Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EVELYN

I glance up at Josie from my collection of folded leggings—a frankly alarming amount of comfort wear that towers next to one of my moving boxes. “When?”

He hadn’t said a thing. He stood in the entrance of the greenhouse with his arm braced against the door and watched me quietly move around his house. I only allowed myself a single look back, right before I walked out the front door. He had his back to me by then, both hands anchored in his hair.

I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.

I topple the whole stack into the box. “He didn’t say anything.”

I glance at my phone and then shake my head. It’s been radio silence.

Not that I expected anything different.

It’s been two days and the only update I’ve received on Beckett is a banal text from Stella. A simple he’s okay that she didn’t choose to elaborate on, along with a picture of a baby duck with a cookie by his webbed feet. Otis written in icing on top.

Though I suppose that was an update in and of itself.

She trails off, grumbling under her breath.

She shuffles her way back over to me around a minefield of moving boxes and … more leggings … the bottle wedged under her arm. She collapses in front of me and hands me the shot glass, working at the cap with her teeth. She spits it towards the windows when it’s off.

I see it every time I close my eyes. Beckett and the way his entire body went rigid when I walked into his space. The resignation on his face, like it was what he expected the entire time.

He really thought I left.

Josie fiddles with the bottle. “Well, did you ever tell him you wanted to stay?”

I open my mouth and then close it.

Josie continues. “You were very communicative with me about your plans.” She sniffs at the open bottle and makes a face. “What was his reaction when you told him about the new job?”

Josie makes a sound, exasperated. The bottle in her hand almost goes flying across the room. “So it is a miscommunication thing.”

See where this thing goes.

God, we’ve both been so stupid.

But I’ve shown him, haven’t I? Trivia with his family and my name written on the registration sheet for next time. Afternoons spent in town and evenings spent with him. I’ve been putting down roots this whole time, carefully cultivating each one to be something lasting and true. Hasn’t he seen that? Hasn’t he realized?

Josie pours the amber liquid into the shot glass and I frown at it. “What do you want me to do with this?”

She raises both eyebrows. “Drink it.”

It’s a loose plan, at best. I want him to see that it’s not just him I’m going back for, but everything else, too. I think he needs to see that I mean it.

Josie nods.

It’s not weird. I know for a fact it’s been empty since before I came to town. Gus told me so when I called him to put down my deposit over the phone. Apparently, he wanted to try his hand at flipping houses—in addition to the trivia night emceeing and firehouse dancing. A man of many strange talents. Unfortunately for him, there were no other houses to flip in Inglewild town limits and that dream came to an abrupt halt.

It’ll be heartbreaking, but I won’t leave.

Happiness and freedom and belonging and community and—shortbread cookies in the dead of night. Weird trivia. Layla’s buttercream frosting.

Didn’t I? I swear I did. I pressed my thumb to the constellation on the inside of his forearm and traced the inked lines all the way down to his palm. I tapped there twice and told him I’d be back. “It’s not a miscommunication,” I explain.

We just keep missing each other. Every time we collide, something is slightly off. We smack into each other and go ricocheting back into space, a million miles between us. One of those meteors.

A misalignment, maybe?

A missed opportunity, certainly.

Hopefully I can fix that.

Josie taps her fingers along at the open bottle of liquor and keeps her gaze on me. She looks like she’s considering another taste, previous experience be damned.

I stare out at a conference room full of blank faces. For some inexplicable reason, they called the entire organization in here for this meeting. I see Kirstyn in the corner, openly weeping with her face hidden in a patterned handkerchief. She has a tiny glass of espresso at her elbow and a miniature cucumber sandwich. There’s no bass coming from the speaker in the center of the room this time, thank god.

Though I bet Josie is dying to break out a tiny violin.

Josie snorts and I drive the heel of my boot into her Converse beneath the table.

I wonder what Beckett is doing right now. If he’s out in the fields or at the bakehouse, stealing snacks from the front case when he thinks Layla isn’t looking. He doesn’t know it, but she puts the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies in the bottom right just for him, half-hidden behind the lemon bars so he has a chance to grab one after his morning list is done.

I picture him there, leaning up against the counter. Flannel rolled to his elbows and hat backwards. The slightest curl to the ends of his hair behind his ears.

This time, Josie has to step on my foot.

I glance down at her and she raises both eyebrows expectantly.

Ah, that’s right. A room full of people.

I glance sheepishly at Leon, sitting at the head of the table with both palms flat against the wood. He looks lost and a little desperate, his dark brown eyes resigned behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

Now I just want empanadas.

And a plane ride back to Maryland.

We all file out of the room in a slow slog, hindered by two people at the front too busy on their phones to watch where they’re going. I’m surrounded by people with hunched shoulders and drawn faces, actively avoiding eye contact. One guy wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand. Someone wanders into the kitchen and turns off the pink neon light above the refrigerator. There’s no place like Sway stutters and then blinks out, the kitchen oddly cold without the fluorescent, glowing light.

It all seems a bit much.

Josie leans into me as we walk towards the elevator. “That was nicely done.”

I glance back over my shoulder at Kirstyn, sitting at the edge of the long table in the center of the room, her forehead flat against the surface. I frown. “It didn’t feel very nice.”

Josie shrugs and jams the elevator button. She does it again when it doesn’t light up right away. They’re going to have to replace the damn thing when she’s through with it. “Sometimes the right thing for one person isn’t the nice thing for someone else.” She turns to me and gives me a grin. “Hey, do we have any pizza leftover from last night?”

