9. Emory
EMORY
The Salty Dog sits at the edge of The Green as if it blew in one summer on a salty breeze and nobody had the heart to tell it to move along.
Yellow and white striped umbrella. A hand-painted sign with a bulldog in a fisherman’s slicker hat and a curved pipe in his mouth, looking like a retired seaman.
The menu is written on an old green chalkboard in faded white paint.
HOT DOG
HOT DOG (with slaw)
HOT DOG (with baked beans)
HOT DOG (with “everything”)
Everything is in quotation marks, which feels both ominous and refreshingly honest.
I’m standing here because Granny decided I needed sunshine and salt air, then handed me a twenty like she was sending me off to summer camp.
“You can’t fix your life on an empty stomach,” she’d said. “And don’t you come back with a salad.”
So here I am, afternoon heat pressing down on my shoulders, standing in line behind a man passionately debating with another whether a hot dog counts as a sandwich.
It does not.
But I’m not emotionally equipped to litigate this today. I’m just trying to buy a hot dog like a normal person who did not have a public emotional incident at Tall Tales yesterday.
No. Two days ago.
I think.
Time has become a very loose concept.
The line inches forward. The bell on the cart dings as the man ahead of me steps away clutching his paper tray like it’s sacred.
My turn.
“Well, look at you,” she says, beaming. “Emory Donovan.”
“Hi, Miss Hattie.”
“Hi,” she echoes, delighted. “You’re back in town.”
I still can’t tell when that’s meant as a welcome and when it’s meant as a finding.
“Just for a bit,” I say automatically.
She makes a little sound that says she has thoughts about that and all of them are blunt.
“Uh-huh. What can I get you?”
I’d like one hot dog with a side of the earth opening up beneath me.
“Just a hot dog,” I say instead. “With slaw.”
“Good choice.” Then she leans in. “How’s Maddy’s leg doing?”
“Still broken. Still dramatic.”
“She’s been dramatic since high school. That’s never gonna change.”
She reaches for a bun. “Tell her I’m bringing casserole and schnapps tonight.”
“I’ll pass along the threat.”
She grins, pleased with herself, then her eyes flick past me and widen in a way that would be subtle anywhere else but absolutely is not here.
The town’s attention shifts half an inch, and that’s enough to know who just stepped behind me.
Of course.
Of course the universe would schedule my first normal public moment with Jake Wheeler next to condiments and wieners.
I turn.
He’s standing behind me in line.
Ball cap. Docksiders. A tee shirt that lands right at mid-bicep. Immediately, Martha May Whovier’s voice pops into my head—the muscles—uninvited and unhelpful. He looks maddeningly like himself. Casual in that specific Jake way that never reads careless. He’s always been that way.
In one hand he’s holding a leash. At the other end of it stands an English bulldog squarely at attention as if he’s on emotional security detail.
Great. Even the dog knows who I am.
Jake’s eyes lift to mine and stay there. I try to make my face do something normal.
“Hi.”
His mouth shifts, that small restrained smile of his, the one that always looks like the real one is waiting just behind it.
“Hi, Mo.”
The name lands exactly where it always has, in the place only he knows how to reach.
The bulldog snorts at my feet. I look down. “And who is this?”
“Mo, meet Hank the Tank. Hank, this is Mo.”
“Hi, Hank the Tank,” I say, lowering my voice like I’m greeting a very serious little bouncer.
Hank’s back leg twitches. Then he inches closer to me with the slow confidence of someone who assumes affection is inevitable.
“You’re… out,” Jake says carefully.
“I am.” I wave the twenty in my hand. “Granny banished me.”
“That tracks.”
And then we’re standing there in the weirdest version of normal imaginable. Two people who used to know everything about each other down to favorite popsicle colors now trying to speak in complete sentences next to relish.
Miss Hattie sets my tray down, but instead of sliding it toward me, she looks at me. Then at Jake. Then back at me. She smiles.
“Well,” she says brightly. “Isn’t this nice.”
Jake tips his chin. “Afternoon, Miss Hattie.”
“Afternoon, Jake,” she says, and the way she says his name carries at least three generations of hometown pride.
She finally nudges the tray toward me. I reach for it and realize, with actual surprise, that my hands are steady. That feels like a small miracle. Or at least a decent start.
“I was going to walk the loop,” I say, because standing here is inviting commentary from strangers and from my own brain, and both are currently tied for my least favorite thing. “Get some air.”
Jake’s eyes flick to the tray, then back to me. “You mind company?”
Such a normal question, and somehow it still feels careful. A cautious way of asking the thing underneath the thing.
“I don’t mind.”
His smile deepens just a fraction. Small enough most people wouldn’t catch it.
I do.
