20. Jake
JAKE
I’ve been awake since five fifty-one.
Not because I’ve spent the better part of the morning replaying a kiss on top of a lighthouse like some kind of lovesick fool.
I’m just awake.
Wide the hell awake.
The sky was still that soft gray-blue when I gave up pretending I could sleep. Standing on the porch didn’t fix it. Nothing about the salt air, the quiet of the water, or the fact that the whole town was still asleep did a damn thing to settle me down.
So I made coffee. Checked the weather like I had somewhere to be that required knowing it. Then I went out to the dock and replaced two loose boards that’ve only been loose for a week and, for reasons that made perfect sense before sunrise, suddenly needed immediate attention.
I stood there afterward with the drill in my hand, looking them over, wondering if maybe I’d missed something. Maybe there was another problem I could fix if I stared long enough.
There wasn’t.
So I walked up to The Knuckle and tightened a couple boards on the patio too, because if I was going to pretend I had a practical reason to be up before dawn, I might as well commit to the lie.
By the time I made it back to the boat, the sun had started pushing up over the water. I washed down The Pinch of Tides nice and thorough. When I finished, I stood there, hose still in my hand, watching water run off the deck. Then I turned it off. Coiled it up. Put it away.
Opened the storage bin under the bench. Closed it. Opened it again. Rearranged two crab pots that were already exactly where they belonged. Checked my phone. Nothing. Slid it into my pocket. Took it back out thirty seconds later. Still nothing.
Hank lies stretched out on the dock, chin down, eyes half closed, breathing slow and heavy in that way he does when he’s decided the world is not worth getting up for. He’s been watching me for the last hour with the kind of quiet judgment only a bulldog can pull off.
“Nothing to see here, buddy,” I tell him, stepping off the boat. The wood’s already warm under my feet. “Just your dad conducting unnecessary dock repairs before breakfast,” I tell him, dropping down beside him.
He lifts his head just enough to look at me, then lets out a long, unimpressed grunt and drops it onto my thigh.
I scratch behind his ear. He leans into it briefly, then settles again, eyes closing like he’s officially withdrawing from this conversation.
I look up when the lights click on inside The Knuckle. Bethany. She moves through the space with that same efficient, no-nonsense pace she always has, flipping things on, setting things up like the place belongs to her as much as it does to me.
I check my watch. Nine oh-two. I’ve passed three hours without accomplishing a damn thing that actually needed doing.
Everything looks the same as it did yesterday morning. The bay. The dock. The boat. Same ropes. Same pilings. Same water sliding in and out like it’s got all the time in the world.
Only now I know what her mouth tastes like.
That seems like a design flaw in the universe. Expecting a man to move through a normal morning after that.
Hank lifts his head. I follow his line of sight toward shore. Nothing. Just a pelican diving down through the air and hitting the water hard enough to send a ripple out toward the dock.
Hank huffs and settles again.
“You’re not helping.”
He thumps one foot against the wood.
This is the fourth time in the last hour he’s done that. Looked toward shore like he’s spotted something. Someone. Let me hope for exactly half a second. Then gone right back to being a potato.
I pull my phone out again.
Still nothing from her.
I turn it over in my hand, thumb hovering for a beat before I drop it facedown beside me.
Hank’s head snaps up. I don’t look this time. “Not falling for that again,” I mutter.
“Arf.”
I look.
And there she is.
Crossing the dock with a pink doughnut box tucked against her side in one hand, iced coffee in the other.
The smile hits before I can stop it. I try. I do. Pull it back. Play it cool.
I fail miserably.
Hank does too.
He launches himself up so fast his back end wiggles hard enough to look like something might come loose. “Easy,” I mutter, grabbing for his bandana as he barrels forward.
We meet her halfway down the dock. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” I say, as if I haven’t been losing my mind since the second she kissed me.
She drops to her knees without hesitation, and Hank throws himself at her. “Hi, Hank,” she says softly, both hands sinking into the folds of his neck, and something about the way she says his name lands somewhere I don’t have a good defense for.
I stand there watching her smile down at him, easy in a way that doesn’t feel forced.
I probably should’ve spent this morning preparing myself for what seeing her today after that kiss would do to me.
I didn’t. Not even close.
Hank climbs halfway into her lap. She laughs under her breath and steadies him, pressing her cheek briefly against the side of his head like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Missed you,” she tells him.
We head down to the end of the dock, falling into step without talking about it.
