I’m not going to push. I’m not going to perform. I’m just going to be exactly who I am and let her decide what she does with that, because I have a feeling Hannah Caldwell has spent a significant portion of her life being managed and maneuvered and I’m not going to be another person who does that to her.
But I’m also not going anywhere.
The ocean settles into its nighttime rhythm. Next door, a light comes on in the kitchen window.
I stay on the deck a little longer than I need to.
3
HANNAH
I sleep better than I have in months.
This is annoying to admit, even to myself, because I’d like to attribute it to the ocean air and the absence of my phone alarm and the particular darkness that exists when you’re away from the city and those things are true, those things are factors. But somewhere around six a.m. when I surface slowly into consciousness with the sound of waves replacing the usual soundtrack of Omaha traffic, I know that the good sleep has something to do with the loosening feeling that started on my deck last night.
I don’t examine that too carefully.
I make coffee. I put on a swimsuit and the linen cover-up that Mia said made me look like a “coastal grandmother and I mean that as a complete compliment, Mom” and I take my mug out to the deck because the morning light out here is obscene. Gold, blue, and… clean. Different but not exactly better from the pinks, oranges, and purples of a Midwestern sunrise that I’ve been living under. But it almost feels fictional, produced by some artist who didn’t want to use all the other colors.
I settle into my chair.
I have twelve pages left in my chapter.
I am going to read them.
“Morning.”
I look up before I can decide not to.
Cruz Jackson is on his deck with a mug of his own, leaning against the railing in a t-shirt and shorts, hair still carrying the evidence of sleep in a way that should look careless and unfortunately looks the opposite. He’s not looking at me —he’s looking at the water, the same way I was— and the greeting was easy, unhurried, not angled toward anything.
“Morning,” I say, because I’m not rude.
I look back at my book.
He stays quiet.
This is, I realize after approximately ninety seconds, more disarming than conversation would’ve been. I’m aware of him the way you’re aware of weather. Not intrusively, just as a fact of the environment. And this awareness makes it difficult to remember what I was reading, which I resent mildly.
I almost go inside.
But… I stay.
It starts because he’s sketching.
I notice it because I’m not reading my book, I’m looking at the ocean, and in my peripheral vision his posture has shifted. He’s leaning forward now, forearms on the railing, something in his hand that catches the light. A pencil. And a notebook that is clearly not the kind you use for grocery lists. It’s wide, flat, the pages thick.
I watch him sketch for longer than I intend to.
“What are you drawing?” The question comes out before I’ve approved it.
He looks up and there’s that expression again. Not the grin exactly, something quieter than that, like he’s pleased but trying not to show it by being obvious about it. “The house three down. The one with the bad addition on the left side.”
I look. There is, in fact, a house three down with what appears to be a sunroom bolted onto its left side with no architectural consideration whatsoever.
“You draw houses.”
“I design them.” He says it simply, no setup, no redirect. “The influencer thing funds it. The architecture is the actual job.”
