With a quiet sigh at himself, Luca opened a new spreadsheet.
Budget, he typed at the top.
Things had been going okay financially, these last few weeks he’d been here. The cabin had been consistently booked, which covered his mortgage and utilities, along with his health insurance. He was spending way less on groceries now that Emerson King fed him all the time. Since he’d never gone to school, he didn’t have any student loans; his credit cards were in a pretty good place.
But for the first time, Luca’s cabin wasn’t booked this week. He kept refreshing the app of the company he was using to help manage his reservations, but—nothing, for five full days, until a single overnight checked in on Saturday. Looking at the calendar for the rest of the fall and winter was like a half-filled-in crossword puzzle: spots claimed here and there, but the blank boxes glared so much louder.
He should have predicted this. Of course the Oregon Coast was slower during the winter. But it was only early September; the weather was still good. He personally thought the coast was at its most beautiful in the fall. He knew kids were back in school, but—god, his cabin was a fucking good cabin. Ocean fucking view. There had to be enough retired people, enough childless people, who still wanted a getaway to Greyfin Bay in the fall.
But as he refreshed his app one more time?—
Maybe there weren’t.
And as he typed in numbers he already fucking knew into his spreadsheet, Emerson’s line from the other night now bounced around Luca’s head.
He didn’t know how he was going to make this work.
It was a strange, new feeling, this panic that was dripping into his bloodstream. Fishing was a communal thing: everyone on the boat shared the profits. There had beentimes that were tough, over the years, when the fishing was lean, when the economy fucked with prices. But maybe because it was a family business, something that had always been in the Yaegers’ blood, even those years…they were stressful, but there was this feeling of being in it together. Knowing that they’d get each other through, somehow.
Now that Luca had stepped away from the boats?—
He was on his own.
Which heknew, of course; it was what he had wanted, needed. But he’d been processing it for so long on an emotional level, a mental health level. He hadn’t really sat down until now and realized what it meant financially. How fucking embarrassing. To try to stand on your own two feet for the first time in your entire life at the age of thirty-three.
And realize you couldn’t.
Luca’s phone buzzed on the table. Grateful for the chance to escape his laptop, Luca picked it up to see a photo of Kjell and Enzo on a soccer field in the family group chat. Enzo’s socks, pulled up to his knees over his shinguards, were slashed with grass stains. Kjell had his hand on Enzo’s shoulder as he leaned down toward the camera, tongue hanging out of his mouth while his free hand made a hang ten gesture, like a stoned teenager.
Two goals today!!!
Except Kjell wasn’t a stoned teenager. He was a fucking engineer. He was a husband and a father, the owner of a house three times the size of Luca’s cabin. A real home, in a suburb, not some single-room dwelling on the side of a bluff. Kjell never discussed his finances, but Luca knew he had to make far more than anyone in the Yaeger family ever had slinging salmon.
More texts from the family dinged in.Hell yeah Enz, Dagny said. Luca hearted the photo. It was nice. He appreciated the regular family chat more than ever, now that he’dbeen cut off from the chats from the boats. This wholesome photo shouldn’t make him feel like such a loser.
Luca flipped the phone face down and stared back at his spreadsheet.
Would he have to get rid of his cabin? If he wanted to stay on Short King Farms without a paycheck, he didn’t know how he’d keep affording the cabin when it wasn’t booked full-time.
Except…he fucking loved that cabin on the bluff.
It had been the one thing that was fullyhis, where he’d found the solitude he’d always craved after moving out of his loud childhood home. The thing he’d loved and cared for throughout the majority of his adulthood.
And what happened if hedidsell it? Then he’d truly have no income. And even if Emerson housed and fed him, he still neededsomething. He still needed to pay for his car, his health insurance, his life.
What if Luca sold the cabin that was the crowning achievement of his whole adult life and went all in on Short King Farms instead—convinced Emerson to give him a small wage or profit share or something—and all of Emerson’s neuroses were well-founded, as they’d certainly seemed the other night? What if the farm went under, too?
Even more realistically, what happened when Emerson realized fucking Luca all the time actually wasn’t the best idea? Because he was still in love with his ex-husband. Because Luca was only a temporary distraction to help him chill out, and one day the harvest would be over for the year, and the wedding would have come and gone, and just like the slowing of reservations for Luca’s cabin, Emerson wouldn’t need him around anymore anyway, but thanks so much for all the free labor and orgasms.
It had felt like the grown-up thing to do. Sit here and make this spreadsheet. But it wasn’t telling Luca anything new. It only made him feel worse.
Maybe this Spreadsheet of Failure was his worst one yet.
Except—he still really fucking hated his querying one.
“Hey,” Luca said suddenly. Desperately. “Emerson. Do you think you’d ever be able to, like, ask your parents for a loan? To help you with this place?”
He couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation on the couch. There had to be some way to save this place. There had to be some way to make this all work.
