Beckett tosses his towel back on the metal shelf and props his hands on his hips. I know he’s not doing it on purpose, but his arms flex with the movement, his inked biceps straining at the sleeves of his t-shirt. I have no idea what he was doing that caused him to sweat so much, but I’d like to pen a thank you note.
“Stay here,” he says in his gruff voice—his bossy voice—a voice that’s used to getting what it wants out here on the farm. His hand rubs at his jaw, his fingertips fanned out under his left eye. He looks tired. “Stay at the house. I’ll stop—“
“Avoiding me? Being weird?” I think for a second, voicing a suspicion. “Sleeping in your greenhouse?”
“I haven’t been sleeping in my greenhouse.”
Okay, well. He’s been doing those other things.
“I won’t stay here if it’s like this,” I tell him quietly, the fight draining out of me. “I didn’t come here to mess with your life. I wanted a little perspective and this seemed like the best place for it.”
Now I’m not so sure. I’ve been topsy-turvy since I set foot in Inglewild.
“Stay,” he says again, and he nods towards the open door. Some of the apprehension melts out of his eyes. There’s a softness there, a bit of understanding. For a second, he’s that man from Maine again. The one that tangled his fingers in my hair and pressed his lips so sweetly to mine. But then he blinks and the recognition is gone.
He grabs his hat off the shelf.
“I’ve gotta wrap up a few things and then I’ll come up to the house. I won’t be—” a smile twitches at the corners of his lips. “I won’t be weird.”
True to his word, Beckett appears about an hour later. I hear the roll of gravel in the driveway and the heavy stomp of boots up the porch steps before he swings through the front door, a guarded look on his face when he spots me sitting at his kitchen table. I rest my chin in my hand and watch as he toes his boots off and places them carefully next to mine.
“I’m making soup,” he tells me.
He says it like he expects a fight.
“Okay.”
He takes two slow steps down the hallway, closer to the kitchen. “It’s Maryland crab.”
“That sounds nice.”
He eyeballs me as he opens the fridge, one arm braced on the door, palm flat against the freezer. I try not to notice the stretch of his t-shirt. “You’re not allergic to shellfish, are you?”
It’s strange that I know what this man sounds like when he comes and the shape his fingertips leave on my hips, but when it comes to the simple things—allergies, coffee-to-creamer ratio, sock folding preference—we’re both flailing in the dark.
A different kind of intimacy, I suppose.
“I’m not allergic to shellfish.”
“Good.” He ducks his head down into the fridge and begins to pull things out—tomatoes, onions, chicken stock, two containers of crab meat, a stalk of celery—and stacks them on the counter. He drops a cutting board, a knife, and an onion in front of me.
“Can you cut this?”
I nod and let our silence fill the space between us. A pot sizzles on the stove. My knife snicks against the cutting board. Beckett mutters under his breath about piss poor celery quality.
“For the record,” I offer, in between chops. “You’re being a little weird.”
A smile quirks on his mouth and his eyes cut to mine. It feels like a peace offering, like a step in the right direction.
“For the record, I’m not trying to be.”
We find our rhythm.
Beckett spends his days on the farm and I spend my days in town, wandering in and out of shops, watching tourists get ice cream, helping Ms. Beatrice curate content for her one hundred and thirty seven passionate followers. I disconnect my email and all my social accounts and let myself breathe … for the first time in a long time.
No plan. No schedule.
Just me and whatever strikes my interest for the day, whether it’s helping re-shelve new paperbacks at the bookstore or learning how to clean the espresso machine at the cafe. I hold myself to absolutely no productivity standards. I let myself be.
In the evenings, I find my way back to Beckett’s cabin and wait for him at his kitchen table, an abandoned book of crossword puzzles I’ve claimed as my own at my elbow. He declares what he’s making as soon as he sees me, and silently hands me a cutting board or a mixing bowl or a potato peeler to help. Every day is exactly the same and there’s a comfort in that. In the way his smiles slowly get a touch wider. In the low rumble of his voice over the hiss of the frying pan.
We sit at his table and we eat our meal, and I wash our dishes after.
It’s nice, if not a little confusing.
Tonight, I decide to upset the rhythm.
I’m waiting on the back porch with two steaming bowls, nestled in the chair I’m starting to think of as my own when I hear him pull up in the driveway. The front porch stairs creak, the third one from the top making a sound of protest as he clambers his way up. The door shuts behind him and his steps stutter to an abrupt stop in the hallway.
A hesitant voice. “Evelyn?”
“Out here.”
I listen as he moves around the house, a comfort in the sounds of him settling. Water from the faucet. His jacket on the hook. The back screen creaks open and I tilt my head back.
Standing there like that, fingers curled loose around the neck of a beer bottle, face angled down towards mine—a bit of dirt on his brow and on the back of his hand—he looks like every flicker of a warm thought I’ve had in the past six months.
A soft and steady glow, burning under my skin.
“You made dinner?” He leans over slightly to get a look at my bowl. I nod towards the empty seat next to me and the dish that’s waiting for him on the table in between.
“Mmhmm,” I hum. “One of my mom’s recipes. I hope you like spice.”
His eyes flare into something heated and sharp. A recollection, a shared memory. His mouth below my ear and his big palm at my thigh. I watch as he tucks it away, settling his face into something flat.
He might not be in that tiny shed anymore, but he’s still hiding from me.
“You’re in my seat,” he tells me.
I take a long pull from my jam jar wine glass and hold eye contact. I have no intention of moving. Just like the crossword puzzle book and the extra-soft towel I have hanging in the spare bathroom, I’ve claimed these things as mine. He’ll have to fight me to get them back.
He snorts a laugh and moves around me to collapse in the chair to my left. He lets out a groan as he does, his long body stretching out in a lazy curve, one leg kicked wide. He drops his head against the back of the chair and reaches for his bowl, looking at me with a hazy sort of softness.
“Thanks for this,” he rasps. “It’s nice to come home to dinner.”
“You should feel honored,” I tell him, forking a bite of food in my mouth. “I’ve made this dinner for exactly two other people.”
His eyes narrow. “Who?”
I swallow and reach for my glass. “What do you mean?”
“Who did you make this for?”
“Josie,” I offer slowly. I think for a second. “Josie’s mom.”