“How do I look?” he asked, half trepidation and half bravery,both curious and embarrassed at being perceived by this gorgeous man. “That look on my face.”
For the first time since Emerson had noticed his presence, the man glanced at him. Shrugged again.
“I don’t know. Serious. Desperate.”
“Christ.” Emerson covered his face with his hands. Jayhadalways told him he couldn’t hide a single emotion.
“Sorry.” The change in the man’s voice made Emerson drop his palms. A hint of color had risen in the man’s cheeks, that secret of a smile wiped away as he shifted on his stool. “I don’t mean to be an asshole. It’s just a look I, ah, recognized. I’ve been there before, so.” Another chin tilt toward the bartender. Matt, apparently. “But I’ll leave you alone.”
“No, it’s okay.” Emerson found himself laughing a little. The man had somehow said it without judgment, and, well. He rubbed his face. “You’re not wrong. Although I’m, uh…” His cheeks heated underneath his fingertips. “Not necessarily desperate in that way.”
Except—the divorce had been finalized for a few months now. Jayden had moved out a year ago. Emerson had signed up for a dating app once, but he’d never actually used it. Farmers didn’t have time to date. At least, farmers who were as overwhelmed and under water as Emerson was.
Emerson was possibly also desperate inthatway.
But it was true that sex wasn’t what he’d come for—he’d come here to feel sorry for himself in the outside world instead of his inside one, and he’d been doing a bang-up job of it—and this perceptive stranger didn’t need to know everythingabout him. Even if it was freeing, admitting his desperation out loud.
“I just…came here to look, for a little while. Oh god. Does that make me a creep?”
“Nah.” The quarter-smile returned to the stranger’s lips, accompanied, to Emerson’s extreme relief, by a bit of a laugh. “Nothing wrong with that. I think at least half of Lincoln County’s queer population comes to this bar every now and then to do just that. Matt knows his importance.”
Emerson smiled. It had been obvious from the start of this bizarre conversation that this man assumed Emerson’s attraction to Matt, even if Emerson was only, in truth, mildly attracted to the bartender at best. Still, hearing the man sayqueerout loud, attaching it to the both of them, made a swell of pride lift in Emerson’s chest. Most people looked at him, his receding hairline and faded clothes and overall Boring White Man exterior, and assumed he was an accountant who played golf for fun. Not that there weren’t queer accountants who played golf for fun. Regardless—being that Emerson had only realized his own queerness a few years ago, it pleased him that this ridiculously attractive guy had chosen to sit next to him, had chosen to speak to him, had seen something of himself in kind so confidently that he’d called it out.
Although Emerson supposed openly ogling the bartender had helped with that assertion.
“He was fun, though, huh?” he asked. Perhaps inappropriately, but the man smiled, that hint of color creeping into his cheeks again.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “So what are you desperate about, then?”
“Oh.” Emerson sighed. “Just my farm.” It slid past his lips, lubricated by the beer and the bar and the out-of-time-and-space quality of talking with a hot stranger.
He was a bit proud of himself for this too, though. Even four years after they’d purchased the land with the help of Emerson’s in-laws, he still sometimes stumbled over introducing himself as a farmer. People looked at you, sometimes, like you’d said you worked in the circus, or in the coal mines, or…something most people didn’t do anymore.
This man looked at him, too, but only raised a neutral brow.
“Justyour farm?” Those lips shifted into another teasing barely-there-smile. Was this man flirting with him? Emerson was pretty sure he was flirting with him. Which was hard to believe, being as this man was so clearly out of Emerson’s league. But then again, there were slimmer pickings when you lived in a small town. Maybe you saw a sad man eyeing the pretty bartender and took what you could get. Either way, Emerson’s face warmed under the weight of the curve that deepened on the man’s cheek when he contemplated smiling. “Having a farm doesn’t seem like a small thing.”
“No.” Emerson returned his gaze to Matt, the whimsy of perhaps being flirted with swirling away as quickly as it had appeared. “No, it’s not a small thing at all. That’s sort of the whole problem.”
“Ah.” The man took another sip of his beer. After a long moment, a moment that felt almost peculiarly comfortable, he asked, “Want to talk about it?”
Emerson stared at the bartender for another thirty seconds.
And then, pathetically, he hung his head in his hands once more.
Where to even start?
Perhaps the fact that he desperately needed more employees, especially now that Parker and Myriah, his summer help, had just left for the season. With teaching being their actual full-time jobs, they had to head back soon for before-the-school-year training. But Emerson couldn’t afford anyone else. He couldn’t afford anything.
Or maybe he could lead with the truth that, while he still clung with gratitude to any time with Daisy he got, he had no idea how to be a single dad and run a farm. He’d thought it’dget easier, somewhere over these last twelve months, but it never had.
Maybe this man would find his broken two-wheel tractor or rotting fence posts interesting. Or the fact that he’d maxed out another credit card last week when one of the goats needed a visit from the vet. Again. Or he could cry a while about his busted greenhouses, or how glad he was that market season would be coming to an end soon(ish), even though farmers’ markets were one of the main pillars of his business plan. He was just…so fucking worn out.
Oh!Or! The best one of all! Maybe he could rhapsodize over the reality that he’d promised two lovely people a space to get married in a month. And without Jayden, he had no idea how he was going to pull it off. Short King Farms was barely presentable to a farmhand, let alone a hundred strangers.
“You all right there?”
“I”—Emerson took a deep breath—“need help.”
