Birding with Benefits

Chapter 41

“So how would this work, exactly? If we wanted to do a little more bird-watching?”

John did a double take, making sure the red-faced man in the floppy hat was talking to him. When he’d thrown together the plan for the free guided walk under the banner of Wings of Discovery, he’d hoped to gather some interest for his private guiding services.

But now that he was faced with that very interest, he just stared and swallowed.

Chris’s elbow hit him hard in the ribs. “John. This nice man is asking about birding.”

John shook his head and cleared his throat, reminding himself to smile as he pulled a business card out of his back pocket. It showed the logo he’d sketched out with Chris and sent to his brother Jared for a more formal rendering, along with his phone number and brand-new website.

“You can contact me here and we can set up a time to go out and get started. I work in thirty-minute increments, so we can plan for whatever you think will work for you—from thirty minutes up to three hours.” The man looked over the card before tucking it into his pocket. “And you don’t need to worry about binoculars or anything,” John added. “I can provide all of that.”

The man turned to his companion, a lanky Black fellow with a white beard and wire-rimmed glasses, and raised his eyebrows. “Could be fun.”

“Definitely,” the other answered. He offered a hand for John to shake. “Great to meet you; we’ll be in touch.”

John shook his hand quickly as Chris bounced beside him. The two men drifted away, still looking around at the trees and across the small pond that served as the centerpiece of Rivera Park.

As soon as there was some distance between them and the budding birders, Chris shoved John hard in the shoulder. “Look at that! Fuck yeah, John. Clients are lining up.”

“It was one client.” Still, John couldn’t repress his smile. For an event thrown together so quickly, it had been a success. It might have made sense to spend more time planning, but he couldn’t risk losing his momentum or letting his old doubts retake their space in his brain. So he’d decided to just get the hell started.

Chris ripped open a granola bar and took a big bite, looking content. He’d been eager to join John as his assistant and had been great at chatting with the people who’d come for a taste of bird-watching. “Two clients, actually. And ten other people at the walk, who all got a card from me as they were heading out. And I bet more than half of them will call you, if not more. They were entranced, dude. You have a gift.”

Celeste had said something similar, and he was on the path to letting himself believe it. He’d stopped himself from sending her the information about the walk, which was at the park where their concocted first meeting had taken place. But this step was about John, not about proving anything to Celeste or finding excuses to reach out to her, as much as he wanted to. If Celeste was going to reach a place of openness to their being together, he knew she had to get there on her own.

Chris swung his backpack over his shoulder. “I’ve got to shower before my board meeting. You all good here?”

Chris had joined the board of a local nonprofit that focused on watershed advocacy and restoration, a big step in the “Help Myself” plan he’d drawn up.

“Yeah, I’m good. Board stuff still going well?”

Chris’s face lit up. “It’s so cool, John. Really digging it. We’re planning this community event where kids come and learn all about the watershed, and they said I could bring some snails! I can’t wait.”

As John turned to gather his things, he spotted the two men he’d just talked to. They were shading their eyes and peering across the pond.

Unable to resist the urge to help someone spot a bird, he joined them, pulling a pair of binoculars out of his pack and passing them over. “See something over there?”

One took the binoculars and adjusted them at his eyes. “What is she doing?” He passed the binoculars to his companion.

“She’s holding some kind of sign? It says ‘Hi.’ What in the world?”

John heard Chris gasp and turn, jogging to reach John’s side.

John brought his binoculars to his face and focused. Celeste was standing in her turquoise dress, the one she’d worn the last night he’d seen her. In her hands was a big white poster board with designs swirling around its edges and a single word written in the middle.

HI.

She laid the poster board on the ground in front of her and picked up another from beside her, holding it up next.

CAN WE TALK?

“Can we talk?” The man with the floppy hat passed the binoculars back to his friend. “Who does she want to talk to? You?”

Their voices were like birdsong filtering through John’s head as he kept his eyes trained on Celeste while she reached for the next sign.

I’M HALFWAY THERE, TOO.

“Halfway to what?” Chris was right next to him, his own binoculars back up and at his face. “Where’s she halfway to?”

A great blue heron lifted from its post at the edge of the pond and took flight. As it passed over her, Celeste lifted her chin to watch it fly.

John had never been so happy to have splurged on an expensive pair of binoculars. He could see each escaped strand of Celeste’s ponytail waving around her face in the breeze.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to see an incoming call from Celeste. He showed the screen to Chris, who was beaming. “I’m gonna take this. Have a good meeting, buddy, thanks for coming.”

John raised the binoculars back to his face, training them on Celeste again as he answered the call. “Hi.”

She smiled and bit her lower lip, holding her phone in one hand and still gripping the sign in the other.

“Hi.” Then she laughed into the phone. “Looks like Chris is giving us some privacy.”

John turned to see Chris walking away with an arm around each of the straggling new birders, talking to them enthusiastically as he directed them toward the parking lot. John heard the words snail and watershed and imagined they were halfway through a lecture about snail ecology already.

He turned back to look at Celeste. “Stay where you are. I’ll come over.”

She shook her head, toying with the hem of her dress. “No, we’ll meet in the middle. You head left and I’ll go right.”

A minute later, John turned the corner on the path and saw her as she gasped and skidded to a halt in the loose gravel of the trail, her face flushed. She gripped her posters in one hand, her backpack hanging from her shoulders.

The last few feet between them felt like a mile. She’d shown up, posters and all, but John was still afraid she might flee at any minute. Her feet crunched on the path as she closed the distance between them, stopping just close enough for him to reach out and touch her, if he dared.

