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The first thing Jenna thinks when she meets Nancy Drew is: well, that was fast.
She tries not to judge Katie, but that last about a full five minutes before Jenna gives up. The thing is, it wasn’t that long ago when she and Katie broke up, and here she is inviting out replacements to spend time with her on her boat. Jenna knows just how little room there is in that bunk. She’s not an idiot.
It could be that Jenna isn’t all that good with dealing with exes, at least exes who stay in town close enough to be in spitting distance. Jenna needs her ex-girlfriends to drop off the face of the earth after they’re done, especially if they heartlessly dumped Jenna for no good reason and didn’t even have the common courtesy of giving back Jenna’s favorite mug. Still. Flaunting her new girlfriend in her face so damn soon? That’s a little cold.
She didn’t realize she’d have to send Katie a fucking postcard so she’d get the message. But if she was going to rip out Jenna’s heart and wear it on her sleeve like a corsage of honor, then Jenna had no choice other than act like Katie was the scum of the earth until she got the hint and just left Snake Horse Harbor already.
--
Jenna learned pretty quickly of the new girl in town. Rumors spread fast in such a small area and Katie Firestone was a pretty good rumor—she came straight out of a big city and had all the knowledge of a marine biology career strapped to her back—and it didn’t take long for news of her arrival to step into the Hot Kettle.
She fit in well enough, quickly enough, from the sound of it. Andy Jason latched onto her like a leech, immediately vying for all of her customers the second she opened up her boat to tourists, and a lot of the locals liked chatting with her about Caddy and all the other sea creature myths she learned on her path to becoming a marine biologist.
Jenna first met Katie Firestone herself in the Hot Kettle. It was her second day in Snake Horse Harbor, and she had been pointed that way by the locals who were all too happy to recommend Jenna's chowder as a welcome-to-Deception-Island lunch break, a story Katie shared after she was sitting down working on her third bowl.
“I don't even typically like clams,” she had said, but she spooned down the chowder like it was her new favorite food.
Jenna hardly even knew what to say to her. She was always one with a silver-tongue, but something about Katie just… dazed her over, so to speak. She was wearing a thick green vest and her hair had frizzed up from that morning’s drizzle, but she was still gorgeous. That bright red hair could've lured in anybody; Jenna would swear by that.
“So this is kind of the hangout spot for people around here, huh?” Katie asked after she was officially full.
“Definitely. Once you get a taste of my food, you're hooked,” Jenna told her, reveling in the smile Katie gave her in return. “You want some more coffee?”
“I would love some.”
Some more coffee ended up turning into about four more cups. They talked for a long time, Jenna continuously refilling her cup to make sure she was sticking around. Katie told her about her work and how excited she was to be surrounded by so much sea life after spending so much time in the clogged big city, the high hopes she had for her whale-watching tours. She was incredibly cute, and honest, and those freckles on her face were pleasantly distracting to say the least, and Jenna must've ignored at least ten customers that day because she was so wrapped up in chatting with Katie.
It was safe to say that Jenna wasn’t looking for a relationship. She was still recovering from losing Kim, who hadn’t said a word to Jenna since she left for New York and sent her a to-the-point postcard last month, and she wanted to take time for herself, for caring about the cafe and her customers, but then Katie showed up and that plan seemed absolutely ridiculous, because who on earth could take one look at Katie and not want to throw all ideas of staying single out the window?
Jenna definitely couldn’t. It was one look, and then hook, line, and sinker for her.
--
Katie comes in about an hour after Nancy’s first appearance, thirsty for caffeine. It hocks Jenna off to no end that Katie still shows up here, like she has the right, like she’s never read the rulebook for breaking up with somebody. Rule number one: stop attending their establishment, residence, or popular cafe, absolutely no excuses.
Amazingly enough, despite what Jenna suggested to Nancy about Katie purposefully vandalizing her own boat to take down Holt’s popularity in the polls, she does look like someone whose morning was ruined thanks to being the target of a crime and then having to clean up the mess of said crime, extremely harrowed and pinched around the edges. She comes up to the counter, briefly meeting Jenna’s eyes.
“Could I get a coffee?” she asks.
“Fine.”
Jenna gets started on it. She doesn’t particularly want to talk to Katie, but she’s also burning up with questions, the latter need ultimately pushing aside the first.
“I met Nancy earlier,” she says. “Thought you were inviting your girlfriend.”
“George isn’t—” Katie stops herself. She looks annoyed, frustrated that she’s even having this conversation, and puts down her mug. “She was never my girlfriend. She’s young, and she lives in Illinois, and I’m.” She looks at Jenna like she wants to say more, but is holding herself back. “It doesn’t matter.”
It feels like the most awkward exchange in the world. Jenna’s arms are stiff with tension as she watches Katie look everywhere but anywhere near Jenna, so she grabs a rag from beneath the counter and starts wiping down the greasy spot by the cashier. Why does she even come in here anymore? They don’t get along, and Jenna doesn’t think Katie even wants to.
“Well, Nancy’s nice,” Jenna says. “George’s friend?”
“Yeah. She is.”
Jenna wants to say more. She wants to ask if George didn’t end up coming because Katie ended up running scared and snubbed her too, if she led her on and left her high and dry, but how terrible would it sound if she actually said that out loud? Maybe she just ought to move on. She thinks about Kim’s postcard, how she’s thought about throwing it out a dozen times but it’s still sitting on that table by the door. Maybe she should write back.
“So you and Nancy.”
“Nothing,” Katie says. “She’s just staying at my boat.”
Jenna intends to keep that derisive snort inside, but it sneaks its way out anyway. The hurt-turned-irritation on Katie's face is almost satisfying, because Jenna honestly doesn't even know why she came in here. Why she still does. There are other coffee shops in Snake Horse Harbor, why does she have to hang out in the one her ex runs? Katie decided to pull the brakes on all this, and that means she can't torment Jenna by showing up here acting like everything is hunky-dory between them, because it isn't. Jenna wouldn't be knocking down her door for whale watching tours if she was the one who had dumped Katie like yesterday's leftovers.
“Sure,” Jenna says. “You two do whatever the hell you want.”
“We’re just friends,” Katie says again. She sounds like she regrets coming here, but she still isn't leaving, so clearly Jenna isn't trying hard enough yet. “Can I get some coffee, yes or no?”
They lock eyes, and it feels a little like some tense, uncomfortable standoff during which Jenna wishes and prays that Katie just gets out already. She doesn't.
“Coming right up,” she says, doing her best to keep the acid out of her voice.
She grabs the coffee pot and pours Katie the damn cup she needs so much, but makes it a to-go unprompted just to send the wordless message that Jenna isn't thrilled that she's here. She knows how Katie wants it—one cream, one sugar—but leaves it black like she doesn't, like she's forgotten, and fits the lid on the cup.
She sets it on the counter. “There you go.”
Katie's fidgeting with the money in her hands, coins scraping against each other, before she hands them over. She looks like she has more to say, just like Jenna, but she's considering letting it out, like Jenna very much isn’t. For one frozen moment, Jenna wants her to say whatever it is that's just a few seconds away from spilling out. Is she sorry? Is she disappointed? Does she wish she never came to this town in the first place?
The front door opens just then, and in steps Holt, boots heavy on the floor. He comes over to his usual chair by the counter, only sparing Katie one cursory glance.
“Morning, Firestore,” Holt says, heaving his duffel onto the floor. “Here to smear my campaign?”
“I was just leaving,” Katie says, seizing the cup off the counter and standing up.
“Wait,” Jenna says. In a moment of childish impulse, she grabs a muffin and stuffs it into a paper bag, holding it out over the counter for Katie to take. “Bring that to Nancy. She loves my muffins.”
Katie's mouth twitches, but she takes the bag. “I'm sure she does,” she says, and leaves looking visibly paler than when she entered.
--
“What do you think of the new girl?” Jenna asked Holt before lunch rush at the cafe while she cleaned out the coffeemaker.
“Mm. Cathy something?”
“Katie,” Jenna said. “Katie Firestone.”
“Aah,” Holt said. “Seems okay. A little bossy, maybe, but that's how they make them from the big city.”
Jenna didn't mind bossiness. There were a lot of things about Katie she didn't mind, actually.