“Okay. Let me grab mine.” He steps up to order, and the bell dings again.
I have no idea if Miss Hattie taps it for the next customer or to alert the town that Round Two: Jake and Emory is officially underway.
I head toward the edge of The Green before I can think too hard about any of this. A few minutes later Jake falls into step beside me with his own tray, Hank trotting proudly between us. A wrinkled little chaperone.
We walk.
Just walk.
No past. No explanations. Just shell crunching under our feet and Hank’s tags giving a soft little jingle every few steps. It’s so ordinary it almost scares me. For one second, I could be seventeen again.
“How’s your granny doing?” Jake asks.
“She’s furious,” I say. “Which is her love language.”
He laughs, that low barely there laugh of his that always sounds like he means it even when it’s small.
“Frank’s trying to help,” I add, “but Frank is also trying to eat everything he touches.”
“Frank would eat a candle if it was sugar-coated.”
“Correct.”
Jake glances at my tray. “You went slaw.”
“I did.” I lift the hot dog a little. “I like to live dangerously.”
He looks out toward the water a little too fast to be casual.
I take a bite before I can overthink the fact that I’m out here walking beside Jake Wheeler as if this is something I just do now. Again.
The first bite is exactly what I remember. Soft bun. Salty snap. Sweet slaw. A lotta messy. Completely worth it.
When I look over, Jake’s watching me with that look that says he’s trying not to smile and not doing a very convincing job of it.
“What?” I ask, mouth half full, because clearly dignity is optional today.
“Nothing.” He pauses. “Just… you always ate the slaw first.”
I freeze mid-chew.
Because I did.
I always did.
When we were kids, I used to dismantle the whole thing like a science project, eat the slaw with my fingers, then put it back together like nothing happened.
I had completely forgotten that.
Jake had not.
“I did not,” I say, very maturely, because denial is my second core competency.
His mouth pulls to one side. “You did.”
“No.”
“Every time.”
I point the hot dog at him. “I think you’re making that up.”
He shakes his head, smiling now. “Nope.”
Hank bumps my calf. He’s laughing too.
“Rude,” I mumble to both of them.
We keep walking. The buoy dings out on the water. A seagull circles overhead, and I swear it’s the same one that’s been showing up all week. French Fry. An airborne menace. Hank notices him too and lets out a low growl.
We pass Willard’s bench.
He’s exactly as he always is. Hat low, peanut bag within reach, Chip somewhere close even when I can’t see him.
“You still do that thing where you eat around the best part and save it for last?”
I stop and look at him. “That is such a vague accusation.”
“It’s not vague. It’s specific.” He gestures at my tray. “You did it with your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups too.”
“Oh my God.” I laugh, horrified. “Why do you remember everything embarrassing about me?”
“Mo, I remember all of it.”
Jake laughs beside me. His eyes stay on mine long enough to make me feel the difference between someone remembering your hot dog habits and someone who never really stopped.
Once we pass the lighthouse, I glance up and catch faces in windows.
Three people at Town Hall stacked one above the other, building a human periscope. Somebody across The Green holding a paperback upside down and not even pretending to read it.
Mrs. Kravitz lifting her coffee at us, toasting the show.
“You okay?” Jake asks quietly.
Of course he catches it. Jake has always known me, often better than I know myself.
“Am I imagining this,” I ask, “or is half the town pretending not to stare at us?”
He glances toward Town Hall. Hart’s Landing. Mrs. Kravitz, who raises her cup again with absolutely no shame.
“No,” he says. “That’s pretty much what’s happening.”
“Great. I didn’t realize how public this would feel.”
Jake is quiet for a second. “It always was,” he says.
I glance at him.
He gives one small shrug. “We just didn’t notice when we were kids.”
And he’s right. Nothing about us was ever private here. We just had the advantage of being too young to understand what that meant yet.
I look toward Tall Tales, and somebody straight up ducks behind the glass. I almost laugh.
Jake reaches over and takes my tray from me.
“What are you doing?”
“You looked like you needed one less thing to carry.”
My heart gives a stupid little flutter.
“That is extremely annoying of you,” I mumble.
He smiles, small and brief. “I know.”
We keep walking. He shifts a little closer. Not touching, but close enough that I’m aware of the heat of him. Close enough that the watching doesn’t feel quite so sharp.
Just me. Just Jake. Just Hank, snorting like a tiny pig shaped bodyguard.
Mrs. Kravitz appears again somehow, now seated on a bench she absolutely was not on thirty seconds ago.
I squint at her. “Does she teleport?”
“Pretty sure she does.”
We both laugh, and it feels good.
Jake adjusts Hank’s leash and glances down the loop ahead. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s keep walking.”
So I do.
And for one quiet moment, it feels like something I could get used to.