It was easy to find him once Emerson got close enough, with all the noise Luca was making. Emerson paused at the open door of the third greenhouse, catching his breath. He watched Luca shove old pots with the side of his foot, stack discarded trays with a scowl, squint at the busted windows.
Finally, Emerson couldn’t take it anymore.
“Luca? What are you doing here?”
Luca jumped. Shoulders hunching toward his ears, he turned and stuck his hands in his pockets.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Emerson said back, fighting a smile. He wasstill confused, still hurt about Luca’s disappearance, but—it was hard not to smile anyway, seeing Luca’s face again.
Luca cleared his throat.
“You, um. Told me you needed to fix your greenhouses. To extend your growing season.”
Emerson nodded slowly. He was sure he had said that, at various points.
“Right. But why are you here…now?”
“I’ve never actually looked at them before. I wanted to see…if there was anything I could do.”
What?Emerson thought. But then he changed gears, took a cautious step forward.
“Fixing the glass would be expensive,” Emerson said instead. The old school structures, sturdy but long abandoned, had already been here when they’d purchased the property. Most folks didn’t use glass anymore. “But you can achieve basically the same functionality through investing in heavy duty clear tarps. That was what I was going to try to do, soon, if I could. But we have to take care of all the broken glass first. Which will be tricky.”
Luca’s shoulders creeped closer to his ears with every step Emerson took. Emerson paused when he was a few feet away.
“Luca?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
Luca was staring in the other direction. Emerson had hoped talking about the dumb greenhouses would help break the ice, soothe Luca’s clearly chaotic energy, but he still hadn’t made eye contact. Emerson watched him swallow.
“It’s not your fault, Emerson,” Luca said, swinging his head back around but not yet looking Emerson in the eye. “It’s not your fault that you and Jayden got divorced.”
Emerson frowned, trying to take in the sudden change in topic.
“I don’t—I think you’re trying to be nice to me, and Iappreciate it, Luca, but it is my fault. I’ve accepted that, though. It’s okay.”
“No, it’snot—” Luca attempted to scrunch his hands in his hair. It was getting long enough that he could almost do that. Emerson could see the curl in it now, closer to how it had appeared in that dating app profile picture. It was driving Emerson wild.
“It’s not your fault.Hemade the choice to move here with you,hewas all in.Hemade the choice to then leave. But I’m not saying—it’s not his fault either, okay? Sometimes you love people, and I know how much you and Jayden clearly fucking love each other, but it just doesn’t work out. Like you said, he needed to be back in Portland and Emerson, youcannotleave this farm. And that’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that you were born to be a farmer. It’s not your fault that your parents fucking abused you. It’s not your fault that—fuck.”
Luca kicked at an old, cobwebbed watering can, like a child having a tantrum, and it made Emerson jump. He’d never seen Luca this worked up. It scared him a little, like any display of anger still scared him, still brought him back to his childhood home, even if he could view that fear with a more clinical point of view now. Luca must have seen Emerson flinch, though, because he stilled, breathing out, hands in his hair again.
“Fuck. Fuck, I’m sorry Emerson. But it’s not—not your fault that industrialized farming has made us all conditioned to cheap food prices and you’re likely not getting the profit you deserve! But you’re not going to lose this place, okay? You can’t leave here, no matter what. Youcan’t. I won’t allow it.”
Emerson stared. He didn’t—he didn’t know what was happening.
“Luca,” Emerson said, shaking his head. Ever since he’d walked into this greenhouse, he’d been trying to go along with Luca’s mood, but Emerson needed to back up now. Get hisbearings. “Why did you leave last night? I was looking forward, all day, to decompressing with you when it was all over. And not—” He winced. “I don’t just mean sex. We could’ve collapsed into bed fully clothed and fallen asleep like that. I spent a significant amount of time, in fact, throughout the day, fantasizing about doing just that. I only…wanted to be with you.”
Luca hung his head. Something seemed to drop off his shoulders, the veneer of his anger and frustration, until he only seemed tired.
“I just—I needed some space.”
Emerson took a deep breath.
Too many things had gone unsaid for too long between Emerson and Jayden over the years. Emerson always too afraid to push, to hear the real answers. Until Jayden reached his limits, and spoke the truth for both of them.
Emerson knew, at once and with certainty, that he didn’t want to play that game anymore. He didn’t want it to be that way with Luca. Something clicked awake in his brain, a coin flipping through the air, shiny and crisp. A new chance.
