“It’s the cheapest one,” Wyn says.
I look up, stunned. “Wyn. Are you buying a fifteen-thousand-dollar table? Here I was freaking out about a coffee-table book, and you’re buying a millionaire’s table?”
“What?” He laughs uncomfortably. “No. Harriet. It’s not—I’m not buying it . . . I made it.”
I stare at him. “You . . .” I look back down to the table, then up at him. “You made this? Or you fixed it?”
Color rises along his cheeks. “I made it. For that home goods store in Bozeman. Juniper and Sage?”
Juniper and Sage. I went once with Wyn’s parents, and Hank joked that we shouldn’t touch any of their vases, because if we broke them, we’d have to mortgage the house.
“They’re selling them on consignment,” Wyn says. “The first two they bought are already gone. I kind of hate that one, and apparently the Bozeman millionaires agree, because it’s been sitting for weeks. But I’ve started doing commissions too. Mostly for people’s summer homes, but I’ve also got this sixty-thousand-dollar order for a resort. I’m getting requests every few days. Tourists want something locally made—I’ll have to hire someone to help soon if it keeps up—and . . . what?”
“Nothing.” I look away, toward the water, bat my eyelashes against the welling emotion.
“Harriet?”
“You’re . . .” I shake my head. “You’re amazing, Wyn. This is amazing.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, his gaze dropping to the water below us. “Yeah, well, turns out that business degree wasn’t a complete waste.”
I flip through the pictures on the home page, and he watches me out of the corner of his eye, like he can’t bear to see it straight on.
A dark walnut table sitting in a sparkling creek, vases filled with prairie coneflowers and common chokecherry and Rocky Mountain penstemon. And then a cedar table with a live edge, sitting in a pine forest, like an altar in a cathedral made of trees.
The photograph sends an imprecise ache through my limbs. To be there, maybe, or maybe to be standing behind the camera with the man who built that table.
“In their natural habitat,” I say.
What I mean is, In your natural habitat.
I think back to those phone calls when he went home to Montana, how even over video, I could see that the colors of Wyn had leached back into him, after months of fading under the fog and drizzle of San Francisco.
“I mean, it’s a table.” He reaches for the phone, but I hold on to it. “No table is worth that much.”
“This one is,” I murmur.
I look up and catch him watching me, a look of raw vulnerability, hope.
“It’s amazing,” I force out. “I didn’t know you were building anything. When did you start?”
He scratches the back of his head. “I started building in San Francisco.”
“You what?” I say.
“The second job I had,” he says. “It wasn’t upholstery. I was apprenticing for a designer.”
In the scheme of things, it’s not a salacious reveal, but it is disorienting. To realize the rift between us began even longer ago than I realized. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I was embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed,” I repeat, like it’s my first introduction to the word. It might as well be. “What could possibly be embarrassing about this?”
“I’ve never been like you,” he says. “I wasn’t brilliant. I wasn’t someone with a ton of goals. I’ve spent my first thirty years tripping through life.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“Harriet.” He looks at me through his lashes, every variety of green and gray in his eyes on full display in the sunlight reflecting off the water below. “I barely got into college, and I barely graduated. And then I followed you out to San Francisco, and even with a degree, I managed to botch every interview I went to for jobs that would actually pay. If I fucked up the apprenticeship, I didn’t want you to watch it happen. Saying it was another upholstery job took the pressure off, because if I lost it, I could find another.”
My nose burns. I drop my eyes back to the phone, the screen blurring.
“He actually didn’t think I was any good,” he says.
I look up.
“The designer I apprenticed for,” he says. “He said I had no instincts.”
I snort. “What, like you’re some kind of birding dog? What an asshole.”
Wyn smiles faintly. “When I left that job and went home, I was pretty sure I was done even trying. Figured I’d stick with the repairs.”
“What made you change your mind?”
He eases onto the hot metal of the hood beside me. “It’s hard to explain.”
We’re back to the push and pull, the little drips of him and then the droughts that follow.
I’ve never known how to take him in small doses. One taste only ever makes the thirst worse.
“Well, I’m proud of you,” I say thickly, folding my arms, barricading myself from him the same way he’s done to me.
His eyes return to mine. “I could make you one, if you want.”
“A table?” I ask. He nods. “I don’t have that kind of money, Wyn.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I couldn’t take something like that for free,” I say.
“It’s going really well, Harriet,” he says. “And I hardly have any expenses right now—maybe you’ve heard: I live with my mom?”
I laugh. “I think I remember reading that on TMZ.”
He touches my hand against the hood, and god help me, I turn my palm up to his. I need to hold on to him right now, need to feel the calluses I’ve memorized on his palm.
“I would love to make you one,” he murmurs. “I’ve got time, and I don’t need money.”
Reading my expression, Wyn says, “Or if you don’t want one . . .”
“It’s not that.” I shake my head. “It’s amazing. Seeing you like this. So happy.”
He studies me for a beat before dropping his gaze on a nod. “I am. I’m really happy.”
Now my chest is folding over on itself. “I’m so glad.”
“You too, right?” He matches my gaze.
That seesaw feeling rocks through me. “Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
“Good,” he says softly.
“Why was Gloria so worried about you telling me this?” I ask.
“Because she thinks we’re still together,” he says, his gaze dark and steady. “She thinks you’re still waiting for me to come back.”
Back to San Francisco.
Back to me.
I’m not waiting. I’ve known for months he wouldn’t be coming back.
So why does hearing it hurt so much?
My phone chimes, and I break eye contact, blinking rapidly as I pull it out, read the new message. “Sabrina,” I tell him thickly, sliding off the hood.
His mouth hitches, an unconvincing quarter smile. “Looks like our time’s up.”