JAKE
There are two kinds of people in this world.
People who go to the grocery store with a list.
And people like Emory Donovan, who walk in with no written plan.
I’m standing beside her in On The Bay Market, holding a basket that has, at some point, become my entire purpose in this operation while she studies a display of tomatoes like she’s judging a county fair.
“You’re overthinking it,” I tell her.
She doesn’t look up. “No. I’m selecting with intention.”
“You’ve been holding the same tomato for a full minute.”
“That’s because I care about quality.”
“I care about quality too.” I shift the basket to my other hand. “I also care about not growing old in produce.”
I grab one to move things along.
She takes it right out of my hand, replaces it with another, then drops the rejected tomato back into the pile.
“This one,” she says. “That one’s too firm.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her mouth twitches.
That’s become one of my favorite things lately. That split second where she tries not to smile first. As if giving in too quickly means I somehow win.
She huffs out a laugh and drops two more tomatoes into the basket. “Now we need basil.”
“We have basil.”
“You have basil that looks like it lost the will to live three days ago.”
“It’s hanging on.” That earns me a look over her shoulder.
Evening light pours through the front windows across the old plank floors.
On The Bay Market has been here longer than half the houses in town.
Part grocery store. Part general store. Part place where people come in for milk and somehow leave with muck boots, strawberry preserves, boiled peanuts, and a personal update on three relationships.
The old Coca-Cola sign above the vintage bottle machine rattles every time the door opens. It’s been doing that since I was a kid. Nobody’s ever fixed it. Probably nobody even hears it anymore.
Miss Esther’s behind the deli counter, slicing meat with the concentration of a surgeon. A little boy in a Superman cape is dragging his exhausted mother toward the candy jars. Near the flowers, some poor bastard is asking if a bouquet can make up for forgetting his wife’s birthday.
It cannot.
And Mo’s standing in front of the herbs in shorts and a thin long sleeve tee, hair loosely pulled back, looking more at home here than she probably realizes.
I have to shift the basket again just to stop thinking about that too hard.
She lifts a bunch of basil to her nose and breathes in slowly. “Okay,” she says. “This one still has hope.”
“Proud of him.”
Her head tips back when she laughs, and there it is again. That quick hit I get every time I make it happen.
She turns toward dairy. “We need butter.”
“We always need butter.”
“That might be the smartest thing you’ve ever said.”
“Thank you. I’ve been waiting years for recognition.”
We move through the store like this. She grabs heavy cream. I grab pasta. She judges my choice of bacon. I ignore her and put it in the basket anyway.
At the end of canned goods, she stops abruptly and looks at me. “What exactly are we making?”
I stare at her. “You’re asking me now?”
“I like to know the plan.”
“First of all, this is your operation. I’m just labor.”
“That’s not true.”
“No?”
“No.” She gestures toward me. “You’re… dessert.”
I look at her.
She looks at me.
Then we both crack up at the exact same time.
“Yes,” I say, already grinning as I start walking again. “Yes, I am.”
“Jake Wheeler,” she calls after me. “That is not what I meant.”
“Too late now.”
By the time we make it to the register, the basket’s heavier than it ought to be for two people who walked in without a dinner plan.
We end up with pasta, shrimp, bacon, a bunch of dairy, a crusty loaf of bread from the bakery, produce, and a pint of butter pecan ice cream neither of us admits to getting.
Marlene’s working checkout. She’s known me since I was ten years old and stole a pack of Hubba Bubba, made it halfway home, then came back crying because guilt made my stomach hurt.
She eyes the basket.
Then Mo.
Then she looks at me with all the subtlety of a brass band.
“Well,” she says.
“Evening, Marlene.”
“This looks serious.”
“It’s groceries.”
“It’s shrimp and ice cream,” she says. “That’s not groceries. That’s intent.”
Mo laughs under her breath while she starts unloading the basket.
Marlene reaches under the counter, hands me one of the cookies she keeps for Hank, then starts weighing produce.
There’s a fresh issue of Southern Living in the rack beside a variety of Goo Goo Clusters and batteries. I reach for it automatically and thumb through until I hit recipes.
“Not in that one,” Mo says without even looking up.
