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.
But he didn’t answer.
I turn the wrench with a grunt and loosen the last bolt, a bead of sweat sliding down between my shoulder blades. I drop the wrench to the cement and one of the crows launches itself off the top of the gas station in a flurry of ruffled feathers. I frown at his friends and then down at my flat tire.
“So far so good,” I mutter.
It comes back to me in pieces as I work. My mom’s voice in my ear, instructing me how to crank the jack, how to hold myself away from the car, how to pull the tire off and gently push the new one on. A thrill of satisfaction runs through me as I move through each step, secure the new wheel, and tighten the last of the bolts. I roll the popped tire to the trunk and lower the jack again, and the car releases a groaning, heaving sigh.
Maybe I should have changed a tire sooner. The pride burning in my chest has me short of breath, a fierce burst of energy that zips through my entire body. I stand there with my hands covered in grease and my arms burning from the effort.
I feel fantastic.
I almost laugh when I hear the growl of a car engine behind me, a bright red truck tearing down the backroad. It slows to a stop by my side and an old man with a faded baseball cap pokes his head out the window, his tanned arm hanging over the door. He looks at all the tools scattered across the ground and gives me a quizzical look.
“You need any help?”
I shake my head. I don’t. For the first time in a long time, I’m not left wanting for a single thing. I am firmly here, in this moment. Not planning for what’s next, not thinking about all the things I’m missing out on by standing still. Everything is exactly where it should be.
I give him a grin that he mirrors with a bewildered twitch of his lips. A strange lady standing outside of a boarded up gas station with grease on her face, smiling at nothing.
“I’m good, thanks.”
I call Josie from a rental shop exactly halfway between Durham and Inglewild, a styrofoam cup of coffee in my hand and a stale donut cradled in my arm.
“He offered you the job?”
I glance through the glass window at the service center, my little blue car receiving a proper tire replacement. I’m impatient to get back on the road, another couple of hours left of driving before I’m back at Lovelight. Beckett still hasn’t answered his phone, and I don’t know what to do with that.
I left a note on the kitchen table when I left, my own attempt of a doodle at the bottom. I had to leave on short notice, I wrote. An interview, three exclamation points after. We can celebrate with burgers when I get back.
I hesitated beneath that, my hand hovering over the scrap of paper. Talk soon felt incomplete. Miss you felt silly. I stared at that piece of scrap paper and chewed on my bottom lip, clueless as to how to sign the damn thing.
In the end I settled for a tiny heart with lopsided edges, a circle of tulips curling at the bottom.
“Informally,” I reply to Josie, nibbling at the edge of my boston creme donut. It pales in comparison to Layla’s flaky, buttery dough and a punch of longing hits me right in the chest. What I wouldn’t give to be sitting in her cafe right now, my boots propped up on the seat across from me and Beckett leaning heavily into my side, his scruff catching in my hair and his fingers toying with the sleeve of my shirt. I sigh. “He said he’d send me an offer letter in the next couple of days.”
“That’s good, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.”
“Then why do you sound weird?”
“A lot to do,” I mutter, peering out the window again to check on my car. There’s a guy in coveralls half-tucked beneath it, another mechanic approaching. I wish I had taken the replacement they offered. It’s ridiculous to feel a sense of camaraderie with a car. “A lot of details to sort out.”
Josie hums. “Like if you’re staying in Inglewild or not?”
“Hopefully that won’t be one of the details that needs sorting.” Once I talk to Beckett. Once he answers his damn phone.
I’d like to stay. Not at his house, of course. A new place, maybe somewhere in town. Somewhere I can step off the porch and press my toes into wet grass. Flowers in the garden. Lots of windows.
“I’ll have to fly out to California,” I tell her. “I need to close out the contract with Sway. Sort out a couple other projects.” Collect the rest of my things from my barely-used apartment. Probably visit that empanada shop.
“I’ll fly down and meet you.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“And miss your break up with Sway? I don’t think so.” She snickers on the other end of the phone and I hear the creak of a screen door opening.