“She's nice,” Jenna said.
“Andy seems to think so,” Holt said.
“Andy Jason? What, you think he's interested in her?”
“I think he's interested in her customers,” Holt said, huffing out a bark of laughter. “Looks like he's trying to schmooze her away from her own business.” He took a sip of his coffee. “What do you think of her then?”
“Me?” Jenna asked. She polished that spot on the side of the coffee tank that was already near sparkling just a little more. “I like her.”
“Well. If I have her vote, she's all right in my book.”
“That’s all it takes for you, huh?”
“Best to keep things as simple as possible,” Holt said. “Advice to live by, by the way.”
It wasn’t bad advice, Jenna knew as much, but she also couldn’t help but hope that things with Katie got at least a little complicated. At least just enough to make things fun. Just enough to maybe make them more than friends, ideally.
--
Nancy turning out to be a pleasant person isn’t the worst thing in the world that could’ve happened, but Jenna was looking forward to hating her just a little bit, no matter how irrationally, because she’s staying at Katie’s boat and god knows what they’re doing on that boat, but she’s actually a pretty cool girl.
And for as many questions she asks and how much snooping around she does, she seems to be completely oblivious to what happened with Katie and Jenna. That, or Katie told her everything already, and shared the story so flippantly, so casually, that Nancy didn’t even find their history to be anything of worth.
It makes Jenna hate Katie a little more just imagining that that’s the case.
She knows that Nancy isn't even one who's supposed to be here. Katie's friend George is the one who was supposed to make it out, and it kills Jenna that she doesn't know more. Years of eavesdropping on town gossip at the Hot Kettle has made her hungry to know everybody's secrets, although admittedly, Katie's secrets are worth more to Jenna than anybody else’s.
She just wants to know what the deal is. Who George is, why she didn't come, why Nancy’s here instead, what Nancy means to her. She can't help but imagine the worst since her brain doesn't have the truth to fill in the blanks, leaving her to consider the gnarliest possibilities, like that George is Katie’s rebound. Or maybe Katie’s in love with George, and that's why she couldn't be bothered to make it work with Jenna.
Nancy's a nice girl, but Jenna has the distinct feeling that she wouldn't be very open to her asking her questions about all her hypotheses regarding Katie’s current love life.
She doesn't ask. She bites her tongue whenever she feels a question sitting in that vein of thought desperate to wing its nosy way out of her mouth, thankful if nothing else that Nancy seems more interested in the orca than anything else. She mostly asks questions about Hilda and the town and other banal things, but just in case, Jenna still overplays it a bit when Nancy mentions Katie. What if she's reporting back to her what Jenna said? What if she'll start to pick up on their past if she doesn't act like Katie is the last person on earth she wants to so much as talk about?
Turns out, it's not hard to pretend she loathes Katie. Truth is, she kind of does loathe Katie. There are a million other feelings mixed in there too, all of them blending and mixing and influencing each other like some horribly emotionally-charged tornado, but hate is definitely there. So when Nancy brings her up, it's not hard to call her “fancy-schmancy” and mock her science degree and spread rumors that she's illegally feeding the orca and basically act like she's back in the third grade. It actually feels kind of good to just complain about her a little bit instead of just internalizing it all.
“I got an idea,” she says when she’s met with nothing but Nancy’s slightly uncomfortable expression after her tiny tirade. “Let’s change the subject.”
They do. Jenna spends the rest of their conversation trying to figure out if she’s hoping Nancy tells Katie exactly what Jenna said about her, or if she’s hoping she says nothing.
--
Katie took a lot of coffee breaks. A lot, a lot. Jenna used to think that Holt spent a lot of time at the Hot Kettle, but suddenly Katie was there constantly, showing up for a shot of caffeine before breakfast, grabbing a muffin for brunch, stopping for midday soup, coming by for tea at the end of the day. It gave Jenna the encouragement to just ask her out already to save Katie from riding her bike up the hill to the cafe five times a day and to save herself from constantly handing out so much free food.
(Fine, so maybe she had A Signature Move. It always worked for her in the past, why stop now?)
However, she was a little slow. Jenna was still thinking of ways to ask Katie out without being too forward when Katie got to the idea first one Wednesday morning.
She came in when Jenna was still prepping the place for the morning crowd, wiping down tables and setting the coffeemaker to start up. Katie's cheeks were red from the early morning chill, or in retrospect, possibly a hint of nerves.
“Big city girl,” Jenna said when she saw Katie, smiling. “Can I get you something on the house?” She grabbed a mug; she already knew that Katie wanted coffee to start her day off. “You getting sick of all our small town charm?”
“Not yet,” Katie said. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Are there any other places around here with good food?”
“The Hot Kettle not fancy enough for you?”
“Well.” Katie leaned in closer, leaning her forearm on the counter. “If I was to take you somewhere on a date, I don’t want to bring you to your own café.”
A date. For sure a date, not just some friendly hangout. All right, Katie had more guts in her than Jenna had originally expected. She felt her lips tug up into a smile without her permission. “In that case...” Jenna handed her a mug of coffee. “There’s a great seafood place down the street with awesome lobster.”
“Should I meet you there around seven p.m.? Maybe tomorrow?”
“Sounds good.”
Katie left after a few quick sips for an early morning whale-watching tour she had booked with some of the locals, leaving Jenna alone with a horde of butterflies in her stomach that danced around in her ribcage all morning long.
--
Jenna doesn't see much of her parents these days. They like to claim it's geographical restraints that's keeping them away, but Jenna knows that the physical distance is nothing compared to the emotional distance built up between them. Sometimes family just doesn't mean all that much; Jenna found that out the hard way the minute she came out.
Aunt Iris is a different story. If Jenna's mom and dad taught her that you can't always count on family to love you, Aunt Iris taught her the opposite. That someone in your family tree, no matter how many limbs out, is always going to have your back. You just have to dig a little sometimes.
Jenna misses her every minute of every day. She's traded in dreary Washington for sunny Florida, and Jenna always likes her Facebook posts of her sitting on a warm beach with a humongous straw hat on her head casting shade over her entire tiny body, but she still wishes she was closer, if even just a bit. Aunt Iris never pulled a single punch, and Jenna needs strong people like that around. That strength is what built her, what inspired her, what she looked up to all those days she spent at the cafe as a kid, hardly tall enough to look over the counter, watching Aunt Iris fill all the orders, prepare fresh batches of muffins, clean the dishes, and still have the time to eavesdrop on everybody in the whole place.
Aunt Iris was never a fan of Kim. She practically sealed up that clam chowder recipe in a bank safe when she heard that Kim was asking for it, terrified it would somehow end up in her hands. Aunt Iris has a wonderful intuition about people—a skill Jenna used to see up close when she was a kid hanging around here—but she ignored her advice to steer clear of Kim when she offered it. At the time, Kim was sweet and charming and represented all of these unreachable things. Jenna fell for her anyway, and lived to regret it, and now Aunt Iris never misses the opportunity to bring that up during a phone call.
“Now that Katie, she was better for you. Scrappy,” she says when Jenna calls to tell her about the break-in at the Hot Kettle, not that she seems to be all that concerned about it. Aunt Iris has this infuriating habit of steering a conversation wherever she wants it to go, regardless of what everybody else might want. “Why aren't you kids together anymore again?”
“Aunt Iris, we've talked about this,” Jenna says, balancing the phone between her ear and shoulder as she cleans up the mess in her storage room left behind by the burglars. They haven't really, not exactly, most probably because Jenna still isn't one hundred percent sure about what the answer is either. It all just fell apart so quickly and now here they are. “Aren't you at all concerned about the robbery?”
“You weren't hurt, were you?” Aunt Iris says.
“No.”
“Then no, I'm not concerned. That old place can handle a few ruffians running around in it,” she says, huffing. “Why don't you go talk to her?”
“Who, Katie?”
“Yes!”
Jenna sighs. Because Katie wouldn't want to talk to her anyway? Because that conversation would spiral downwards very quickly? An upturned box marked boat parts captures her eye, giving her a much needed shot of perspective.
“You know that she probably robbed me of my boat parts,” Jenna points out, looking inside the box and finding it mostly empty. “So she might very well be that ruffian you were just talking about.”
“Now why would she do that?”
