Chapter 16 #2
“Over there!” Daisy pointed. She had let go of Luca’s hand to greet all the chickens, but she grabbed it again now.
Luca tried to remember the last time a hand so small had held his for so long.
He rarely got up to Kjell and Amaya’s place in Bellevue, and they only came down with the kids once or twice a year.
He obviously loved Summer and Enzo, his niece and nephew, but whenever he’d been around them, they were always surrounded by the chaos of the Yaeger family.
He couldn’t remember if he’d ever actually been alone with them.
Holding their hands in the middle of a pasture. Walking toward a cow.
“Sally’s good with us approaching her like this?” Luca hadn’t helped much with taking care of any of the animals. A thread of anxiety threaded through him. Sally was a big girl. What if she got startled and accidentally kicked them, or stepped on Daisy’s foot or something?
Why had Emerson trusted Luca with his kid so easily?
“Yeah,” Daisy said. “Just gotta talk as we get close. No surprise.”
“Right,” Luca agreed. “No surprise. Are you wearing the right shoes for this?”
The grass—if one could even call it that; it was a wild combination of weeds Luca would never be able to name—was high and still wet with dew.
It’d been a chilly, overcast day, typical of the Oregon Coast at any time of year.
The dampness of everything had made weeding an easier task today, but the lower half of Luca’s jeans was already getting soaked.
He should check them both for ticks, probably, when they got back inside. He was possibly regretting his choices.
Daisy giggled. “Nope,” she answered. And then she ripped her hand from his, shouting, “Sally!” as she shot ahead of him like a light.
“Fuck,” he muttered, all assortment of mauling scenarios rushing through his head as he jogged to catch up. But then—
There was Sally, barely moving a muscle as Daisy reached up to pet her leg. Her tail swished as Luca approached. He slowed his gait as Sally’s age-old eyes tracked him.
“Hey, girl.” Slowly, carefully, he lifted a hand to run down the side of her face. Her coat was coarse and soft all at once, somehow.
“Sally’s the best,” Daisy said with feeling before wrapping her entire body around one of Sally’s legs. Luca’s heart leapt into his throat.
“Daisy—”
“Hokay!” As quickly as she’d attached herself to the bovine, she stepped away. “Da-dee said I could use my screen!”
With that, she turned and ran back across the pasture.
“Seriously?” Luca said. They had just fucking gotten here.
Sally moved her head. Luca, still staring at Daisy, only comprehended what was happening from the corner of his eye before a big, wet tongue licked up the side of his face. Jerking away, Luca laughed. That had been both the roughest and the slimiest sensation of his life.
“Sorry, Sally,” he said, wiping his cheek with the hem of his shirt before running after Daisy. If she twisted an ankle, or got her tiny little fingers caught in the gate—
“Daisy,” he called out. She paused, looking back at him. Man, those little glasses really killed him. “Sally licked me,” he said when he’d finally caught up, slightly out of breath. “Does that mean she likes me?”
Daisy giggled again. “Duh.”
Back in the house, Daisy marched to Emerson’s room, where a kid’s tablet was charging in a corner. It was protected by a thick purple case.
“Uh,” Luca said. He knew parents had lots of rules about screen time, and that Emerson had only offered the tablet so Daisy would do what he said.
But Daisy was already skipping out of Emerson’s room back to her own, where she plopped a matching set of purple headphones over her ears and sat herself down in a beanbag chair in the corner, fully absorbed.
Loo-kah time was done.
“All right.” Luca stuck his hands in his pockets, looking around the room.
After a minute, he walked over to a bookshelf.
It was dumb, because he had no training in how to actually write them and he knew it took skill, but—sometimes he daydreamed about giving up his long, tortured fantasy novel and writing picture books instead. They were always so fucking beautiful.
He gathered a few in his arms and walked back to the bed.
“Okay if I lie down for a bit?” he asked Daisy, but she didn’t hear him. She stabbed a finger at her screen. Luca looked down at Moomoo. “You okay if I join you?”
And being around a kid for twenty minutes must have influenced him more than he’d thought, because Luca actually pictured Moomoo saying, in a deep voice, Sure, Loo-kah, before Luca moved him to the side. Her? Them? Wouldn’t it have horns if it was a he? He was uncertain on Moomoo’s gender.
The bed gave a slight groan as Luca laid down, and only then did Luca contemplate how a bed for a four-year-old girl might not actually be made to fit his weight.
But after a moment’s held breath, it seemed to be holding.
And even though his feet stuck out over the end, it was surprisingly comfortable. Felt fucking incredible, actually.
