22. Aaron
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AARON
The sun starts to come up as I arrive at the park. I’m the only one here, and I get out, lower the tailgate, and look at the tool belt and lumber I brought with me. I figure I can build a bench in under a half hour, and to add a cover is just a couple of pillars and a pitched roof.
I’ve done races with my dad for a ten-minute door, and I can put long, straight pieces of wood together quick-quick. I smile to myself as I put on my belt, wishing Emma was here to dare me to make this bench in less than an hour.
She’s not, so I have to issue the dare to myself silently.
That done, I head for our plot, more silent talking to myself happening. I’m glad our plot isn’t super deep in the park, because I’m going to have to bring all of that lumber down here. I have to make cuts at the truck, haul it in, and put it together on the plot. With a bench made of cypress wood—a tree native to South Carolina—and the half-barrel, white oak end tables I’m planning to put on each end, the covered bench should make an impressive showpiece for our demo plot.
“Wow,” I say as I approach our plot. Yes, I’d told my parents that Emma’s flowers looked amazing, but I haven’t been here in a couple of weeks. We’re not the only team to have planted something in our plot, but Emma’s flowers are twice as big as anyone else’s.
Ten times as colorful. A hundred times better.
I set down the barrel I reclaimed from a plantation down the road a little bit and separate the halves I’ve already cut. White oak is also native to South Carolina, and my vision for the bench is to provide a place for people to sit and eat lunch. So of course, they need somewhere to put their drinks, their phones, anything else they want to set down for a few minutes while they sit themselves down for a few minutes.
The cypress pillars will come out of the middle of the barrels to support the roof over the bench, and I can’t wait to see this come together. I survey our plot, the sketches Emma and I have gone over right there in my mind.
She’s got sculpted beds along the left side of our plot, and our vision was to have the bench be in the center. As I’m standing there, I’m not sure how a bench and a bunch of blooms will win us twenty-five thousand dollars, but I can’t build a gazebo, benches, picnic tables, and a pavilion all in one spot, even if it is one thousand square feet.
I return to the truck and make my initial cuts for the seat and back of the bench. I carry them to the plot four at a time, and within twenty minutes, I have the bench built. I use my jigsaw to cut out the square holes I need for the pillars, and back to the truck I go to get those cut.
The thing about building—about woodworking specifically—is that it’s like meditation for me. The noise of the saw, the smell of the wood, the feel of the power tools in my hands—it all shuts out the chaos in my brain. I can focus, really focus, in a way I struggle to do with almost anything else. It’s just me and the project, and everything else—the deadlines, the expectations, the what-ifs—fades into the background.
This bench is going to be beautiful. Solid. The kind of thing people will sit on for years, maybe even decades. A place where couples might hold hands, where kids might climb and laugh. A place that lasts.
I cut the lumber for the roof too, and I make a few trips back and forth, sweating like nobody’s business as I do. I screw the half barrels to the bench, then thread the pillars into them and make those solid with three-inch screws.
“This would benefit from cement,” I say to myself and the lightly waving flowers. Then, I could hide the unfinished ends of the barrels and have the pillar down into something super supportive. I don’t want to pour concrete right here on our plot, because our demo can’t be permanent. We’ll be disqualified.
I make a mental note to tell our artist that we’re envisioning the benches on a pad of cement, and I keep working.
I lose track of time. I know I do. It’s one of those things I’ve always struggled with—“time blindness,” my momma calls it. It’s not like I don’t know time is passing. It’s just that once I’m locked into a task, the minutes blur together, and the rest of the world doesn’t seem to exist.
The roof goes up quickly as well, and I stand on the ladder and take in the gardens surrounding me. “Stop drooping, Daisy,” I mutter under my breath, mimicking Emma’s voice in my head as I climb down to the ground. “This is a team effort.”
I chuckle to myself, imagining how she’d roll her eyes at me for butchering her flower pep talks. She’s probably at the shop right now, talking to her floral fridge like it’s a grumpy roommate. The thought makes me smile, but it also makes me wish she were here.
That’s when I hear someone catcall. I twist back toward the parking area, my heartbeat throbbing in my throat.
Emma comes to a stop next to me, one hand on her hip and the other holding a watering can. “You’re moving that, right?” She pants out the words, and I take the heavy watering can from her, because she has to haul in the water.
“Moving it?” I look back at the bench. It’s utterly fantastic, and I don’t think I could move it myself even if I wanted to. “No, I wasn’t going to move it.”
“Well, it’s in the wrong place.”
My pulse misfires. “No, it isn’t. It’s our showpiece.”
“I deliberately left a gap in my garden right there.” Emma sweeps her hand toward the bank of bushes and flowers on her right. “For the bench. It was part of the design. Now it’s just, like, stuck out there in the middle of the dirt.”
I don’t know what to say. We’ve been over the designs so many times. My brain blitzes out, and I can’t remember anything. “I thought it was the showpiece.”
“It is, but it should still be part of the design.” She adjusts her sunglasses and sighs. “We have to move it.”
I can see the half-barrels nestled among her flowers and grasses, and she’s right. I shouldn’t have built it out in the middle of nothing.
She moves away from me, displeasure radiating off her like heat waves. “What is this made of?”
“Cypress,” I say. “I got it for free from a plantation and upcycled it. It’s great.” I put my hand on the pillar. “Natural resistance to rot and insects, and it does really well outside in hot and humid climates.”
“You sound like an infomercial for cypress wood.” She rolls her eyes. “What are these?” She runs her fingers along the top rim of the end table barrel.
“It’s a recycled white oak barrel,” I say, the words scraping my throat. “It’s used all over the south for whiskey or wine. Also local to our South Carolina forests.” I know people like reclaiming items and reusing them, and I’m fully intending to put that in our copy that people can read as they walk the park and take in each plot.