“I don't know, probably because her boat got vandalized this morning and she thought why not kill two birds with one stone? Fix her boat for free and annoy Jenna?”
“Her boat was vandalized?” Aunt Iris says, focusing—as usual—on the bit of the sentence Jenna didn't intend for her to. “Why, she must be shaken. You should go see her.”
“I'm sure she's fine,” Jenna says. “She has a. A visitor on board to help out.”
“A visitor,” she repeats. “What kind of visitor?”
“A pretty young girl?”
Aunt Iris seems to be temporarily silenced at that. Jenna can practically hear her trying to justify the situation, and tries to imagine what she might come back with. She might just be her cousin. Have you asked if they're actually more than friends friends? Maybe she's trying to make you jealous. Oh, I'll bet she's got nothing on you, sweetie.
“Sounds to me like you're not over her,” is what Aunt Iris comes back with. “You should really talk to her.”
“Aunt Iris, I'm a little busy trying to run my cafe, here. Not to mention clean up this crime scene, if you haven't forgotten.”
“There’s more to life than just work, sweetheart.”
Jenna breathes out through her nose. She has too much on her plate to deal with all this right now, even if Aunt Iris is right and she can’t keep stewing in this hurricane of feelings she has for Katie anymore, the good and the bad. But right now she’s just been robbed and there could be thieves breaking into her cafe from the old shanghaiing tunnels she’s been trying to keep mum about and lately her cafe is full of nothing but angry fishermen, so she has other priorities.
“Jenna,” she says, a little more sternly this time.
“Yeah, okay, I promise I’ll talk to her later. Can you just give me time to clean up my cafe first?”
Jenna can practically see Aunt Iris’ thinned lips materialized in front of her, can practically hear her exhale come slowly out her nose. She should be happy that Jenna's keeping the Hot Kettle in good condition instead of worrying so much about Jenna's love life, but on an annoyingly real level, Jenna knows that she has a point.
“Fine,” Aunt Iris concedes. “Keep me posted, all right, sweetie?”
“You know I will.”
--
The seafood in Snake Horse Harbor was unlike the seafood anywhere else. It was like there was something in the water that just made the salmon fresher, better than even Maine’s, which Jenna discovered during a trip up to the northeast as a teenager. Then again, maybe Jenna was a little bit biased and there was a homefield advantage at play here—and the good company definitely made everything taste a little bit better too.
It was hard to complain about anything when Jenna was on a date with Katie. They waited for thirty minutes to get a table, and Jenna’s favorite shirt which she had planned to wear tonight was in the wash, and Katie was late meeting her on the dock because of work, and still, Jenna wasn't in the mood to gripe about anything. Katie had that effect on her.
Katie took Jenna's suggestion and ordered the lobster, Jenna following suit. The entire place smelled amazing, like butter and broiled fish and fresh salmon, and Katie seemed to be as excited to be here as Jenna was.
“Just so you know, I can actually eat like an adult on occasion,” Katie said after the waiter fastened the gigantic lobster bib around her neck. The blush on her face stood out as a bright red against her pale skin, and it was awfully endearing to know that she was embarrassed.
“Oh, I think you rock the look well,” Jenna said, winking. “At least we’ll be matching.”
Bib or not, Katie looked great. Tonight was the first night Jenna wasn't seeing her in fashion meant and designed purely for boat safety—dark jeans and a v-necked sweater that gave way to just the right amount of cleavage up until that lobster bib got in the way, which was probably a good thing, as Jenna might've caught herself distracted just a few too many times to be appropriate tonight otherwise.
“I’m really glad that you said yes to going out with me,” Katie admitted after their drinks came. “For a while, I wasn't sure if—well, if you felt like that about me.”
Jenna shot her a look, a little disbelieving. “What do you think all that free food was about?”
“Welcoming a newcomer to the area?” Katie guessed. “I wasn't sure. I didn't want to assume.”
“I was being pretty obvious,” Jenna said. She lost count of how many flirtatious lean-ins and intentionally charged glances and long moments of eye-contact she had pushed Katie's way up until now, but she definitely was working overtime as far sending messages went. “You have any idea how many customers I totally ignored because I was having such a good time talking to you?”
Katie looked away, clearly caught up in a moment of flattery she wasn't expecting, but Jenna still saw the corners of a smile on her face. “You weren't the only one.”
“Yeah?”
“I ended up canceling a whale-watching tour one afternoon because I wanted to see you instead,” Katie said.
“Wow. How much do I owe you for that?”
“Let’s just say all those free bowls of chowder have made up for it.”
They laughed, the cutest little crinkles Jenna ever did see appearing by Katie's eyes as she smiled. It was almost hard to comprehend that this was going so well, that this attraction was so mutual. Since when did Snake Horse Harbor drop such gorgeous, smart, sweet people into Jenna's lap, no questions asked or strings attached? Clearly she was hiding some horribly dark secret, like that she had bodies stashed away in her boat’s freezer. Was Jenna seriously just that lucky?
“So… what brought you down to Deception Island?” Jenna had to ask. “Other than the name, which I'm sure really lured you in.”
“The name was a big selling point, that's for sure,” Katie said. “Honestly, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to really engage with my studies like I never could in the city. You can sit down at a desk and learn about whales all day long, but being surrounded by them? I knew I wanted to be here. I knew I wanted to get myself a ship of my own and just—take a chance.”
“You really care about marine life, huh?” Jenna said. “So is that a negative one for me on the scoreboard for taking you to a seafood place?”
Katie smiled. “Not at all,” she said. “Even marine biologists can't say no to lobster.”
It didn't take long for the food to arrive after that. The waiter brought over gargantuan plates and little cups of melted butter and shared a few tips on how to eat lobster just right, and the conversation flowed in between bites. Katie mentioned just how long she had dreamed of owning a boat, and being close to the sea, and waking up with the fresh smell of the ocean in the air, and how none of that was around when she lived in the big city. She had spent a good deal of money on that boat she had sitting in the harbor, and it was achingly clear that she wanted her business to work out, not just to keep her career alive, but because she felt at home at Deception Island.
“How long have you been running the cafe?” Katie asked after most of their lobsters had been picked apart and devoured. Her hands were greasy from butter, fingers shining, and Jenna tried not to be too distracted as she licked them clean.
“About three years. My Aunt Iris left it to me,” Jenna told her.
“And you run it all by yourself?”
“Yeah. My mom was supposed to inherit it and take over, but—well. Aunt Iris gave it straight to me instead.”
“How come?”
“Well.” This wasn't usually her preferred first date topic, but okay. “My family—my parents, at least—never really accepted me liking girls. Aunt Iris was the only one who did, and she didn’t want to hand her cafe off to a part of the family that pretty much pretended her favorite niece didn’t exist.”
“Wow. Did they ever come around?”
“They send me a card every Christmas,” Jenna said. “But other than that, they live in Oregon and avoid coming up here as much as possible.”
“I’m sorry. That sounds awful.”
“Yeah. Not a great coming-out. I felt really alone for a long time. But you know what, now the entire town comes to chat with me at my cafe, so things turned out all right.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad.”
Katie really sounded like she meant it, and her words were emphasized just a little bit when she reached across the table and slid her hand over Jenna's wrist, thumb brushing over the back of her palm. Her hands were so incredibly soft, and all Jenna really wanted to do was flip her hand over and curl their fingers together.
She kept control of that impulse just to avoid jumping the gun. This was supposed to be date number one, after all.
Oh, fuck it. Jenna grabbed her hand.
“And you have no idea the kind of awesome people I get to meet running that place.”
“I'm happy to hear it,” Katie said, grinning.
“And what about the world of marine biology?” Jenna asked, thumb brushing over Katie's palm. “Meet any interesting characters through that?”
“Mostly fish,” Katie said. “They don't talk much. Well, at least not in a language I understand.”
“That's something Andy Jason should really look into if he wants to get a leg up over your business.”
“Whale-to-English translation?”
“Yeah,” Jenna said. “He might just drive you out of business if he can teach customers the elusive language of whale.”
“I'll keep an eye out for that,” Katie said, and dipped the last bite of her lobster into the butter dish.
