CHAPTER EIGHT
EVELYN
Beckett is avoiding me.
Three days and I haven’t seen a single glimpse of him. I know he’s been coming and going. There’s always fresh coffee in the pot and a handwritten note right next to it listing out what leftovers are in the fridge. I don’t know how he manages to be so quiet about it, but I don’t catch him once. Not even when I attempt to stay up late on the third night, determined to talk with him.
Instead I fall asleep on the couch, two of the cats purring on my lap. I wake up around midnight with a blanket draped over me and a fresh glass of water on the coffee table.
It’s infuriating.
“Where is Beckett hiding?” I ask Layla, my palms pressing pastry dough into the countertop. I’ve been spending my days with Layla and Stella, helping out where I can. Neither of them looked surprised to see me when I first appeared in Stella’s office, so at the very least, Beckett told them I was here.
Or the phone tree did.
Layla hums and continues piping intricate layers of icing across a cookie. She leans back, rotates it once, and then bends to continue. “Aren’t you staying at his house?”
“I am, but he’s not.” Layla makes another contemplative sound under her breath. I press my knuckles into a stubborn bit of dough. “Or he’s the quietest man alive.”
“He is pretty quiet,” Layla offers. “Once I went three whole weeks without hearing him say a single word. Just grunts.” She straightens, fixes her face in a frown, and grunts from somewhere deep in her chest. It’s a pretty good impression of Beckett. “He’s probably trying to give you space. He’s like that.”
“I’d prefer if he wasn’t avoiding his own home.”
“You could try telling him that.”
I would. If I ever saw him. “I haven’t seen him in three days.”
Layla gives me a look over her tray of cookies, a streak of bright blue frosting on her chin. “He works here, doesn’t he? Go find him.”
My forearms and shoulders are sore by the time I decide to leave the bakehouse. I took all of my frustration out on the dough, and I think I rolled out enough pie crust to blanket the entire acreage of the farm and then some.
I trudge my way through the fields, letting my palms pass over the bristly branches of the Christmas trees. The farm is no less magical now than it was during the holiday season, the trees so dense out in the fields that I can’t see the buildings or the narrow road beyond it. It’s just me and the evergreens, the sun high in the sky. I breathe in deep through my nose and smile.
Balsam. Cedar. Fresh cut grass and apple blossoms.
I don’t find Beckett out with the trees or along the fence that divides the land into neat quadrants, so I change direction and head to the barn instead. I pass a couple of farmhands I recognize from my last trip and give them a wave, a man passing by with what looks like a basket full of radishes. I shield my eyes against the sun with my hand.
“Have you seen Beckett?”
The man nods and points to a smaller barn behind the one they use for holiday decorations, the door propped open with a discarded tractor wheel. Finally. I let the full weight of my frustration guide my way over to the shed and I slip through the door, half-expecting him to bolt as soon as he sees me. It would be poetic, in a way, for Beckett to run from me this time.
But he doesn’t run. He doesn’t hear me at all. I step through the door into the small space flooded with afternoon light and almost faceplant into the wheelbarrow in front of me.
Beckett stands shirtless in the middle of the room, both arms braced above him as he winds a thick coil of rope around and around two parallel pegs. I watch the ink on his arms shift and flex with every rotation of his hands, the constellations and planets on his left arm a beautiful compliment to the flowers and vines on his right.
The smooth skin of his back is unmarked, his spine a strong column flanked with lean muscle. His body is conditioned by work, hardened and cut by days spent under the sun and in the fields. I remember pressing my fingers into that warm skin, how his hips rolled down into me, pinning me beneath him.
I swallow hard as he drops his arms and rolls his shoulders back with a sigh. He reaches for a t-shirt thrown over the edge of a large metal shelf and I clear my throat—shift my eyes away from the span of his firm shoulders.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
Beckett startles and knocks his head on a low-hanging basket of garden tools. I get a glimpse of toned stomach as he turns and pulls his shirt down to cover himself. The reminder that I’ve been in bed with this man is like a string looping us together. It pulls taut and I sway forward, further into his space.
He rubs his knuckles behind his ear, his sweat-damp hair sticking up every which way. His hat is back on one of the shelves, a faded black snapback with an Orioles logo worn at the edges. There’s a red mark across his forehead from where it must have been pressing into his skin. I stare at it as he looks at me with lowered lashes, a sheepish look turning his cheeks pink.
