After Rei left, Lucy stood in the quiet kitchen and looked around. The industrial mixer, the oven she'd replaced three years ago, the shelves lined with her grandmother's recipe binders. The small table in the corner where she ate meals standing up, toorushed to sit. The life she'd built—or the life that had built itself around her.
Your grandmother didn't leave you this place so you could disappear into it.
Maybe Uncle Walter and Rei were right. Maybe she had disappeared. Maybe it was time to start figuring out how to come back.
The walk from the rink to his apartment took twelve minutes if Jake went the long way down Main Street, past the shops and restaurants and the town square with its war memorial. On Saturday afternoons, Main Street was busy—families getting ice cream, teenagers hanging out by the fountain, tourists from Burlington taking photos of the "charming Vermont town."
Jake took the long way.
He liked watching Timber Falls on Saturdays. There was something reassuring about the predictability of it—Mr. Henderson from his building, walking his ancient beagle. The Knitting Circle, clustered outside the yarn shop, probably discussing someone's business. Tom and Jerry (the married couple who owned the hardware store below Jake's apartment) arguing good-naturedly about whether to close early or stay open another hour.
This was home. It had always been home, even during the years he'd tried to convince himself it was just a temporary stop.
Jake was almost to his building when he passed The Bread Basket. He hadn't meant to look in the window—his Wednesday visits were already borderline obsessive, he didn't need to add Saturday stalking to the list—but he glanced in anyway.
Lucy was behind the counter, talking to someone Jake couldn't see. Her hair was falling out of its bun, there was flour on her cheek (there was always flour on her cheek), and she was laughing at something the other person said. Really laughing, head thrown back, eyes crinkled.
Jake's chest did something weird.
He'd noticed Lucy before, obviously. You didn't visit the same bakery every week for three years without noticing the owner. But he'd noticed her the way you noticed anyone who was competent at their job—with a kind of detached appreciation. She made good pork buns. She was friendly with customers. She ran a successful business.
But this—watching her laugh through the window, seeing the way her whole face transformed—this was different. This felt like noticing her as a person, not just as a fixture of his Wednesday routine.
Jake realized he was staring and quickly looked away. He continued walking to his apartment, taking the stairs two at a time to the third floor.
Inside, his studio was exactly as he'd left it: bed unmade, dishes in the sink, his gear bag by the door. The TV was still on mute, frozen on the menu screen of whatever streaming service he'd been using last night. The space smelled like stale coffee and old takeout.
Jake looked around and felt the same thing he'd felt at the rink with Emma: a kind of dissatisfied restlessness, like he was waiting for something to happen but didn't know what.
His phone buzzed. A text from Marcus:
post-game drinks tonight? mac's tavern 8pm?
Jake almost said no—he usually said no—but Tommy's words from this morning echoed in his head.
You decided which one you're doing yet, Reaper?
What was he doing? Sitting in his apartment alone, watching movies on mute, waiting for a life that might never come?
Jake typed back:yeah ok
Marcus responded immediately with three exclamation points and a beer emoji.
Jake set his phone down and looked around his apartment again. It was fine. It was functional. It was temporary—except it had been temporary for three years now.
Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he'd been living in temporary for so long that he'd forgotten how to commit to permanent.
Through the wall, he heard movement in the apartment next door. His mysterious neighbor, the one with the unpredictable schedule. Jake had lived here for three years and had never met them—just heard them through the wall at odd hours, a constant reminder that he wasn't the only one awake at 3 AM.
Jake lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Tommy's question circled in his mind:Settling or choosing?
He didn't know the answer yet. But for the first time in a long time, he thought maybe he wanted to figure it out.
And maybe—just maybe—figuring it out started with showing up. To team drinks, to community events, to life in Timber Falls instead of just existence.
Maybe it started with treating this place like home instead of like a consolation prize.
Jake's phone buzzed again. This time it was his mom:
