2000 word article not being indexed, but the homepage/other posts appear for that keyword wtf?

Okay so let's say I made a unique 2000 word post "best coast destinations"

This article appears on every other post in the "related posts section" as a generic card with a link overlay and the title of it is the same.

It's been 2 days and the post is not being indexed, instead, when I google "best coast destinations" I'm getting my homepage and other posts in the results because they have the "best coast destinations" title on the cards that are displayed for users to click on instead of bouncing.

Wtf? Why would google rank a random post/homepage with this keyword appearing only once and not having any relevant content on them, instead of indexing my 2000 word post with unique content and the keyword appearing about 15 times, as well as having the image alts with the keyword. I seriously don't get it.

The site is being crawled regularly and most new posts are indexed within a day. It's been two days now and I feel like there's something wrong...