Page 2 of At First Dance
She freezes. I lift my hands again, palms forward. “Selfie. With me. When we get to the property and the service is better, you can send it to whoever would hunt me down if you don’t text later.”
Her throat works. Then she digs in her back pocket and hands the phone over.
I frame us wide—her sunglasses, my stupidly white shirt I ironed for the first time this year, black jeans, a wedding-appropriate belt Lila bullied me into buying, and clean boots that won’t be that way long. I look like a cowboy dragged through an REI. I hate selfies. I take it anyway—one of me stonefaced, one of me trying not to look like I swallowed a nail—then pass the phone back.
“Rowan, Coral Bell Cove,” I say while she’s tapping out a text. “Otter Creek Farms. If I blink wrong, half this county can find me.”
That gets me an actual smile. Not the red-carpet one. Smaller. Real. “Noted.”
She slides the phone into her bag. I offer an elbow toward the shoulder. “Let’s get you out of the mud.”
She hesitates, clocking the distance I’ve kept, then slips her hand into the crook of my arm like we’re strangers on a dance floor that isn’t there. Her skin is warm against my sleeve. The vanilla citrus of whatever perfume she uses finds me and stirs up memories I don’t want.
At the truck, I pull the passenger door wide and stand back so she can climb in without feeling my eyes on her. She tucks her legs like she’s done this in too many borrowed cars andsettles the cardigan over her lap, like armor, like decency in a world that tries to devour it.
The cab takes her scent the way cotton takes dye—fast and indelible. I start the engine and let the low hum do the first round of talking for us. Gravel shifts under the tires. A heron lifts slowly from the ditch, like a curtain going up.
“You really rescue stranded celebrities often?” she asks after a minute, chin tipped toward the window.
“First time.”
“Great. I’m a novelty.”
“More like an inconvenience.”
She huffs out a laugh that sounds like surprise. “Honesty. That’s refreshing.”
We roll past the hedgerow, and my back acreage opens up on the right—fence lines I mean to fix, shrubs I mean to clear, the kind of work that anchors a man when the rest of life leans too hard. Her knee bounces in a fast, staccato click. I pretend I’m not counting.
I break the quiet with the only thing that makes sense. “Big day ahead,” I say, nodding at my shirt. “Sister’s wedding.”
“Of course,” she murmurs. “It’s always a wedding in a small town.”
“Sometimes a funeral,” I say dryly. “Weddings are better.”
“That’s debatable.”
I glance over. “You don’t like them?”
She shrugs. “I like the idea of them. The spectacle… not so much.”
We pass the hand-painted wooden Otter Creek Farm sign that hangs a little crooked. “You’ll be alright,” I say before I think about it. “Spectacle or not.”
She doesn’t answer, but her knee slows.Progress.
At my parents’ lane, the trees open to white clapboard and a backyard mid-transformation: strings of lights, wildflowers in Mason jars, and chairs in imperfect rows. Music drifts out of the barn—someone doing a sound check on a speaker and a guitar run that sounds like summer. The air hums with the kind of happy chaos you don’t get in cities—kids barefoot, aunts already bossing, and men pretending they don’t like boutonnieres.
I cut the engine. For a second, neither of us moves.
“You’ve got two choices,” I finally say. “I can stash you in the truck and run interference, or you can walk in with me and allow Lila to squeal in your face.”
She pops her sunglasses up to her hair. Her eyes—blue, and not subtle about it—hit me like a bucket of cold well water.
“I’m not hiding,” she says, calm as you please. Then a smile that lifts something sharp in my chest. “Also… if this turns into a murder documentary, I want good lighting.”
I huff a laugh I shouldn’t let her hear. “Come on, then.”
I climb out, circle to her side, and offer a palm to steady her hop down. She ignores it on principle, then takes it anyway because the heel sinks, and I’m not letting her face-plant five minutes from a wedding. Her hand fits mine like a problem I could solve if I let myself.
