6. Emory
EMORY
I’m sitting here like an idiot, staring out at the bay as if it might hand me answers.
Idiot feels like my default setting lately. The last twenty-four hours. The last decade.
So I start walking, because as soon as I stop moving, my brain snaps right back to yesterday. To Jake saying my name. To me doing what I always do when emotion shows up uninvited and I don’t have a plan.
I run.
I slipped past him like a coward. Mumbled something—maybe an apology, maybe a grocery list—and got out before he could say anything. Before I could say the wrong thing.
Again.
The problem was never that Jake loved me.
It was that he loved me out loud.
And instead of saying what I felt, I panicked. Smiled. Nodded. Reached for politeness as if it were a life raft. I said something so wrong it’s echoed all this time.
The verbal equivalent of a shrug.
I said, Thank you.
Then I disappeared, and he hadn’t heard from me since.
I take the shell loop slower than usual, my iced latte sweating in the humidity, the cardboard sleeve soaking up most of it. A breeze drifts in off the water, moving through the live oaks and stirring the Spanish moss just enough to make The Point look like it’s breathing.
The bench comes into view where the path curves, the shade thickens, and Blue Crab Bay meets the Atlantic.
The man from the other day is there again, hat pulled low, shoulders slightly rounded, talking to himself like that’s a perfectly normal way to pass the morning. Around here, it might be. He tosses something toward the grass with a quiet underhand motion.
“Hello,” I say, slowing as I lift my latte for a sip.
He looks up, eyes crinkling right away. “Morning, Emory.”
“You know who I am?”
“Of course.” His voice is soft, easy. “You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve known you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper.” He holds a hand out around shin height.
“I can barely remember last week.” I step closer and offer my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mister…”
“No need for formalities, but I appreciate the sentiment.” He shakes my hand, firm and warm. “Willard’s fine.”
“Willard,” I repeat. “That suits you.”
“So I’ve been told.”
I glance at the small brown paper bag beside him. “What are we working with there?”
“Unsalted peanuts.” He nudges the bag with two fingers. “Doctor says I can’t have ‘em. Didn’t say nothin’ about the wildlife.”
“Rebellious,” I say. “I like it.”
Something rustles in the grass near his shoes. A small brown blur darts out, grabs a peanut, and vanishes before I get more than a flash of tail.
“Oh,” I say, turning. “You have a friend.”
Willard smiles. “That’s Chip, the squirrel.”
I squint toward the grass. “You named a squirrel after a chipmunk? How’s he feel about that?”
Willard chuckles. “He’s got a chip out of his ear.”
Sure enough, the squirrel pops back out, and there it is. A neat little notch missing from one ear.
“Well,” I say, “that name feels earned.”
Chip flicks his tail and chatters in agreement, then makes off with another peanut.
Willard pats the bench beside him.
I hesitate before I sit. The wood is warm where the shade doesn’t reach. He tosses another peanut. Chip takes it. One at a time. Never greedy. Just this small, steady exchange built on trust and routine.
Something in that rhythm eases my shoulders down from where they’ve been living near my ears.
“You walk this early often?” Willard asks.
“I needed air,” I admit.
“Air’s good.”
Silence settles between us. Willard seems like the kind of man who doesn’t treat quiet as something that needs fixing.
We sit there while the town keeps happening around us. Boats idle out. A flagpole tings. A buoy dings. A man jogs by with the grim determination of someone who hates jogging but hates himself more if he doesn’t. Mrs. Kravitz passes with coffee in one hand and purpose in the other.
Willard watches none of it.
He watches Chip.
After a while he says, “I hear you thinking.”
That pulls a reluctant smile out of me. “That loud, huh?”
“Mmm.”
I pick at the seam of my latte sleeve. “I always am.”
He nods once and tosses another peanut. “You thinking about something that already happened, or something you’re afraid might?”
Well. Hate that he nailed it. “Both.”
Willard gives that same calm little nod he’s given everything else. “Sometimes,” he says, “the past feels safer. It’s already done disappointing us.”
I peel off a piece of cardboard. “What if the past is the disappointing part?”
“Then you learned something.” He tosses another peanut. “Or you’re about to.”
I stare down the path toward the lighthouse and the rocky jetty. “You ever mess something up so badly you just…” I make a useless little motion with my free hand. “Left it there?”
Willard doesn’t answer right away. He holds a peanut between his finger and thumb while Chip inches closer.
“Yes,” he says at last.
“Did you fix it?”
He shakes his head once. “No.”
My fingers go still on the sleeve. “Oh.”
“But I lived,” he adds gently. “And I loved. And I learned the difference between what was broken and what was just unfinished.”
I clear my throat and take a sip of latte so I have something else to do with my mouth besides admit that hit a little too close for comfort.
“Unfinished has a way of calling,” he continues. “Broken usually doesn’t.”
Chip scampers closer, climbing onto Willard’s shoe and taking the peanut from between his fingers.
I look down the shell path again. “What if you waited too long?”
Willard lets out a soft little chuckle. “People always think there’s a clock on these things.”
“There isn’t?”
“Oh, there’s a clock.” He glances at me then. “Just not the one you’re watching.”
I lean back against the bench and exhale. “You’re annoying in a very comforting way.”
“I’ve been told.”
I look down at my cup and freeze.
There’s writing near the rim. I hadn’t even noticed it.
WORDS HURT BUT SILENCE HAUNTS
Five words.
Willard follows my gaze. “Walt get philosophical again?”
“Apparently.”
He hums. “He does that.”
“I didn’t even see it before.”
“You notice things when you’re ready,” Willard says.
My thumb traces the edge of the cup. “I’m not good at this part.”
“The talking?”
“The part where you go back,” I say. “Where you admit you were wrong and hope the other person doesn’t laugh in your face or politely accept your apology and then disappear forever.”
Willard gives Chip another peanut. “You can’t control the answer.”
“I know.” My voice cracks on it anyway. “That’s the problem.”
Chip takes the peanut, drops it immediately, and chatters at it like the peanut personally betrayed him.
Willard watches with quiet amusement. “You can control whether you ask.”
I nod and peel off another piece of the sleeve. Bits of cardboard gather in my lap as evidence.
“I ran,” I say softly. “I always run.”
“Running keeps you alive,” Willard says. “Staying lets you live.”
I turn to look at him. “Did you practice that?”
“No.” His mouth shifts, almost a smile. “My wife used to say it when I tried to dodge hard conversations.”
“She sounds wise.”
“She was.” His eyes lift toward the sky, fond and far away.
The breeze moves through the branches overhead, and all I hear is leaves and water and the soft chatter of Chip in the grass.
Then a shadow passes over us.
I glance up just as a seagull circles lower.
“That’s French Fry,” Willard says, right about the time the bird dips over my head, and if I hadn’t leaned toward the inside of the bench, I’m fairly sure I would’ve been shit on.
“Now that’s not very hospitable, French Fry,” Willard calls.
I glare up at the sky. “That bird and I have already met, and we do not get along.”
French Fry squawks something that was probably obscene and flaps off.
I take the last sip of my latte and realize my hands have stopped shaking.
“I should keep walking,” I say.
Willard nods. “Loop’s not going to walk itself.”
I stand and brush the cardboard bits from my shorts. Then I hesitate.
“Thank you, Willard.”
He tips his hat just a little. “Chip and I are happy to help.”
I smile. “Thank you, Chip.”
Then I start down the path, heart thudding a little harder with every step.
Excitement slips in beside the nerves.
The thought of seeing Jake again.
Of not slipping past him this time.
For the first time, I don’t speed up to outrun the feeling.
I let it walk with me.