Page 96 of At First Dance
“You okay?”
“I will be,” I tell him. “We made rules. Real ones. I gave her Granddad’s acorn.”
“You did what?”
“Shut up,” I say, and he does. Genuinely does. “I want to keep this from turning me into who I was last time—suspicious, defensive, petty, the guy who chooses distance before someone else gets a chance to choose it for him.”
“You’re not that guy,” Crew says, and for once, he doesn’t varnish it with a joke. “You’re the one who builds. You stayed when it was hard. Do that now too.”
The line goes gentle. “Also? If you ever decide you want to surprise her, I’ll make sure your dumb flannel and my dumb face don’t have to share a doorway with cameras.”
I let that sit in the pocket where a yes might live later. “Appreciate it.”
After we hang up, I walk the fence line to the creek and let the water sound pull me back into myself. The stones look the way they looked before she came and the way they’ll look when we’re old. It’s hard not to like a truth that steady.
My phone vibrates at exactly the minute the flight tracker I didn’t pull up would have promised. Her name takes the whole screen, and the sight of it hits me in the knees like a clean tackle, which I will never admit to Crew.
“Hey,” I answer, and the word hurts good.
“Hey,” she says, breath a little winded like she ran through the terminal to make the rule true. “I’m on the ground.”
“What can you see?” I ask because we said we would.
“People pretending not to stare,” she says dryly, and then the smile comes through her voice like sun through leaves. “A sign with my name spelled wrong. A kid in a dinosaur shirt who won’t let go of a paper airplane. He’s winning.”
“Good,” I say. “I like him already.”
“Me too.” There’s a shuffle, and I hear the shape of her moving. “Ride’s here. I’ll call when I get to the hotel.”
My throat goes thick for half a breath. “Ivy—”
“Say it,” she prompts softly.
“I’m proud of you,” I tell her. “Not for the tickets and the headlines. For the way you told me and didn’t flinch.”
Silence that isn’t empty.
“Thank you,” she says, small and big at the same time. “Talk soon.”
After the call, I walk to the barn, not because there’s something to fix but because I like the smell of hay when I’m feeling too human. Butterscotch complains the second she sees me, tail wiggling like she’s trying out a dog life by mistake. I feed her, scratch the spot behind her ear that makes her eyes go ridiculous, and swear not to text Ivy a hundred photos of a calf like a man who has lost his mind.
Two hours. Two fence posts set. One lunch I actually taste. At 3:17, my phone chimes with a photo of a hotel window, Nashville skyline beyond, and in the glass a faint reflection of a woman wearing my stupid acorn like it belongs there. The message:Rule check: I’m safe. Handler tolerable. Room smells like bleach and lavender. Thinking about your porch light.
I don’t send words back. I send a photo of my porch with the string lights off because it’s daylight and a thumb up over the switch. Her typing bubbles flash, disappear, then flash again.Ivy:
Turn it on anyway.
I do. Even if I have to pull the shade to see if they’re working, even if it’s a little crazy. It steadies me like a hand at the small of my back.
That night, I’m supposed to go into town for darts with Holt. I text him a rain check and get back a string of dramatic GIFs, then a simple:Proud of you too, grump. I stand in the driveway with a cheap pizza box and a stubborn ache in my chest and decide being a grown-up sometimes means letting yourself be a little bit of a teenager again. So I put the pizza in the passenger seat, drive the dirt track to the back field, and park under the quiet sky like a man practicing for her return.The quilt rides shotgun now. So does the jar of tea I didn’t drink because I didn’t want to finish the last one without her.
I fall asleep there, shoes off, my forearm over my eyes. Even though she took my usual hoodie, I don another one because I’m not above entirely sentimental acts. The owls wake me after midnight, and the first thing I do is look at the porch. The light halos the edges just enough to see the front step. It feels like faith, which is not a thing I would have known how to say a month ago.
The phone buzzes on my chest for a video request.
I swipe without thinking, and the screen fills with her—no makeup, hair down to her shoulders in sleep-tangled waves, my acorn glinting at her throat. “I can’t sleep,” she whispers into a hotel room that probably costs more than my tractor is worth. “Tell me something true.”
I point the phone toward the field so she can hear the crickets. “I fell asleep in the truck,” I tell her. “Because it feels like the middle of us.”
