He’s quiet for a moment, staring out at the garden.
“Because he represents everything I hate. People who come into a place and try to change it into something it’s not. Who see a community like Copper Creek and think only about what value they can extract from it.”
“Yeah, but it’s more than that, though, isn’t it?”
He sighs. “When I came home from overseas, I felt like everyone was trying to change me. The VA wanted to put me on a dozen different medications. Therapists wanted me to talk about things I wasn’t ready to talk about. Everyone had an opinion about what I should do, who I should be. And I just wanted—” He stops and swallows. “I just wanted somewhere to exist. Somewhere that would let me be broken for a while without trying to fix me.”
“And Copper Creek did that?”
“Well, Copper Creek and Mavis. They gave me space to figure myself out. Didn’t push. Didn’t judge. Just accepted.” He looks back toward the garden. “And Gary Allen wants to change all that.”
“Yeah. He wants to turn this place into something profitable, sleek, polished, marketable.”
“If that happens, if Copper Creek just becomes another tourist destination, then the thing that saved me won’t exist anymore for the next person who needs it.”
I reach over and take his hand. “We won’t let it happen.”
“We might not be able to stop it.”
“Maybe not. But we can try. And whatever happens, you won’t be doing it alone.”
He looks at me. “You mean that?”
“I mean it.”
He squeezes my hand, and we sit there on his grandmother’s porch, watching the garden grow, holding on to each other and the fragile hope that some things are worth fighting for.
That evening, as promised, I cook for Wyatt. It’s nothing fancy, just roast chicken with lemon and herbs, some roasted vegetables, and a simple salad. But I put my full effort into it, paying the kind of attention Meredith talked about in the garden.
My apartment looks different when I’m preparing to host someone, smaller somehow, more intimate. I’ve set the tiny table by the window with Mavis’s eclectic dishes and cloth napkins I found in a drawer. I even picked wildflowers from behind the bar and put them in a mason jar.
Wyatt arrives at seven, freshly showered with damp hair curling at his temples, and pauses in the doorway.
“You made it nice,” he says.
“I made it mine.” The words surprise me even as I say them. “Or I’m trying to make it mine, I mean.
He steps inside and looks around at the wildflowers, the table, and takes in the smells coming from the tiny kitchen. “It suits you,” he says. “This place. I couldn’t really see it at first, but now I can.”
“What changed?”
“You did.” He looks at me. “You’re different than when you got here, more yourself.”
“I feel more myself.”
We stand there looking at each other.
“Wine,” I offer, breaking the spell before I do something stupid, like cross the room and kiss him square on the lips.
“Please.”
We drink wine on the sofa while the chicken finishes in the oven. We talk about nothing important, just about Meredith’s garden, funny customers at the bar, and Presley’s latest song. It’s an easy conversation, comfortable. Underneath it, there’s an awareness, a current running between us that we’re both trying to ignore. Moment to moment.
When dinner is ready, we sit at the tiny table and eat. The chicken is good, better than good, actually. And Wyatt makes appropriately appreciative noises, whether sincere or merely polite. Either way, they make me smile.
“Where did you learn to cook?” he asks.
“I actually taught myself, in college, mostly. My mother thought cooking was for the housekeepers, not the Whitfields. I had a tiny apartment and no money, and takeout got expensive.” I shrug. “Turns out I like it. The process, you know, the measuring, the mixing.”