--
After saying goodbye to Aunt Iris, Katie cleans up the rest of the mess left behind that the sheriff was okay with her getting rid of—mainly just a few muddy footprints on the ground and some upturned boxes in the storage closet—despite not really wanting to do anything other than closing up shop early today and just heading home to get her mind off things. Her brain wanders too much when she cleans. She's just a little worried that it'll wander right on over to Katie if she's not careful.
Nancy comes in a few times and pokes around the back room for a while, which is a welcome distraction, and Holt drops by too for another cup of coffee, but the place doesn't get busy enough to keep Jenna busy behind the counter. She grabs her duster instead, sweeping up old must on the bookcases and underneath lamps, and that's when she finds Kim's postcard. The one she had almost forgotten about. The one that came in the mail a few weeks ago that she wanted to throw out but had trouble doing out of some horrible sentimental hold caged around her heart.
Hey, Jenna! it says. It was good to visit you last month. Boy, do I miss that clam chowder! (Oh— and you too.)
Jenna flips it back and forth in her hand a few times. Even just looking at this thing is encouraging her to make bad decisions, snap decisions made out of questionable judgment and bitterness more than anything else. She knows they're stupid, knows that she knows better, and tries to remind herself of that.
But then there's Katie on her boat, probably sharing a PB&J with Nancy right now and laughing over something her and Jenna used to laugh about, so what the hell.
She takes her phone out and scrolls her way through her contacts to where Kim's name sits. She's considered deleting her out of there a hundred times, just doing herself a favor and flushing out all those memories and the tether tying her to possibly having more, just dropping those digits straight into the trash bin. She probably should just go ahead and do it.
She hits the call button instead.
Every ring after that feels like it's echoing through her chest. Her hands get a little sweaty on the phone, and Jenna has to pace around just to keep her nervous feet in motion. Kim probably won't pick up. Kim is probably swamped over in New York, overwhelmed with all the skyscrapers and job opportunities and new exciting people everywhere all around her, so she most likely won't pick up. There's no way she'll pick up.
She picks up.
“Hello?”
“Hey. Kim. It’s me. Jenna.” She shouldn’t have called. Why did she call? “Jenna Deblin.”
“Jenna! Hey!” Kim says, sounding just as chipper as Jenna remembers. “Finally going to give me that clam chowder recipe?”
“Never,” Jenna says. “I just called to, uh. Check in. It’s nice to hear your voice.”
It is, almost worryingly so. Jenna can practically see Kim next to her how she used to be, standing behind the bar laughing, leaving lipstick marks on her cups. She misses all those things, and wonders now why she didn’t come with her to New York, why she was so insistent on staying in Washington.
“Same. How have you been?”
“Great. There’s been so much going on here. There’s this orca in the channel that’s been causing trouble and Holt’s actually running for harbormaster, and—well, yeah, it’s been a lot.” Jenna scratches her head. “How’s New York?”
“Busy. There’s so much to see. Oh, Jenna, you’d love it here.”
Jenna tries to imagine herself there, swallowed by the huge buildings, listening to car horns blare outside her window every night. No more fog or days at gray beaches, no more listening in to people’s conversations at the Hot Kettle. Would that be a good thing?
“I’d love to come visit.”
“I’d love for you to do more than visit. Jenna, I think you’d really like living here.” Kim sighs. “Is there—is there anybody new?”
Is there? There was—for a while there was Katie, who had felt important so early on, who Jenna wanted to be somebody new and then some. But she isn’t, not anymore.
“No. There isn’t.”
“Me neither.”
There's a silence between them that feels significant. It also gives Jenna those few seconds of quiet to consider if she just made a mistake, if she's edging herself down a thorny path. She can't be sure.
“So you think you might be up for a trip sometime soon?” Kim asks.
“To New York?”
“Yeah. I have plenty of room. At least, well. For NYC standards.”
“Right.”
“Just… tell me you’ll think about it,” Kim says. She sounds genuine, and Jenna’s close to getting caught up in it. If Kim misses her so much, why did she leave so easily? It’s not fair to break up with her, skip town, and then send her postcards signed Love, Kim and ask her to come visit and stay in her apartment. At least Katie has the common courtesy to act like she dislikes Jenna as much as Jenna dislikes her now that they’re over.
“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” Jenna tells her. She looks out over the empty cafe. “Listen, there’s a huge crowd of people at the Hot Kettle today, so I gotta get back to work.”
“Sure. Just let me know.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later, all right?”
She hangs up and takes a deep breath, feeling remarkably short on air. She tries to imagine spending a weekend in New York, just closing up the Hot Kettle for a few days and running off to the Big Apple. Exploring the Empire State Building and taking a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, then spending the nights in Kim’s tiny apartment, just listening to the sounds of the city drift in through a cracked window while she and Kim sit close together on her sofa.
Is that what she wants? Does she still have feelings for Kim bubbling around under her skin? Is all this just nostalgia masquerading around as lingering affection? Is that image of New York a misplaced fantasy?
She has no clue. All this heartbreak is messing with her ability to be sensible. Things with Kim were easy, there's no denying that, but all Jenna really for sure remembers is that it was better with Katie. All of it, all of the long talks and the evenings wasted away kissing and the romantic mornings together wearing hardly anything.
But the end of it all was harder with Katie too. It hurt more. Maybe, Jenna thinks, looking down again at Kim's contact in her phone, it's smart to choose the person who hurts you less.
--
They walked along the quiet path by the harbor shops after their lobster dinner. It was a perfect night for a stroll, the weather mild and just gently windy, not cold enough for hats but enough so for hand-holding, their stomachs pleasantly full with seafood platters that had, at the end of the night, nothing left to pack up in take home boxes.
Their fingers were entwined as they walked along. Katie's hands were very soft, and it made Jenna think of her first girlfriend from years and years ago, how much she despised holding hands, too caught up in the fear of getting caught standing too close to Jenna by someone who happened to be paying attention. Kim didn't like hand holding either, but she said it was because she didn't care for the disapproving looks it evoked out of some of the older fishermen who walked around town. Katie's hand was completely firm in Jenna's grip, unwavering, not a shred of hesitance there. She held hands like she did everything else, Jenna thought, with a purpose and a strength and the solidity that came with knowing what you wanted and going after it. The fact that Jenna was something Katie wanted and had gone after was still managing to dizzy Jenna in the best of ways.
“Mind if we stop by the Core-Ner Store?” Katie asked at one point. “I've been meaning to pick up some ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
“And mayonnaise.”
“Ice cream and mayonnaise?”
“Don't judge,” Katie said, squeezing Jenna's hand. “We can't all be great chefs.”
“Ain't that the truth.”
So they stopped by the store. You could learn a lot about someone based on what their typical grocery run looked like, and Katie shopped like a frat boy with minimal cooking skills. Grape jelly, three tubs of ice cream, plain bread, toilet paper. Only thing missing was face paint for those college football nights.
“No coffee?” Jenna asked when Katie walked straight by the bags of coffee beans.
“Why would I need it when my favorite cafe that's right around the corner serves the best coffee in town?” Katie said.
“You're addicted, huh?” Jenna said, pinching Katie's side. “So all those multiple stops per day by the Hot Kettle. That was all for the coffee?”
“Not entirely,” Katie admitted.
“Ah.” Jenna scooted in just a tad closer, slipping her hand over Katie's hip. She smiled, something soft and private only meant for Katie's eyes. “You don't have to keep doing that anymore, you know. You've got my attention.”
She couldn't help herself—she grabbed Katie's chin and kissed her, just a gentle kiss that wasn't all that long but still managed to electrocute Jenna from head to toe. Katie seemed to be feeling similar effects, because her hand flew up to Jenna's forearm and squeezed hard, keeping her close. As far as first kisses went, it was good. Really good, actually, even as chaste as it was. Jenna kind of wanted to keep doing it for the next seventy-two hours, nonstop.
“That's good to know,” Katie said, leaning in for seconds.
Then the store intercom flickered on, calling attention to a spill in the third aisle, reminding Jenna of the fact that they were in the middle of a grocery store acting like handsy teenagers. She took a step back, telling herself to pack away those urges to back Katie up against that shelf of iced tea and save them for a more private moment. A mouth that tempting really wasn't fair.
“Hey,” Katie said, touching her shoulder, apparently on the same page as her. “Want to come back to my boat after we're done here?”
