Luca grinned as he followed. “That all your animals, then? The chickens and the goats?”
“There’s Sally, too.”
“Sally?”
“The cow. She stays there, too, in the back”—he motioned behind them toward the barn—“when she’s not grazing.”
He paused, squinting out at the long pasture that stretched behind the barn. A smile softened his face when he spotted her, a split second before Luca did: a dark shape in the distance.
“I change my answer. Sally’s not an asshole.” Emerson turned and walked toward the gate. “Sally’s my favorite.” He added over his shoulder, “And then there are the bees. But that’s all.”
“The bees?”
“Yeah. Got a few hives over at the edge of the wildflower fields.”
“Wildflower fields, huh?” Luca caught up to him and stepped through the gate, away from the smell of the barn. He stuck his hands in his pockets as he looked into the distance, trying to hazard a guess as to the location of said fields. “Those sound pretty perfect for a wedding.”
He glanced back when Emerson didn’t respond. He still stood on the other side of the gate, a hand on top of the fence post. His eyes bounced to Luca’s and then immediately away, as if he’d been caught looking at something he shouldn’t have. Luca wondered if Emerson had been checking out his ass.
He’d never had a man check out his ass while holding a basket of fresh eggs before.
He didn’t mind it.
Your boss, he tried to remind himself. Possibly not quite sternly enough.You want this man to be your boss.
“Yeah.” Emerson cleared his throat. “Yeah, that’s the thought. Even though they’re a mess.”
Luca doubted it. The paths were a little rough and tumble, sure; the fields the goats and the hens and Sally thecow grazed in a bit wild. But it was a working farm. Luca thought this was probably how it was all supposed to look. Certainly didn’t appear the total mess Emerson had made it sound like back at the bar, at least not to Luca.
“Let’s go look, then.”
“At the wildflower fields? It’s a bit more of a walk. And it’s getting kind of late.”
“It’s August in Oregon.” Luca shrugged. Daylight seemed to last forever, sometimes, during a Pacific Northwest summer. “We’ve got another hour at least.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Emerson took a few sloping steps back to the barn. Luca watched him place his basket of eggs on a shelf before he returned, latching the gate behind them.
A kind of bubbly lightness filled Luca’s chest when they walked side by side again. He was relieved Emerson had said yes. That there was more to explore.
With a jolt of something like surprise, Luca realized he was having fun.
It had maybe been too long since he’d had fun, if its sudden appearance felt so startling.
How many minutes had gone by since he’d thought about pathetic spreadsheets on his computer? The spreadsheets that had been the reason he’d headed to the brewery tonight in the first place.
But this was better.
Sure, once upon a time, he’d dreamed of…not this. Leaving the family business in a different way. Spending all his time off a boat and inside that cabin of his, with only his thoughts and a blinking cursor. Safe and warm and free to write whatever he wanted to write, to disappear into the worlds he’d spent so long creating. The worlds where he felt most alive, mosthimself.To live however he wanted to live.
But then the spreadsheets had come into it.
No. Thiswouldbe better. Still being outside, keeping his body occupied, mind quiet. He sensed it in his bones with each step he took on Emerson’s farm. The rightness of it.
This could be his fresh start. His time, finally, to move forward. Not just from fishing. But from fucking all of it. His own delusional head.
He’d do what he could to keep this.