She settles beside me, our feet dangling out over the water. Same spot. Same stretch of dock we’ve been sitting on since we were kids, watching shrimp boats come in, talking about nothing and everything and whatever we were going to do when we were older.
We never once thought there’d be a world where we weren’t side by side.
Hank wedges himself between us with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and drops his full weight into her lap, head immediately settling like he’s claimed the position for the foreseeable future.
“Traitor,” I tell him.
She doesn’t look up. “I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
“You should.”
I expected this to feel strange. Awkward. Careful. Where every word has to pass through ten years of distance, one lighthouse, and everything we still haven’t said. But it’s not. It’s just… quiet. Good quiet. The kind we used to be able to make together without trying.
She flips open the pink box and takes a chocolate with sprinkles for herself, then tips the box toward me. Glazed. Crullers. Old-fashioned. A chocolate glazed. I take a cruller.
We sit there eating doughnuts like it’s the most normal thing in the world. This is just what happens the morning after the girl kisses you under a meteor shower.
Hank cracks one eye open, tracking the cruller in my hand with a level of focus he rarely applies to anything. I break off a piece and hold it out.
“Don’t,” she says.
“He’s looking at me.”
“He always looks at you like that.”
“He’s drooling.”
“He’s a bulldog. That’s what they do.”
“He’s cute.”
She lifts her head, narrowing her eyes. “You are absolutely the problem.”
“I know.” I give him the piece anyway. Hank takes it like he’s earned it. She shakes her head, but she’s smiling when she does it, attention dropping back to him as she scratches behind his ear.
Then she sucks chocolate off her thumb. I have to look out at the water until the surge that runs through me settles enough that I can breathe like a normal person again.
“The whole town knows,” she says.
“I’m not surprised. Do I want to know how?”
“Mrs. Kravitz had binoculars.”
“Again, not surprised.”
She laughs, small and breathy, and looks at me. “That doesn’t bother you?”
Two months ago, if someone had asked me whether I’d want Mo beside me with the whole town talking, I’d have said yes before they finished the question.
“No,” I say. “Doesn’t bother me.”
She watches my face. Then she gives a small shrug. “Okay.”
A gull glides low over the water. The boat bumps soft against the dock. Somewhere over on The Point, somebody laughs. The town keeps waking up around us like this is any other morning.
It’s not.
At least for me, it’s not.
She finishes her doughnut, wipes her hands on her shorts, then glances toward the boat. “Pots today?”
“Pots today.”
She leans in just a little, shoulder brushing mine. “You need a first mate?”
I turn and look at her. She’s already looking at me. Trying very hard not to smile and losing the fight.
I reach into the box and hold out the chocolate. She takes it. “Eat that first,” I say. “You’re slower when you’re hungry.”
“I am not.”
“You’re squeaking, and you are.”
“Not.”
Hank shifts higher into her lap with a grunt, clearly annoyed we’re disrupting his winks. She scratches behind his ear, then looks back at me. “Are you going to be weird about last night?”
There are a dozen ways I can answer that question.
No, Mo. I’m not going to be weird. I’m not going to ask what changed or what happens when your time here runs out.
I’m not going to tell you I haven’t been able to think straight since you kissed me or that when I saw you walking down this dock, the first thing I felt was relief. Then happiness. Because some part of me was still braced for you not showing up at all.
“No.”
She squints one eye against the sun. “Good. Me neither.”
The kiss mattered.
This matters more.
This is her sitting beside me. On purpose. Acting like last night happened and she’s still here.
Ten years.
I built a life I could stand on without her in it. Football. This town. The Knuckle. Crab pots. All the ordinary things you stack under yourself when you’re trying to make peace with the life you planned and didn’t get.
She tips her face back toward the light, eyes closing, breeze lifting a few loose strands of hair across her cheek.
“It’s nice out here,” she says quietly.
“Yeah.”
“I forgot.”
I glance over at her. “Forgot what?”
She opens her eyes again, turning her head just enough to meet mine. “How much I like it here in the morning.”
I don’t say anything. Because if I do, I might tell her I never forgot a damn thing about her here.
The way she used to sit cross-legged on this dock with a book in her lap for hours. The way she’d lean into me when she got tired and pretend it was accidental.
The way she’d count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder to know how far away a storm was from us.
The way my whole life used to orient itself around where she was.
A strand of hair blows across her mouth. I reach over and brush it off her face. My knuckles skim her cheek.
She doesn’t pull away.
I don’t move my hand.
Then she looks at me.
And if Hank wasn’t asleep between us like a snoring barricade, I’m not sure I’d remember how to be a gentleman.