I stand with my back against a brick wall and stare at a patch of May sky above the roofline, letting myself feel everything I hadn't let Cherry see.
It was nothing. It was Cherry, and Cherry is a person who plants things and tends them carefully and enjoys the harvest. I know that. I know all of that, and I still hate it.
I replay the kiss and him walking out. I think about the two weeks before that, him going quiet on me, pulling back, the distance reinstalled like he'd noticed a crack in his walls and gone at it with spackle.
I think about all the moments that almost were and then weren't, all the times I caught him watching me like I was something he wanted and couldn't have, and I am so, so tired.
Tired of reading into silences and decoding exits and finding reasons to be in a house where I'm family to one Holt and a problem to avoid for the other.
Tired of Cherry's sympathy face and the rumor she was definitely responsible for and a town that sometimes feels like it has opinions about my life I never solicited.
I wanted to live here this year so that I'd have enough love and family to sustain me when I went back to the big city, alone and far away from them. Harbor Hill is mine for alittle while in all the ways that matter, and I'm not going to let any of this take that from me.
I have three months before my MCAT prep intensifies and interviews start. Three months of Harbor Hill summer, which Poppy described as the best thing that happens to this town all year, and Poppy has never once been wrong about anything I can verify.
Three months of the harbor and the pub and Erin's shop and Ruth's diner and Mr. J's barbershop and Gran and the Estrogen Council and all of it. All the warm, ridiculous, wonderful fabric of this place I've chosen.
I'm going to live it. Fully. Without spending every third thought on a man who hasn't figured out what he's doing yet. Callahan Holt can find me when he's ready. In the meantime, I have a summer to get into.
I finish my iced coffee, toss it in the nearest trash can, and go to find my brother.
14
CAL
Seven days without a day off, and I can feel every single one of them sitting in my bones.
Back-to-back shifts. A call on Wednesday that nobody talked about on the drive back. Just all of us staring out our own windows like there was something worth seeing out there. There wasn't.
Thursday was four hours in every jewelry store within a thirty-mile radius because Zuri needed someone to help her pick a ring and apparently that someone was me. She couldn't bring Talia. Those two in a jewelry store together would've been a fight before they made it through the door.
I really hope no one else is getting married anytime soon because I am more than fed up with engagement rings.
Now it's Friday night. Everyone else is out and I am on my couch with the football on and seventeen tabs of engagement rings still open on my phone, closing them one by one slowly, like I'm putting them to sleep.
"You're quiet," Dad says from his chair, not looking up from his book.
"I'm always quiet."
He turns a page with that deliberate patience he has, the one that makes everything feel like a test. "Not like this."
I stretch my legs out on the coffee table as the TV drones on. I couldn't tell you the score if someone paid me.
"Your friends are out tonight."
Another page turn. His eyes aren't even moving across the lines, which means he's been waiting to have this conversation and the book is just a prop.
I cut my eyes to him, already suspicious. "How do you know that?"
"Ramsey called to check on me this afternoon." Page turn. "Said they were all going to the pub." He flattens the spine with his thumb, keeps going. "Poppy texted, asked if I needed anything from town." Another page. "Lily called, she's stopping by tomorrow."
Three separate people. My father, who hasn't left this house since Tuesday, has a better social life than I do. Cool. Great. Love that for him.
"I'm tired," I say, sinking deeper into the couch and letting my head fall back against the cushion like that settles it, like that's the end of the conversation.
It's not. Dad closes his book, sets it on the side table, taps his fingers once against the cover before folding his hands in his lap. When he finally turns to me, there's something in his expression that I recognize from every conversation I've ever tried to avoid with this man.
"Tired?"
