30. Emory
EMORY
Bethany’s cottage has weathered cedar siding, light blue shutters, and a white front porch. Like all the homes on the lane, it sits right on the water.
I love it.
The front door is already open, but I still ring the ship’s bell hanging beside it because I was raised with manners. The bell clangs once.
“COME ON IN,” Bethany yells from somewhere inside. I open the screen door and step into a living room that feels cozy in that accidentally perfect way where nothing matches and everything still somehow belongs.
Books stacked sideways beneath a driftwood coffee table. Framed art hanging slightly crooked like nobody cared enough to straighten it because they were busy having a life. A throw blanket tossed over the couch despite the fact that it’s late August and the humidity outside could qualify as soup.
Fleetwood Mac is spinning softly from a record player in the corner.
A woman I’ve never met is sitting cross-legged on the couch with a wine glass balanced against one knee. Blonde hair pulled back. Oversized button-up that looks like butter if butter were thin cotton.
She smiles the moment she sees me. “You must be Emory,” she says. “I’m Ainsley.” Before I can fully process the sentence, she’s already crossing the room and hugging me like we’ve known each other longer than ten seconds.
“Nice to meet you.” I laugh.
“You too. I already feel emotionally invested in whatever’s happening here.”
“Oh. Okay. I think.”
Bethany appears from the kitchen, carrying two bottles of wine. She’s wearing a gray tee shirt that says ZERO FUCKS GIVEN in block letters.
Bethany is very self-aware.
“Sit,” she says. “Cheese board’s coming.”
“You made a cheese board?”
“I put cheese on a board,” she corrects. “I don’t have patience for the architecture.” She drops the wine bottles onto the coffee table with a thunk and disappears back into the kitchen.
I kick off my boat shoes by the door and settle into the armchair by the window just as the screen door swings open again.
“Giiirls.” Lainey bursts inside, waving two tote bags over her head. “The snacks are here,” she declares. “Let the girl talk begin.”
“Did you remember the olives?” Ainsley asks.
“Duh.”
Ainsley stretches her arm toward Lainey. “Fork ‘em over.”
“Emory, yay, you’re here.” Lainey leans down to air kiss my cheek.
“I am.”
Bethany returns carrying a cheese board that is, in fact, an actual cheese board. Multiple cheeses. Grapes. Crackers. Tiny bowl of nuts. Small jar of honey.
She sets it down on top of a stack of celebrity gossip magazines, which surprises me because Bethany does not strike me as someone who cares which celebrity is engaged, divorced, or suddenly “aging backwards” after a month in Cabo and access to suspiciously expensive dermatology.
Within minutes we’re arranged around the living room like this is something we’ve done forever.
Ainsley claims one end of the couch. Bethany takes the other, tucking one leg underneath herself. Lainey sinks into a beanbag chair near the fireplace, and I regret not choosing childhood comfort over adult dignity.
Bethany pours wine into my glass with alarming generosity. Then she takes a sip from her own and says, “Okay. Who’s starting?”
“She is,” Ainsley says, pointing directly at me. “I’ve been gone for two weeks and the town group chats read like a daytime soap written by seriously horny retirees.”
Lainey sighs solemnly and glances at me. “You’re trending.”
I take a long sip of wine while all three of them lean forward with varying levels of enthusiasm and concern. “Where would you like me to start?” I ask.
“With the most important question,” Lainey says. “Has he said it yet?”
I look at her. “Said what?”
“Lainey,” Bethany says, already sounding exhausted.
Lainey leans forward and whispers dramatically, “The L word.”
Ainsley jerks upright. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. I thought he already said the L word years ago?”
And just like that, every eye in the room swings back to me.
“…He did.”
Lainey gasps. Ainsley leans forward. “What happened?”
I close my eyes briefly because there is no way to make this sound less horrifying than it is. “I said…” I inhale. “Thank you.”
Bethany winces like she just stepped barefoot on a sandspur. Lainey clutches her chest. “Oh no.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I was not emotionally prepared for that,” Ainsley says faintly.
“You said thank you,” Bethany repeats.
“I was twenty. I panicked.”
