“No, I’m fine.” He grabs another handful of fries and settles back in his seat with a sigh, knees splayed wide, dusk beginning to creep through the trees. Everything is a deep indigo tonight, the branches of the trees forming a canopy of midnight blue over the backyard. It feels like we’re in the pages of a fairy tale. Beckett glances at me out of the corner of his eye, a brush of pink on the tips of his ears. He looks so bashful and hesitant it steals the air right out of my lungs.
The prince. Or maybe the damsel in need of rescuing. I haven’t quite decided yet.
“Don’t laugh, okay?”
“I won’t,” I say emphatically. I’d never laugh at Beckett. Not ever.
He considers that, rolling his words around in his head as he squints out at the fields. “I wanted to be—” he laughs a little bit, his palm against the back of his head. “I wanted to be an astronaut.”
I think about the map of the sky he has taped on the front of his refrigerator, times and dates of celestial events scribbled in the margins. A book of the moon phases on the very top of his shelf.
“I think most kids want to be an astronaut for at least half their childhood. I guess I was just checking off that box. My mom got me a spacesuit for my eighth birthday and I don’t think I took it off for an entire year.” I imagine a tiny Beckett in a spacesuit with a helmet too big, his blue-green eyes smiling through the visor and my heart squeezes in my chest. “I thought I could work at NASA. Do research, or something. I don’t know. I just wanted to look at the stars.”
“You could have.” Stella told me Beckett built all of the sprinkler systems on the farm, a new design she’s been trying to get him to patent. He would have made an excellent engineer if that’s what he wanted to do. “Why didn’t you?”
“My dad worked at the main produce supplier for the state. Parson’s. It’s a couple of towns over.” I know the place he’s talking about. I’ve driven past it on my way in and out of Inglewild. It’s a massive farm. Rows and rows of produce, as far as you can see. “He had an accident. He fell from a ladder and he, uh—he was paralyzed from the waist down.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Beckett, I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry about.” He settles down further in his seat with a grunt. “My mom didn’t work at the time. She went to cosmetology school to get her license once my dad was in a better spot. It took him a bit of time to—to deal with everything.” He rubs his fingers against his jaw absently, remembering. “The Parson family was really good about it, though. They paid all the medical bills, helped our family out however they could. They let me come on and paid me the same salary as my dad, even though I’m pretty sure I was useless the first couple of seasons.”
I stare at Beckett. “You took your dad’s place at the farm?”
He nods. “Yeah, when I was fifteen. It’s been farming since.”
Beckett must see the look on my face because his whole body softens, a thoughtful look on his handsome face. “Nah, don’t look at me like that. It’s alright.”
“You were just a kid,” I manage around a throat that’s too tight. A pressure burning behind my eyes. I think about that little boy in a space suit, looking up at the stars. “You had a dream.”
“Found a new one,” he answers, smile kicking up the corner of his mouth. He leans back in his chair and tilts his face to the night sky, the stars beginning to wake. “And I got to keep the stars with me.”
I oversleep the next morning, my body sore from my shoulders all the way down to my calves. Muscles I never even knew existed protest as I pull myself out of bed, shuffling down the hall to the kitchen. Comet and Cupid trail after me, Vixen waiting patiently next to an empty mug by the coffee maker.
There’s a note too, a plain piece of paper with a scribbled map. I stare at it, trying to make sense of the figures Beckett drew. I’m assuming the penciled outline of a house with a cat on top is his cabin, a path marked in a neat line around several farm landmarks.
The big oak tree that splits at the trunk. The pumpkin patch by Stella’s house. The fields we were working in yesterday. All of it leads to a big X in the corner. He’s written SOME HAPPY in tiny block letters right next to it.
I grin.
“Did you find out about the sweatpants, yes or no?”
That’s how Josie answers the phone as I begin my treasure hunt across the farm. I snort a laugh. “I did not.”
She breathes out a sigh, long and gusting. “What are you even doing out there?”
Going on a scavenger hunt for bits of happiness, apparently. I round the pumpkin patch and refer back to my map. Beckett has drawn a little dotted line that crosses the next field in a zigzag pattern. I take three big steps to the left and then tilt to the right. I look down at my boots and notice this field is more marshy than the last, a somewhat solid stretch of ground moving at a crisscross right through the center of it. I smile.
“I’m figuring it out,” I answer. I am, I think. If I’m not out in the field with Beckett, I’m somewhere else in town. I’ve had a steady stream of consulting requests since I arrived in town and I’ve accepted payment in the forms of lattes and secondhand books. It’s working out well for me.
I don’t feel the same suffocating pressure when I’m helping someone else. I’m not stuck in my head, trapped in an endless cycle of over analyzing every detail. It’s slower, more relaxed.
I like it.
“I noticed you posted the other day.”
Just a short video. A mash-up of clips from my wandering around town. A half-eaten croissant on a chipped plate. Flower petals drifting through the air. Dane staring at Matty over the counter at the pizza shop like he hung the damn moon. Sandra McGivens belly laughing on the sidewalk.
Bits and pieces of a normal, extraordinary day. Just like I used to.
“Also, Kirstyn called. You owe me a raise for not ending that conversation with a string of expletives. She wanted to know if you’ve looked at any of her emails.”
“I haven’t.” The longer I stay away from my inbox, the more clear it is to me that I need to end my relationship with Sway. I don’t think I can ever sit through a meeting about the Okeechobee music festival again. I’ve known it for a while now. The time away has made that decision easier to make. “I think we’re going to be done with Sway,” I tell Josie.
Her relief reaches through the phone. “Thank god. Can I be the one to end it? I’ll do it right now.”
“No,” I laugh. “I’ll set up a meeting for when I get back.”
“Which is when?”
I stop in the middle of the muddy field I’m walking through and look up at the rolling hills lined with trees. I can just make out the sounds of a rumbling tractor in the distance, the figures of people working in the field. I wonder if Barney is needling Beckett. If Prancer is on her throne at the back of the tractor.
I don’t feel ready to leave this place yet. For the first time in a long time, I’m content standing still.
“I don’t know,” I reply faintly. “I still don’t know.”