Chapter 2
ETHAN
Friday hit different after a night like that.
I skipped the gym for the first time in months — not because I didn’t care, but because I didn’t have time. Coffee first. Shower fast. Hair landed just right, like it knew something I didn’t.
I caught my reflection once in the mirror and almost laughed.
Same guy.
Different energy.
By the time I walked into the office, I could feel it.
Heads lifted. Paused. Lifted again.
Quick looks. Smiles that lingered too long.
Then eyes dropped just as fast — because the bosses were in early, doors closed, voices low, that tense don’t say anything until after lunch atmosphere thick in the air.
Beth glanced up from her desk.
Her eyes flicked to mine.
Then her mouth curved, slow and knowing.
So it wasn’t just us.
I shook my head once.
Later.
Phones rang. Keyboards clacked. No one said a word, but it buzzed under everything — the collective awareness that something had happened last night, and we’d all seen it.
By noon, Jim had already left for golf.
That was the release valve.
“Lunch,” Dan announced, popping up like he’d been waiting all morning. “Newbury. Outside. Right now.”
“I’ve got edits—” Beth started.
“Nope,” Chris cut in. “You’re coming. We earned this.”
I grabbed my jacket. “You’re all impossible.”
“And you,” Dan said, pointing at me, “are not getting out of this.”
Ten minutes later, we were wedged around a small café table on Newbury Street, sun cutting through the trees, traffic humming, menus untouched.
Boston in June — alive, unapologetic.
The second drinks hit the table, Dan leaned forward.
“Okay,” he said. “From the top.”
“There is no top,” I replied.
Chris laughed. “Bullshit. We all watched it happen.”
Beth nodded. “The entire bar felt it.”
Dan snapped his fingers. “She walked in, and you went quiet. Which never happens.”
“I did not go quiet.”
“You absolutely did,” Chris said. “You got this look. Like you were seeing someone across a crowded room in a movie.”
Beth smiled faintly. “We backed off on purpose.”
That made me pause.
“I noticed. And I appreciated that. Thanks.”
“Of course,” she replied. “We’re not idiots. Whatever that was… it wasn’t for us to interrupt.”
Dan raised his iced coffee. “You’re welcome.”
I exhaled slowly. “Nothing happened.”
Dan groaned. “You left with her.”
“We walked to the marina. I took her aboard Artemis. We talked. Watched the sun come up.” I shrugged like it was no big deal.
Beth’s fork froze halfway to her mouth.
Chris leaned back. “Damn. He’s whipped already.”
“I don’t kiss and tell,” I added. “And it wasn’t like that.”
Dan squinted. “So it was worse. She got hooks into you.”
“Can you blame me? You saw her.”
Beth studied me — not prying, not teasing.
Just curious.
“Did it feel different?” she asked.
The table went quiet.
I took a second.
“Yeah,” I said finally. “It did.”
Chris nodded like he’d expected that answer.
Dan grinned. “I knew it.”
Beth’s smile softened. “I’m glad.”
The conversation drifted then — work gossip, weekend plans, Dan’s dating disasters — but I could feel it under everything.
They weren’t just curious.
They were protective.
Because that’s what we were now.
Not just coworkers.
Family you choose in adulthood — forged in deadlines and late nights and shared beers when the week tried to eat you alive.
I’d built this team on purpose.
Beth — sharp, observant, always thinking three steps ahead.
Dan — loud, loyal, impossible to miss.
Chris — steady, thoughtful, the glue.
I looked out for them.
They looked out for me.
Which meant they knew when something had shifted.
Back at the office, Jim caught me before I reached my desk.
“Quick word.”
The door shut.
Recruiting. Restructuring. Strategic realignment.
The words slid over me, dulling the glow from lunch.
Rick. Tracy. People who’d given me chances once.
When the door closed behind Jim, Beth knocked softly and peeked in.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just… thinking.”
She hesitated. “Whoever she is… we all saw her. And we’re happy for you.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
After she left, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling.
Last night had felt like a beginning.
Today reminded me that beginnings never happen in isolation.
They ripple.
And somewhere between that bar, that boat, and this office —
I knew one thing for sure.
Whatever I’d stepped into last night?
It wasn’t small.
Back at the office, the energy hadn’t quite settled after lunch. People were half-working, half-planning. Tabs open that had nothing to do with actual deliverables. The quiet hum of anticipation buzzing under everything.
I sat at my desk, pretending to review a deck I already knew by heart, my mind two steps ahead.
Same bar.
Same time.
