JAKE
The flight from Tampa is just over an hour. Long enough for Wayne to eat everything the cabin had to offer, try to start a card game nobody agreed to, and fall asleep mid-sentence with a pretzel in his hand.
Ryan is out cold across from me with Hank curled against his leg. Bethany has her headphones in and her eyes closed, though I’m fairly sure she’s not sleeping because every time Wayne snores, she opens one eye like a woman deciding whether tonight is the night.
Mo is beside me. Her head is on my shoulder. Her fingers are loosely threaded through mine, holding on even in sleep, and I haven’t moved my arm in forty minutes because I’d rather lose circulation than wake her.
I look out the window at nothing. Just black sky and the faint glow of coast below.
We’re going home.
Bethany insisted on driving the van from the airport. Wayne took one look at it in the rental lot and said, “If the van’s rockin’, don’t come knockin’.”
“For fuck’s sake, Wayne,” Bethany hollered.
“See, Bethany gets it.”
“That’s not what I mea—forget it,” she said.
He’s now in the front seat providing commentary on every turn, speed limit, and lane choice like a man who has never once operated a vehicle with appropriate caution.
“You’re riding the center line.”
“Wayne, I swear to God.”
“I’m just saying. The line is there for a reason.”
“The line is about to be your chalk outline.”
Ryan is asleep again in the third row with Hank draped across his lap. Neither one has moved since the highway.
The two-lane road narrows, and the pines and oaks close in on both sides, thick and dark and familiar.
I know this stretch by feel. The slight curve before the bridge.
The way the road dips near the marina turnoff.
The smell that changes when you get close enough—salt and pluff mud and something green that doesn’t have a name but means you’re almost there.
The oaks arch overhead. Spanish moss catches in the headlights as we pass through the columns. Huey is there waiting on us, big blue claws wrapped around the town sign.
WELCOME TO BLUE CRAB BAY
Population 1,244
Let’s hope that will soon be 1,245.
Mo leans forward between the seats, looking through the windshield at the sign, and something crosses her face she doesn’t try to hide.
“Hi, Huey,” she says quietly.
Bethany pulls into the crushed shell lot and kills the engine.
We wake Ryan. Hank requires more negotiation. He looks at me with the deep betrayal of a bulldog who was told the car ride was temporary and has now decided the third row is his permanent residence.
“Come on, buddy.” He refuses to move.
Ryan hoists Hank out of the back like a solid sandbag with dangling legs. Hank grumbles and grunts about it.
“You’re welcome,” Ryan tells him.
I grab our bags from the back. Mo reaches for one, and I shake my head. “I got it.”
“I’m capable of carrying a bag, Jake.”
“I know.” I take her outstretched hand and kiss the top.
Wayne grabs his and Ryan’s because Ryan is carrying Hank’s travel bed and go-bag. In addition to being Hank’s godfather, he’s also now Hank’s full-time concierge.
I take Mo’s hand as we cross the footbridge. The water is black beneath us, and you can barely hear our footsteps over the sound of crickets. It’s the time of year they turn the volume up. But I can feel the boards creak in the same rhythm I’ve felt a thousand times coming home.
I slow when we reach the middle.
The brass plaque catching the faint light from the lamp at the far end.
In memoriam of Tammy and Steve Wheeler
Mo doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. She just tightens her hand around mine.
I run my thumb across her knuckles.
Then I keep walking.
We come around the bend, and I hear it before I see it.
Music.
String lights are strung across The Green in every direction. Between the oaks, the lampposts, the awning of Tall Tales, the railing of The Knuckle’s upper deck. Somebody hung them in a hurry, and it shows, but Blue Crab Bay has never cared about perfect.
Just present.
And they are all present.
There must be a hundred people here. Lawn chairs. Coolers. A new white screen replaying Mo and me at the stadium.
They waited up.
“Now this is the kind of welcome I can get used to,” Wayne says. Then he starts dancing.
“Wayne, you’re such an idiot,” Bethany tells him.
“I feel seen.”
“I’m going to take Hank to the house,” Ryan says, scratching behind Hank’s ears. “He’s done.”
He’s right. Hank is leaning against Ryan’s leg with the thousand-yard stare of a bulldog who exceeded his social battery several hours ago.
