Chapter 19 #2
By the time Luca returned with the pail, Emerson’s back had started to ache.
“Hey Daisy. Mind if Luca and I sit for a while? We’ll be right here.”
Daisy nodded without looking up.
“Locked in, Da-dee.”
With a snort of amusement, followed swiftly by a wince, Emerson stood and motioned Luca to a spot several yards back, farther up the tideline where the sand was drier.
They dropped onto their butts, stretched out their legs, leaned their weight on their palms behind them.
Emerson tried not to think about how close their pinkies were to each other, how close they had chosen to align themselves. How this, too, felt natural.
“Did she just say she was locked in?”
Emerson smiled. “I’m sure Jayden taught her that one.”
“She really is, though,” Luca observed a moment later.
“I know.” Emerson watched his daughter in front of them, her bottom lip jutted out, almost consuming her top one, as happened when she was truly focused on a task.
“I’m glad she suggested this,” he said, voice softer, quieter, so only Luca could hear.
“I have to remind myself sometimes to hold onto this. Not just because she’ll grow up so fast, which I know she will, but…
” He sighed. “When she’s old enough to start attending school.
She’ll probably go somewhere in Portland, by Jay. And I won’t—”
Emerson shook his head, trying to keep the sudden swell of emotion at bay. This, he supposed, was why he never talked about this.
“It’ll be so much easier in terms of actually getting work done on the farm, and I’ll see her more during the summers, and we’ll switch off weekends, but…
it won’t be like it is now. I’ll see her so much less for nine months of the year.
So even when it’s hard right now, managing both her and the farm on the weeks she’s here…
I don’t know. I need to do things like this more often. I can’t let it all just pass me by.”
“And that’s set in stone?” Luca asked after a moment. “Her attending school in Portland?”
“We haven’t talked about it in a while, but yeah.
Pretty much. There’s one elementary school kind of nearby here, but by the time she reaches middle and high school—Greyfin Bay’s too small to have their own.
It’s a trek here to get to school. The ones in Portland are bigger, more diverse, have more opportunity.
Jayden can work dropoff and pickup into his work day pretty easily.
It makes more sense. I mean.” Another shrug.
“God willing I still have the farm by then. If not…”
Emerson trailed off.
Luca gave him a minute before he prompted, “What would you do? If you lost the farm. Not just with Daisy, but in general.”
Emerson’s gaze strayed from Daisy to the horizon. The question didn’t send him into a panic. He had practically goaded Luca into asking. It was a question he was slowly, day by day, working on accepting the answer to.
“Probably find another farm to work at,” he said, “like I used to. Folks always need good farmhands.”
He could probably find a farm closer to Portland, like he had before. Be closer to Jayden and Daisy. Make it all easier, for everyone.
Except it wasn’t the same, working someone else’s land. It could still be gratifying, of course. No one truly owned land, anywhere. The land belonged to itself.
But it still wasn’t the same.
It wouldn’t ever be the same if it wasn’t here. In Greyfin Bay. With Jansel, and Liv at the IGA, and everyone else he’d met here. Fertile land, ten minutes from the ocean.
“Did growing up here inspire your book?” Emerson asked, wanting a new topic. Enough, now, of the same things that always rattled around in his brain. He wanted more of what rattled around Luca’s.
Emerson gestured behind them to where driftwood littered the dunes.
When his hand hit the sand again, it was possible their fingers were even closer to each other.
“Yeah. Not very original, probably.”
Luca looked away. Emerson wasn’t sure if he’d get anything else. And that was okay, too.
Emerson reached out his pinky. Brushed it against the side of Luca’s. After a second, Luca brushed back.
They sat like that a minute. It was ridiculous, probably, how much Emerson’s heartrate kicked up from this barest amount of contact. If Daisy looked up, she probably wouldn’t even be able to tell they were touching.
He realized he’d be okay with it, though, if she did.
Would she be confused?
He didn’t know. His gut wanted to say no, she’d be fine. She loved Luca, had been fine with him living with them for a month now. But maybe she’d still be confused.
They could talk about it, though. After Emerson talked to Jay.
Emerson should probably talk to Jay.
Except—wait. What would he even say? Was there anything to say? What did Emerson want to say?
One morning at the beach, one brush of Luca’s pinky against his, and Emerson was suddenly living in fantasies.
And then Luca faced forward again, and began talking.
“When I’m being kind to myself about it, I tell myself it’s not my fault. Wanting to be a writer, I mean. Growing up in Greyfin Bay, you’re always staring out at the ocean. You could see it from our house, up in those hills.”
He turned his head, looked at the foothills that rose into the opposite horizon before looking back at the water.
“Being a fisherman—even more so. But when you’re on a boat, at least when you’re not stuck in your bunk, you also spend so much time studying the sky.
They’re both so fucking vast, you know? So, it wasn’t my fault.
When you spend such a large portion of your life staring at these infinite things.
I don’t know, maybe it’s inevitable. That you start looking for other worlds. ”
Emerson stared at him.
Luca squinted, scratched his head.
“Anyway, that was like, the most earnest thing I’ve ever said out loud, so I’m gonna need you to stop looking at me now.”
I love you, Emerson thought.
It was such a calm thought, so basic and clear.
Not a fantasy at all.
Maybe he’d never have anything real to tell Daisy or Jayden about what Luca Yaeger was to him. Maybe this all went away one day, maybe one day soon. But Emerson’s heart knew it. Simple and true.
