**Part 3**

We stayed on the porch until the mosquitoes got bold and the sweet tea ran low.

Hank didn’t say much after that first “Took you long enough.” He just sat in his chair with Sarge purring in his lap, occasionally glancing at the two of us like he was checking a box he’d been waiting years to check. Jenna told me about the nursing program—night classes three times a week, clinicals starting in the spring—and I told her about the band’s upcoming football game and the freshman who still mixed up his B-flat and E-flat fingerings. It felt easy. Easier than any conversation I’d had with her across the coffee counter.

When the sky turned fully dark, Hank stood up with a quiet groan.

“I’m turning in,” he said. “You two can sit out here as long as you want. Just lock the door when you leave.” He looked at me, then at Jenna, and added, almost gently, “June would’ve liked this.”

He went inside. The screen door clicked shut behind him.

Jenna and I stayed where we were, side by side on the porch steps. The roses along the new fence moved a little in the night breeze. She had her arms wrapped loosely around her knees, yellow sundress bright even in the low light.

“He’s been trying to set me up with someone for months,” she said. “I kept telling him I was fine. That I didn’t have time.”

“And now?”

She glanced at me. “Now I’m wondering how long he’s known it was you.”

“Probably longer than either of us.”

She laughed under her breath. “He wrote June every day for over a year. Three hundred ninety-six letters. He still has them in a shoebox. I think… I think he just hates watching people waste time.”

I nodded. The fence we’d rebuilt yesterday stood straight and solid in the dark, the new boards pale against the older ones.

“I almost asked for your number about a dozen times,” I admitted. “Then I’d get to the counter, you’d smile, and I’d chicken out and just take the cup.”

“I almost wrote my number on one of them,” she said. “Drew a little trumpet and put it underneath. Then I got scared you’d think it was weird and stop coming in.”

We both went quiet for a second, realizing how close we’d come to missing this.

Jenna turned toward me. “So… coffee tomorrow? After my shift?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a place on Bull Street that does peach cobbler almost as good as the one we just ate. No drawings required. Unless you want to.”

“I might still doodle on a napkin,” she warned. “Force of habit.”

“I’ll keep it.”

She smiled, the real one that reached her eyes, and for a moment neither of us looked away. Then she leaned in and kissed my cheek—quick, warm, a little shy. When she pulled back, her face was pink even in the porch light.

“I’ve wanted to do that since the tuba with sunglᴀsses,” she said.

I felt my own face heat. “I’ve wanted you to since the Sousa march.”

From inside the house, Sarge meowed once, loud and judgmental, like he was reminding us Hank was still awake. Jenna stood up and offered me her hand.

“Walk me to my car?” she asked. “Before Grandpa comes back out and starts planning Thanksgiving.”

I took her hand. It fit easily in mine.

“Yeah,” I said. “But fair warning—I’m probably going to be at the shop early tomorrow. Just to see what you draw.”

She squeezed my fingers once. “I’ll make it a good one.”

We walked down the porch steps together, past the roses and the fence that had started all of this, and for the first time in a long time, Saturday didn’t feel like something I had to get through alone.