“I’m proud of you, you know.” Her voice is quiet, a smile in every syllable. “I know you haven’t been feeling like yourself, but you’re—you’re getting back there. And I’m proud of you.”
I blink at the pressure behind my eyes. I’m proud of myself, too.
A conversation whispers back to me. Worn flannel tucked around my shoulders and that old porch chair rough beneath my palms. Borrowed socks on my feet and Beckett in the chair right next to me.
“I’m trying.”
By the time I make it back to Inglewild and the single dirt road that leads to Lovelight, the sun is setting over the farm, the big red barn by the road turning a faded rust in the dwindling light. Relief blossoms in my chest, a warmth radiating all the way out to where my hands grip at the wheel. Two days and I missed this place. Missed the wide open space and Beckett in the spot right next to me. The cats and the trees and the lightness I feel as the road changes from dirt to gravel, my car rumbling along.
It feels like coming home.
The house is dark when I pull into the driveway, but Beckett’s truck is in its usual spot, a dull glow from the greenhouse in the backyard letting me know where he is. I smile as I slip from my car and leave my things for later. I’m eager to see Beckett, to wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze.
I skip from rock to rock down the stone pathway that hugs the side of the house, counting the wooden signs in the garden as I go. More herbs than blooms on this side of the house. Basil. Thyme. Mint and rosemary. I wonder if he’ll make that chicken soup again. If he’ll taste like sage when I sit sideways in his lap and press my mouth to his.
I see him as soon as I turn the corner, his head bowed over a shelf of plants near the front. Messy hair. Strong arms. Sleeves rolled to his elbows. He looks like one of those old statues—the ones that sit lonely in the middle of bustling city squares, their crisp edges worn down by time. My smile falters and I trip over the edge of a tree root, sticking out at the edge of the path. The ones that look so sad.
I’m quiet as I lean up against the frame of the glass door, my fingers itching with the need to smooth my palms over those tight shoulders. Press my face in the space between until he releases a deep, relieved breath. I want to make it go away, whatever it is.
“Hey,” I tip my head against the door and watch as his entire body goes rigid, half-bent over a pot of fledgling poinsettias. He’s frozen where he is, my arrival clearly unexpected. Unwelcome, by the looks of it. A cascade of nerves flutter in my belly and I pause. “What’re you up to?”
It’s so good to see you, I want to say. Two days and I missed you like crazy.
He straightens out of his crouched position and sets his watering can to the side, his movements slow and hesitant. It’s like he’s forgotten where he is, what he’s supposed to be doing. He glances at me slowly, a thin tremble of confusion twisting at his lips.
“I’m finishing up a few things,” he tells me, voice rough. He wipes his palms against the front of his jeans, clenches them into fists, and shoves them into his pockets. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m staying here, aren’t I?” I laugh. He doesn’t. The smile slips right off my face. My heart jumps to my throat and everything in my body tightens. “Is everything alright?” He remains quiet. The space between us feels like a chasm. “Did something happen with the trees?”
“No,” he shakes his head and glances out one of the big windows. The sky glows behind him, a bright and fierce orange. One last burst of brilliant color. “No, nothing happened with the trees.”
“Your family okay?”
He nods.
“Alright, good.” I glance over my shoulder at the back porch, the two chairs that look like they’re a little bit further apart than the last time we sat in them. “Why are you out here so late?”
Why is the house dark?
Why won’t you look at me?
Why haven’t you kissed me yet?
“Evelyn,” he sighs, exhausted. He drags his gaze up from the floor to blink at me slowly. “What are we doing?”
Evelyn. I feel that like a pinch. A tiny prick to my heart. He hasn’t called me by my full name in weeks.
“Well,” I rub my fingertips against my heart and urge myself to settle. “Right now, it sounds like you have something to say to me.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know that’s not what you meant,” I sigh. Maybe I should go back to the car, do a lap around the farm, and we can try this again. I had been so excited to see him, so relieved to be back in this place. And he’s treating me like my arrival is the worst thing that could have happened. “What’s going on? Why are you upset?”
