The post-dive scramble was always worse. Cold and fatigue had a way of thinning patience, turning every voice a notch too loud. We came off the boat in stages, a dazed procession of divers squinting in the sudden land-bright of a Carolina afternoon. First the tanks, thudding onto the dock. Then the gear bags. Then us.

I made it to the end of the dock and stopped, leaning my back against the rail. I told myself I was just waiting for the ceremonial pack-out to finish, but I was really just watching them. The air, dense with diesel and fried seafood, did nothing to cut the acidic taste in my throat. A gull shrieked overhead—a sound that matched my mood perfectly.

Karma ran the show, naturally. She planted herself at the bottleneck where the gangway met the planks, and she did what Karma did best: orchestrated, delegated, and made herself impossible to work around. Only her voice cut through the whine of the winch and the hollow thunk of tanks hitting the wood. “Brian, that’s not your tank—pay attention.”

“Braden, you’re going to crush the regs if you stack them like that.” The absolute authority she wielded was impressive, in a way, reducing grown men to sheepish twelve-year-olds. It was a skill.

Braden hung back at the top of the gangway, arms folded, easy and unhurried. Karma positioned herself at his elbow, passing him dry towels, clipping off hoses, occasionally laughing at something he said in a voice pitched just for her. I couldn’t make out the words, just the shape of her mouth around them. I told myself it didn’t matter, but the little surge of acid in my throat said otherwise.

My jaw clenched so tight my molars ached. Caring was a liability. Pretending not to care was worse—a transparent little performance this crew would see through instantly. I wrenched my gear bag from the tangle at the base of the dock, slung it over my shoulder, and stalked toward the bunkhouse. Let them think what they wanted. I didn’t turn back to see if they’d even noticed I was gone.

The bunkhouse was a time capsule from a less sanitary decade. Orange shag carpet, ground flat and sticky with what I hoped was only salt. Four sets of bunks, each with a thin mattress and a pillow that might once have been white. The kitchenette held a microwave and a coffee maker so scorched it looked like a pyrotechnics prop. One toilet, one sink, no shower, and a note taped to the fridge: “RINSE WETSUITS OUTSIDE.” I’d stayed here before. It was cheap, and it was a bed. I told myself it was like camping.

I grabbed my go bag from my car and dropped my bag onto the lowest bunk, sat on the edge, and flexed my fingers until the joints popped. The walls were thin, and I could hear the steady, muffled percussion of boots on the dock as the rest of the team came up behind. I listened for the cadence of voices, picking out Karma’s and Braden’s with embarrassing ease. There was a rhythm to their conversation, the kind that only happens after people have come to a private understanding. It was smooth, frictionless, no static. Even when Braden was silent, Karma filled the gaps.

I ran a hand over my face, felt the salt and the hint of sunburn despite having slathered myself up multiple times. I pressed the heel of my palm against my left eye until I saw sparks. Why did it bother me so much? I had spent years perfecting the art of not giving a shit, and yet here I was, letting it all in through some unguarded crack in the armor. I pulled my hair out of its braid and tried to fluff it dry, but it just stuck out in wet spikes, each one pointing a different direction like I’d lost an argument with the ocean.

I heard the door open. Braden’s voice, laced with amusement: “Home sweet home.” Karma’s, a low murmur: “It’s a place to sleep.”

I stood. I didn’t want to be caught sitting, somehow. I pressed my palm against my shorts pocket, feeling the warmth of the coin.

The bunkhouse looked better from the outside. Or maybe I just preferred being outside it—leaning with my back to the sun-bleached boards, knees locked, the rough wood catching in the seat of my shorts. The air was heavy with the last sigh of day: not quite dark yet, but the kind of blue that promised darkness in the next ten minutes. I could hear the dock motors down the hill, a deep, distant hum, and the salt air cut through the mildew stink that always drifted down from the bunkhouse showers. For a while, I let myself melt into that: the wind, the scrape of a gull, the soft pop of boats nudging the pilings below.

A shadow stretched over the grass to my left, and I felt someone coming before I heard them. I didn’t move. Brian, still in his faded swim trunks and a t-shirt that read “Dive or Die,” rounded the corner and paused, squinting at me like he wasn’t sure if I was real or a hallucination brought on by too much sun. He leaned on the far side of the door and produced a bottle from behind his back: Seagram’s Jamaican Me Happy, fruit punch flavor.

He offered it with a little half-bow, like a dorky prom date. “Figured you’d rather drink antifreeze than Budweiser,” he said.

“I took the bottle with a skeptical eye. “Are you saying this is antifreeze? It’s not blue?”

