Chapter 24
ETHAN
Tony didn’t call.
He just showed up.
I was standing in my kitchen, staring into the fridge like there might be answers behind the milk, when I heard the knock. Two quick raps. Familiar. Confident.
When I opened the door, he was already grinning.
“You look like shit,” he said.
“Good to see you too,” I replied.
He stepped inside without waiting, shedding his jacket, eyes scanning the apartment in that way only old friends do—cataloging changes, noticing absences.
“You eating?” he asked.
“Thinking about it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He grabbed a beer from the fridge like it belonged to him, then leaned against the counter, studying me over the rim.
October had done something to the city.
Everything felt quieter. Heavier. Like even laughter was cautious now.
Tony cleared his throat. “We’ve all been fucked up since September.”
I nodded once.
“And you…” He tilted his head. “You’ve been especially fucked up.”
I snorted softly. “Appreciate the diagnosis.”
“I’m serious, man.” His voice gentled. “You haven’t been the same since her.”
There it was.
Sage.
He didn’t say her name. He didn’t have to.
“She burned through your life like a wildfire,” he went on. “Fast. Hot. Destructive. And now you’re just standing there staring at the ashes.”
I looked away, jaw tightening.
“And we can’t even escape on the boat,” he added. “Dry dock. Winterizing. No harbor therapy this year.”
Silence stretched.
Then his mouth twitched.
“So I had an idea.”
That got my attention.
“What kind of idea?” I asked cautiously.
“The kind that starts with ‘business proposition’ and ends with you not losing your mind in that apartment.”
I raised a brow.
He grinned. “Come have a drink with me.”
The bar was half-empty. Low lights. Muted TV over the counter replaying the news on silent. We took a booth in the corner like we always did when things were serious.
Tony didn’t start with the pitch.
He waited until the second beer.
“You remember how my uncle used to flip houses up north?” he said.
“Vaguely. Vermont, right?”
“Yeah. Near Killington. Little town called Pittsfield.”
I shrugged. “Ski country.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned forward now, elbows on the table.
“I found a place.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Old farmhouse,” he said. “More like a wreck, actually. Roof’s shot. Porch is rotting. Needs a full gut. But—”
He held up a finger.
“Twenty acres. Private trails. A pond that freezes in the winter. Barn out back. Five minutes from a small resort. Fifteen from Killington.”
I blinked. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“And you’re telling me this because…?”
“Because I want a partner,” he said simply. “And because you’re the only guy I trust not to screw me over.”
I laughed. “Tony, I don’t have money for that. Not after this summer.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s not what I’m asking.”
He took a breath.
“I’ll put up the capital. You put in sweat equity. Five grand if you can. Ten if you’re feeling brave. I’ll pay you to help renovate. We flip it in two years, or keep it as a ski rental. Fifty-fifty.”
I stared at him.
“You want me to quit my job and become a mountain hermit?”
“No,” he said. “I want you to stop drowning.”
That landed harder than I expected.
He went on, quieter now.
“You grew up working with your hands, man. You fix engines. You build shit. You light up when you’re not in a suit.”
He gestured vaguely at me.
“Right now, you’re trapped in an apartment full of ghosts. I’m offering you a place with real walls and real work and no memories attached to it.”
I looked down at my hands.
He wasn’t wrong.
“You’d come up on weekends,” he added. “We’d tear it apart. Rebuild it. Ski all winter. Drink shitty beer. Remember how to be human again.”
I exhaled slowly.
“And if I say no?”
He shrugged. “Then I buy it alone. But I think you need this more than I do.”
We drove up that Saturday.
Three hours north. Leaves on fire along the highway. The kind of crisp air that makes your lungs feel clean.
The house was worse than he’d described.
Sagging porch. Moss on the shingles. Windows cloudy with age.
But when I stepped out of the truck and looked past it—
The land opened up.
Rolling trails. Tall pines. A frozen pond already forming skin along the edges. Silence so deep it rang.
Tony watched me carefully.
“Well?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
I walked up to the porch, knelt, ran my hand along a rotting beam.
This… this I understood.
Wood.
Nails.
Tools.
Problems that could be fixed if you were willing to work.
No mixed signals.
No apologies.
No emotional landmines.
Just honest damage and honest labor.
For the first time in months, my chest felt… lighter.
“This is a disaster,” I said.
Tony grinned. “That’s a yes.”
I stood, took a slow breath of pine and cold air.
“I don’t know who I became this summer,” I admitted. “But I know I’m not him.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s build someone better.”
And standing there, surrounded by broken wood and open land, I realized something simple and true:
Love had nearly destroyed me.
