“Bet you don’t have views like that back in New York,” Shepherd says proudly.
I don’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t gasping about the view. Though it is gorgeous, I was actually stunned by the three-quarters-built house that sits on the ridge, overlooking the valley below us. At its far side, the sun sinks toward the horizon, coating everything in a honeycomb gold that might just be my new favorite color.
But the house—a massive modern ranch with a back wall made entirely of glass—is blazing in the fiery wash of the sunset. “Did you build this?” I look over my shoulder to find Shepherd pulling a cooler from the bed of his trunk, along with a blue moving blanket.
“Am building,” he corrects, knocking the tailgate shut. “It’s for me, so it’s taking years, between paying jobs.”
“It’s incredible,” I say.
He sets the cooler down and shakes out the blanket. “I’ve wanted to live up here since I was ten years old.” He gestures for me to sit.
“Did you always want to be in construction?” I tuck my skirt against my thighs and lower myself to the ground, just as Shepherd pulls two canned beers from the cooler and drops down beside me.
“Structural engineer, actually,” he says.
“Okay, no ten-year-old wants to be a structural engineer,” I say. “They don’t even know that’s a thing. Frankly, I just found out it was a thing in this moment.”
His low, pleasant laugh rumbles through the ground. I get that shot of adrenaline that making anyone laugh sends through me, but the drunken-butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling is obnoxiously absent. I adjust my legs so they’re a little closer to his, let our fingers brush as I accept a beer from him. Nothing.
“No, you’re right,” he says. “When I was ten I wanted to build stadiums. But by the time I went to Cornell, I’d figured it out.”
I choke on my beer, and not just because it’s disgusting.
“You okay?” Shepherd asks, patting my back like I’m a spooked horse.
I nod. “Cornell,” I say. “That’s pretty fancy.”
The corners of his eyes crinkle handsomely. “Are you surprised?”
“Yes,” I say, “but only because I’ve never met a Cornell alum who waited so long to mention that he was a Cornell alum.”
He drops his head back, laughing, and runs a hand over his beard. “Fair enough. I probably used to bring it up a little more before I moved home, but no matter where I went to college, people here are still more impressed by my years as the quarterback.”
“The what now?” I say.
“Quarterback—it’s a position in . . .” He trails off as he takes in my expression, a smile forming in the corner of his mouth. “You’re joking.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Bad habit.”
“Not so bad,” he says, a flirtatious edge in his voice.
I nudge his knee with mine. “So how’d you end up back here? You said you lived in Chicago for a while?”
“Right out of school I got a job there,” he says. “But I missed home too much. I didn’t want to be away from all this.”
I follow his gaze over the valley again, purples and pinks swarming across it as shadow unspools from the horizon. Trillions of gnats and mosquitoes dance in the dying light, nature’s own sparkling ballet. “It’s beautiful,” I say.
Up here, the quiet seems more calming than eerie, and he wears the thick humidity so well I’m able to （somewhat） believe that I also don’t look like a waterlogged papillon. The hot stickiness is almost pleasant, and the grassy scent is soothing. Nothing feels urgent.
In the back of my mind, a familiarly hoarse voice says, You’d rather be somewhere loud and crowded, where just existing feels like a competition.
I feel eyes on me, and when I glance sidelong, the surprise is disorienting. Like I’d fully expected someone else.
“So what brings you here?” Shepherd asks.
The sun is almost entirely gone now, the air finally cooling. “My sister.”
He doesn’t press for information, but he leaves space for me to go on. I try, but everything going on with Libby is so intangible, impossible to itemize for a near-perfect stranger.
“Wait here a sec,” Shepherd says, jumping up. He walks back to his truck and digs around in the cab until country music crackles out of the speakers, a slow, crooning ballad with plenty of twang. He leaves the door ajar and returns to me, stretching his hand down with an almost shy grin. “Would you like to dance?”