“I’m not upset.”
“Beckett. You can barely look at me.” His jaw clenches and impatience grabs me by the throat. “If you have something to say, I’d wish you’d just—”
“What are you doing here, Evie?” He asks in a rush. I take a half-step forward and he takes two steps back, his hands gripping the metal frame of the shelf he’s backed into like he needs the anchor to keep himself grounded. In all this frantic motion, he’s sure to keep his body away from mine. We don’t touch anywhere, and I feel that absence like a hand to my chest, demanding distance. His eyes search mine, desperate and a little bit hurt. “What’s your plan? Are you coming or are you going?”
“What are you talking about? I thought I was coming home.” His face crumples and I have no idea what’s going on. “Do you want me to leave? I don’t understand.”
He pushes off the shelf but I reach out and grip his t-shirt in both hands, hauling him close. “No. No, you explain what the hell you’re talking about. Right now, Beckett.”
“You left.”
“Yes.” I left for two days. I came right back. I bought him a stupid gas station t-shirt and a koozie for his beer.
He curls his hands around my wrists and squeezes gently, urging me to let go of his shirt. I do, and he takes three steps across the small space, his back against the same table he propped me up on two nights ago. I can barely make out the shape of the man who pressed a kiss to my neck and tangled a flower in my hair.
“You didn’t bother to tell me,” he says. “I thought you left for good.”
“I left a note.” Right in the middle of the table. Next to a thermos of coffee and a stack of mail.
“There was no note.”
“But I left one.” I think about the scribbles at the bottom of the page, how I agonized over what to write. Guess that didn’t matter. “I drew flowers on it. Tulips.”
He doesn’t move an inch, not even a flex of his fingers at his side. “There wasn’t a note on the table when I got home. There wasn’t anything.”
A lead weight sinks in my chest.
“I left all of my stuff in the spare bedroom.”
“I didn’t check.”
“Well, maybe you should have,” I snap. All he had to do was crack open the door to see my laundry thrown all over the place.
“I didn’t want to see an empty room.” His response thunders out of him, a fist against the table. “I didn’t want to look at the place you were and find you gone.”
“You think I could just leave?”
He shrugs and I know exactly what he’s going to say the moment before he says it.
“You’ve never had trouble leaving,” he accuses, and I feel the words like a slice against my skin.
That was before, I want to tell him. Before I stood in your kitchen and watched you make pancakes. Before I sat on your back porch and listened to you talk about the stars. Before you trusted me with all of your smiles. Before you let me know you.
Before I fell in love with you.
“You’ll leave again,” he adds as an afterthought, his shoulders curling in. He looks exhausted, completely spent. Dark circles under his eyes and a strain in the lines of his body that I haven’t seen since that night at the bar, when everything was too loud around him.
“You’re gonna keep leaving, Evie.” His face twists in naked longing.”Why wouldn’t you?”
Oh, I think quietly. There it is.
“Then ask me to stay.” The words are out of my mouth before I can consider them. They hold in the space between us, impatient. Pleading.
His eyes meet mine and he shakes his head once.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
He swallows hard, a catch in the strong line of his throat. He stares at me for a long time. So long, I think he won’t answer the question.
“I dreamt about you,” he says, his voice rough. He looks embarrassed to say such a lovely thing. “After those two night in Maine, I dreamt about you all of the time. When we ran into each other again that night on the street, I thought I had fallen asleep for a second. You were so beautiful.” He swallows again and looks down at his boots, gathering himself. He looks back at me, eyes bright. “Having you here has felt like that. A dream. But I think we both know it has to end, yeah? You’ve got a great big life outside this tiny town and that’s okay. That’s the best thing, really. You glow like—you glow like the fucking sun and you shouldn’t bottle that up here. You shouldn’t waste your light. I thought I could be happy with whatever pieces of you I got. I thought it would be enough. But then you left and I realized it—it won’t be. You’ll take a piece of me every time you go until I’ve got nothing left. I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.”
