21. Jake
JAKE
Draft one is too long.
Draft two sounds like I’m inviting her to a business dinner.
Draft three only has Mo written before I just sit there staring at the paper while Hank breathes like a lawn mower at my feet, wondering when exactly I got nervous enough to need four tries to ask a woman to dinner.
Draft four.
Tonight. The Knuckle. 7:00
I read it twice, like the words might rearrange themselves into something better if I give them time.
Hank stares at it. “Too simple?” I ask him. He paws at the note.
Bulldog approved.
“Alright,” I say, like that settles it.
I roll the paper, write Mo on the outside, tie it with twine, and crouch down beside him. “Okay, buddy. Your turn.”
He spins in a tight circle with excitement, already committed to the job. I straighten the little blue bow tie at his neck and fasten the note to it. “Don’t eat it,” I add. He looks offended.
We head across The Point together, Hank trotting beside me with his chest out like he personally invented invitations. A couple people lift their cups from the Tall Tales patio, and someone in line at The Salty Dog calls Hank’s name before mine. Hank soaks it up like he’s on a parade route.
Willard tips his hat from his bench. I nod back.
Hank doesn’t break stride. He keeps marching like he’s on official business.
“It’s for you, Emory,” Maddy hollers before we’re even fully through the door.
Mo comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, hair piled up, cheeks flushed from the heat, flour or sugar dusting one side of her face and the bridge of her nose. She stops when she sees me. Then she smiles.
“Hi,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you.” She swipes at her cheek with her forearm.
“Don’t.”
She pauses, her arm still in midair. “Don’t what?”
“Wipe your face.” I step closer and take her jaw in my hand. “You’ve got…” I lightly kiss the side of her face. The sugar is sweet against my lips. “Sugar on your cheek.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“I’m not complaining.”
“About time,” Maddy calls from behind the counter.
Mo’s smile widens, but before I can do something like kiss her again, Hank huffs at my leg. I glance down at him. “Right. Your turn.”
He plants his front paws against her and lets out a proud little arf. She laughs, stumbling backward before steadying both of them, and that’s when she spots the note tied to his bow tie. “What’s this?”
I keep my mouth shut and let Hank take the credit.
Her fingers move to the twine.
I take one step back. Then another. Hank hops down. We turn toward the door.
“You’re just leaving?” she calls after me, half laughing.
“Yes, ma’am.” I don’t look back.
If I do, I’ll stay.
I close The Knuckle at four o’clock.
Bethany stares at me like I’ve just announced I’m selling the place and joining a monastery. “It’s four o’clock,” she repeats.
“Yes. It’s four.”
She looks at the clock. Then at me. Then back at the clock. “We have a full house tonight.”
“Had.” I reach for the bacon and line it up on the prep counter, giving it my full attention so I don’t have to look at her. “I called and moved them to next week. Gave them dinner on me. The staff’s covered too.”
Bethany sets her knife down very slowly. That kind of slow never means anything good. “So you’ve lost your mind generously,” she says. Then, after a breath, “Is this about Emory?”
I don’t answer.
“Jake.”
“I’m cooking dinner.” That gets me three full seconds of silence.
Then she unties her apron, folds it with the kind of precision people use when they’re trying not to say ten things at once, grabs her keys and her boatkin, and heads for the door.
“You’re leaving,” I say.
“I’m leaving.” She pauses, one hand on the push bar. “To get you flowers.”
“Already got them. And I’ve got dock lights.”
She considers that. “Okay.” Another pause. “Does she know?”
“No.”
A small smile pulls at her mouth.
“Good. Don’t tell her until she gets here.”
Then she’s gone.
Hank’s eyes follow me from his bed by the prep station with the kind of bulldog judgment that feels unearned from a creature who licks windows.
“We’ve never had a first date,” I tell him. Not when we were kids, splitting hot dogs and racing barefoot down the dock. Not during college visits, when everything between us felt both inevitable and unspoken right up until the second it wasn’t.
We’ve had almosts. We’ve had history. We’ve had a lighthouse and a kiss that felt like something finally clicking into place. But we’ve never had this.
Something chosen.
By six o’clock, The Knuckle is empty in a way it almost never is. No clatter from the bar. No voices drifting in from the patio. No music. Just the low lights and the view of the bay and beyond to the ocean.
I set one table.
The one by the window.
Mom always called it the best seat in the house. She was right. On clear evenings you can see the lights in Oyster Bay, the next town over, come up one at a time, like the whole shoreline’s settling in for the evening.
I fold the napkins and place the silverware just so, with a small bunch of flowers in the center. Then I dig a candle out of the hurricane box in the back office because it seems I own emergency preparedness but not romance supplies.
I step back and look.
It looks like a date.
Good.
Hank waddles over, inspects the table, then sits and looks up at me smiling with his bottom teeth sticking out. “Sorry, buddy. This one’s for two.” He flops down with a dramatic sigh.
The peaches are on the counter where I lined them up after the farm stand this morning. I’d stood there squeezing every single one like my grandmother taught me until the woman running the stand kindly said that if I bruised one more peach, I was buying the whole basket.
I bought the whole basket.
The recipe is taped above the prep station.
Peach Crisp
Emory Donovan
I’ve read it enough to know it by heart, but I keep looking up anyway. My hands quit rushing when I see her name there.
She made this. Tested it. Adjusted it. Stood in some test kitchen figuring out the exact ratio of sugar to flour, oats to brown sugar, until it came out right.
I want to make it for her.
Hank watches from the corner while I peel peaches, his eyes following every move. “I know what I’m doing,” I tell him.
He’s unconvinced.
