Page 104 of Whisking It All

“You should have told me sooner. You should have told me as soon as something happened,” Ethan said.

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to lose you,” Jamie said, the excuse sounding so feeble when he spoke it out loud. “I knew you’d be angry—”

“Fuck yeah, I was angry. You were— with my daughter,” Ethan said. “There was never a scenario where I didn’t hit the roof over this shit.” Ethan braced his arms on the edge of the desk and leaned towards Jamie. “But, Jamie, you’re family, man. Did you really think we’d fight and that would stop being true? Did you really have so little faith in me?”

“She’s your daughter,” Jamie said helplessly.

“And as much as I hate to admit it, she’s an adult who can make her own choices. I missed out on seeing her grow up. She turned into this incredible woman, and I had nothing to do with it. Do I wish she hadn’t chosen to—” He waved his hand around as if to indicate the words he wouldn’t say. “—with my best friend? Of course, I do. But that’s not up to me. Doesn’t mean I fucking like it, and it sure as hell means there better never–and I mean never—be a time when you say any locker room shit about her to the guys. But I’m not severing ties with anyone because you couldn’t find someone who’s not my kid to fall in love with.”

Jamie didn’t know what to say, how to express the immense relief washing over him, the awe at this unbelievable grace his best friend was granting him.

“You can be angry at the people you love, and it doesn’t mean you love them any less. You might not understand why they make the decisions they make, you can wish they’d choose something else, and you can still want them in your life. That’s family, man. Maybe not always the family you’re born into, but definitely the family you choose. You and I are family just as much as Tessa and I are. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier at another person than I was the day I found out about you two, but I never for a second stopped loving either of you.”

“Are you still angry?” Jamie asked.

“That depends,” Ethan said, raising one eyebrow. “You done lying to me?”

Jamie laughed. “Yes. I will never lie to you again, I swear.”

“Good,” Ethan said. After a moment, he asked, “You heard from her?”

“Not since the day she left. You?”

Ethan shook his head. “Not since she called to tell me where she was, which I am well aware she only did because my mom made her.”

The now-familiar weight of missing Tessa sank into Jamie’s bones, like a chill he couldn’t warm up from. “I don’t know how to make her understand…”

“That’s your first problem. You can’t make her do anything. I might not know Tessa as much as I’d like, but I knew her mother, and I’d recognize Steph’s penchant for self-preservation anywhere. All you can do is give her all the information and pray she makes the right choice.” A haunted look flashed across Ethan’s face, the flicker of a memory. “But if you try and corner her, she’ll just run again, further and faster.”

“Then what do I do?” Jamie asked, helplessly.

“You wait.”

Chapter 34

Tessa pulled another tray of failed chocolate chip cookies out of her grandmother’s oven, tossing it on the stovetop with a clang. That was five batches in a row, each one worse than the last. She’d forgotten to add the salt to the first batch. On the second, she’d mixed up the measurements of sugar and flour. On the third, she’d over softened the butter. Mistake after mistake. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d made so many mistakes in the kitchen.

On the counter, her notebook sat unopened, taunting her.

“Why don’t you take a break?” her grandmother’s gentle voice came from the kitchen doorway.

“I’ll buy you a new sheet pan,” Tessa said, scraping the blackened cookies off the tray and into the garbage.

“There’s no need for all that,” Grama said. She slid open the window over the kitchen sink and began fanning smoke out the window, one wary eye on the smoke alarm on the ceiling. “But maybe we could talk about what’s bothering you before you use up all the butter in West Palm Beach?”

Tessa thought of the text sitting on her phone, the one that had arrived mid-day and she still hadn’t answered, even though it was long past sunset.

Jamie: I miss you.

She missed him so much she felt like her chest was caving in with the weight of his absence, but she didn’t know how to fix it. By now, with the festival only two days away, she’d not only betrayed her father and destroyed Jamie’s oldest friendship, she’d also let down the entire town. How could she make any of that better?

She put the scorched pan back on the stovetop and sank onto a stool at the kitchen island, watching as her grandmother bustled about the kitchen making tea. She’d memorized this dance over the last ten days, the way Grama made tea, flitting from cupboard to cupboard because she could never remember which one she’d stashed the box of tea in the day before. (It was never the same cupboard twice.) When the tea was ready, Grama slid a mug across the island to Tessa and stood on the opposite side, her hip resting against the counter.

“Have you called them? Either of them?” Grama asked.

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