But I’ll bring your pieces back, I want to say. I’ll bring them back and give you some of mine, too.
Silence rings between us, a faint buzzing in my ears.
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
He looks so tired, propped up against the table. He drags his palm over his face. “What?”
“How long have you been expecting me to leave? After our date?” I swallow hard and will the hum in my blood to settle. “After we had sex?” He’s too still, over by the windows, the shadows twisting around his ankles and cloaking him in darkness. “You really thought I’d just leave, without a word? You think I could do that?”
He shrugs and averts his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Evie.” He rubs his palm against the back of his neck. “I’m just—I’m just trying to hold onto what I can. Do you understand?”
I shake my head, a pressure behind my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
His hands fall limply by his sides. “I don’t know a better way to explain it to you.”
I take a step closer. “If I had waited for you to get back … if you saw my note … would you have believed me when I told you I was coming back?”
He doesn’t say a word. He sighs and closes his eyes tight and then meets my gaze. I see the answer in the lines of his face. In the sad, sad blue-green of his eyes.
“Why can’t you believe me?” I ask, my voice cracking at the edges “I want to be here.”
With you. With everyone else. Where I can breathe and rest and think. Where I can be whoever I want to be.
His mouth opens and closes. I wait for him to say something, anything. But he doesn’t. He snaps his mouth shut and looks at a spot over my shoulder.
“That’s it then?”
He glances at the empty pot on the table, the seed packets next to it. Everywhere, it seems, except for me. He sighs and scrubs his hand against the back of his head. A small shrug.
“You can—you can stay as long as you want. You’re always welcome here. I just think—I think maybe we should go back to the way things were before. I complicated it and I’m sorry about that.”
Like it would be that simple to untangle all the feelings in my chest. Like I could sit down in the seat next to him on that porch and not love him with all of my heart.
“You’re sorry.”
I don’t bother phrasing it as a question. He’s sorry for how he complicated things. My chest cracks right open. He hesitates, and then, “Yes.”
All of the fight drains right out of me. He thinks I’ll be giving something up by staying, not getting everything I’ve ever wanted. The flame of hope that was burning bright in my chest as I drove back from Durham flickers. Embers, really—cooling in the circle of ash that’s taken up residence in the open space between my lungs. Every breath burns.
“Beckett Porter,” I sigh out his name and blink too quickly. I don’t want to cry. Not here. Not right now. “Are you letting me down easy?”
I hate the way my voice wobbles at the edges. He notices and his eyes snap to mine. I watch his fingers flex, the small oak leaf on the inside of his wrist dancing as his arm turns.
He huffs a laugh but it doesn’t sound funny at all. It sounds sad, a thousand unspoken things tucked into a single sound.
“No, honey.” He watches me with those serious eyes, looking for all the world like he’s trying to memorize the curves of my face. His mouth twitches to the side. Not quite a smile, not quite a frown. Something resigned, right in-between. “I’m letting myself down hard.”
I could tell him about my job offer.
I could tell him about Theo’s cluttered desk and the pictures on the wall. The schedule he gave me before I left, all of my travel planned out for the next year. I could tell him about my phone call with Josie and how I have a plane ticket in my name for two days from now, a one-way ticket back.
I could tell him I plan to stay.
But I’m tired, and my heart feels bruised.
So I press up on my toes and brush a gentle kiss to his lips. I tell him I’ll see him soon and squeeze his hand in mine. I turn and leave him standing there in the greenhouse, with the flowers and the herbs and the spilled soil on the table.
My body moves without my mind needing to check in. I go to the spare room and pack up my things. I fight with the door of my car and toss my suitcase in the trunk. I stomp back up the stairs and leave the stupid gas station t-shirt and koozie sitting by his door.
I gather all of the parts of me that are unraveling and hold them tight in my shaking fist, two deep breaths and my hands on the steering wheel. I stare at the house and exhale slowly.
I back out of the driveway and rumble down the little road that leads back to town.
Tomorrow.
I’ll make a plan tomorrow.