4. Elias
ELIAS
Isit in the truck outside Sugar Moon for a full two minutes before I go in.
This is new. Usually I park, walk in, get my coffee and my muffin, nod at Morgan, and leave. The whole thing takes three minutes, maybe four. I think about those three minutes for the rest of the day. Every day. Like an idiot.
But today my flannel is at Morgan’s place because I wrapped it around her shoulders on a mountain trail last night, and I didn’t sleep because every time I closed my eyes I saw her on that trail, shivering, limping, telling me she was fine when she clearly wasn’t.
And I keep hearing the way her voice sounded in my cabin when she said I should get home, like she wanted to mean it but her body hadn’t gotten the message yet.
I go inside.
She’s behind the counter. Of course she is.
I told her to stay off the ankle, to call in, to rest. I said it clearly, and she nodded and I thought maybe she’d actually listen, but here she is at 6:45 in the morning, plating scones and pouring coffee and smiling at people like her ankle isn’t twice the size it should be.
I watch her move. She’s hiding the limp well.
Someone who didn’t know what to look for would miss it.
But I know what a sprained ankle looks like when someone’s trying to work through it—the way she shifts her weight to the right side, the way she pauses for a half-second longer than normal between the counter and the coffee machine.
She’s in pain and she’s not going to tell a single person in this bakery about it.
My chest tightens. I’ve seen guys work through injuries at the station, pushing through because the job demands it.
That’s different. Nobody’s demanding this of her.
She’s demanding it of herself, and something about watching her do it makes me want to walk behind that counter and physically put her in a chair.
“Morning,” she says when I reach the counter, and her voice is warm and easy and exactly the same as it is every other morning, like last night didn’t happen. Like I didn’t carry her down a mountain and kneel on my cabin floor and hold ice against her skin while she tried not to cry.
“Morning,” I say.
She reaches for the coffee pot. Her usual rhythm, the one I’ve memorized without meaning to. Pour, lid, bag the muffin, slide it across. But I don’t pick it up. I just stand there, and she looks at me, and the easy smile falters just enough for me to see what’s underneath it.
“How’s the ankle?”
“It’s fine,” she says. “Barely notice it.”
“You’re favoring your right side.”
Her eyes widen for just a second before she catches herself. “Occupational hazard. I’m on my feet all day.”
“Morgan.”
I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t say her name at the counter.
I don’t have conversations that last more than ten seconds.
I nod, I leave, I take my coffee and my muffin and I go to the station where I can eat in peace and replay every detail of the interaction in my head without her watching me do it.
That’s the system. That’s how this works.
But that system died on a mountain trail last night, and I don’t think it’s coming back.
“You should be sitting down,” I say. “Elevated. Ice on it.”
“I have a shift.”
“Someone else can cover your shift.”
She tilts her head, and there it is. That look she gets when someone says something she wasn’t expecting. The one where her whole face goes soft and curious and a little bit guarded, like she’s not sure whether to trust what she’s hearing.
I’ve seen it a hundred times from the other side of this counter, always directed at someone else. Having it aimed at me feels different than I imagined. More direct. Harder to walk away from.
“Since when do you say more than two words to me before seven a.m.?” she asks, and there’s something in her voice that isn’t quite teasing. It’s careful. Testing.
“Since I pulled you off a mountain last night.”
She holds my gaze for a long beat. The bakery is filling up behind me.
I can hear chairs scraping and someone laughing and the bell above the door chiming.
None of it registers because she’s looking at me like she’s seeing me for the first time, even though she’s been looking at me every morning for six months.
“I’m okay,” she says. Softer now. “Really.”
She’s not okay. I can see it in the way she’s gripping the edge of the counter with her left hand, taking the pressure off her ankle without realizing she’s doing it.
She’s been standing on a bad sprain for at least an hour already, and she’ll stand on it for another six because that’s who she is.
The woman who shows up. The woman who says yes.
The woman who gives and gives until there’s nothing left and then gives some more.
I want to tell her to sit down. I want to walk behind that counter and pick her up and carry her to a chair and tell her that the world will keep turning if she takes one day off.
I want to ask her who taught her that her own pain doesn’t matter, that everyone else’s comfort comes before hers, that I’m fine is an acceptable answer when she’s clearly not.
I don’t say any of that.
“I’ll bring the flannel back,” she says, and something about the way she says it makes me think she’s been thinking about it. About last night. About the cabin and the tea and the silence that sat between us like a living thing.
“Keep it,” I say.
The word comes out before I can stop it, and her lips part just slightly, and I realize I’ve been standing at this counter for longer than I’ve ever stood here in six months of mornings.
There are people behind me. I should go.
I should take my coffee and my muffin and leave before I say something else I can’t take back.
But I don’t want to leave.
That’s the problem. That’s been the problem since the first morning I walked in here and she smiled at me without expecting anything back.
Leaving has always been the easy part for me.
I leave. It’s what I do. I walk out the door and I don’t look back because looking back means caring about what I left behind, and caring is the thing I can’t afford.
I pick up the coffee. I pick up the muffin. She’s watching me, and I feel it the way you feel the sun on your back when you’re not facing it. You just know.
“Stay off it when you can,” I say. “Please.”
The please hangs in the air between us. I don’t say please. I give instructions, I state facts, I tell people what needs to happen and I expect them to do it.
But Morgan isn’t someone I can give orders to, and I don’t want that anyway. I want to be the man who says please to her and means it as something closer to I’m asking because you matter to me and I don’t know how to say that yet.
She nods slowly, like she’s actually hearing me. It’s a different nod from the one she gives customers, and I feel it somewhere deep.
I turn and walk out. The bell chimes behind me, the morning air hits my face, and I sit in my truck for another two minutes before I start the engine.
Three towns in four years. I came to Wildwood to disappear.
I don’t think that’s going to work anymore.