Page 72 of Sunshine
Dylan
I spend the restof the week racking my brain for a romantic place to take Poppy for our next date. I can’t use the restaurant again—the risk that someone might find us there is too great, and with Charlie’s plans to expand the business, the private dining room will soon be open to actual customers. I can’t serve food off a table that twelve hours earlier was used for a very different purpose. And I can’t keep explaining away the scratches.
The days fly past, my head spinning with plans and my veins firing with adrenaline, and an almost hazy cloud of impatience and exhilaration follows me everywhere I go. I feel like a teenager trying to come up with ways to sneak around with his girlfriend. I want to talk to her. I want to hold her hand. I want to kiss her all the damn time. The wait to be alone together is a perfect kind of pain.
When the answer finally comes to me, I feel like an idiot it didn’t occur to me sooner.
The old barn house on Silver Leaf Ranch was barely worth the name twenty-odd years ago, a bare-bones building with roomsand amenities that housed stable hands when business was healthy and we had at least a dozen horses. When times grew lean, and we had to sell the horses, we boarded up the house and all but forgot about it.
Last summer, things changed. The money from Charlie’s corporate sponsorship deal started coming in, Daisy reappeared in Aster Springs, and Chord bought her—and Izzy—new horses. Then Charlie decided it was time to renovate the barn. For what purpose yet, we haven’t decided, but I’ve got my suspicions.
So, on Friday night, after I dash home to tuck Izzy into her bed and then return to The Hill to finish dinner service, I get in my truck—which I conveniently left in the restaurant parking lot earlier in the day—and drive around to the still-in-progress barn house rebuild. Charlie hired the architect who designed Chord’s home on the far side of our family’s property, and it’s almost a knockdown and rebuild to add new features that match the architecture of the other buildings on Silver Leaf Ranch. It’s already a beautiful property to look at with its pitched roof and glass walls. The inside still needs work, with its bare drywall, unpolished hardwood floors, and toolboxes stacked in corners. But the hot water is running and it’s closer to complete than not. And maybe I’m too far gone to see it clearly, but the kid in me thinks hiding out here sounds fun. Romantic. An adventure.
I only hope Poppy thinks so too.
Moving as quickly as I can in the near-complete darkness, I collect the supplies I’ve hidden in the back seat of my truck and set about preparing a space in the soon-to-be living room. Once I’ve cleared out any construction materials and the floor is swept clean, I go back to the truck and retrieve the stack of blankets and pillows, the box of candles, the twinkle lights, and the basket with bread and olives and wine.
When it’s all arranged the way I want it, I send two quick texts. The first to Daisy to say I need to stay behind at work to finish offpaperwork. The second to Poppy, asking her to meet me here as soon as she can.
I’m pacing the floor in front of the newly installed oversized glass windows when my phone pings with two replies, one right after the other.
Daisy
No problem. Poppy’s heading home now, but Charlie and I are here with Izzy, so there’s no need to rush.
Poppy
On my way.
I read each message quickly, staring at the screen as the words swim a little, but I swat away any guilt I feel about lying to my sister. What she doesn’t know won’t harm her, but the truth could hurt us all. Then I scroll through my playlist and hook my phone up to the portable speaker hidden behind the mountain of pillows, and I wait.
Fifteen minutes later, headlights appear on the horizon, and my heart thuds harder with every beat as I watch them draw closer. Poppy stops her car beside mine, and before she has a chance to open her door, I’m there to do it for her.
She steps out with curious eyes and a pleased mouth. “What have you done, Dylan?”
I pick up her hand, moving her aside so I can close the car door, then lead her back to the house. My steps slow as we approach the open door, and I’m suddenly—weirdly—nervous. “Nothing,” I mumble, trying to manage her expectations. “Just…this.”
We step into the house and, in half a dozen steps, round a corner to reveal the space I’ve created. Poppy squeezes my hand and presses herself against me.
“Dylan,” she murmurs as her gaze bounces across the room, and I watch her pick out all the little details I hoped she’d notice. “It’s beautiful.”
Blankets line the floor in the middle of the room, layers of them to create a soft space to lie. Pillows are scattered in a circle, and outside of those, a dozen short candles flicker and cast shadows on the drywall. A bottle of red wine stands half empty beside two filled glasses and a basket of crusty sourdough with a mason jar of Silver Leaf olive oil. Through the wall of glass windows at the front of the building, the black night twinkles with a million tiny stars. There really is no sky like the one over Sonoma.
She’s taking in the room, but all I can see is her when I reply, “Yeah. Beautiful.”
Poppy looks up at me with self-conscious suspicion, then she shakes her head and gestures at the house. “When do you think this place will be finished?”
I drag a hand through my hair as I guide her to the blankets. “Uh…another couple of months. Ten weeks, maybe.”
She folds her legs beneath her, and we sit facing each other as she accepts the glass of wine I offer. “Do you think you might live here when it’s done?”
I glance around at the half-done interiors, the potential already clear in the lines of the high ceiling and the majesty of the glass walls. It’s going to be an incredible property, but even though I sometimes wish I lived somewhere other than the house I grew up in, I can’t picture myself in a home like this.
“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “I prefer the simplicity of the main house and the memories that go with it. I like to believe that even though Mom and Dad never met Izzy and they aren’t aroundto see their granddaughter grow, something of them still exists within those four walls, and I don’t want to give that up. Not yet.”
Poppy rests her chin on her arms, arms tights around her knees, and drops her head to one side as she looks up at me. Tiny flames dance in her contemplative eyes and make her reddish-blonde hair glimmer, and she looks so pretty, so perfect, that I’m dangerously close to saying something I’ll regret.
What if I asked her to stay the way Daisy intends to do? Would she build a life here in her hometown? Enroll in college the way we talked about? We could keep things the way they are for as long as she wanted them to stay this way, or we could stand on the ledge of what if and jump together. We could tell Daisy the truth. See if there’s a future where we do this for real.