I glance over. She’s lining up butter beside the pasta on the belt, but when she lifts her head, her whole face is smiling.
“Jake,” she says quietly. “I love that you do that. That you’ve been doing it all along.”
Before I can answer, Marlene hoots. “Oh, honey, he held up my line once for a good ten minutes staring into one of those.”
“Hello,” I say. “He is standing right here and he would like some things to remain private.”
“Well then,” Marlene says, scanning the bacon, “he needs to live somewhere else.”
Mo laughs and high-fives her across the register. And God help me, I think I could stand there watching her fit into this town forever.
By the time we step back outside, the heat’s finally started easing off. The sky over the water’s gone that deep summer blue that only shows up right before dusk.
I load the bags into the back of her truck while she climbs into the passenger seat and tucks one leg underneath herself. When I get in, she says, “I’ve never let anyone else drive my truck before.”
I glance at all the buttons and dials overhead. “Probably because it looks like it should come with a pre-flight checklist.”
She smiles faintly. “You’re the one and only.”
Just five words.
Still enough to stay with me all the way down Bay Street.
The windows are down. The safari windows are popped up. Cool air moves through the truck, carrying salt and the hint of fall with it.
We pass the little white church with the black shutters. Two kids dragging fishing poles. Lainey walking home with a stack of books balanced on her hip. I tap the button with the bicycle symbol, giving her a polite toot. She looks up, grinning as she waves.
Halfway there, she says quietly, “Granny gets her cast off tomorrow.”
The words themselves are simple.
The way she says them isn’t.
“That’s good,” I say.
“It is.” But her voice catches just enough on the last word for me to hear it. Her fingers tug absently at the hem of her shorts.
I keep one hand loose on the wheel and reach over with the other to cover hers. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She exhales slowly. “I just… it’s weird.”
“Weird how?”
“She’s had it long enough that everything sort of rearranged itself around it.” She shrugs a little. “Schedules. Deliveries. Rides. The bakery. Me being there all the time.” Her mouth presses slightly to one side. “It became this whole version of life.”
I wait.
“And now,” she says more quietly, “it feels like one more thing is going back to normal.”
Normal.
Every piece of normal that slides back into place for her is one less reason to stay.
One less reason to stay with me.
“Normal’s overrated.”
That gets a small smile out of her. But it fades fast. She goes quiet again, and I let her.
We park in the shell lot and unload the groceries. As soon as we cross the footbridge onto The Point, Hank spots a ghost crab down near the beach and launches himself toward it.
“Don’t do it,” I shout, already setting the grocery bags down.
Mo shades her eyes. “What’s he doing?”
“Making poor decisions at full speed.”
The crab darts sideways.
Hank lunges after it, short bulldog legs pumping hard enough to rooster tail sand behind him. Then he spins around and comes barreling back toward us.
A pale ghost crab dangling from his lip.
He’s snorting and wiggling his entire back half proudly while the crab hangs there waving one furious claw like it has a complaint to file.
“Oh my God,” Mo says, laughing so hard she grabs my arm. “Jake! Jake, help him!”
Hank’s spinning in circles now. The crab refusing to let go. And above us, I spot French Fry circling. That’s the last thing I need right now.
“Good job, buddy. You caught a crab. Now let me get it.”
Mo bends forward laughing harder now, and I swear there’s nothing prettier than a woman laughing like that.
“Buddy, hold still. I can’t help you if you don’t hold still.”
He does not hold still.
I finally get hold of the crab’s shell and work the thing loose. It drops into the grass, rights itself, then scuttles away with the unmistakable confidence of something that feels victorious.
Hank lunges after it.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“HANK. COOKIE.” He freezes instantly. Looks at me. Looks toward the crab. Then chooses the cookie because in the end he does have priorities.
Mo drops down beside him. “Hank, you poor baby. You got beat up by an hors d’oeuvre.”
“Come on,” I say, grabbing the grocery bags again. “Let’s make dinner before he starts another fight with something that has claws or wings.”
Inside, I set the bags on the counter while Mo starts unpacking groceries with the kind of focused efficiency that makes me want to lean against something and watch her.
The kitchen gets smaller in the best way with two people moving around inside it and Hank planted directly in the center like a snoring trip hazard.