That body with that face.
I never stood a chance in that bar, all those months ago.
I straighten my spine, gather my frustration close, and hold onto it tight with both hands. “Have you been sleeping in the barn?” It snaps out of me quick as a whip. Apparently I’m more annoyed about it than I thought.
“No,” he answers. His deep voice is even and calm, but he doesn’t look me in the eye. “I’ve been sleeping at the house.”
“When?” I shoot back.
“At night.”
I set my hands on my hips. His eyes narrow, studying the stack of spare tires behind me like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.
“Beckett.”
His eyes reluctantly crawl back to mine.
“I’ve been getting in late. I’ve been—” he hesitates, so clearly looking for an excuse I have to fight not to roll my eyes. “I’ve got a project.”
“A project.”
He shifts on his feet like a man with something to hide. “Yes.”
“Is that project avoiding me?”
“No,” he draws out the word like it has a thousand vowels at the end of it, gazing over my shoulder at the open door with naked longing. I bet he’s fantasizing about running right out into the hills. “It’s—well, it’s complicated.”
This conversation is ridiculous. “Try me.”
He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone at such a loss for words.
“It’s a duck,” he finally manages.
A group of farmhands walk past the open door, their laughter carrying into the small space. I blink at Beckett and he stares right back. Is he serious? “A what?”
“I’m trying to figure out where I can put a duck,” he mumbles. His words are tucked under his breath and I have to strain to hear what he’s saying.
“And you can only do that in the middle of the night?”
“Ah, I don’t—” He lets his arms fall by his sides. I focus on the vine tattoo that curls from his wrist and around his broad forearm, all the way to his elbow. There are small white flowers on it, a new addition since the last time I saw him. “I thought you’d prefer it that way.”
“You thought I’d prefer you sneaking around?”
He nods.
“When did I give you that impression?”
He doesn’t say anything in response, hands clenching at his sides. I sigh and press two fingers against the ever-present headache between my eyes.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you,” I explain. “I found a rental in Rehoboth. I can be out of your place in two days, once it becomes available.”
It’ll be a pain to drive back and forth from the coast, but it’s better than—whatever this is.
His face crumples in confusion. “You’re leaving?”
I don’t understand why he cares, considering he’s seen me for a combined twenty-eight minutes since I’ve arrived and he’s—hiding in storage sheds, apparently. I nod and slip my hands into my back pockets, rocking back on my heels.
He considers me quietly. Here in the muted light, his eyes look moss green. Dark and deep. “Did you find your happy, then?”
“What?”
He takes a step forward and reaches for a towel, wiping his hands on it with quick, practiced movements. His whole face is angled lines, a frown twisting everything down. “The first night you were here, you said something about looking for your happy. Did you find it?”
I’m surprised he remembers, but I guess I shouldn’t be. Beckett has always been good with the details.
“Bits of it.” Gus and Monty dancing at the fire-station. A sausage and cream cheese biscuit. The smell of fresh blooming jasmine at Mabel’s greenhouse.
Handwritten notes next to the coffee machine.
He gives me a critical look. “You don’t sound sure of it.”
“Because I’m not,” I say. I still don’t have answers to the questions buzzing in the back of my head. I still don’t have a solution to my burnout problem. “But I’m not going to have you sneaking around your own house while I figure my stuff out.” I shrug up one shoulder. “The place in Delaware is fine.”
Beckett tosses his towel back on the metal shelf and props his hands on his hips. I know he’s not doing it on purpose, but his arms flex with the movement, his inked biceps straining at the sleeves of his t-shirt. I have no idea what he was doing that caused him to sweat so much, but I’d like to pen a thank you note.
“Stay here,” he says in his gruff voice—his bossy voice—a voice that’s used to getting what it wants out here on the farm. His hand rubs at his jaw, his fingertips fanned out under his left eye. He looks tired. “Stay at the house. I’ll stop—“
“Avoiding me? Being weird?” I think for a second, voicing a suspicion. “Sleeping in your greenhouse?”
“I haven’t been sleeping in my greenhouse.”
Okay, well. He’s been doing those other things.
“I won’t stay here if it’s like this,” I tell him quietly, the fight draining out of me. “I didn’t come here to mess with your life. I wanted a little perspective and this seemed like the best place for it.”
Now I’m not so sure. I’ve been topsy-turvy since I set foot in Inglewild.