We do. Barely. I’d much rather walk across the street and devour the entire menu of empanadas. The elevator finally arrives and Josie storms the doors, muttering something about pizza with croquetas on top while digging for her phone in her bag. I follow in behind her and pivot on my foot, trace my eyes over the ferns on the wallpaper. Beckett would hate it. Too green, he would say. The coloring is all wrong. I can practically hear his voice in my ear, telling me the difference between vascular plants and … non-vascular plants. What kind of sunlight they need. The perfect soil consistency.

I’m so lost in my little Beckett bubble that I almost don’t notice it.

A few things happen at once.

My phone begins to go wild in my pocket. Josie whispers a quiet oh my god that gains volume as she repeats it over and over again. Several people stand up at the long coworking table and—the most jarring—I see Beckett’s face suddenly appear in the conference room, ten times larger than usual on the screen that’s dropped from the ceiling.

I slam my hand against the elevator door to hold it open, a dip in my belly. It feels like this elevator just dropped all the way to the basement and I’m along for the ride.

Josie reaches for my arm and squeezes. “Evie.”

I take a step out and then another. I watch Beckett’s mouth move silently through the industrial glass window. He looks—god—he looks good. Two days and I feel like some of the details have already dimmed. How did I go weeks before? How did I go months?

How did I ever slip out of his bed to begin with?

Josie trails after me, her gaze stuck on her phone. “Your mentions are going absolutely insane,” she says.

I watch Beckett’s eyes crinkle slightly at the corners through the window, a barely-there smile on his handsome face. I can hear the muted rumble of his voice, the low tones of him speaking on camera, but I can’t hear any of the words he’s saying. “Why is there a video of Beckett playing in the conference room?”

Josie’s head snaps up and her eyes narrow. “I guess it’s hit the blogs already. He must have posted it while we were in that meeting.”

We watch together as the video ends and then starts up again. It looks like—it looks like it’s a TikTok video, pulled up on the browser. It’s hard to tell with people standing in front of the screen watching. None of this makes any sense. And as far as I’m aware, Beckett doesn’t have online banking. His coffee maker has a single switch on the bottom. I find it hard to believe he has a TikTok account.

Josie loops her arm through mine and drags me across the office space, back to the conference room. She comes to an abrupt halt right outside the door, watches the screen, and seems to time her entrance with whatever Beckett is saying in the video.

When the video loops again, she shoves me once—hard—between my shoulder blades. I catch myself on the edge of the table and watch.

It’s an awkward shot. The camera angle is a little off, leaving him lopsided in the center of the screen. One of his fingers is slightly covering the camera, a halo of obstruction in the top corner. But it only makes it better, the imperfection of it.

I watch as he swallows and looks up, over the camera. I can see trees behind him and I imagine him out there in the fields, dirt on the palms of his hands. “I haven’t been doing that with you, have I? Going out of my way.” His eyes snap back to the screen. “We’ve been sitting on my back porch for weeks, Evie. Just watching the sun move. We’ve been doing things how I’ve wanted to do them.”

Me too, I want to tell him. I haven’t wanted to be anywhere else but on that porch with you.

He lets out a deep, gusting sigh and his mouth curls at the edge, just a touch. Regret, it looks like. “So I thought—I don’t know. I guess I thought making you one of these things would be a start at saying sorry, for the way I left things. The last time we were together, I told you I couldn’t keep watching you walk away. You told me to ask you to stay, and I didn’t. I was having trouble with the possibility that you’d want to. I thought, how could someone like Evie want to be here? With me?” He pauses and drifts his hand over his heart. My own pounds in response. “I’ve kept so much from you.”

Hope lights up every inch of me, my heart in my throat. I ignore everyone else in the room and take a step closer to the screen, looking at those blue-green eyes, somehow the same color as the sky above him and the trees behind him.

I hold onto the back of the chair in front of me, my hands gripping the top edge until my knuckles turn white. I wish I were standing in front of him. I wish I could trace those lines by his eyes and step between his feet, press my palm to his neck and guide his mouth to mine.

He blinks and his gaze trips somewhere else, another lingering pause. His eyes swing back to the phone with a brush of color across his cheeks, a slow-curling, bashful grin that inches under my ribcage. “Alright, well. That’s it, I guess.” He shrugs, a little unsure. “I know you came back here because you were looking for your happy. But Evie, you gave me mine while you were looking for yours and I think it’s only fair if I try to return the favor. I’ll be, uh—” he swallows around his words—looking, I know, for the right ones. “I’ll be here. You know where to find me.” He stares at the phone like he wishes it were me instead. “Bye.”

The video cuts off with a fumble, his movements unpracticed, his frowning face the last thing I see before the video loops—back to him standing beneath the sun.

I stand there in that tiny conference room and I watch it again. Again and again and again. I feel the eyes of the other people in the room as they watch me for a reaction. I’m pretty sure a couple of them have their cameras out.

But I don’t care.

I only see Beckett and the dark shadows under his eyes that tell me he hasn’t been sleeping much, the way the sunlight catches in his hair and makes it seem lighter—a halo of gold around him. I catalog the lines of his face and the way the ones by his eyes deepen when he says come home, honey.

I feel those words melt against me.

I tighten my grip on my bag as a smile begins to bloom across my lips. Like the wildflowers in that field at the edge of the farm, my face tilted towards the sun.

On my way.