He kept his arms at his sides for now. “How did you know I’d be here?”

“Morgan told me.” Her voice was quiet, more timid than he’d heard her before. “She saw it on Instagram.” A smile cracked on her face. “The walk was a great idea. How’d it go?”

“It was good.” Great, actually. But not exactly what he wanted to talk about. He cocked his head. “Morgan told you I’d be here? So you two are okay?”

Celeste shrugged, but she was smiling. “Yeah. Not perfect, but okay for sure. She helped me with the signs.”

She held one up briefly, and he got a better look at the designs that bordered the edges. Vines and flowers, intricately drawn, interspersed with hearts and hand-drawn emojis. John laughed at a particularly enthusiastic yellow face with red heart eyes.

“Em helped, too,” Celeste said, following his gaze.

Seeing her mouth upturned and hearing the laugh like music from her lips was almost more than he could take.

“Could you,” he forced out, “tell me why you’re here?” The signs seemed clear, but he had to hear it from her.

Celeste leaned the posters against a tree and took one step closer. “I’m here because one morning on my porch you told me I was brave, and I’m trying to be brave again.” Another step. “I had this story in my head of what it meant for me to…” She swallowed. “Fall in love. And it’s hard for me to let that go, but I’m trying.”

She took another step and reached for his hand, twisting her fingers with his. “You asked if I could be open to this. I am.”

John closed the distance between them and cradled her face in his hand. “Yeah?”

She nodded and swiped her bottom lip with her tongue. “Yeah.” Her pulse thumped against his thumb where it rubbed just under her jaw. “I’m open to finding something that fits us and what we need, even if we don’t know exactly what it looks like yet. But it’s scary.”

“I know. I’m scared, too.” Celeste made him want things he’d given up on, and made him aware that the world was even bigger than he’d imagined. “From the start, you’ve been a whirlwind, and I don’t want to slow any of that down. You aren’t too much for me, Celeste.”

She sighed, leaning into him. “I know that. But I might need reminders sometimes.” Her hands pressed against his chest, fingers curling into his T-shirt. “And you need to talk to me, tell me when I push too hard.”

“I will.” John kissed her jaw, inhaling deep to catch the sweet, familiar tang of peppermint.

“Wait.” She breathed hard. “There’s one more part of my plan. After the signs and the talking.”

“I think we need privacy for that,” he murmured against her skin, wrapping an arm around her waist.

She giggled and pushed him away. “Not that, you dirty man! I mean, yes that. But this first.”

Celeste reached a hand to her ponytail, pulling it through her fingers, then smiled at him. “I wanted to ask you, officially, if you’ll be my person.”

“Your person?”

She nodded, looking so sweetly shy he could melt. “?‘Boyfriend’ doesn’t seem right for you. But I heard someone just use ‘person’ and I liked it. So, do you? Want to be?”

Her nervousness was as endearing as it was ridiculous. Who wouldn’t want to be this woman’s person? She could hike eight miles without blinking and talk for hours about different adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. Everything she did—from parenting to birding—was done with passion and dedication.

He cupped her face with both hands. “Do you want to be my person?”

She nodded, her lips parting.

“Then we’re people, together.” His mouth landed on hers, smiling and open. Kissing Celeste was falling underwater and losing all sense of direction. It was the vast Arizona sky with no up or down.

Eventually they separated to gasp a few deep breaths, but Celeste kept her arms wrapped tight around John’s neck. He walked her back until she was pressed against the rough bark of a cottonwood as his hand slid from her back around the front of her body, gripping her hip bone.

He smiled against her mouth, then kissed her again, harder this time, pressing his body against hers.

“Oh, John,” she gasped and laughed into his mouth. “Did you bring some wood from your shop, or are you just happy to see me?”

His laugh filled the space around them, free and open. He pecked at her lips, shaking his head. “I missed you. I really did.”

Speaking the truth about how he felt with her, and without her, left him feeling as light as the air around them.

Celeste traced his smile with her fingers. “I missed you, too.”

They locked eyes as her fingers trailed down his cheek. John knew what Celeste was giving him with just a simple statement, and how vulnerable it must make her feel.

It made him want to repay her gesture tenfold, to shower her with his trust and gratitude until she was writhing beneath him, moaning his name.

“Maybe we should go.” His mouth moved along her jaw. “Spend some time at my place.”

Celeste caught his mouth with hers, kissing him deeply. When they broke apart again, breathing hard, she was smirking. “First, can we—can we walk around a little? Go birding? I’ve missed it, and soon you’re going to be busy with all these new clients.”

“You know a perk of running my own business?” John tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “I can be as busy or not busy as I want. And I’ll never be too busy to go birding with you.”

Celeste leaned into his hand, all but purring. “I’m glad to hear that, because you wouldn’t want to lose me as a partner. I don’t know if you heard, but I was the most improved birder in this year’s Arizona Ornithological Society contest. I have an award to prove it and everything.”

“Do you?”

She nodded, looking haughty and cute as hell. “And speaking of contests, I thought maybe we could have one of our own?”

John buzzed with the energy that came from being near Celeste, like anything might happen.

“First to see five birds wins,” she said. “The loser is the first to get naked back at my house.”

He drew in a long breath. “It sounds like no matter what, we both win.”

The playful, heated look on her face said it all. “That’s the point. You in?”

John stepped back into Celeste, crowding her against the tree. The sun streaked through the branches, shining against the chestnut sheen of her hair as a red-winged blackbird trilled from the reeds along the nearby pond. His mouth brushed hers softly before he pulled her bottom lip between his teeth, tugging just like he knew she liked it. “You’re on.”