“Stay,” he says again, and he nods towards the open door. Some of the apprehension melts out of his eyes. There’s a softness there, a bit of understanding. For a second, he’s that man from Maine again. The one that tangled his fingers in my hair and pressed his lips so sweetly to mine. But then he blinks and the recognition is gone.
He grabs his hat off the shelf.
“I’ve gotta wrap up a few things and then I’ll come up to the house. I won’t be—” a smile twitches at the corners of his lips. “I won’t be weird.”
True to his word, Beckett appears about an hour later. I hear the roll of gravel in the driveway and the heavy stomp of boots up the porch steps before he swings through the front door, a guarded look on his face when he spots me sitting at his kitchen table. I rest my chin in my hand and watch as he toes his boots off and places them carefully next to mine.
“I’m making soup,” he tells me.
He says it like he expects a fight.
“Okay.”
He takes two slow steps down the hallway, closer to the kitchen. “It’s Maryland crab.”
“That sounds nice.”
He eyeballs me as he opens the fridge, one arm braced on the door, palm flat against the freezer. I try not to notice the stretch of his t-shirt. “You’re not allergic to shellfish, are you?”
It’s strange that I know what this man sounds like when he comes and the shape his fingertips leave on my hips, but when it comes to the simple things—allergies, coffee-to-creamer ratio, sock folding preference—we’re both flailing in the dark.
A different kind of intimacy, I suppose.
“I’m not allergic to shellfish.”
“Good.” He ducks his head down into the fridge and begins to pull things out—tomatoes, onions, chicken stock, two containers of crab meat, a stalk of celery—and stacks them on the counter. He drops a cutting board, a knife, and an onion in front of me.
“Can you cut this?”
I nod and let our silence fill the space between us. A pot sizzles on the stove. My knife snicks against the cutting board. Beckett mutters under his breath about piss poor celery quality.
“For the record,” I offer, in between chops. “You’re being a little weird.”
A smile quirks on his mouth and his eyes cut to mine. It feels like a peace offering, like a step in the right direction.
“For the record, I’m not trying to be.”
We find our rhythm.
Beckett spends his days on the farm and I spend my days in town, wandering in and out of shops, watching tourists get ice cream, helping Ms. Beatrice curate content for her one hundred and thirty seven passionate followers. I disconnect my email and all my social accounts and let myself breathe … for the first time in a long time.
No plan. No schedule.
Just me and whatever strikes my interest for the day, whether it’s helping re-shelve new paperbacks at the bookstore or learning how to clean the espresso machine at the cafe. I hold myself to absolutely no productivity standards. I let myself be.
In the evenings, I find my way back to Beckett’s cabin and wait for him at his kitchen table, an abandoned book of crossword puzzles I’ve claimed as my own at my elbow. He declares what he’s making as soon as he sees me, and silently hands me a cutting board or a mixing bowl or a potato peeler to help. Every day is exactly the same and there’s a comfort in that. In the way his smiles slowly get a touch wider. In the low rumble of his voice over the hiss of the frying pan.
We sit at his table and we eat our meal, and I wash our dishes after.
It’s nice, if not a little confusing.
Tonight, I decide to upset the rhythm.
I’m waiting on the back porch with two steaming bowls, nestled in the chair I’m starting to think of as my own when I hear him pull up in the driveway. The front porch stairs creak, the third one from the top making a sound of protest as he clambers his way up. The door shuts behind him and his steps stutter to an abrupt stop in the hallway.
A hesitant voice. “Evelyn?”
“Out here.”
I listen as he moves around the house, a comfort in the sounds of him settling. Water from the faucet. His jacket on the hook. The back screen creaks open and I tilt my head back.
Standing there like that, fingers curled loose around the neck of a beer bottle, face angled down towards mine—a bit of dirt on his brow and on the back of his hand—he looks like every flicker of a warm thought I’ve had in the past six months.
A soft and steady glow, burning under my skin.
“You made dinner?” He leans over slightly to get a look at my bowl. I nod towards the empty seat next to me and the dish that’s waiting for him on the table in between.
“Mmhmm,” I hum. “One of my mom’s recipes. I hope you like spice.”
His eyes flare into something heated and sharp. A recollection, a shared memory. His mouth below my ear and his big palm at my thigh. I watch as he tucks it away, settling his face into something flat.
He might not be in that tiny shed anymore, but he’s still hiding from me.
