would teach bartenders or work with restaurant owners on creating drink menus. There’s probably no market for that, but I think I’d like it.”
He sets a plate with an oversized omelet in front of me with two forks.
“This smells amazing, Ethan. No wonder all those women hunt you down at all hours of the night,” I tease, picking up one of the forks.
“I haven’t made breakfast for any woman since I was married.”
The confession stops me mid-bite while he easily plucks a forkful of omelet into his mouth.
“I think you should try it,” he says.
“Try what?” I ask, taking a bite.
“I think you should try being a cocktail consultant. I would hire you, and I can think of several other restaurant owners who would love to have someone like that help them.”
I search his face for a joke, but there isn’t one. He’s serious.
“Maybe.” I look down at the plate. “But first, I was thinking I could teach you how to make drinks. I can’t leave here knowing that sometime in your future you’re going to get behind a bar—that you own—and have you replay that scene from last week. Turns out I have two weeks here and nothing to do.”
“What about the puffins and whales and lobsters?” There’s a playfulness in his eyes as he takes his last bite of breakfast.
The moment Finn and Marin decided to go to that camp, I stopped caring about puffins or whales. The lobster? I definitely still want that, but everything else were plans for them.
“I just want lobster. Lots of it. But I realized for the first part of this trip, I went to a lot of places because I thought it was what Travis wanted, and then when we were coming here, I planned a lot of things because of some idea of what it would be like with the kids. Now that I’m alone…” My voice trails off. “I guess I just see it differently.”
”Good.”
”Good?” I ask, eyebrows raised.
“I have to go to the restaurant for a few hours this morning, but I want to show you something…with lobster.” His mouth curves into a smile that renders me powerless. “And pack a bag—just in case.”