“There's nothing I'd like more,” Jenna said, hopelessly honest, and focused on the portion of the evening that involved getting done here. She grabbed Katie's cart. “Cashier?”
Katie nodded. They may or may not have broken a few speed records leaving the store after being rung up.
--
A lot happens while Nancy is visiting Snake Horse Harbor, too much for Jenna to really wrap her head around. The robbery and the vandalism on Katie's boat is all one thing; Andy Jason, sweet little boring Andy Jason, running an undercover smuggling operation is another thing entirely.
Gossip moves fast the morning after. The Hot Kettle is full of all kinds of rumors the next day, rumors that Jenna catches snippets of while she runs around refilling coffees. Apparently Nancy single-handedly took down twenty or so hunky men who were all Andy’s henchmen. Apparently they were all only a few hours away from jetsetting off to Aruba and never returning. Apparently Hilda Swenson had a mysterious hand in all of it.
Holt dismisses all of the gossip in one fell swoop.
“It didn't go down like that,” he tells Jenna after she relays what she's heard back to him. “And I should know, I was there.”
“So what happened?”
He sets his mug down to get himself ready to share the story. “When me and the coast guard got on board, everybody surrendered. All those chumps were sitting around counting money they hadn't made yet and none of them could believe that they had been busted. I grabbed one by the back of the shirt just so he wouldn't jump ship and make a run for it.”
“And Andy?”
“He was down in the hold unconscious when I got to him thanks to an oxygen tank to the head. Nancy and I had to drag him upstairs together,” he says. “Then we went back for Katie and untied her. They practically had her gagged and hogtied at the bottom of the ship. She can count herself lucky that they didn't throw her overboard with weights around her ankles.” He shakes his head, circling his spoon around the remains of his coffee. “Anyway, that's all that happened. Anything else you hear is a tall tale.”
He goes back to his chess book. Jenna wants to ask more questions—was Katie scared? Did she look all right? Had they hurt her?—but she doesn't bring them up, keeping them safe in her throat. She doesn't even know how to properly react to any of that. What are you supposed to do when your ex is held hostage on sea and almost dies? Who knows what the hell Andy and his cronies had planned for her if Nancy hadn't interfered. Not that Jenna had listened to her when she came for help.
God, does she feel terrible about that. Soul-crushing guilt is the more accurate term, probably. She hadn't felt anything but a smug appreciation for karma that night Nancy ran in here begging for a boat to drive her out past the channel markers to get to Katie. All that had been going through her head was how invigorating it felt to imagine Katie getting caught knees-deep in a scandal she would have to pay for, whether it be feeding the orca or something much worse. Almost like she deserved whatever happened to her after how she had treated this town. How she had treated Jenna.
Jenna can't even comprehend just how unbelievably stupid that train of thought was now that it's all over. What if Katie had died out there on that boat? What if Holt’s conscience hadn't kicked in after twenty minutes? What if Jenna really was that self-centered that one selfish decision made out of spite would’ve cost Katie her life? And does Katie know? Did Nancy tell her that Jenna couldn't be bothered to get off her ass and row out a few miles just to make sure Katie wasn't in danger?
She grabs Holt’s empty soup bowl and brings it into the sink just to busy her hands for a second, her fingers suddenly shaking. What the fuck kind of person has she become that she was perfectly willing to cast Katie aside when she was in danger all because of a grudge? So she broke up with her for a shitty reason, does that really mean she deserved to be punished? Does Jenna still being stupidly in love with her somehow equal her having to suffer?
Jenna aggressively wipes away one runaway tear leaking out onto her cheek. She lets the water run over the dirty dishes, trying to compose herself while she turns the faucet on, and reminds herself that there's a cafe full of people probably in need of refills and that she's at work here, not home alone where it's acceptable to have a good cry here and there.
She comes back out of the kitchen after a few more seconds of measuring out her breathing. Holt is still engrossed in his book, but Jenna still comes up to him and says, “That was a good thing you did, by the way.”
“Huh?”
She grabs the coffee pot and focuses on pouring more into Holt’s cup to avoid making eye contact with him. “Going with your gut and grabbing the coast guard. I'm glad you did.”
He shrugs, clearly not seeing the heroics in it. “Eh, you would've stepped up and done it if I hadn't.”
“I'm not so sure,” she says.
“Come on. I know you and Katie aren't exactly all buddy-buddy, but even you've got a heart, Deblin,” he says. “You would've done the right thing.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Holt seems to pick up on the fact that she's unconvinced. “If you feel so badly about it, go find the girl and give her a cup of chowder or something,” he tells her. “I'm sure she's in a forgiving mood. Being kidnapped by a nutjob will do that to you.”
“You think I should?”
“Why not?”
Jenna rolls her lips into her mouth. No, she shouldn't. If Katie wanted to see her, she would've come herself. She would've showed up unprompted. Besides, Jenna already knows that she wouldn’t be able to work up the courage to look Katie in the face and ask her if she’s all right, and then what would she do, leave a cup of chowder on the edge of her boat like she does groceries for Hilda? Is that how she’s doomed to interact with the people she cares about, just dropping off tokens of love in silence and hope they get the message?
Fuck, that’s depressing. She can't resign herself to a life like that, to one-sided sentiments and unrequited affection. Leaving people wordless gifts in the hopes that they feel loved enough to reach out.
Once again, she thinks of New York, how easy it would be. How Jenna's making everything so damn hard on herself.
“Don’t worry,” Holt says, briefly looking up at Jenna before flipping a page in his book. “She won't start making you friendship bracelets just because you do one nice thing for her.”
“You're right,” Jenna says. “I'll go.”
--
Katie was a world of freckles. Jenna discovered this the moment Katie’s clothes came off her body. She knew she had them—she saw them smattered over her nose, or even on the curve of her collarbone on days when she was wearing a lower-cut shirt—but never this many, never these entire constellations of beautiful brown spots. Jenna traced some of the ones trickling down Katie’s chest, between her breasts, over the swell of them, slightly mesmerized. If she stared too hard, they all blurred together into one starry night.
They probably should've gone slower. It was easy to say that now, but at the time—approximately two hours ago—the idea of slowing down had seemed illogical and borderline impossible. It was like they got out of the store and stepped onto Katie's boat and the air completely changed, and there wasn't any holding back any more after that. It was like they were magnetized to each other, and all Jenna clearly remembered were Katie's fingers working fast on Jenna's jeans and Katie's soft, breathy moans warm in her ear. Then there had been careless dropping of the groceries and stumbling down to the beds and quick undressing and a lot of movement that copied the rolling of the sea, and here they were, very naked and satisfied and pleased and lazy.
Turned out, Katie was good at other things than just kissing. And she clearly understood certain facets of human biology just as well as she did marine biology.
“You leave a girl in every port or what, Firestone?” Jenna asked as the boat swayed around them, lulling her into a pleasant sleepiness. Katie’s bunk wasn't the comfiest bed she was ever on, but right now, it felt just fine, plenty soft enough. “I bet you broke hearts all over the big city.”
Katie laughed. “Not quite.”
“Really?”
“I was busy with marine biology school, you know,” Katie said. Her hair was sweaty, no longer combed into place, and Jenna couldn't help touching a damp strand by her ear and tucking it aside. “What about you? Is giving out free food your signature move?”
“Maybe,” Jenna admitted. “What can I say? It works. The clam chowder does all the work for me.”
“What exactly is it you put in there?”
“Just your standard love potion,” Jenna said. Katie’s laughter vibrated all the way through her body and into Jenna’s.
“And how many people has that potion worked on?”
“Oh, I’m very selective,” Jenna told her. “Just a few. Here and there.”
Katie's eyebrows rose in an unspoken question. It was a nice night, one Jenna didn't want to ruin with stories about exes long gone, but Katie seemed interested, and right now her totally bare leg was slung over Jenna's thigh and making it very hard to deny her anything.
“Her name was Kim. She left town recently and, uh. That was that.”
The story fell a little flat when she summed it up in one sentence. The thing is, it really was just that simple. Kim came to town and lasted a whole few months before the big-city-itch got to her, before Snake Horse Harbor got too small and caved in around her, before she took a job in Manhattan and left town without much fuss. Jenna knew that she had mattered to Kim. She just hadn’t mattered enough for Kim to stay.