And because he loved him, Emerson followed Luca’s request and turned his face back toward the ocean, back to where Daisy still stabbed her stick into the sand.
It should have felt stranger, he knew. He’d only ever been in love with one other person before.
Even after the divorce, even after he and Jayden had awkwardly encouraged each other to date again, Emerson had never contemplated actually loving someone else.
It just hadn’t seemed like something he’d ever be able to do.
That box had already been checked. His heart had already been filled.
Even if the box had fallen apart, it wasn’t something Emerson could uncheck, something he could undo.
He could only continue to hold it all, even as the box grew messy. It was still his box.
And now here he was.
He still didn’t quite understand the consequences of it. How it would all work, if Luca felt the same, if they wanted…Emerson didn’t even know. Something more.
But right here, right now, filling another box only felt easy.
“Jayden and I broke up because of the farm,” he said, as abruptly as he’d said anything since they’d walked onto this beach. Like the moment they’d left Short King Farms together, Emerson’s chest had simply cracked open.
Or maybe it was because Emerson didn’t know what to say to Luca’s speech about being a writer. He had a feeling Luca probably didn’t want him to say anything about it.
But Emerson could give him something in return.
He felt Luca’s eyes on him. The heat of those eyes on him still pooled in his belly, every single time.
And then Luca looked forward again and said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah. We lived together in Portland for a long time after he graduated from college. He worked in marketing; I kept working at farms outside the city. But he knew it was my dream to have my own. He went along with it when we found this place, because he knew I wanted it so badly, but…” Emerson sighed.
“Jay’s not a farmer. He belongs in a city.
He tried; I know he really did. I wouldn’t have been able to get the business side of it going at all without him.
He put his heart into getting us up and running while I worked on the land.
Our logo, our website and socials, connections to the community, setting up the CSA and getting us into markets… all Jay.”
Another lump formed in Emerson’s throat. He paused until he was sure he could talk through it.
“But looking back, it’s like, I should have known from the start, you know?
And the fact that we had Daisy at like, almost the same time as we moved here…
it was so chaotic. Just…so much. But having Daisy, becoming a dad, pushed Jay to be who he really wanted to be, which started with him transitioning, and then, eventually…
” Emerson sniffed, looked to the side to calm himself before continuing.
“It was him realizing he wasn’t happy here. Not fully, not truly.”
Luca’s hand crawled through the sand until his fingers rested fully on top of Emerson’s.
“We started fighting a lot. Always about the farm. Raising Daisy was stressful, for sure; it definitely added to the tension. But the farm was always at the heart of it. And I knew, eventually, that I had to choose. Jayden had already sacrificed so much for me, quit his job when we moved here. Now I had to decide if I could sacrifice for him, if I could give Short King up. Except from the moment we bought it, the moment I started building it up, it was like…it feels like my soul, you know? Which sounds dramatic, but. It was like having to choose between the two great loves of my life. And I chose the land over the person.”
“That’s hard, Emerson.”
Emerson shook his head at himself, swallowing back more lumps.
“I’ll probably feel shitty about it for the rest of my life.
Even though there are some days when I’m outside, working in the beds or feeding the chickens or collecting the honey or…
any of it. And it feels like enough. Like, no question, no doubt about it.
This is my soul, this is my heart. This place.
I couldn’t have chosen any other way without losing myself. ”
Daisy stood and then tripped over something, falling onto her hands and knees in the sand. Emerson waited to see if there would be a cry.
With a giggle Emerson couldn’t hear over the wind but he could see on her face, she picked herself up and moved on.
“But then I go inside at the end of the day,” he finished, “and I just want to tell Jay all about it. Everything I learned about the farm that day. But I can’t, anymore.” Another sniff, followed by a humorless puff of air. “So.”
Luca circled a fingertip against Emerson’s hand. They sat like that in silence, watching Daisy and the waves behind her, for a long time.
“You can tell me,” Luca eventually said. “What you learn about the farm each day.”
Emerson released a slow breath. He thought the urge to cry had finally passed, but now it rushed through him again, the same sensation but totally different at the same time.
“Thank you,” he eventually pushed out. The most inadequate words of all time. Others jumbled up in his head: I know. I want to. Please never leave.
But then Daisy called, “Da-dee. Loo-kah. Come look!”
And so they did, oohing and ahhing over her castle and its intricate moats and nearby lands.
Luca crouched on his haunches, asking questions about the people who lived there, who its rulers were, if they were fair and kind or if there was any trouble brewing in the kingdom.
More questions than Emerson had ever asked in his life about any of Daisy’s sand castles, or anything else she’d ever created.
She had answers to some of his questions; others stumped her. He only nodded and asked something else. It took Emerson a minute or two to realize.
Daisy was speaking Luca’s language.
He retrieved his phone from his pocket. Took a picture of the two of them, dissecting Daisy’s kingdom.
Luca was pointing at something in her creation, face serious.
Daisy was looking at him, face decidedly not.
The sun, still miraculously shining, lit the back of Daisy’s hair, the side of Luca’s face.
Emerson knew he was possibly getting ahead of himself.
But he thought of that wall in his bedroom, the one he knew Luca had more questions about. The one Emerson hadn’t added to in over a year.
He looked at the picture on his phone.
And he thought maybe it was time to buy a new frame.