We were so damn young, standing on the edge of everything. I’d just started diving after being taught by Eli. I’d talk to Tessa for hours about it, about the silent, beautiful world beneath the waves. A world apart from the noise of my family. She understood. The ocean was a part of her, like it was with Eli and Austin. And I had this half-formed, impossible dream of a place of my own, a real business that would prove I was more than just another Coleridge.
She squeezed my hand. “And whatever happens with college, we’ll figure it out, right? We’ll make it work.”
The promise had been as real and solid as the driftwood near our feet. We both believed it. Two kids against the world, convinced that love and ambition were enough to conquer distance. I told myself I was being noble, letting her fly without trying to cage her. The truth was, I was afraid she'd eventually realize she was meant for the sky, and I was stuck on the ground. I was just a Coleridge fromDove Key. Tessa was destined for greatness, a full-ride scholarship waiting for her. We kissed then, a desperate, salty goodbye that already tasted like the end.
She left and never looked back. I never tried to fight for her. The end.
A sharp, acrid smell—the scent of burning fat and ruined meat—yanked me back to the searing heat of the kitchen.
“Boss, that burger’s a hockey puck.” Andy’s worried voice cut through the memory.
I looked down. A blackened, smoking circle of what used to be a burger sat on the grill, a perfect monument to my distraction.
“Goddammit,” I snarled. “Son-of-a-bitch burger.”
I scraped it off with a sharp, angry motion and tossed it into the trash. The memory of Tessa’s kiss lingered on my lips, a phantom taste of salt and rain and a future that never happened.
All these years, every success with Tidal Hops, every new beer I brewed… in some quiet, unacknowledged corner of my heart, it had all been for her. A silent, one-sided conversation with a memory. A decade-long effort to prove to a girl who was long gone that her parents had been wrong about me.
And now?
The central, agonizing question, the one Eli had so carelessly unearthed, knocked the air from my lungs.
What if he was right?
What if, after all these years, Tessa was back? Not just as a presence in my head, but as a real, breathing woman who had built her own life, her own world, far away?
The thought was a terrifying, exhilarating jolt to my system. The persona I’d built, the easy charm andprofessional success, was like a sandcastle about to be washed away by the incoming tide.
And I didn’t know if I wanted to run for higher ground or stand my ground and let the water take me.