“You’re in my seat,” he tells me.
I take a long pull from my jam jar wine glass and hold eye contact. I have no intention of moving. Just like the crossword puzzle book and the extra-soft towel I have hanging in the spare bathroom, I’ve claimed these things as mine. He’ll have to fight me to get them back.
He snorts a laugh and moves around me to collapse in the chair to my left. He lets out a groan as he does, his long body stretching out in a lazy curve, one leg kicked wide. He drops his head against the back of the chair and reaches for his bowl, looking at me with a hazy sort of softness.
“Thanks for this,” he rasps. “It’s nice to come home to dinner.”
“You should feel honored,” I tell him, forking a bite of food in my mouth. “I’ve made this dinner for exactly two other people.”
His eyes narrow. “Who?”
I swallow and reach for my glass. “What do you mean?”
“Who did you make this for?”
“Josie,” I offer slowly. I think for a second. “Josie’s mom.”
He relaxes into his chair and grabs his bowl, poking around at the rice. “Thank you,” he mutters again, barely looking at me.
“It’s no problem.” I keep watching him, at the way his jaw works when he takes a bite. “It’s the least I can do.”
I had offered to pay him rent on my fifth night here. Beckett had given me a look so affronted I didn’t bother bringing it up again.
We eat in silence and I let myself wonder if this is what he does every night after a long day in the fields. Sunsets on the back porch in his socks. His flannel sleeves rolled up and a beer at his elbow. I have the sudden, confusing urge to smooth his hair back from his forehead. Get up from this chair and go to his, slide onto his lap and tuck my head under his chin.
That was the problem, I think, in that little room in Maine. It was way too easy to imagine being with Beck. To want for more.
I clear my throat and decide to tackle the reason for this little meal. “I don’t know for sure how long I plan to stay.”
He looks up at me, eyebrows raised. “Okay.”
“Probably a couple of weeks, I think.” That should be enough time for me to get my head on straight. If it’s not—well. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
He rolls his head back to look out over the trees. “That’s fine.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
He shakes his head, fingers flexing on his fork. “Not if you keep making chicken like this.”
I hesitate before my next question. I feel like an idiot for asking, but I don’t want any surprises. It’s something I should have asked sooner, honestly. “There isn’t anyone that would be upset about me staying here?”
He turns to look at me again. “Who would be upset about it? Stella and Layla obviously know you’re here.” He spears another piece of chicken. “Didn’t tell them why though.”
That’s good, because I don’t even know the answer to that. I only know that it feels good to sit on this comfy chair on his back porch with my knees tucked to my chest. “I’m asking if you’re seeing anyone, Beckett. And if this will complicate things for you.”
“Oh.” A brush of color dances over his cheeks, the same exact shade as the sun melting into the horizon. “No.”
No. That’s it. That’s all he says. He tips his beer to his mouth and swallows heavily. One, two, three gulps in a row.
“What’s your plan for tomorrow?”
Alright, then.
“I don’t have one,” I answer honestly. I stretch out my legs and flex my feet back and forth. Back and forth. I squint my eye and touch my toe to the very top of the greenhouse. “I thought it was pretty apparent I don’t have any sort of plan.”
“You’ve always got a plan,” he tells me. “Even when it feels like you don’t.”
That’s fair. I’ve had a plan since I was sixteen years old. The YouTube channel, then college, then a program at Pratt. I deviated slightly when my dream of working at a big name publication didn’t work out, and decided to make my own platform instead. I’ve been pursuing that ever since.
Not letting myself breathe since.
“New territory, I guess,” I say, forcing my voice to be light and ignoring the swarm of unease that settles every time I think about work. “For someone who posts cute pictures all day.”
He makes a sound under his breath. A frustrated huff. I drop my foot back down to the porch and look at him.
“Stop doing that,” he finally says.
“What?”
“Making yourself seem smaller than you are.” He doesn’t bother to elaborate. His hand finds his beer bottle again and he taps his thumb there once. He heaves out a gusting sigh. “What are you doing here, Evelyn?”
“I missed the trees,” I tell him.
“Try again.”
“You’re right. I missed Layla’s peppermint hot chocolate.”
“More believable.” He turns in his seat until he can fix me with a gaze that offers no room for teasing remarks. It demands the truth, and all of it. Right now. “What are you doing here?”
I reach for the wine bottle by my feet and pour myself a glass that redefines the term heavy pour.