“Girl, that’s not panic,” she says. “That’s customer service.”
Ainsley makes a choking noise and nearly spits wine across the couch. Lainey folds over laughing so hard she starts gasping for air. I cover my face with both hands. “Why am I here?”
Bethany reaches across the table and pats my knee. “Because we like you.”
“And because,” Ainsley adds through laughter, “this is the best story I’ve heard since a man tried to open the emergency exit over Kansas because he thought a non-human sentient being was sitting next to him.”
Lainey wipes tears from under her eyes. “Okay, but actual important question. Does he still love you?”
“Can we circle back to what a non-human sentient being is instead?”
“Alien. Does he still love you?” Lainey repeats.
I stare down at the floor. “I think so.”
Bethany huffs a laugh. “Yeah. He does.” Like it isn’t even remotely debatable.
I look at her. “You knew that?”
“Emory.” Her expression goes flat with disbelief. “From what I hear, that man has been in love with you since dial-up internet.”
Ainsley lifts her glass. “To Jake Wheeler. Patron saint of patience.”
We all clink glasses.
I drink what absolutely qualifies as a gulp.
Bethany squints at me over the rim of her glass. “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” I say carefully, “is that I’m only here temporarily. I leave in a few weeks.”
Right then the record starts a song about what you lost and what you had.
Of course it does.
Ainsley tops off everyone’s glasses with the smooth efficiency of a woman who has poured cabernet during turbulence at thirty thousand feet. “Back to Jake,” she says, settling into the couch again.
I pull my knees up and wrap both hands around my wine glass. “Do we have to?”
“How is he?” Ainsley asks. “Like, actually.”
I take a deep breath in and exhale. “He’s just…
” I smile down at my wine. “Jake. He’s kind.
He’s steady. He’s patient. He notices things and remembers them while I’m forgetting why I walked into rooms. He sets up blankets and candles on barrier islands and remembers extra cherries and somehow acts like that’s a completely normal thing for a man to do on a Thursday. ”
I look up and they’re all staring at me. “What?” I ask defensively.
“You’re gone,” Lainey says. “HEA activated. No epilogue required.”
I groan and hide my face behind my wine glass. “I’m aware of the situation.”
Lainey presses both hands dramatically to her chest. “I need tropes. Are we talking slow burn? Intense pining? He falls first? Fated soulmates?”
Ainsley raises her glass. “I once dated a pilot who said we were taking it slow. He moved into my apartment two weeks later with a guinea pig and a blender.”
“Please direct me to the point of that story,” Bethany says.
“The point is men ejaculate unpredictably.”
“Not wrong,” Bethany says. “But how is that relevant?”
“How is what relevant?” Ainsley asks.
“The ejaculation of your pilot and his emotional support guinea pig.”
“Oh God,” Lainey says, sticking her fingers into her ears. “If this story involves the guinea pig, I cannot handle it.”
“It does not!”
“Lalalalala,” Lainey chants anyway.
“I’m talking about emotional escalation, not ejaculation. Damn, Bethany. You need to get laid.”
“You said—forget it,” Bethany mutters.
I lean over and tap Lainey’s knee. “You can un-lala yourself now.”
She lowers her hands cautiously. “Is it safe?”
“Probably.”
“I don’t even remember what we were talking about.”
“Which base Emory has reached,” Ainsley says helpfully.
“We haven’t…” I exaggerate the movement of my wine glass forward and back. “You know.”
Bethany shifts and pulls her shorts from a wedgie. “I’m sorry. You haven’t what?”
“You know what.”
The three of them just stare at me. “We haven’t slept together,” I blurt at a volume the neighbors probably heard.
Lainey gasps, genuinely stunned. “With Jake Wheeler?”
“Yes, Lainey. With Jake Wheeler.”
She gasps again.
“What?”
“You kissed under a meteor shower.”
“Yes.”
“That’s cosmic permission. The universe literally lit up the sky for you two. It threw fireworks.”
“Lainey, honey,” Ainsley says gently, “I love you, but you need to step away from the romance section for a while.”