“She didn’t ask you to come along?” Katie asked.
“She did.”
“So you didn’t want to go?”
Jenna shook her head. “Something keeps me here. And it’s not just my cafe—I love the people. I even love the bad weather.” She gently dug her elbow into Katie’s side. “And the people here aren’t bad either.”
Katie leaned over and kissed her. It was almost unfair how good she was at it—either kissing or just Jenna in general, she wasn't sure yet—but it was like one touch of lips and Jenna was liquefying into jello. Surely this would get in the way of her ever getting up and leaving this bed again, but at the moment, that didn't even seem like a bad thing.
They broke apart after what was either two minutes or two hours—Jenna wasn't certain—and Jenna went back to playing connect-the-dots with the freckles on Katie's shoulder while she got her breath back into her lungs.
“Okay, enough outta me, tell me about your last girl,” Jenna said. “Did she make chowder as good as mine?”
Katie shook her head, smirking. “Is that a euphemism for something?”
Jenna grinned. “Not this time.”
“She didn't even cook,” Katie said. “She was scared of the stove.”
“What'd you guys eat?”
“Takeout. Every night.”
“Terrible,” Jenna said, voice hushed with disapproval, and Katie giggled as Jenna rolled on top of her and straddled her hips, hands rubbing up Katie's naked, freckled, white-in-the-moonlight torso. “Blasphemy.”
“I think you've spoiled me,” Katie said, winding her arms around Jenna's neck to pull her in closer. Katie liked having the side of her neck kissed; Jenna felt stupidly pleased that she knew this already. “How am I ever supposed to date someone else when none of them will cook like you?”
Jenna kissed her briefly right under the chin. “Guess you just won't be able to date someone else,” she suggested.
“Hmm,” Katie hummed, angling closer to kiss her again. “Wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.”
--
Jenna brings the chowder to Katie's boat against her better judgement, but she has the sad feeling that if she doesn’t bring something, nobody else will bring Katie anything. Has anybody been helping her fix her engine? Has anybody been checking up on her since she was held hostage on Andy’s boat? The idea of the answers being no leaves her feeling a little hollow inside.
However, Jenna's plan doesn’t quite work out. Katie’s boat is empty when Jenna gets there, nobody answering when Jenna calls out her name, nobody appearing after a few minutes of waiting. She vaguely recalls that Nancy’s supposed to be going home today, so there's a good chance there's at the airport.
So Jenna gets on the boat. She can tell that it wasn’t that long ago when Katie was here—all her tools are still strewn out on the deck around her mess of an engine. There’s a box of SaveKing boat parts nearby, and Jenna kneels by it to pick up an intake pipe. None of them look familiar from Jenna’s box of stolen boat parts from the Hot Kettle. It’s not something she really needed validating, not after Andy’s goons admitted to being the ones who broke into the cafe, but now looking at the proof in front of her, it feels unbelievably ridiculous that Jenna ever even considered that Katie was the one who robbed her. Of course Katie wouldn’t have stooped to that level. Katie was dealing with all this much better than Jenna. Jenna was telling anyone that listened that Katie was a high and mighty, self-obsessed grandstander, and Katie—well, she was handling all this gracefully in comparison.
Jenna puts the pipe down and gets to her feet, remembering the soup in her hands. Maybe it’s a good thing that Katie isn’t here; she can just leave the chowder and go without having to exchange any uncomfortable words. She heads downstairs to leave the soup by her fridge and do just that, and that’s when she notices it—the calendar hanging up on the wall. The dates marked on it. The little scribble that says coffee break @ kettle, YAY!
When did Katie write that? Back when they were dating, maybe, and Katie stopped by the cafe more than once a day? Jenna can't imagine her being so excited about coming into the Hot Kettle after breaking up with her like she did. There was nothing yay! about seeing your ex when you're craving coffee, and even less so considering how cold Jenna's purposefully been toward her.
It feels a little childish now. Jenna isn't sure what causes it, that guilt, that weird disappointment in her own juvenile approach to things, but maybe it's being surrounded by Katie's things and her scent and standing on her boat remembering the better times they had that's causing her to look back with better hindsight. All this iciness, all this bitterness, all this attitude Jenna's taken to Katie dumping her—it’s been immature. Sometimes people just don't work out. Sometimes things just go too fast. Sometimes the timing just isn't right.
Jenna thinks back to that night they had their first date, how Katie had told her all about how thrilled she was to be here, in her own boat, running her own business, waking up with the whales. Jenna isn't sure she would forgive herself if Katie left all that behind because Jenna drove her out.
She looks down at the soup in her hands. It feels a little paltry now, not nearly enough of an apology, but it's a start. Jenna puts it down on the counter where she hopes Katie will see it, and leaves before she accidentally finds a box of memorabilia Katie kept behind from her and Jenna’s relationship and ends up feeling even worse.
Not that she's sure that's possible right now.
--
It didn’t take Jenna very long to fall in love with Katie. It only took a few dates, and she was gone, and voluntarily so.
Katie was just so smart, so kind, so gorgeous. Jenna was hooked.
They did a lot together in a very short time that ended up, in the future, feeling like a much longer time. Sometimes Katie drove her boat out so she and Jenna could watch the whales. Sometimes they'd go clam hunting together, inadvertently matching their galoshes. Sometimes they’d just spend time together on Katie’s boat, Jenna picking through Katie’s books on science while Katie taught her how to use the microscope.
“You're a smart cookie, you know that, right?” Jenna said while Katie went on to try and explain a data chart she had assembled the night before. Something about whale patterns and tracking history and pod tendencies. It was all very neatly put together.
Katie smiled. “Are you calling me a know-it-all?”
“Not at all,” Jenna said, reaching for Katie's waist. “Maybe a little.”
She pulled her into a kiss before Katie could reply, winding her fingers through her short hair. She could do this forever; she was sure of it. Just spending lazy afternoon after lazy afternoon camped out on Katie's boat listening to the seagulls overhead while exploring the soft skin under Katie's shirt. She let her left hand slide under her sweater, slipping over her stomach, touching the warm skin.
“I really like you, Firestone,” Jenna admitted against her lips.
“The feeling’s mutual,” Katie said, already sounding a little breathless.
“And not just for the food?”
Katie laughed. “And not just for the food.”
--
Two days after Nancy leaves, Jenna sees Katie in town walking around with a Vote for Holt badge. It's not much, but it still feels like something. Maybe an attempt to become a part of the town again after all the orca drama created such a deep chasm. Jenna hasn't really bothered to think about it until now, but Katie's really retreated since their break-up. Stuck to herself and her boat, her work, her customers. Jenna's never been one for the seafaring life, but she just can't imagine what it must feel like being cooped up in an old boat all day. Probably lonely.
It makes her think about Hilda, who was an important part of town—a glue that kept everybody together, a common link that bonded them all—and who still slipped away from them. Nowadays, Jenna finds herself wondering if she did enough to prevent it from happening. Maybe she should've checked in with Hilda more. Asked if she needed to talk. Helped her with the funeral arrangements for her husband so she didn't have to do it all alone.
But now she's gone, and there's nothing Jenna can do about it except for leave bags of groceries outside her door, probably out of some lingering guilt that she didn't try harder to keep her around. No town should turn its back on someone like that, no matter the circumstances.
That goes for Katie too.
Jenna's not sure if it's Hilda or the badge or something else entirely that ends up encouraging her to pull out her phone and text Kim, but something encourages her to do it. She opens up their conversation and writes her, making a decision.
Jenna @ 3:12pm: Sorry, my schedule is crazy. Don't think I'll be able to visit you in NY anytime soon.
She tucks her phone away after she hits send, no apprehension trembling her thumb as she does do. She knows, in some inexplicable way, that she's done the thing she needed to do. The right thing.
That fantasy, that weekend in New York she had been imagining, that moment spent curled up with Kim on her couch—she doesn’t want it anymore. She’s not sure she ever did.
--
Something changed when that lone orca showed up in the channel. It was like a flipped switch—suddenly Katie was too busy to hang out. Too focused on work to invite Jenna over. Too swamped to see her girlfriend.