He wasn’t wrong. I took the bottle; the glass was cold and beaded with condensation. I twisted the cap. The smell was aggressively pink, like a grown-up Capri Sun. I took a careful swig. “Not bad. Are you stalking me, Brian?”

He shook his head, fishing his own beer from a cooler with the toe of his sandal. “Just needed a minute before the debrief. My wife wants to know if I remembered to book that beach house for August. I didn’t.” He took a long swallow, then rested his elbows on his knees, staring out at the water with the practiced casualness of a man trying to postpone an argument he knew he was going to lose.

For a minute, we just sat there while the dock lights clicked on, one by one. I watched a heron pick its way through the reeds until it finally took flight, a dark shape against the fading sky. Brian tracked it with his eyes. “That thing’s got it easy,” he said quietly, turning his beer bottle in his hands. “You ever think about not doing this?”

I side-eyed him. “Drinking on a school night?”

He grinned. “No. This.” He swept his bottle in a circle that took in the bunkhouse, the water, all of it. “You could be doing something else, something normal. I just wonder why you stick with… all this.” He gestured toward the bunkhouse with a wry grin.”

I considered lying. Then I took another slug of fruit punch and watched a fishing trawler head out of the channel, a silent shape against the dusk. “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes I think about quitting. But then I remember the silence inside a wreck.”

He nodded, like he’d been expecting that answer.

The silence pressed in again. I expected him to fill it with one of his usual stories—the time he almost got arrested in Aruba, or how he’d won four hundred dollars off a rookie cop who didn’t know poker from canasta. But tonight, he let it stretch.

He cracked first. “You and Ford are done, right?”

I took a long pull off the bottle, let the burn hit my tongue, and shrugged. “Probably. It feels like we are.”

He made a face. “I never liked that guy. Not that it matters. But he always treated you like you were a piece of gear he’d already bought and paid for.” He gestured with his bottle, sloshing foam onto his wrist.

The words hit harder than I wanted them to. I looked down at my feet, counting the bruises on my shins. “He’s just… familiar,” I said, and the word tasted like an excuse.

Brian laughed, a soft, tired sound. “Didn’t say he was. Just said he’s not your guy.”

I felt my ears heat. “Why are we talking about this?”

He finished his beer, crushed the can with one hand, and set it on the deck. “Because it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that you’re not here for the same reasons anymore. Last trip? Ford spent half the boat ride talking about himself and the other half complaining about you. Meanwhile, you were teaching Karma’s niece how to clear her mask because you actually give a shit about people.”

I wanted to argue, but the words stuck. I’d started hating the way Ford looked at me months ago. Like I was the answer to a riddle he’d already solved, and now he was just waiting for the applause.

Brian stretched his legs out, ankles crossed. “Look, I’m not trying to play therapist. But you deserve better. Everybody knows it.” He jerked his chin toward the bunkhouse window, where the light from the kitchen spilled out in a warped yellow rectangle. “That guy in there? He looks at you like you’re the only readable depth gauge on a bad dive. Maybe stop running from that, even if it’s moving a little fast.”

I stared at the Seagram’s label, tracing the edges with my thumb. I could still feel the coin from the dive pressing against my hip, heavier than it had any right to be. I remembered the way Braden had looked at me when he handed it over—not like a man giving a girl a souvenir, but like he’d decided something and wasn’t going to be moved off it.

“He’s not Ford,” I said. It came out softer than I meant.

Brian rolled his eyes. “No shit. That’s the point.” He stood, brushing sand from his calves. “I gotta call home before my kids are asleep. You want my advice? Drink that stuff, think it over, and when you’re ready, maybe stop looking back at the dock and see what’s ahead of you for once.”

He gave my shoulder a squeeze—gentle, like a brother would—and ambled back inside, letting the door bang behind him. I was alone again, just me and the Seagram’s and the dying light.

I spun the bottle in my palm, watching the dock lights shimmer and double in the water. The heron was gone. Ford looked at me like I was a confirmed reservation. Braden looked at me like I was a problem he was dying to solve. The coin in my pocket felt impossibly heavy.

My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pulled it out, thumb hovering over the screen, expecting a text from Karma or maybe a photo of Brian’s destroyed living room. It was neither.

It was Ford. Calling.

The name pulsed on the screen, harsh and insistent, the vibration a frantic, punishing alarm against my thigh. I stared at it, the seconds ticking up. Five, ten, fifteen. I could answer. I could let him talk, let him say whatever it was he needed to say to make himself feel better. Or I could let it ring, let it die, let it go.

I held the bottle up, watching the last light catch in the artificial red. The phone kept buzzing, a harsh vibration against my leg. Answer. Decline. The name pulsed on the screen, a question I didn’t want to answer and a choice I couldn’t avoid. I sent it to voicemail.