Page 118 of Boston
“Yeah.” Bailey gave a nervous laugh, and she certainly wouldn’t be standing still the way he did. No, Bailey was a bundle of energy when she got nervous, while Bryce shut down. He ran, he hid, he escaped. But Bailey charged forward.
“I’m just wondering if you think it’s going to be too weird. If you think having me there is going to be too hard on you, or Codi, or OJ, or anyone else in the family, I won’t do it.” She heaved another sigh. “I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea. So many people have asked me when I’m going to move there, and I’ve always put them off, but somehow it got in my mind, and it’s been burrowing away, and it won’t let go.”
“Okay, Bailey,” he said. “Take a breath.”
“Don’t tell me to take a breath.”
“Okay, sorry,” he said, squinching his eyes closed. “I get what you’re saying.”
“Do you?” she asked. A long pause came through the line. “Every time I come there, it feels like a major event, and I’m tired of it. I don’t want to be this side-show that everyone stares at, and I have to arrange all these meals and visits with everyone.”
“And if you lived here,” Bryce said slowly, putting the pieces together. “You’d just be here. It wouldn’t be novel or exciting.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But I’m also afraid that it’s going to upset some Young…family…space-time-continuum there that I don’t know about, because I do only come into town a couple of times a year.”
Bryce chuckled at the hilarity of what she just said, amping up into a full-blown laugh. “The Young family space-time continuum.” He laughed again, and this time, it drew OJ’s attention. Bryce watched him come back to the pumpkin patch and then start down the row the way he was supposed to be doing.
“Oh, Bailey, I think you give us too much credit for what goes on in Coral Canyon.”
“Oh, no, I don’t,” she said. “There’s a dynamic there with you guys, and I don’t want to disrupt it.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” he said easily. “You’ll just add to it.”
“I don’t even know if I want to do this,” she whispered.
“Sometimes it’s not about whatwewant to do, Bay,” Bryce said. “But about where God wants us to be.”
“Yeah.” Bailey didn’t argue with him, and she didn’t sigh in that exasperated way she had twelve years ago when he’d tried to give her advice or tell her that God loved her. Heck, he himself hadn’t felt lovable for years.
He turned his back on OJ and kept walking down the row of pumpkins. “OJ is here with me,” he said. “We’re just checking the pumpkin patch. He’s a distance away.” Bryce lifted his head into the sunshine. “So he doesn’t need to know it’s you on the phone.”
She paused and then said, “That would be great, Bryce. I don’t need to talk to him about this right now.”
“All right,” Bryce said. “I think it would be fine if you moved here, Bailey.”
Though nowhewas starting to wonder how that would impact him and OJ, the boy he’d given up for adoption but worried about constantly.
“I think you’ll see it just settles into regular life,” he said. “And maybe you’ll get to come to our New Year’s Eve parties at the furniture store and see us all act like idiots on a mechanical bull.”
That made her laugh, and Bryce was glad for that. He could talk to Codi about everything else that might come from this.
“Okay, I’ll keep you updated.”
“If you want to,” Bryce said. “You don’t have to. You don’t owe me any explanations, Bailey.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I don’t know why I called,” she said. “I just started panicking.”
“I’m sure your parents are real glad that you’ll be coming back,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “They are happy about it, and I’m happy that the perfect property sits on the other side of town.”
They both laughed then, and Bryce said, “It’s nice to have a buffer, that’s for sure.”
“Okay,” she said, “I guess I’ll let you know more when I know more, if I feel like it.”