Jenna couldn’t figure out what happened. Did she come on too strongly? Was Katie just too cowardly to just break up with Jenna face-to-face? Was this going to be Kim 2.0, and Jenna just had her head in the clouds too high to even notice?
Jenna did start noticing when it registered with her that a week had passed without Katie responding to a single voicemail. It was an uneasy feeling, the one that crept in when she realized she was being ignored, or too pushy, or loving too hard. She didn't want to be that person, that weirdo who was already clamoring for a UHaul after a few weeks. She just wanted to make sure Katie wasn't slipping away.
And Jenna had a churning pit in her gut that told her she was.
An entire week and six missed calls passed with hardly a word from Katie’s end. She sent one short text on Monday: sorry, I’m super busy, and that was the extent of updates coming from Katie, nothing more. Jenna was starting to get worried. The entire town was already in a tizzy over the orca, and not one born of gleeful excitement, and then Katie ignoring her on top of that wasn't doing much to improve the general mood Jenna was feeling.
She didn't want to hover, but what if Katie was waiting for her to reach out? What if something terrible had happened and Jenna was missing out on all the details?
Her seventh missed call came and went later that day. Jenna was supposed to be working, but her mind was racing, occupied with the growing concern that something was horribly wrong with Katie and taking priority over all mundane thoughts of refilling table five’s coffee and bringing over the check to the booth by the window and getting the dishwasher in the back going before the lunch rush. The eighth time she called, she did so expecting Katie to not pick up and with her voicemail message prepared.
“Call me back when you get a chance, okay?” Jenna whispered into the phone while she carried empty soup bowls over to the sink. She was starting to get a little fed up of hearing nothing but Katie’s voicemail message, the tinny I can't come to the phone right now. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. Let me know when you have some time, okay?”
She tucked her phone back into her pocket, busying herself by topping off Holt’s coffee. He seemed to have heard her one-sided phone conversation, because he closed the book in his hand on his thumb and frowned at her.
“Trying to get in touch with someone?”
Jenna didn’t say anything, just let out a frustrated hum as she put the coffee pot down. “You talk to Katie recently?”
“Not much,” Holt said. “Rumor has it that she called up the Fisheries service on that orca hanging around here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and you know those bigwigs. They’re going to stick their paws in our waters as much as they can from here on out, and it won’t be pretty for anybody just trying to get in a day’s worth of fishing,” Holt grumbled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they banned all boats from the channel for the next few weeks.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“You think they’re just going to peek around and go their merry way?” Holt said. He scoffed. “So next time you see that girl, thank her for me.”
He gave Jenna a look that made it perfectly clear that his thanks were anything but earnest, then went back to his book, deep crease still stuck between his eyebrows.
It wasn’t a great feeling, knowing that Katie was in the middle of making herself an enemy of the majority of the town’s population: fishermen. She hadn’t made much of an effort to make friends when she came to town, and calling in the Fisheries service definitely wasn’t going to have pals flocking her way. The whole thing with the orca—was it seriously such a big deal? Was it really about to break up Jenna’s relationship?
She checked her phone about ten times during the day to see if Katie had called back before giving in and closing the Hot Kettle a few hours early, heading to Katie’s boat to talk to her. If she wasn’t going to return any of Jenna’s calls, then she’d just talk to her face-to-face. Her bad feeling wasn't getting any better, and Jenna wanted to handle all this before it grew horns and claws.
Jenna found Katie up on the second deck inside the boat, poring over microscope slides and hunched over the lens.
“Hey, stranger,” Jenna said. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Oh, hi,” Katie said, apparently hardly noticing that Jenna got on board. She looked up from her microscope to spare her a glance, and Jenna could admit that she did look stressed, surrounded by paperwork. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you come up here.”
“You weren’t returning my calls.”
“I’ve been busy,” Katie said. “So much is going on recently.”
“Yeah. Holt told me.”
“What’d he say?”
Jenna stuck her hands in her pockets. “That you called the Fisheries service.”
“I did,” Katie said. She switched a few of the slides, still not bothering to give Jenna any more than a shred of her attention. It made Jenna feel awfully out of place on this boat, which was ridiculous, because she had spent hours up here in the past lounging on the floor in her socks, rifling through Katie’s books, eating all of Katie’s Koko Kringle ice cream, kissing down the spine of Katie’s back to try and distract her from work. Right now, the idea of kicking off her shoes seemed ridiculously inappropriate.
“Funny that you had time to call them and not me.”
Katie sighed. “I’ve been busy working. I figured you’d want to go out, and I just don’t have time for that right now.”
“Would’ve been nice to just hear your voice.”
Katie didn’t say anything, slipping another microscope slide into a sleeve and replacing it with a new sample. It wasn't like Jenna didn’t understand how hard it was to set up in a new town, or start up a new business, or get anybody to take said business seriously. Those first few months Jenna officially took over the Hot Kettle without Aunt Iris also there behind the counter with her were nerve-wracking. Jenna was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to do it all herself, let alone convince the town that she could, and she broke many a cup and plate thanks to nerves in the beginning.
But she didn’t push away everyone around her in the process.
“Look, I get that you’re overworked,” Jenna started, stepping closer. “Maybe I could help. I just closed up the Hot Kettle a little early.”
Katie cut in before she could continue. “I’m not sure we should keep this up,” she said. She sounded so clipped, it was like hearing a stranger speak. “You and me.”
That pit of consternation in Jenna's stomach seemed to punch her right in the ribcage.
“What do you mean?”
“I'm just really busy lately. Everything going on with the orca and—”
“The orca?” No way this is all about a damn orca. “Forget the orca. The Fisheries Service will sort that out.”
“I can't just forget the orca. It's part of my job.” Katie finally looked up from the microscope. “And it isn't helping that you're so chummy with people who are actively working against me on it.”
“Are you talking about Holt?”
Katie shrugged. She got to her feet, still not looking Jenna in the eye, much too busy rooting around the papers she had stacked up by the GPS. “I'm just not in the place to take care of a girlfriend right now. I don't have room for a relationship with everything going on.”
“Take care of—who said I needing taking care of?” Jenna dug her hands into the railing of the boat, wishing terribly that it would stop moving so much in the water. It was making her feel sick to her stomach, which their conversation already was doing a marvelous job of as well. “Nice to know you don't want to make room for me.”
Katie sighed. “Jenna, come on.”
“No, I get it. You have to focus on yourself and the orca and your boat and those are your priorities and I'm just not on that list,” Jenna spat out. She hated herself for feeling her throat start to thicken. This wasn't supposed to go like this. They had just begun, how could it all go crashing down so fast already? “Maybe you're just a little too selfish for an adult relationship.”
Katie's lips thinned. She stood still for a moment, almost like she was on the verge of taking all this back, and then she turned back to the microscope, hands white where they were curled around the stand. “I think you should go,” she said. “You have a cafe to run.”
Jenna just couldn't quite believe—she was having trouble processing this. It wasn't even that long ago that she was thinking about their next date, and the one after, and the one after that. She just pictured Katie in her future, made the unbelievably stupid mistake of imagining her there because her gut was telling Jenna that something about her just felt right, and now she had to erase all those images, all those ideas.
She shouldn't have trusted so easily. Not after Kim.
“Yeah, I do,” she finally said, letting go of the railing. Her fingers almost hurt from the vice grip she kept on the metal. “And you're clearly busy too, so.”
Katie didn't look up from the microscope again. It was like Jenna wasn't even on the boat at all, just some invisible force who was standing there talking and speaking that Katie didn’t even notice. Apparently it was just that easy. It was easy for Kim to give up on her, it was easy for her parents to give up on her, and apparently now it was easy for Katie to give up on her as well.
Jenna turned around and got off the boat. She had the throat-clenching feeling that Katie might not ever want her on here again.
--
Holt celebrates his election win at the Hot Kettle with what seems to be the entire town and then some. Jenna runs out of clams about halfway through the evening and even has to grab a few wine glasses from the back just to keep up with the demand, but it's been a good day, and she understands everybody's want to drink and carouse and clap Holt on the back.
That is, everybody except Katie. It shouldn't surprise Jenna that she didn't come, but it still does, somehow. Jenna saw her walking around town with that Vote for Holt pin stuck to her vest too much for her to be upset about the election outcome, but if she's celebrating Holt’s win now that the polls have come in, she's doing it alone.