“Thanks, man.”
“The big idiot and I have rooms at Huey and the Snooze,” Ryan says, nodding toward Wayne. “I’ll pick him up on the way back through.”
Wayne stops mid-dance. “Who’s the big idiot?”
Nobody answers.
Wayne shrugs.
Then keeps dancing.
Bethany shakes her head. “I’m going home. My bed misses me.” She punches my arm once. “Good game, Wheeler.”
Then she looks at Mo. Something passes between them that I’m not invited to understand.
“Welcome home,” Bethany says.
Mo nods. “Thanks.”
Then it’s just us and the town.
Maddy reaches us first. She doesn’t say a word. She just opens her arms, and Mo walks straight into them and stays there.
I watch Mo’s shoulders shake once.
Maddy looks at me over her granddaughter’s shoulder. Her eyes are wet, and her chin is steady, and she mouths two words I’ll carry for the rest of my life.
Thank you.
I nod. That’s all I can manage.
Miss Hattie is next, with a tuba. She attempts one celebratory note. The sound it produces is somewhere between a foghorn and a moose in distress.
Hank, who was halfway down the dock with Ryan, stops dead. His ears pin back. He looks back at me with an expression that clearly communicates his displeasure.
Ryan picks up the pace.
“Beautiful, Hattie,” Maddy says. “Really captured the moment.”
“I’ve been practicing,” Miss Hattie says proudly.
“With what, the neighbors’ patience?” Maddy asks.
Frank is tossing doughnut holes into the air like celebratory confetti and eating every third one.
Charlie claps my shoulder on his way past. Doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. Just the grip, the nod, the look that says I watched the game and I watched the girl and I’m happy for you, brother.
Mrs. Kravitz materializes from the crowd, holding a scoring paddle. She looks at me. Then at Mo. Then back at me.
She holds it up.
Ten.
Mo laughs and presses her face into my shoulder.
Tommy brings me a beer I didn’t ask for. “On the house,” he says, which is a generous offer for a beer that came from my own restaurant.
Humphrey hmphs from a lawn chair but doesn’t leave, which from Humphrey is practically a standing ovation.
I see Walt heading our way with two cups. He hands one to Mo. One to me.
I look down at mine.
HE GOT THE GIRL
I look at Mo’s. She tilts it so I can read it.
STAY
One word. Four letters.
Walt looks at me, then tips his chin toward the bench at the edge of The Green. Willard is there. He’s not in the crowd. He’s watching from where he always watches. A quiet observer of everything this town does.
The place where he’s spent years listening to me talk about the girl I couldn’t get over and this summer listening to her talk about the boy she couldn’t go back to.
He catches my eye across The Green and tips his hat.
I lift my cup.
Some things don’t need a speech.
The crowd thins slowly, the way crowds in Blue Crab Bay always thin—by half measures and long goodbyes and one more beer and somebody remembering a story that has to be told right now.
Mo is sitting on the edge of The Green with Maddy, their heads close together. Maddy says something, and Mo laughs the loose, unguarded kind that only comes when you’re somewhere you’re comfortable.
I think about ten years ago. About the night I told her I loved her and she said thank you and the silence after that swallowed everything.
About the years I spent on the dock looking out at this water and wondering if she ever thought about me.
About the night I heard she was coming back and the way my hands shook when I set down the phone.
I think about my parents.
About the seats they never got to sit in. The games they never got to see. The way my dad would’ve stood up and clapped too loud and my mom would’ve cried before the anthem was over.
They would’ve loved tonight.
My mom would’ve had her arm around Mo before we made it off the bridge. My dad would’ve shaken my hand, then pulled me in and held on too long.
I would’ve let him.
I feel the ache of that.
The specific shape of their absence.
But for the first time, the ache has company.
Mo looks up and finds me across the grass. She’s wearing my hat. The black Buccaneers hat she talked me out of with three words and a look. Smiling.
I walk toward her.
She stands and meets me halfway. “You okay?”
I look at her. At the hat. At the town behind her, still lit up, still holding on to tonight like it’s something worth keeping.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m okay. I have you, and I’m home.”
She takes my hand.
“Me too,” she says.
And for the first time in a long time, neither of us means just the town.