He settled in, and opened up his first book.
Something was jostling Luca’s shoulder.
Blurrily, he opened his eyes and blinked—
Into Emerson King’s smiling face.
“Shit.” Luca tried to sit up, looking over to the beanbag chair, where Daisy—wasn’t. “Did—”
“She’s fine,” Emerson interrupted. Luca looked at him again. Remembered that he was smiling. Eyes clearer now, Luca could see the pinch around Emerson’s eyes, the press of his lips, like he was trying to hold himself back from smiling even bigger. His hand was still on Luca’s shoulder.
It felt good.
“I didn’t fail my first babysitting gig?”
Emerson shook his head. His thumb dug a circle into the muscle underneath Luca’s collarbone. Luca had to force himself to keep his eyes open.
“No. Except don’t let her hear you call it babysitting. She’ll lecture you for approximately three hours about how she’s not a baby.”
“Right. Thanks for the heads up.”
Their gazes held, Emerson still massaging Luca’s shoulder. Luca was muddled in that weird, out of time, woke-up-in-the-middle-of-the-day feeling. God, he could look at Emerson’s face all day, all the strong lines of it, those eyes and that wispy hair. His stomach flipped.
Emerson took his hand back. Stood straight.
“Want to join us for some quesadillas?”
They didn’t always meet for lunch; a lot of times when Jansel and Luca walked into the kitchen for a break Emerson was nowhere to be seen. Luca usually made himself a sandwich or a bagel, heated up a frozen burrito.
Luca blinked a few times. “Sure.”
“Take your time waking up,” Emerson said, the smile hitching a little farther up his cheek. “We’ll see you in the kitchen.”
Surrounded by Daisy’s pillows and stuffed animals, Luca didn’t move, watching Emerson’s ass as he walked away.
Luca rolled his head in a circle, stretching out his neck.
He’d stayed out in the fields longer than usual, past when Jansel had already gone home, to make up for the time he’d missed while watching Daisy.
Jansel had told him he didn’t need to, that they never finished weeding all the beds on Wednesdays, that it was literally impossible.
Still, Luca had some extra energy from his nap.
He wanted to at least get done what he could.
And while he was out there, alone for a while—well. More words had come to him.
He’d hurried downstairs to his room and his journals as soon as he’d come inside, forgoing dinner or a shower, lest the words disappear before he could scrawl them out.
But he’d gotten the gist of his new idea out now, and his stomach was growling, his neck cramping. He was definitely over writing in this bed.
It was mostly quiet when he walked up the stairs, laptop tucked under an arm. Daisy must already be asleep. He dropped his laptop at the kitchen table, grabbed himself a glass of water. A low murmur of sound emanated from somewhere.
It took Luca less than a second to realize what it was.
He popped his head around the doorframe into the living room. Emerson sat on the couch, the same side where he’d sat that night last week, when Luca had propositioned him. He was clearly occupied with something in his lap, but Luca could only see his strong neck, the back of his head.
And just beyond him, on the TV—a Giants game.
“Whatchya doin’?”
Emerson barely glanced behind him. Only sighed, holding up Moomoo.
“You know. Just stuffy surgery.”
As if pulled into the room by an invisible string, Luca found himself flopping onto the other end of the couch, laptop and anything else promptly forgotten. He stretched out his legs just enough so his toes brushed Emerson’s thigh.
He glanced at the TV. Almost asked if Emerson was a baseball fan too, but he knew he wasn’t. Emerson had never mentioned it, had only listed cooking shows when Luca asked him what he normally liked to watch.
Even if Emerson did care about America’s game, Luca preferred to keep it this way in his mind. That Emerson had put it on expressly for him. A Bat signal for Luca to come and find him.
The Giants, of course, were losing.
Luca returned his gaze to Emerson.
Emerson’s fingers, in particular. Long, lithe. Battered and strong. Carefully, meticulously sewing up a stuffed animal.
Luca loved baseball, he really did. But at that moment, he couldn’t imagine watching anything as captivating as this.
“Rough day today,” he finally said, voice coming out weirdly hoarse. “For Moomoo. And you.”
Emerson released a small laugh, eyes still focused on his task.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had to give Moomoo some stitches.” Luca hadn’t noticed any imperfections on the stuffy before, but watching Emerson work now, it made sense. His seams probably looked fucking flawless.
“The kind of funny thing,” Emerson continued after a beat, “is that I’m almost proud of her, whenever she gives poor Moomoo hell. We taught her to do it. She used to hit us when she got mad. Or kick us. Or bite.”