Jenna thinks about her out there on her boat, digging snacks out of that mini fridge, cleaning the upper deck, maybe even wishing she was here with everybody else. It makes her want to go and see her, the pull inside her to do so almost magnetic.
She realizes—no, finally admits—that she never had a pull like that with Kim. Even when the wound of her leaving was still fresh, even when her bathroom still had Kim’s body wash sitting in it, even when her occasional text messages would rip the rhythm out of Jenna’s heartbeat, she never felt the urge to go out to New York and see her, be with her. She knew—still does know—that she belongs here, in Snake Horse Harbor, in the Hot Kettle, making Aunt Iris proud. Now she thinks about Katie and everything is different, every emotion, every feeling, every gut instinct. She thinks about her and she just wants to fix everything. Wants to push aside everything that made them end something that never needed ending. She knew it weeks ago and didn't act on it, too scared of getting burned again or too busy waiting for Katie to be the one to step forward, and she's not sure why she's wasted all this time now.
She finds Holt surrounded by a crowd of laughing fishermen and grabs his elbow to get his attention.
“Holt, can you keep this place afloat for like—an hour?”
“Sure,” Holt says. “Everything okay?”
“Think so,” Jenna says. She feels like it could be—she just has to be brave enough to make it happen.
And right now, she thinks she might just be brave enough.
The walk from the Hot Kettle to Katie’s dock isn't a long one, but it’s long enough that she can only hope that her nerves don't have enough time to kick in and coax her into turning around. She wants to do this. She should've done this ages ago. She shouldn't have waited until a hostage situation, smuggling scandal, and Vote for Holt badge gave her the courage to do it, so she's doing it now. She hurries out of the cafe, leaving behind the laughter and loud chatter to return to later—hopefully much later—and heads down the hill to Katie’s boat.
She starts jogging when she's about halfway there. The fog is pretty thick today, and she doesn't want it to roll in with the darkness and have Katie call it an early day before she can make it. She's kept this all inside for too long, and she doesn't want to sit on all this anymore. She wants to get it out.
She should’ve done this sooner. She should’ve fought more when Katie tried to end it. She should’ve gone with Nancy that night Andy took Katie and she should’ve followed Holt’s advice and checked on her after. She’s been careless, gutless, and she has no clue why it’s taken her this long to realize it. Katie just takes her and shakes her up and twirls her world, in the best and worst of ways simultaneously.
Jenna slows down when she sees Katie’s boat. It’s rocking gently in the water, the wood creaking as it moves, and Jenna can hear the sound of tools clinking against the metal of the engine. Katie must still be fixing it. Andy must’ve done quite a number on it.
Katie’s completely focused, not even noticing when Jenna comes on board. She’s surrounded by tools and a headlamp by her knee and boxes of spare boat parts, the boxes even messier than the last time Jenna saw them.
“Hey,” Jenna says, leaning against the railing of the boat. “Big city girl.”
Katie turns around. She has engine grease on her temple and her bangs are disheveled, and Jenna wants to hold onto that messy red hair and kiss her.
“I heard about the orca,” Jenna says. “Good news, huh?”
“Sure is,” Katie replies. She looks wary, like she’s waiting for Jenna to start hurling insults.
“Looks like everybody’s happy.” Jenna drums her fingers against the edge of the boat. “Well. Except for me.”
“Didn’t you want the orca to be returned to its pod?”
“I’m not talking about the orca.” Jenna sighs. They’ve been going at this all wrong, so busy being on their guards and glaring at each other during town meetings. She climbs up the steps of the boat, the sway of it on the water perfectly matching her own lurching nerves. “I miss you.”
Katie's expression doesn't give Jenna even the slightest clue what she's thinking, like she's too used to disguising her real emotions from her. It's infuriating.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Whatever it was that kept us apart—it's not worth it. I don't even know why it did, honestly.” She draws her lower lip into her mouth, biting it. “Don't you think?”
Katie still isn't letting on what she's feeling. Her face is blank, probably with surprise, but the fact that she hasn't demanded that Jenna jump off her boat or walk the plank yet is encouraging her to continue.
“I'm sick of fighting with you,” Jenna says. “I don't want to do it anymore.”
They screwed this up a little bit, but not so much that they can't fix it. Jenna knows they can. Katie could've left—she could've jumped on her boat and rode the waves somewhere else, left just like Kim did for bigger, and brighter, and sunnier things, but she didn't. Katie stayed. She stayed in dreary old Snake Horse Harbor and that means something to Jenna.
“I miss you too,” Katie finally says. Her voice is softer than Jenna's heard it in a while. “So you and Nancy never—”
“What? No. Of course not,” Jenna says. What exactly was Katie imagining, make out sessions in the shanghaing tunnels under the Hot Kettle between orders of free muffins? “For the record, I wasn't the one sharing the boat with her.”
Katie lets out a huff of air. “Separate beds.”
“I'm happy to hear it,” Jenna says. She takes another step closer, and in a moment of stupid bravery when Katie's body language gives her the green light, she curls her hand around Katie’s jaw, touching her cheek with her thumb. “So when you say you miss me. You mean me, or the clam chowder?”
“Hmm.” A tiny smile tugs at Katie's mouth. “Both.”
“You're not getting the recipe out of me, I'll tell you that much.”
“Fine by me,” Katie says, and then takes the same leap of courage Jenna just did—the stupid one that right now just happens to be right and amazing and necessary—and leans in close enough to kiss her.
Jenna makes a noise without meaning to, something like a pleased little sound of shock. The kiss goes on for a while. It hasn't been that long—a few weeks, maybe—but it somehow ends up feeling like years, like they're high school sweethearts necking at the twenty-year reunion for the first time in two decades. Katie's mouth is just so familiar in all the best ways. Her lips are familiar. Her hands, shaking and then firm on Jenna’s sides, are familiar. Her smell, fresh and soft, and her taste, salty from the sea air, throw Jenna back to that first night on the boat.
“Oh, I really missed you,” Jenna says again when they pull away, leaning her forehead against Katie’s. “I don't know how I went without that.”
Katie lets out a huff of laughter. “Would you believe me if I say the feeling’s mutual?”
She says it so earnestly but still looks so sheepish, like she's expecting Jenna to call it a bluff. They've been bickering and badmouthing each other for a while now, so maybe it should be hard to believe, but Jenna wouldn't second-guess those soft eyes for a second. She has good instincts about these things. Just another trait she picked up from Aunt Iris.
“Yeah. I would,” she says. “So whaddya say? Should we give it another shot?”
Katie nods. She leans in and presses a firm, unhurried kiss against Jenna's lips, as if to seal a promise, or maybe she just can't help herself.
“Sounds good,” Katie says. “And for what it's worth, I'm sorry.”
“What for?”
“You know what for,” Katie says, squeezing Jenna's sides. “I shouldn't have been so unfair to you. I just thought—I knew I needed to help, and I didn't know if you'd support me.”
“For the record, I would've,” Jenna says. “I don't mind hanging with the bad girls. Even the ones who keep coolers on their boats because they're illegally feeding wildlife because they care so damn much.”
“I'm sorry,” Katie says again.
“Well, if you're apologizing,” Jenna says, “then I'm sorry for calling you a big-headed carrot-topped know-it-all to anybody who would listen.”
“Carrot-topped?” Katie repeats. She clearly hasn't heard that one from the grapevine yet.
“We can discuss nicknames later,” Jenna says, winking. “Come on.” She pulls away from Katie's arms and grabs her hand. “You feel like celebrating?”
“Celebrating?”
“There's a party at the Hot Kettle,” she explains, tugging her hand as she starts walking off the boat. “For Holt getting elected. It was still in full swing when I left. And if you get sick of all the people, we’ll go down into the tunnels where it’s private and see what happens, if you know what I mean.”
“You left a party at your own cafe just to talk to me?”
“Relax. I left Holt in charge. He won't break anything.”
“That's just—it's nice, that's all,” Katie says, squeezing Jenna's palm. “I forgot how romantic you are.”
“Aah. Well, the ladies love it.”
“That, they do,” Katie says. She's grinning from ear to ear, freckles stretched on her cheeks. “They definitely do.”