“It’s an end table,” I say.
“People aren’t going to sit here and watch TV.”
“No, I know.” Frustration builds through me. “I showed up at dawn to get this done,” I say. “Why don’t you like it?”
“Because it’s not what we discussed.”
“It so is,” I say. “It’s a covered bench that shows the kind of work I can do. We’ll have the artist mock up gazebos and picnic tables and a pavilion.”
“Actually…”
I look at her, trying to figure out what she’s going to say before she says it. “Actually?”
“I was hoping you could build one of the picnic tables.” She turns and points to the corner where she’s got some bigger bushes and plants. “And put it there. Otherwise, it’s some flowers with a bench.”
“The flowers are amazing,” I say.
“I’m going to do some raised beds,” she says. “To add some variety. ”
“Em, I don’t think you need to do that.”
“I do.” She won’t look at me, and I don’t like that. “I like the barrels on the end, but we have to move it to this spot.”
“I’ll have Jake come help me,” I say, trying not to bark out the words. “You know, it would be nice if you’d acknowledge that this is an amazing bench.”
Her lips press into a thin line, the tension in her shoulders stinging my lungs.
“Never mind,” I say as I turn around. “If it’s that hard for you to say, don’t say it.”
“Aaron.” She catches up to me quickly, because I only move a few feet to start watering her flowers. “I didn’t know you were going to go rogue and start building without me.”
“I told you I was building this morning.”
“The roof is double-sided.”
“Yep.”
“The drawing had a single sloped roof. You didn’t do anything on our design.”
I blink, taken aback by the sharpness in her tone. “Emma, it’s a bench. It’s not like I bulldozed the whole plot.”
“Do you even know if this fits with the rest of the design?” she asks, gesturing to the flowers she’s cared for over the past couple-few weeks. “Did you think about how much bigger it would be with those barrels? Or that roof that looks like a cabin almost? Or literally anything else we already talked about?”
“I—” I stop, realizing too late that I didn’t think about any of that. I was so focused on the bench itself, on using the amazing reclaimed barrels and wood, on making it perfect, that I didn’t consider how it fit into the bigger picture.
“I just wanted to make something amazing,” I say, not sure how to explain.
“And it is amazing.” She leans into me, gazing up into my face with earnestness in her expression. “Aaron, it’s not hard to say: It’s amazing. It’s the most amazing bench in the whole wide world, and I can’t wait to see it in your backyard after its done doing its job here.”
My emotions coil tightly, and I swallow. My throat is too narrow to let words out, and I don’t know what to say anyway. I look away, my fists clenching at my sides. I want to argue, to defend myself, but deep down, I know she’s right. I’ve been so caught up in my own head, in my own way of doing things, that I didn’t stop to think about how it might affect what she’s been doing here.
“But, baby,” she says. “I have to make some adjustments in the gardens now.”
“I know that now,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’ll fix it.” That’s all I want to do—fix things for her. I’d do anything to fix everything for her.
“Aaron,” she says.
I look at her, and she smiles. “There you are.” She takes my face in her hands, and I let my eyes drift closed. I don’t know what she’s looking for or what she sees, but I just like the way her delicate fingers feel against my skin.
“I want you to just move the bench into the spot we talked about, okay?”
I nod.
“I don’t need you to fix everything,” she says, her voice breaking. “I know you like doing that, and I promise I’m going to let you come fix Sir Chills-a-Lot every time he breaks down.”
I smile and open my eyes. “But?”
“But for this, baby, I just need you to realize I might have good ideas too.” She drops her hands and steps back.
“I know that. I just—I get excited about wood.” I sigh when I realize how that sounds. “When I took over the hardware store, that was a non-negotiable with my daddy and me. With my employees and me. I have to be able to still have build projects.”
“Okay.”
“And I just get a little focused on upcycling this gorgeous wood, and I want to do my best for this project.” I swallow hard. “For you.”
She grins. “So you can make me feel even more like I’m not doing enough here.” She doesn’t phrase it like a question, and I hear the teasing quality of her voice .
“I don’t want you to feel like that,” I say very seriously.
“I come haul water to these plants every day,” she says, turning to be with her flowers.
“I know you do, sweetheart. You’re killing it.” I go with her and simply let her pick through her flowers, pet them, and prune them. “Talk to me about the picnic table, Em. I’ll listen to all of your ideas, I swear.”
“Then I want you to take me to breakfast.” She grins at me as she walks backward for a few steps. “Doable?”
“I’ll call Fonda,” I say with a smile. “And no matter what, we can have breakfast for dinner tonight.”
“All right.” She reaches the back corner, where she’s planted lilacs and a bleeding heart bush that thinks this ground is the most fertile place on the planet. “Remember, I’m doing that thing with my roommates this weekend. Will you be okay with the boys on Friday night?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Beckett said something about a fake bachelor party? One tame enough for a government official to keep his job.”
I scoff-snort. “Beckett’s idea of a wild time is going running twice in one day.”
Emma bursts out laughing, and I’m glad we made it to this point. She’s also reached the corner, and she says, “Okay, so hear me out…”
“Poisoned pansies,” I say.
She blinks at me, a slow smile filling her face. “I think you meant Don’t stop!” She strikes a pose. “Believin’!”
I tip my head back and fill the sky with laughter. “Sure, that works too.”
“But really,” Emma says. “I think we should do a cobblestone path through our plot, first to the bench, and then back to a picnic table. It wouldn’t have to be huge. Six people—three on each side.”
“Standard build?”
She blinks. “Yes?”
I can see the path in my head, and though it means more work for me—hauling stones, no less—I say, “Okay, honeybee. Now, let’s see about that breakfast.”