“I told you to stop being an idiot,” I say, reluctant. “Tell her how you feel.”
Luka raises both eyebrows.
“Stop being an idiot,” he tells me. A smile twists his mouth to the side. “Tell her how you feel.”
Stella appears not too long later, a sweatshirt down to her knees and a shovel dragging listlessly behind her. She looks like she just went seven rounds with her mattress and lost every single one. She brushes a kiss to Luka’s cheek, wraps her arms around my middle in a hug, and then tows her way over to the far end of the field and proceeds to dig the slowest, sloppiest holes known to mankind. Luka lasts three minutes before he trudges his way over to help.
Layla arrives just as a few fat raindrops decide to fall from the sky, rubber boots and a bright blue knit beanie. She walks right up to me and squeezes tight, her head under my chin. I get a mouthful of puffball.
“I didn’t have time to make zucchini bread,” she says. She squeezes harder and I let out a wheeze. “I’m sorry.”
I blink down at her head and give her a gentle squeeze back. Really, I’m trying to encourage her to let go. Rolling out all those pie crusts has made her scary strong. “That’s alright.”
“I’ll make some this afternoon.”
“Okay.”
She hoists the shovel I didn’t see her bring over her shoulder and joins Luka and Stella, her hat bouncing the entire way. I see headlights flash in the distance and I frown.
“What’s going on?” I shout over to my trio of unexpected assistants. A raindrop lands on my nose and slides down.
Stella is leaning back against Luka’s chest, her head tipped against his shoulder. Her eyes are barely open and for a second, I think she’s asleep. “The phone tree,” she yells back, her call echoing out over the empty field. “We moved dig day up.”
Another pair of headlights appears in the distance, two beams of light cast down the dirt road that leads to the farm. I watch them for a second and swallow hard. Those piano strings relax, just a bit.
“Why?”
I can see the look Stella is giving me from all the way over here. One delicately raised eyebrow, her lips in a flat line. Layla scoffs and Luka shakes his head.
“If you’re digging, we’re all digging,” she yells. The heat in her statement is lessened slightly by a giant yawn, right in the middle. She shivers and Luka presses a kiss to the back of her head, his forearm anchored across her collarbone. “That’s what partners do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
EVELYN
I hate this place.
I hate this place. I hate this car. And I hate this stupid backroad that my GPS told me would be the more scenic route. I hate that I thought a more scenic route sounded nice, and I didn’t just take the highway. I could have been back by now.
Or, at the very least, I could be drinking a milkshake on my way back.
On the highway.
I stare out at a field of dead grass and kick my flat tire. There is not a single scenic thing about this stretch of poorly maintained road and the abandoned gas station thirty feet away, a family of crows staring blankly at me from their perch on a boarded up storefront. I’m getting faint Hitchcock vibes, and I press two fingers between my eyebrows, silently willing some positive vibes. It feels like I’ve had a string of cosmic bad luck since I left the U.S. Small Business Coalition offices in Durham. I try not to read into it.
Spilled coffee. Missed turn. Another missed turn. Lost signal. And now this. A flat tire.
At least the rental has a spare. I only need to … remember how to change it.
My mom had been big on this stuff in high school. Replacing old, rusted out pipes beneath the sink and changing the oil in the car. She said it was important for me to learn how to be my own hero.
You won’t ever need to ask a boy, she had told me, grease up to her elbows and across her forehead, a grin on her face as she released the jack. Her laugh had been proud and bright in our tiny garage, crinkles in the dark skin around her eyes. Her arm warm around my shoulder as our minivan rocked in place.
She’d be scowling at me now though, if she could see me staring at the tire propped up against the wheel well.
I put my hand over my eyes and glance down the long winding road I’ve pulled to the side of. I can’t hear a single engine rumbling in the distance. I check my phone again and note the lack of bars in the top right corner.
“Alright, well.” Maybe it’ll come back to me in muscle memory. I certainly have nothing better to do at the moment.
I lug the heavy jack out of the trunk of the car and set it by my bum tire and get to work. This, at least, I remember. I pour all of my frustration into turning the stubborn bolts, a groaning sound coming from each one as I hold the metal steady in my palm and crank.
Despite my string of bad luck since leaving their offices, my interview with the Small Business Coalition went well. Really well. Theo had been warm and welcoming—a little bit awkward—offering me coffee and a tray full of small danishes as soon as I arrived, the covered plate balanced precariously on the edge of an overcrowded desk.
“A lot of your content features food,” he had said, adjusting his glasses with his knuckles. “I was hoping to woo you to our side with sugar.”
He didn’t need to woo me with sugar or coffee or anything else. He had launched into his pitch immediately, his quiet voice coming to life with excitement at the list of small businesses on their roster. His office had been cluttered, stuffy, a small window above his desk that overlooked a narrow alley and a brick wall. There was hardly any natural light or extra space, only one chair across from his desk, a dated phone with a tangled cord wedged next to the danish tray.
I loved it immediately. All of it. The half-empty mug on the bookshelf by the door and the stack of papers that ruffled every time he moved in his squeaky desk chair. His space looked like hard work and enthusiasm, ideas spilling out of every corner. I found myself examining the pictures hanging in clusters along the wall as he talked, a mismatched timeline of people and places in technicolor. A food stand at a small park. A storefront with a red and blue awning, large looping letters on the window. A smaller picture, right beneath, of him and a handsome man, their hands clasped together and a little girl clinging to their knees.
“You’ll get fancier offers, I’m sure,” he told me. I couldn’t help but think of Sway—the fruit art in the water and all the fancy odds and ends that don’t matter at all. “But I don’t think you’ll find work that makes you happier than this.”
Happier. Of all the words he could have chosen.
He hadn’t needed to say more than that.
The details on the position had been like icing on my fulfillment cake. Working with small businesses, helping them establish their digital channels—this new position is exactly what I’ve been doing, but better. More time building relationships. Stronger resources to support initiatives. And an entire Rolodex of small business owners across the country just trying to figure it all out.
Countless stories to tell.
And support for me. Rest, when I want it.
I had been humming with excitement when I left the interview, bursting at the seams with a feeling I thought was gone forever. I walked to my car and dialed Beckett’s number, picturing him sitting on the back porch, one of the cats on his knee and his hand curled around a beer, socked feet crossed at the ankles and his long legs stretched out. I imagined what his face might look like when I told him the news, the way his eyebrows would lift. That quiet smile in the lines by his eyes and the divot in his cheek.