He remembered all of his customers: every business owner, the organizers of every farmers’ market, every single one of his CSA members. Just like he knew every single crop that still needed picking, every hen that was still laying, every inch of the property that needed weeding, every bed that would soon need prepping for winter. Emerson had always been able to remember everything. His brain was a stockpile of information.
He just couldn’t take that information and turn it into enough profit—enough earnings against the massive mortgage, the credit card payments, Jansel’s salary, the taxes and the repairs and the supplies and the vet bills—to make it make sense. To be able to hire more people. To make it all work.
It took Emerson a second to realize the beautiful man’s smile had faded.
“Yeah,” he said, face turning thoughtful. He took another sip of beer. “So. Short King Farms is struggling?”
“What farm isn’t? I mean, the farm itself has been good,great, in terms of the land and health of crops and everything; it’s just—” God, Emerson loved the actual farming. And the land was so, so good. Had only dealt Emerson grace. It all got more exciting every year. He was the luckiest son of a bitch there ever was, in so many ways. Sometimes, when he got too in his head like this, when he spent too long with the business side of it all, he forgot. And then he got up at dawn the next morning and went outside again, and he remembered.
He knew he had to keep remembering the deep-down good stuff. He had lost his marriage because of this farm. If he woke up one day anddidn’tstill love it?—
If he woke up one day and didn’t have the farm at all, whether he loved it or not?—
He didn’t know what he would do with himself then.
“Things are supposed to be better for us small-time folks,” he started, “compared to the industrialized farms thathave to deal with the Farm Bill and all that.” Emerson didn’t have to fuck with a government subsidy, and he never would. “But profit margins are still thin. And I lost my…business partner last year, and I promised some friends they could get married there in September. I need the money they’re giving me for it, and I’m happy to be part of their big day, but my hu—business partner always handled events, and marketing, and all of that. And now he’s gone, and I can’t afford to hire someone to take his place, and the farm is such a mess?—”
Emerson couldn’t help it. He covered his face with his hands. Again.
“September isn’t very far away,” the man noted.
“I am so fucked,” Emerson concluded. He’d skipped, like, seventy-five percent of the details of the whole story, but the conclusion was definitive.
“What kind of work do you need help with, exactly?”
Emerson dropped his hands and blew out a breath.
“Honestly, I just need more farmhands. Ben and Alexei—they’re the ones getting married—have already planned most of the wedding; I just need to make sure the farm looks acceptable for the public. We’ve held small events there before”—when he was still married, when Jayden was there with his smooth smile and social skills to make sure everything went right—“but this will be the biggest one we’ve ever done, with a bunch of people flying in from the East Coast and…I need help getting the farm under control. I want it to look good. But I’ve been working sixteen hours a day all summer and there’s never enough time and”—Emerson’s breath hitched, a small but audible sound, before the final words rushed out—“I feel like I’m drowning.”
Only a beat of silence passed, and Emerson knew it was probably a shorter beat than all the moments that had passed before, but this one gaped open, loud and ugly, the sounds ofthe rest of the brewery dimming in Emerson’s ears as he felt on the verge of crying again.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. I don’t even know your name. I haven’t asked a single thing about you! I’m just so tired and came here to get drunk and you’ve been very nice to me but maybe you should talk to someone else now because?—”
Because farming thrived on hard work and routine. Not…this.
Emerson needed to finish this beer and get the hell out of here.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, barely audible to his own ears. “I think I’m going to need to leave soon.”
He sucked down his beer like a frat boy. A more rational person would just leave it, but he had paid for it. Someone had worked hard to make it. Emerson had never been able to let hard-earned things go to waste.
Maybe the man next to him wasn’t fully rational, either. A rational person probably would’ve made their polite leave from a stranger who was clearly starting to unravel.
But he only sat stock still, the thoughtful look on his face turning ever more serious.
“My name is Luca,” he said after Emerson plunked his empty pint glass onto the bar. “And maybe I can help.”
two
On the one hand,maybe Luca was falling back into bad habits.
See: being drawn, like clockwork, to the saddest man at the bar. No matter Luca’s best intentions to be the saddest man at the bar himself.
On the other hand, maybe he was finally taking control of his destiny.
“What do you mean?” Emerson King was staring at him. Luca could feel the heat of it on the side of his face. But Luca could only stare past Matt, out the front windows of the brewery. Past the overgrown grass, the corners of the intermittent buildings, to the ocean. “What kind of help?”
Luca forced himself to shrug, appear casual.
