“So you’re a beekeeper too,” he said, taking a few quick shuffles to keep up with Emerson’s strides.
“Eh,” Emerson replied. “An amateur one.” And then, a small self-deprecating laugh. “I’m an amateur at all this, really.”
Luca looked around as they walked up the dirt road toward a tree line in the distance.
“Doesn’t look very amateurish to me. How long’ve you been here?”
“Four years,” Emerson answered after a beat. Another stretch of silence hung in the air until he added, “Feels longer, though.”
“Makes sense,” Luca said. He’d always wondered how time passed for folks who had regular jobs, tasks that weren’t dependent on the finicky cycles of the sea or the land, the whims of a changing Earth. Some fishing seasons felt like decades.
“Up here,” Emerson said next. “I’m thinking Ben and Lex will probably want to get married up here.”
Luca and Emerson crested a small hill. And shit.
Of course a person would want to get married here.
Life stretched out before them: wildflowers and high grasses, golden in the light, almost as far as Luca could see. The velvety hills of the Coastal Range rose behind them. Insects buzzed all around; birdsong filtered across the expanse.
Luca didn’t know the names of any of it: the flowers, the birds. But he knew howit felt to be there.
“Wow,” he said. Insufficient with his words, as always.
“I eventually want to harvest up here, too,” Emerson said. “Get on a better rotation schedule for the crops. My ex always wanted to turn this into his fall festival fantasy.” A warm, wistful look stole over his face. “A corn maze, a pumpkin patch. I don’t know. That’ll probably never happen here, not like he imagined it, but crops like that, that need more space. I’d be interested in trying that sometime, up here.”
Like anyone, Luca couldn’t deny the comfort of a corn maze or a pumpkin patch. But right now, looking at the bounty in front of them, the riot of color, the natural wildness of it—Luca couldn’t picture this place being anything but this.
“For now, though,” Emerson finished, “it works for the bees.”
“Right,” Luca said, still feeling a bit stunned, a bit humbled. This man tended all of this. “Where are those?”
“Those boxes, back there.”
Luca followed the direction of Emerson’s gesture. He could just barely make out the small mountain of boxes Emerson referred to.
“Do you wear one of those white suits when you harvest the honey?” he asked after a moment. “Or do you just bare knuckle it?”
Although as soon as he’d asked?—
Seriously now, how did either possibility seem sexy?
Emerson released another tiny laugh.
“I, uh—” He shook his head. “I have a suit, yeah.”
Luca recalled Emerson tenderly caressing a leaf of lettuce. The way he’d smiled down at the eggs in his basket, called them pretty. Even the way he’d stared at Matt in the bar had been obvious but somehow politely restrained. Luca could fill in the unspoken words.I’m not the kind of guy to stick my bare hand into a beehive.
But maybe all farmers were a mixture of soft and hard. Maybe you needed both to get the job done.
And either way, Emerson still stuck his arm inside a buzzing beehive.
“Badass,” Luca assessed.
Another small laugh. Luca was already starting to grow a little addicted to it. Complimenting Emerson, digging under his skin a bit. Making him laugh.
It was okay, probably. Making his boss laugh.
“Anyway.” Emerson scratched the back of his neck. “The fields work for the bees, but it’s gonna take some doing to make it wedding-ready.”