Lainey sticks her tongue out at her. “Okay. New scale. Hand holding to five chili peppers. Where are we currently operating?”
“I don’t even understand what that means.”
“You’ve kissed. What else?”
I take another sip of wine.
Then another.
“We’re at very good kissing that occasionally makes me forget my own name.”
Lainey’s eyes go almost as wide as her smile. “Awww. Have you kissed in the rain yet?”
“No, but there was a foot pop,” I admit before I can stop myself.
Lainey shrieks so loudly, I jump. “That is the universal sign of—“
“Lainey,” Bethany warns.
Lainey bounces harder in the beanbag chair anyway. “This is huge.”
“It’s a huge problem,” I say quietly. “Remember I leave in a few weeks. Well about ten days.”
Lainey stops bouncing. Ainsley stops chewing. Bethany goes still.
“When you said weeks, I was thinking weeks. You’re in days now,” Bethany says.
“Does he know?” Ainsley asks.
“He knows I’m only here temporarily.”
Bethany clears her throat. “Is this an I’m leaving in ten days goodbye forever situation?”
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not done.” I take a breath. “With him. With this. With any of it. I just don’t know what that looks like when I leave.”
Lainey’s eyes suddenly fill with tears.
I point at her. “Don’t.”
She fans her face. “I’m not doing anything.”
“She cried at a car commercial last week,” Bethany says.
“It was emotional,” Lainey argues. “The car detected a mommy duck and her little ducklings crossing the road and stopped automatically to avoid tragedy.”
Ainsley nods. “That would get me too.”
“Thank you.”
By ten we’ve moved outside to the back porch with refilled wine glasses and the remains of the cheese board.
The night is warm and damp in that end-of-summer way that makes the air feel heavy against your skin.
Late night salt air that somehow smells different from any other time of the day and blooming jasmine drift through the screen porch while out on the water somebody’s radio plays something that isn’t quite country and isn’t quite not.
Ainsley folds herself into one of the porch chairs and turns toward Bethany. “Are we going to talk about Wayne?”
“No. We are not.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s nothing to talk about.”
Lainey points at her. “She’s doing the thing.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Bethany says.
“You’re doing the thing where you pretend your face is neutral.”
“My face is naturally neutral.”
“Your naturally neutral face just got neutraler,” Ainsley says.
I glance between them. “Wait. Is there—does Bethany—“
“No,” Bethany says immediately. “Bethany hell no, does not.” She leans back in her chair and looks out toward the water. “He is loud, attention seeking and says things with the confidence of a man who has never once doubted himself and should really consider starting.”
“And?” Ainsley asks.
“And nothing.”
Ainsley looks at me. I look back at her. Neither of us says anything because some things don’t need a spotlight. They just need air.
And time.
“What’s happening with the house next door?” Lainey asks.
“Mrs. Townsend’s kids are finally cleaning it out to sell,” Bethany says.
“So sad. I remember her sitting on that porch every night to watch the sunset,” Ainsley says.
Then she stands and stretches. “I’m going to bed before I become emotionally invested in two separate unresolved romantic situations tonight.” She hugs me like we’ve known each other longer than one evening, which somehow feels accurate. Then she hugs Lainey and disappears inside.
“Me too,” Lainey says. “I have a slice of key lime pie and an enemies to lovers waiting for me.” She kisses my cheek and hugs me like she’s trying to transfer emotional support through physical contact.
“Remember, you only get a second chance at first love once.” The porch door silently closes behind her.
Bethany walks me to the end of the driveway. “He’s a good man,” she says quietly once we reach it.
I don’t pretend not to know who she means. “I know.”
“One of the best I’ve ever met.”
She squeezes my arm once and starts back toward the house. Then she stops and turns around. “Emory. Don’t let the logistics win.”
I start walking the lane toward The Point. And I think about Jake.
The way his face changes when he looks at me. The way his voice lowers when he says Mo.
How every time I try to keep this temporary, he somehow makes it feel like home instead.
I pull out my phone and tap his face in my messages.
Still awake
Yes. You still with the girls?
Leaving now
Want to come over?
Was hoping you’d ask