Page 22 of At First Dance
My ex, Marissa, ghost-walks through my head once—just a shadow, the shape of a lesson: what you think you know about a person can be a story they sold you. I shake it off the way you shake sweat from your brow.
By early afternoon, I’m under the oak with a coil of wire and a stubborn hinge when Dad calls.
“Boy,” he starts, which is how you know you’re about to get a mix of love and a lecture, “your mama says Hadley saw that singer at the market. She buying honey or buying your silence?”
I grit my teeth, keep my voice flat. “She bought a hat. Honey, too.”
He snorts. “You know how this looks, Rowan. Folks talk. I just don’t want you in a position where you’re cleaning up glitter and a mess at the same time. Again.”
“I’m not in a position,” I say.
“She’s a nice girl, probably,” he continues, which is how he softens the edge, “but these visiting types—”
“She won’t stay,” I snap before I can keep it holstered. The words come out harder than they felt in my head, designed to shut a door and succeeding all the way. “She’ll be back on stage soon enough, basking in the cheers and adoration of her rabid fan base.”
Silence on the line. Wind through the oak leaves. And—too late—footsteps on gravel behind me.
“Alright, then,” Dad says after a beat, as if he didn’t hear the way it scraped me raw to say it. “You bring the brush mower up later?”
“Yeah,” I say, and hang up.
I turn.
Ivy stands at the bottom of the porch steps, a paper-wrapped bunch of sunflowers in her arms, Bailey’s taillights just disappearing at the end of the lane. Her braid’s fuzzed from the heat, her cheeks flushed, and there’s a carefulness to her face I haven’t seen since the ditch.
“Hey,” she says, and the word is normal. Everything under it isn’t.
“Hey.” I nod at the flowers. “Those for Butterscotch? She’ll try to eat them.”
“For the cottage,” she says, voice lighter than her eyes. “It needed color.”
I mean to say something that fixes whatever I just cracked. Instead, I hear myself go practical. “Carl called. Thursday’s the day.”
“Good.” She presses the flowers closer, like they could take the weight I just put on her chest. “That’s… good.”
The rest of the afternoon goes like a day with a limp. We put grain away. I pretend not to notice how she sidesteps my hands. She tells me about a bookstore cat that hates everyone but adopted her for ten minutes. I tell her the gate on the east paddock still catches if you don’t lift as you swing. Normal words. Not-normal air.
We split leftovers at the porch railing. She eats slowly, smiling when I tell her that at the End-of-Summer Barbecue last year, the kettle corn vendor flirted with me once, and I still bought two bags out of fear. The cicadas tune up; the light leansgold. If I reach six inches, I could tuck the one wild piece of hair back behind her ear. I don’t.
“I’m going to finish a thing for work,” she says when the plates are clean. Noncommittal. Soft.
“Okay,” I say, because I don’t push caged animals or people pretending not to be.
She carries the vase of flowers from the porch to the cottage like a bride might carry a bouquet—careful, steady, the act conveys most of the message. Her door clicks. The porch swing carries my weight like it always does, but I can’t make it groan the way it usually does. I can’t lure it into telling me what to do next.
I sleep, but only because the body insists.
At first light, I make coffee without thinking, two cups, mine black, hers with cream and sugar. The oak dew ices my boots as I cross the yard. I knock lightly and push the cottage door with my knuckles the way I always do.
It opens quietly.
No boots by the mat. No tote dropped carelessly by the couch. The air holds last night’s cool and the faintest thread of her perfume like something someone should apologize for.
On the arm of the couch is my navy hoodie, folded clean. On the cushion is a torn page from one of those fancy notepads I don’t own.
Rowan—
Thank you for the roof and the quiet. Thank you for being kind when you didn’t have to be.