The thought landed warm in my chest.
Everyone was going. Dan had already claimed he’d “accidentally” show up early. Chris said something about bringing a friend. Beth had mentioned Sean might meet her after his shift — her tone casual, like she didn’t want it to matter.
Tony would be there.
Tony always was.
He didn’t work with us — different world entirely. Old money, real estate, investment firms with names that sounded like law offices. Restaurants, properties, deals that happened over scotch instead of spreadsheets. But he’d never been weird about it. Never needed to prove anything.
He was my best friend because he knew who I’d been before Boston polished the edges off me.
The thought of him seeing Sage again — really seeing her — made something flicker low in my gut. Pride, maybe. Or the quiet hope that she’d still look at me the same way when the night started again.
I pictured it without trying.
The bar lights.
The music.
Her smile when she spotted me across the room like it hadn’t been an accident at all.
I checked my watch.
Plenty of time.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I frowned, let it go to voicemail, turned back to my screen.
Then the voicemail notification popped up almost immediately.
Something about that — the speed of it — tightened my chest.
I listened.
“Ethan, this is Dr. McKenna’s office. We’re calling about your mother.”
Everything inside me went still.
I stood so fast my chair scraped back into the cubicle wall, drawing a few glances I didn’t notice. My sandwich sat untouched on the desk, the bread already curling at the edges.
I called back with shaking fingers.
By the time the nurse picked up, I was already halfway out of my skin.
“She fainted at work,” she said gently. “Dehydration. Exhaustion. We ran tests. She’s stable. But she can’t keep doing what she’s been doing.”
I closed my eyes.
“She cleans offices at night,” I said.
There was a pause on the line.
Then, quieter: “That needs to stop.”
The office around me blurred — keyboards clacking, phones ringing, life continuing like nothing had happened.
“I’m on my way,” I said, already reaching for my keys.
I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.
Just grabbed my jacket, nodded once at Beth as I passed her desk. She opened her mouth, probably to ask about tonight.
“Rain check,” I said, forcing a smile that didn’t quite land.
She watched me go, concern already replacing curiosity.
By the time I hit the highway, the city was fading in my rearview mirror — glass and steel shrinking behind me as the road stretched north.
Three hours.
Plenty of time for the fantasy to dissolve.
For the image of Sage under bar lights to be replaced with my mother at a kitchen table, pretending she wasn’t tired. Pretending she hadn’t been doing too much for too long.
The radio played something soft and familiar. I turned it off.
Somewhere between exits, the truth settled heavy and unavoidable in my chest:
Tonight wasn’t happening.
The bar.
The boat.
The promise of another summer night picking up where the last left off.
All of it disappeared the second my phone rang.
Because this was the line I’d never crossed.
I could chase romance.
I could chase something bright and new and easy.
But when it came down to it —
I was still the kid who drove north without thinking, because family didn’t wait.
And Boston, for all its shine and possibility, suddenly felt very far away.
They discharged her just after dusk.
No sirens. No drama. Just paperwork and instructions and a nurse who smiled too kindly, like she already knew how this story usually went.
“I’m fine,” Ma said for the third time, tugging her cardigan tighter around herself as I pulled the car around. “I told them I’m fine.”
“You fainted,” I said, opening her door.
She waved it off. “I stood up too fast.”
I didn’t argue.
I drove.
The roads up north were darker than I remembered. Fewer streetlights. Longer stretches of nothing. Pine and shadow and the hum of tires on asphalt.
She dozed in the passenger seat, chin tipped toward her chest, hands folded in her lap. I kept glancing over, just to make sure she was still breathing easy.
We pulled into the driveway a little after eight.
The house looked smaller than it used to.
Same pale-blue siding. Same sagging front step I’d meant to fix every summer since college. Porch light flickering like it always had.
I killed the engine and went around to help her out.
“I don’t need—” she started.
“I know,” I said. “Humor me.”
The front door stuck the way it always had. I leaned into it with my shoulder. The familiar smell hit me the second we stepped inside — old carpet, lemon cleaner, something vaguely metallic from the pipes.
I helped her up the three steps into the kitchen.
And then I really saw it.
The tile beneath my feet was cracked in two places, grout darkened with years that never quite came clean. The cabinets — once white — had gone yellow at the edges, warped slightly from moisture. Wallpaper peeling at the corners, the pattern faded into something I couldn’t even remember choosing.
As a kid, it had just been home.
Now, after the Seaport and glass and stainless steel and views that cost more than this whole house?
It looked… tired.