22. Ethan
ETHAN
The board should’ve been replaced weeks ago. I knew that. I just hadn’t gotten around to it.
“You planning on fixing this or just waiting for someone to fall through it?” Miles said, kicking lightly at the edge of the step like he was testing his luck.
“It’s fine,” I said, adjusting the grill brush in my hand.
“It’s not fine. It’s one bad step away from a lawsuit… Better call a lawyer.”
That earned him a look. “Really.”
He grinned. “My bad.”
It was the kind of Tuesday evening that sneaked up on you—the sky going amber and soft over the yard, the air carrying that end-of-season chill that meant summer was just about done.
Miles had shown up with a six-pack. Paul had arrived twenty minutes later with nothing but himself and immediately claimed the hammock.
I flipped the burgers. Smoke and salt air moved through the yard together, one last stretch of warmth before everything turned for good.
“Beer for the grill master,” Paul said, appearing long enough to hand one over before retreating back to the hammock.
“Thanks,” I said without looking up.
He settled back in, rocking slightly. “Backyard’s looking good. All you need now is a hot tub.”
“If I got a hot tub, I’d never get rid of you.”
“Correct,” he said, like that was a selling point.
The guys had helped me work through the yard over the summer—clearing out what had gone overgrown, rebuilding what needed it, turning it into something that felt usable. We’d gotten most of it done before the season turned. The deck was the last thing.
“This was his project,” I said, more to the wood beneath my hand than to either of them.
Miles glanced over. “Yeah?”
“He said he was going to redo the whole deck.” I ran my thumb along the worn edge of the step, feeling the grooves time had worked into it. “Never got around to it.”
“You going to?”
I looked at it for a second. At the uneven boards, the small things left unfinished. “Yeah. Eventually.”
“Before you sell?” Paul asked from the hammock.
I kept my eyes on the grill. “That’s the plan.”
“Right,” Paul said. “The plan.”
Miles crouched down beside the step and pressed his hand against the board, testing it. “Let me grab a drill.”
Before I could answer, he was heading toward the garage.
I let him go, standing at the grill in the quiet.
Coming back here had been an easy decision.
My grandad had raised me after my parents died—him and my Nan both, stepping in without hesitation like I had always been theirs.
I had no real memories of my parents, so the loss was more my grandparents’ than mine.
We lost Nan the year before he called, to cancer that moved fast and left the house silent.
When he called to say he had no one left, I was a week out from the State Bar.
I had been ready. Everything had lined up.
I left anyway.
It felt like the only thing to do. Still did, mostly.
The death certificate said heart disease.
I had read it enough times to know what it said and still not quite believe it was the whole truth.
He had been healthy enough, all things considered, until Nan was gone—and then something in him started going quiet.
The doctors had their explanation. I had mine.
Some people aren’t built to stay in the world without their person, and my grandad was one of them.
He held on for a year, maybe out of stubbornness, maybe for me, and then he didn’t anymore.
The yard looked like what it was now—cared for, having come back from being left too long. The only part I hadn’t touched was Nan’s garden along the back fence.
I had kept it the way she left it. Or kept it up, I should say.
Watered it, trimmed it, showed up for it the way she always had. The season had taken the last of the roses weeks ago, but the hydrangeas had lasted almost into the purple skeleton phase, which felt like something she would have appreciated.
Miles came back out with a drill and a handful of screws, crouching down beside the step without ceremony. “Hold that.”
I stepped over and braced the board while he lined it up. The drill whirred, sharp and clean, pulling everything back into place. He leaned back and tested it with his hand before standing.
“Good as new,” he said, brushing his hands off.
I looked down at it. At the clean line where the wood now sat flush.
“Grandpa would be proud,” Miles said lowly.
The thought landed somewhere I wasn’t ready to sit with right now. I took a slow sip of beer instead and turned back to the grill.
“You call Maya back yet?” Paul asked.
“Not yet.”
Paul was quiet for a second. The hammock creaked. “That’s interesting.”
“It’s not interesting. I’ve been busy.”
“You’re never too busy to return a call,” Miles said, coming to stand beside the grill. “You’re just too busy avoiding what the call means.”
“The call means a market assessment,” I said. “That’s it.”
“The call means you’re actually doing it,” Paul said. “Listing the house. Moving forward with the plan.” Which you apparently can’t bring yourself to do.”
I flipped the burgers.
“Ethan.”
“I’ll call her.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Miles and Paul exchanged a look I didn’t need to see to know was happening.
“The store’s doing well,” Miles said, after a moment. Not pushing, just stating a fact the way he did when he wanted you to hear something without feeling ambushed by it. “Better than last year. You know that.”
“I know.”
“And the house.” He gestured at the yard. The garden. The deck board he’d just fixed. “You’ve put a lot of work into this place.”
“Which makes it easier to sell,” I said.
“Does it?” Paul asked.
I looked at him.
He shrugged, unbothered. “I’m just asking. Because from where I’m standing, it looks less like a guy getting ready to sell and more like a guy who keeps finding reasons to stay.”
The grill popped. I turned back to it.
“So,” Paul said, after a beat. “Salem.”
I kept my eyes on the burgers.
“She seems cool,” Paul continued, unbothered by the silence.
“Yeah,” I said. “She is.”
“I saw Lucy fully cockblocking you at the fair,” Paul added, his arm draped over his eyes.
I let out a slow breath. “I don’t really know what to do about that yet. The post she made was unnecessary, and I let it go.”
“Smart,” Miles said. “You engage with it, and you get the full Lucy special. Waterworks. Passive-aggressive posts. The full drama campaign.”
“It’s not passive-aggressive if you tag the person you’re targeting," Paul offered helpfully.
He wasn’t wrong.
Lucy never fully gave up. We’d settled into something that looked like loose friendship from the outside, mostly because our circles overlapped and there wasn’t much choice. That had worked fine until Salem walked into my haunted house.
“So, this isn’t just the PR thing anymore,” Paul said. Not really a question.
“It started that way,” I said. “I just didn’t expect it to feel this easy.”
Miles turned his beer slowly in his hand. “The not-dating thing.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything,” he said mildly. “I’m just noting that you’ve had this rule for two years and it has produced exactly zero of the results you said it was supposed to produce. Lucy’s still hovering. You’re still here, and now there’s Salem.”
“Salem’s different,” I said before I could stop myself.
Paul sat up. I didn’t look at him.
“So, humor me for a second.” Miles leaned against the deck railing, arms crossed. “Pretend you were staying.”
“Miles—”
“Just pretend. For thirty seconds. You’re staying in Gray Harbor, the store’s yours, the house is yours. Would you date then?”
I didn’t answer.
“And if you would,” Paul said, quieter, all the performance out of his voice, “it’d be Salem. Right?”
The yard was very quiet.
The grill. The breeze off the water. The hammock creaked once and went still.
I didn’t answer that either.
I didn’t need to.
Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something aloud. “Call Maya. Whatever you decide, just actually decide it. Waiting isn’t a plan, man. It’s just waiting.”
Miles pushed off the railing. “Food ready?”
“Yeah,” I said.
We ate on the deck as the sky went dark, the three of us falling into the easy rhythm. The conversation moved on—the Den, the store, something Paul had seen on the internet. Nobody brought Salem up again.
But later, when the night had gone quiet and Miles and Paul had gone home, I stood at the kitchen sink looking out at the yard, and I pulled out my phone.
I stared at Maya’s number for a long moment.
And called.