The peaches get sliced. Sugar. Cinnamon. A little vanilla. Butter worked into the topping until it turns crumbly under my fingers.
“If this goes wrong, I’m blaming the peaches.” I slide the pan into the oven.
Dinner’s easier. Shrimp. Crab. Grits. Butter. Bacon. Cheese.
The kitchen fills with the smell of something that feels like home before it even hits the plate.
Hank relocates directly under my feet. “Do you have to lie right there? I’m afraid I’m gonna step on you.” He doesn’t move.
I step over him. Then over him again. And again.
When I hit six times, I’m counting out loud.
At ten minutes past seven, I hear the front door open. Hank’s head comes up first. The rest of him follows fast, sliding and scrambling on the floor as he heads for the dining room, ignoring he wasn’t invited.
I wipe my hands once. Then again and walk out like I haven’t been waiting all evening.
All day.
Mo is standing just inside the door. Navy sundress. Her water bottle in one hand. The evening light behind her. She looks around the empty restaurant, brow pulling just slightly.
“Did something happen?” she asks. “Why is it so—“
“Empty?”
She gives a quick nod.
“I closed the restaurant.”
Her eyes come back to mine. “You closed it?”
“For tonight.”
Her gaze drifts past me to the single table set. “Jake—“
Hank apparently couldn’t wait another second, barrels into her legs before she can finish, nearly knocking himself and her over in the process. He’s vibrating so hard his whole back half is shaking.
She crouches to hug Hank, pressing her cheek into the side of his neck. He makes a sound that is embarrassingly close to a sob.
“He was told he wasn’t invited,” I say. “He made his feelings known.”
“Don’t you listen to your dad. I’m inviting you to stay.”
Hank turns and looks at me, then juts his jaw out to show his bottom teeth. Then his tongue. That combination is often the bulldog equivalent of a middle finger.
“Okay. You can stay.”
His back end wiggles so much he can’t stay seated.
Mo straightens, and her gaze catches on the wall behind me.
The photo.
Us when we were younger. Smiling goofy smiles. My arm around her shoulders because in some way we were always touching and it was normal.
“I forgot about this one,” she says quietly. “Until I saw it again a few weeks ago.”
“I didn’t.”
Her eyes come back to me, softer now.
“Come sit,” I say. “I’ll bring dinner.”
She moves to the table.
I head back into the kitchen, plate the food with hands that feel steadier than they did five minutes ago. I wipe a smear of grits off the rim of her plate twice before I’m satisfied. I’ve plated this dish a hundred times. None as important as this one.
When I walk out, she’s turned her chair slightly toward the window. Candlelight catches the side of her face.
I set her plate down. Then mine.
She looks at the food, then at me. “This smells incredible.” She takes a bite. I notice the way she tilts her head just a little. The small sound she makes before she catches it. The way her eyes lift back to mine, definitely not expecting this.
We talk the way we always have. About Maddy’s latest chaos. Hank’s ongoing war with French Fry. Frank’s plan to sell bunless hot dogs next to The Salty Dog, insisting it’s a different category.
“He wants to call it Buns Out.”
“That’s actually not a bad name.”
“Miss Hattie would bury him. Figuratively and literally.”
“She’d relish it.” I hold for half a second. “Get it?”
She groans, rolls her eyes, then picks up her napkin and throws it at me while laughing.
Halfway through dinner, she reaches for the wine bottle and refills my glass without asking. Then hers. I notice and let that normalcy settle somewhere I don’t mess with.
I don’t tell her about dessert. I just bring it out and set it between us.
The streusel is maybe a bit too dark. The peaches aren’t as neatly arranged as hers were, but I’m still excited to surprise her.
She stares at it.
Then up at me.
Then back at it.
“Jake,” she says carefully, “where did you get this?”
“The June issue of Southern Living,” I say. “Page ninety-six.”
“You read Southern Living.”
“Sometimes. For the recipes.”
She stops reaching for her fork. “How long?” she asks.
I take a sip of wine. Give myself a second. “A while.”
“You read the magazine I work for,” she says, softer now.
“In the checkout line,” I say. “I buy it when your name’s on a recipe.”
She goes quiet and gets that shine in her eyes that means she’s about half a second away from pretending she’s fine. “That is the most Jake Wheeler thing I’ve ever heard.”
I glance at the crisp. “Tell me I didn’t insult your life’s work.”
She takes a bite. Chews. Sets the fork down. Covers her mouth.
“Mo.”
“It’s perfect,” she says from behind her hand. “And I’m not about to cry over a dessert.” A tear slips out anyway. “Traitor,” she mumbles, swiping at it with a finger.
I reach across the table and lay my hand over hers. She turns her palm under mine and laces our fingers together.
Just like that.
Ten years, and somehow her hand still knows exactly where to land.
She takes another bite, then looks at me over the spoon. “Next time, I’ll help you with the topping,” she says.
I try not to look too pleased about the words next time. “There’s going to be a next time?”
Her fingers tighten around mine. “You seem like you could use supervision.”
I huff out a laugh. “That so?”
“Absolutely.”
I stand and come around the table. She watches me the whole way. I hold out my hand. She takes it like it was always hers. I pull her up close and don’t let go. “Supervision, huh?” I murmur.
“Strict.” She tips her face up. I kiss her before she can say anything else. Her hand slides from my wrist to the front of my shirt, and the laugh disappears into the kiss.
When we part, she stays close, one hand still fisted in my shirt. “So,” she says, a little breathless, “no fire alarms tonight?”
I glance toward the kitchen. “My cooking is done. We’re safe.”
“Good.”
She lifts her head just enough to look at me.
“Then kiss me again.”