Page 65 of What Remains of Grace

Two of the not-so-new guys showed up together, both arguing over whether a mullet or a grouper made better tacos. Grouper for sure. She knew them now to be Jerrod and Kevin.

“Don’t even talk to me about school starting,” Casey groaned, sinking into the seat beside Emmie. “It should be illegal to begin in August.”

“Agreed,” Emmie said, stabbing a fry with unnecessary force. “Summer should last until at least November.”

Jenna laughed. “You two don’t get to complain. I’m the one who has to drag you out of bed at six starting Monday.”

Casey dropped her head onto the table. “Six? As in . . . morning?”

“Is there another six?” Jenna teased, earning a round of laughter at the obvious answer.

Emmie pointed a fry at her. “Aunt Jenna’s about to become a drill sergeant. I can feel it in my bones.”

“It’s for your own good,” Jenna said. “You two are going to regret every life choice when those alarms go off.”

“Already traumatized,” Emmie said.

The girls bickered softly, but Jenna felt the truth settling beneath the jokes: School meant change.

And it wasn’t the only thing shifting with summer ending.

Change meant the long, strange bubble she and Cole had been living in was about to burst. And she wasn’t sure she was ready for it to pop.

Cole arrived last, cap off for once, his tight curls flattened from a long shower, dark and close-cropped enough that she noticed the water still clinging at the edges.

“You clean up nice,” Jenna said, bumping his arm lightly.

“You should see me when I try,” he deadpanned.

Dinner was loud, easy, and full of the kind of laughter that bubbled without effort. Emmie sat with her friends but popped over every so often to steal bites from Jenna’s plate. At one point, she pointed her fork at Cole.

“You better take good care of her when all this construction stuff is done,” she said.

Cole held up a hand. “Cross my heart.”

Then he turned toward Jenna and said, “If I get the chance.”

It was so low, more breath than sound, that she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Surrounded by people, she forced herself not to react, even as every muscle went tight.

Cole’s expression shifted too fast for her to read, something warm, something pained, something he immediately tucked away behind a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Jenna had been around him enough by now to know this was usually the kind of night he loved: good food, loud crew, work well done.

But he kept glancing at his phone like he was expecting bad news, or maybe trying to avoid saying something he couldn’t take back.

Jenna kicked his boot lightly under the table. “You okay?”

He blinked, startled. “Yeah. Just—long day.” But that wasn’t it.

There was a tightness in his shoulders she’d never seen before, a restless way he kept shifting in his seat like staying in one place too long made him uneasy, as if he didn’t know what to do with himself now that the job was almost done. She didn’t have the words for it yet, but she recognized the feeling anyway.

Melancholy.

The kind that sits just beneath the surface, waiting for the wrong moment to split wide.

As the night stretched on, the guys teased Cole about the next job waiting for them, how the new client wasn’t nearly as fun, how no one made cookies for them like Emmie did, or how they were spoiled here and wouldn’t survive the downgrade.

Travis lifted his drink. “To the Hart’s,” he said. “Both of ’em keeping us fed and paid.”