Pasta is boiling.
Butter and cream melt in the skillet.
Garlic goes in next.
Then parmesan.
The smell fills the whole kitchen almost immediately.
At one point, without even thinking about it, she opens the cabinet beside the stove and grabs the bowls.
Doesn’t hesitate. Just reaches automatically like she does this every day.
It shouldn’t hit me the way it does. It’s bowls. That’s all. But watching her move around my kitchen like she belongs there rattles me enough I have to look down at the shrimp and pretend they suddenly need my full attention.
“You okay over there?” she asks.
“Fine.”
“You’re staring at the shrimp like it insulted you.”
“It knows what it did.”
She laughs and squeezes past me to grab the salt. Her hip brushes mine. Enough to make my entire body take notice.
I catch the salt pig before she can and hold it out. “Here.” Our fingers brush. She looks up. I look down.
Then she dips a spoon into the Alfredo sauce and holds it toward me. “Taste.”
I lean down and take it from the spoon.
Her eyes stay on mine while I swallow. “How is it?” she asks.
“Good.”
“Just good?”
I shake my head once. “Better.” I take the spoon from her hand, dip it back into the sauce, then hold it out toward her.
She watches me for a second before leaning in and wrapping her mouth around the spoon.
Her eyes lift to mine slowly.
I set the spoon down on the counter.
My hand slides to her waist. Then the other.
I pull her closer until there’s barely any space left between us, and for one quiet second, with my mouth hovering above hers, I just look at her. The softness around her eyes. The way she’s looking back at me.
“Jake,” she says softly.
I kiss her slowly first. Just the brush of my mouth against hers. Then again.
Her fingers curl lightly into my shirt, and that little bit of pressure sends heat straight through me.
Because slow isn’t enough for either of us anymore, I deepen the kiss, one hand steady at her waist while the other braces against the counter beside her.
She makes the softest sound against my mouth.
Fuck.
I kiss her like I’ve got nowhere else to be for the rest of my life.
Then the timer goes off.
The damn timer.
She jerks back with a startled sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan while I rest my forehead against hers, trying to remember how kitchens work.
I finally step back and kill the burner before we accidentally replay salmon night.
We carry our bowls outside to the small table on the porch while the sky fades from orange to that soft pink that never lasts long enough.
No candles. No setup. Just dinner and wine and Hank sprawled nearby, hoping one of us drops a shrimp.
Mo takes a bite and closes her eyes. “That’s good.”
She tears off a piece of bread and drags it through the sauce. Then she glances up and catches me looking at her. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You were thinking something.”
“I was.” I look out toward the dock lights blinking on one by one across the water before I look back at her.
“You fit here,” I say quietly.
The words settle between us.
Her fingers still around the piece of bread.
Then she looks out toward the bay. “That’s not a nice thing to say to somebody with commitment issues.”
I laugh. “At least you know yourself.”
“Oh, painfully.”
I set my fork down. “You know I’m not trying to—“
“I know.” Her voice softens. “I know.”
She takes another bite, then points her fork at me. “Also, for the record, this pasta is good because of me.”
“How do you figure?”
“I provided a valuable service.”
“What service?”
“Preventing you from turning dinner into a fire hazard.”
“Thank you for servicing me.”
She chokes on a laugh and grabs her wine while I grin and lean back in my chair. Her foot’s tucked underneath her. Mine stretches out beneath the table until the side of my bare foot finds her. Neither of us moves away.
Sitting here with her in the fading light, I let myself imagine this as a beginning instead of borrowed time. Because borrowed time isn’t supposed to feel this natural.
Later, after the bowls are empty and the sky’s gone dark, we eat butter pecan ice cream, both of us “hmmming” as we pass the spoon and carton between us.
A cooler breeze drifts in off the water now.
Mo disappears inside for a minute. When she comes back out, she’s wearing one of my sweatshirts.
She sits and pulls one knee up and rests her chin on it, the sweatshirt covering half her hands. “This is my favorite time of day here,” she says. “Right when everything settles.”
I look out at the water because looking directly at her suddenly feels like more than I can handle.
Then she says very quietly, “Jake, you make it really hard not to stay.”
Everything in me goes still.