“I don’t know. I just know that I felt stuck, and this was the first place that popped into my head when I thought about taking a break. I think I’m looking for—“ I think about standing in the middle of the field, pine trees all around me. “I think I’m reevaluating. To see if what I’m doing is still the right fit.”
I watch the tree branches lift with the breeze, tiny green buds starting to appear. Everything will be in bloom soon, the fields bursting with color. I smile. I bet it looks just like the lights on a Christmas tree.
“I wanted to be a journalist, you know? I thought I’d work for National Geographic or maybe The New York Times. Something amazing.” The confession trips off my tongue easily enough, loosened by wine and the smell of fresh earth. Spring rain and dirt. “I wanted to travel so badly. See all the places from those features. I got into the media studies program at Pratt and I thought I’d made it. I was so sure I’d be able to land a good job after graduation. But I didn’t. I kept going to interviews with my portfolio and it was always the same. Too whimsical. Too lighthearted.” I shrug and remember one painful interview, where a woman with a high collar flicked her eyes up and down my arms and told me I didn’t have the right look for on-camera work. “Too brown.”
Beckett shifts in his seat, the wood creaking under his weight, but I don’t look at him. I can’t.
“I went home to lick my wounds and my parents were having trouble with their shop. They own a boutique in Portland. They sell—all sorts of stuff, really. All locally sourced and produced. I had a YouTube channel with a decent following that I played around with. But I made some videos for my parents and it just—took off. The rest is history.”
It all snowballed from there. Traffic increased for the store. My accounts began to attract attention. I started bopping around my old neighborhood, talking to people. Asking about their business and what they were doing. Their passions. Their interests. Just everyday people doing incredible things.
I don’t know when I stopped. Or why.
I glance at Beckett out of the corner of my eye when he doesn’t say anything. “I know you think it’s stupid, but social media helps me connect. It’s like having a conversation on a massive scale. I really am trying to help people.”
He looks startled. “What?”
“I’m not just posting pictures all day. There’s a strategy behind it. Planning.” A never-ending cycle of content. A crushing desire for more, more, more. Unsolicited opinions and criticism.
“I know that.” He’s looking at me like he doesn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. Like I just jumped out of this chair and slapped a chicken suit on and started doing the Macarena. “I don’t think what you do is stupid.”
I blink at him. “Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You said so.”
“When?”
“When I was staying here in November. When I was here to evaluate the farm.” When he figured out who I really was and looked at me like I wasn’t worth his time.
He frowns. “I never said anything about your job being stupid.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Evelyn. No, I didn’t.” He drags his palm down his face. “How could I think your job is stupid? Look what it did for us. For the town.”
“Oh.” Alright then. I have no response to that.
I stare out at the yard and try to remember the specifics of that conversation. Beckett interrupts with a question.
“Where are you looking?”
“For what?” I want to thumb between his eyebrows until that line disappears. He spends too much time frowning.
“For your happy. Where do you think you’ll find it?”
“I don’t know.” I curl my hand around my glass until the condensation tickles my palm. I’m busy thinking about my answer when he finds one for me.
“Cause I think it’s still in there somewhere.” He gestures in my general direction with his bottle. “You wouldn’t glow like that if it wasn’t.”
He finishes his drink and places it down by his feet, and then tilts his head to look back out at the fields like what he said didn’t slam me right in the chest. “It’s okay if it takes you some time to find it again. And it’s okay if you find it just to lose a bit of it here and there. That’s the beauty of it, yeah? It comes and goes. Not every day is a happy one and it shouldn’t be. It’s in the trying, I think.”
I clear the cobwebs out of my throat. “Trying to be happy?”
“No.” He shakes his head once. “That doesn’t work. Trying to be happy is like—it’s like telling a flower to bloom.” He crosses his ankles and drags his palm against his stubble. “You can’t make yourself be happy. But you can be open to it. You can trust yourself enough to feel it when you stumble on it.”
I stare at him. Stare and stare and stare.
“You’re not what I expected, Beckett Porter.” Not now. Not the last time I saw him. And not that hazy evening in Maine, when he walked in a door like he’d been looking for me forever.
One of the cats wanders out from the house and jumps into Beckett’s lap, settling on his thigh with a wide yawn. He drops a heavy hand over her back and smooths it gently down over soft fur. His smile is almost shy when he looks at me.
“Right back at you.”