But work—real work—might save me.
All the way back to Boston, that air stayed with me.
The smell of pine.
The quiet.
The way the wind sounded through the leaves.
Because ever since September, I hadn’t been right.
I hadn’t told anyone that.
Not Tony.
Not my mother.
Not Beth.
But the truth was, I hadn’t slept more than three hours a night since the towers fell.
I’d been there.
Close enough to smell it.
Close enough to hear it.
The way the air turned thick and gray and wrong.
The way ash blocked out the sun.
The way sirens never stopped.
The way we tried to help and mostly just… moved bodies.
Buried what we couldn’t save.
Every night, it came back.
The sound of impact.
The smell of smoke and metal and something I still couldn’t name.
The feeling that no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t fix what mattered.
Driving south, watching the leaves blur past, it hit me like a light turning on.
This wasn’t just about Sage.
This wasn’t just heartbreak.
This was grief.
Fear.
Trauma.
The next morning, I called my doctor.
I didn’t rehearse it. I just told the truth.
That I couldn’t sleep.
That I kept replaying that day.
That I felt hollow and wired at the same time.
That I was one bad night away from breaking.
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
Then he said gently, “Ethan… call HR. I’m putting you on short-term disability. Six weeks. Paid leave.”
I swallowed. “I don’t need to be—”
“You need to breathe,” he cut in. “And from what you’re describing, a fixer-upper in the mountains sounds like exactly the medicine you didn’t know you were prescribing yourself.”
I hung up and stared at my phone.
For the first time since September, I didn’t feel weak.
I felt… allowed.
To stop.
To heal.
To go north and rebuild something with my hands.
Not just a house.
Myself.
By the time I got to the office, I already knew.
Not in a dramatic, lightning-bolt way. More like the way you know a room has been abandoned before you even turn on the lights.
The elevators opened onto our floor and the silence hit first. No laughter drifting from the break room. No cluster of people arguing about lunch spots. No emails popping up—Happy hour?, Boat this weekend?, You in?
Nothing.
Just keyboards. HVAC hum. Fluorescent lights buzzing like they were tired of their own existence.
I sat at my desk and opened my inbox.
Cleared it.
Closed files I’d been pretending to work on. Answered the few emails that actually mattered. The rest felt pointless—like rearranging deck chairs after the storm already hit.
All summer, we’d lived like there was no tomorrow.
Swipe the card.
Book the trip.
Order another round.
And then September came and reminded us—brutally—that tomorrow was never guaranteed.
Beth had been dumped.
My relationship with Sage had detonated.
Kristen was gone.
Jim wasn’t even hiding his marital problems anymore.
It was like we’d all been living inside a snow globe—bright, perfect, contained—and someone finally picked it up and shook it hard.
I logged into HR.
Downloaded the forms.
Faxed them to my doctor. The machine whined and screeched like it was protesting. Thirty minutes later, the fax came back. Signed. Official. I forwarded everything to HR, cc’d myself, and logged out.
That was it.
Just like that.
I didn’t tell anyone. Not Tony. Not Jim. Some things are too personal to explain. Some ghosts don’t want witnesses—not even your best friends.
I stood, grabbed my jacket, then stopped.
Beth.
She was at her desk, shoulders slightly hunched, fingers flying over the keyboard like speed was the only thing keeping her upright. She looked smaller lately. Like the office had started swallowing her whole.
“Hey,” I said quietly. “You got a minute?”
She looked up, startled, then nodded. “Yeah. Conference room?”
We walked down the hallway together, side by side, not talking. The closer we got, the heavier the air felt. The door loomed at the end like a bad memory.
She stopped.
“Oh.” Her voice caught. “Conference room.”
Right.
This was where we all stood. Where we watched. Where time split in two.
“Let’s not,” I said quickly. “Coats?”
She nodded again, already reaching for hers.
Outside, the air cut sharp and clean. Cold New England fall. The kind of day where the sun shows up but refuses to help. Leaves scraped across the sidewalk in dry, skittering sounds as we walked.
I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“I’m gonna be gone for a bit,” I said.
She slowed. “Gone how?”
“Leave,” I said. “Medical. Short-term.”
She studied my face. “How long is a bit?”
I exhaled. “I can’t really talk about it. HIPAA and all that.” A pause. “But… I need to get my head straight. Figure out what the hell I’m doing with my life.”
She didn’t interrupt. That was Beth—she always let people finish.
“I’ve been pretending,” I went on. “Going out. Spending money. Acting like there was no tomorrow. This whole summer—I lived like there wasn’t.”