I hated that she wasn’t wrong.
Around noon,I walked down to the harbor to clear my head.
The sun was out. Breezy, but not oppressive. The kind of weather that made you forget anything bad had ever happened here.
I passed the bookstore, the café, the post office, places that had once made me itch with how small they felt. Now they just looked… familiar. Weathered. Honest.
I spotted Nate before he saw me.
He was leaning against a stack of dock crates, clipboard in hand, talking to someone with grease on his shirt and a red bandana tucked in his pocket. His voice was calm, hands moving as he spoke; measured, not rushed. The way he’d always been when the rest of us were spinning.
When he spotted me, his whole face shifted. That open, unguarded smile.
“Hey,” he said, walking over. “Back so soon?”
“I needed air.”
“Or to escape your sisters?”
I gave him a look. “Why not both?”
He gestured toward the marina. “Want to walk?”
We fell into step without another word and didn’t talk much. Just the occasional comment about the boats, the town, the upcoming potluck. He asked if I needed help setting up tables. I said I’d let him know. He didn’t press.
And that, more than anything, made me want to say yes.
We reached the edge of the dock. The wind picked up, tossing my hair into my face. Nate reached over—without thinking, without hesitation—and gently tucked it behind my ear.
I froze.
He didn’t.
He just looked at me, not expectant, not smug. Just steady.
I cleared my throat. “You’re still good at that.”
“What?”
“Reading the room.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re easier to read when you’re not pretending to be okay.”
I didn’t answer.
We stood at the edge of the dock, side by side, watching the water slap gently against the posts. A small fishing boat rumbled in the distance, leaving a trail of foam behind it.
“I used to think coming back here would feel like failure,” I said. “Like I’d wasted all the years I spent trying to leave.”
Nate didn’t look at me. Just nodded slowly. “And now?”
“Now I don’t know.”
That was the truth. No rehearsed version. No clever deflection.
Just that: I didn’t know.
“I thought I was supposed to have a plan,” I added. “A marriage, a job that looked good on paper, a condo that was clean and modern and full of things I didn’t have time to use. I thought if I checked all the right boxes, it would mean something.”
