Chapter 27
27
NOVA
“If you don’t pass me the potatoes, I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”
I blink up from where I’ve been studying my phone beneath the table, willing it to ring. Beckett is scowling at me. It would be more intimidating if he wasn’t also wearing his pair of pink fluffy earmuffs. The ones he uses to muffle sound when he forgets his earplugs.
Or when Evie isn’t here to remember them for him.
“That feels excessive.”
“It’s not excessive. I’ve asked you three times.”
I grab the bowl of mashed potatoes and hold it out to him. He takes it with a grunt, and I go back to staring at the blank screen of my phone.
We usually have a strict no phone policy during family dinners, but I snuck it in. Charlie and I have been playing phone tag for three damn days, and if I miss another one of his calls, I might scream.
I miss him. I miss him standing shirtless in my kitchen inspecting the contents of my fridge, and I miss him lounging in the middle of my bed, asking me a million and one questions about nothing in particular. I miss his nose pressed against the back of my neck when he sleeps and the way his chin rests on the top of my head when he stands right behind me. I miss his smell and his taste and his smile when he thinks he’s being funny and his eyes when he’s trying not to be sad. The way his knee jumps up and down when he’s sitting for too long. The crumpled receipts he keeps in his pockets so he can write down notes when he thinks of them only to forget about them entirely and leave them shoved under the plants I keep on my windowsill.
He left one of his sweaters over the back of my chair in my living room, and his pale blue toothbrush is still in the cup next to mine in my bathroom. Some of his socks somehow ended up in my underwear drawer and his phone charger is plugged into the wall in my kitchen. I keep finding bits and pieces of him scattered throughout my house and my tattoo studio and the front seat of my car.
I didn’t want a relationship because I was afraid of giving a part of myself to another person when it felt so important that I keep them all for myself. I like who I am and I like my independence. But I didn’t lose anything to Charlie. It just feels like all the good things in my life got better. Amplified. I got someone to laugh with and someone to rub the knots in my neck and someone to remember to put oat milk on my grocery list because I always forget. I was so determined to not have a relationship with him that I missed the part where we were in one all along.
And I didn’t lose a single thing.
Instead I got Charlie.
And now he’s hundreds of miles away, and I haven’t been able to talk to him in days. I feel like I missed out on all the good parts of a relationship before I even realized I was in one.
Beckett nudges me with his elbow, and I sigh, tucking my phone under my thigh. At least if it rings, I’ll be able to feel it. I can make an excuse and disappear in the backyard.
I stab a piece of broccoli and move it around my plate.
“What’s with the frown?” Beckett asks, an obscene amount of potatoes piled high on his plate. I don’t think he left a single scoop in there for anyone else.
“Says the man who just yelled at me about potatoes.”
“I have an excuse,” he says calmly.
“What’s that?”
“Evie’s work trip.” He reaches for the gravy boat that’s shaped like a cat on a canoe. My mom is really out of control with the tchotchkes. “I won’t see her for another week.”
At least you know when you’ll see her , I want to yell. I have no idea when I’ll get to see Charlie again. Both of our schedules have been so booked we can barely find time to talk on the phone, let alone plan time to see each other in person.
“Doesn’t mean you can be a jerk about spuds,” I mumble, stabbing at my broccoli until it’s smashed wreckage on my plate.
Beckett sighs and puts his fork down. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I mutter. “Nothing is going on.”
“Maybe she just needs to get laid,” Vanessa supplies from the other side of the table. But the only place my sister has ever been delicate is on the dance floor, and it’s more of a bellow than a quiet suggestion. My dad almost fumbles the platter of meatloaf. My mom pinches the bridge of her nose.
“What?” Vanessa asks, glancing around the table. “It’s true. She’s all wound up. Like a top.”
“Vanessa,” my mom sighs. “Don’t embarrass your sister.”
“Or traumatize your brother,” Beckett grumbles. “Can we change the subject please?”
“Seconded,” my dad adds. “Has anyone heard from Charlie lately?”
I narrow my eyes at my dad, still shoveling meatloaf onto his plate like it’s the last time he’ll have the opportunity. Everyone is acting like this is our last dinner before the end of days. “Why are you asking that?”
He shrugs. “I can’t ask after Charlie?”
He can, but it feels targeted. It feels like he knows something I’ve been less and less careful to keep hidden. It doesn’t seem as important as it did two weeks ago that no one knows about my feelings for Charlie. In fact, it’s starting to feel worse keeping it all to myself.
“He hasn’t been in the group chat much,” Beckett offers. I glance away from my dad.
“There’s a group chat?” I ask.
Beckett nods. “A group chat for the farm staff. Layla added him when he took over operations for the month. We never took him off.”
“And he’s been quieter than usual?”
Beckett blinks at me and then nods again, slower this time. “Yeah. Caleb even tossed a softball innuendo about planting seeds, and he didn’t take the bait.”
“Maybe he needs to get laid too,” Vanessa yells across the table. Harper drops her forehead into her hand next to her. “I can set you up with someone, Nova, seriously. I have this friend who—”
Someone kicks her under the table. Everything rattles on top of my grandmother’s hand-stitched tablecloth. Nessa and Harper exchange a brief, furious, whispered conversation.
“…she needs to at least…”
“…you’re being extra and…”
“…all I’m saying is…”
Beckett clears his throat and tries to talk over them both. “I think work is probably keeping him busy. I’m sure he’ll show up sooner or later. He always does.”
My phone stays silent under my thigh. I use the edge of my broccoli piece to draw a forget-me-not in what’s left of my gravy.
“I don’t think Charlie likes his work,” I say quietly. Every time we manage to talk, his voice is strained and distracted. He’s hardly sent me any selfies now that he’s in his glass-and-chrome office. He’s a dimmer version of himself in New York. Smaller. “I actually don’t think Charlie is very happy in New York.”
Beckett keeps shoveling food into his face, half paying attention. He snorts. “Charlie is always happy. It’s a core character trait.”
“He’s not though.” I drop my fork against my plate with a clatter. Beckett stops eating and looks at me. So does the rest of the table. “He’s not happy. He pretends to be, most of the time, because he thinks it’s easier when he does. For him, maybe, or for everyone around him. I don’t know. But he’s not. He doesn’t like his job and his dad is a piece of shit and he’s—”
He’s lonely. He’s lonely, and I can’t bear the thought of him sitting alone in his apartment thinking everyone has forgotten him.
That I’ve forgotten him.
“Nova—”
My heart pounds in my chest. “He’s—he’s funny and he’s kind, and he’s ridiculous most of the time, but he only does it so he can see other people laugh. And he pushes himself to the edges and shrinks himself down to make himself seem more tolerable. But he doesn’t need to do that. He doesn’t need to break himself down into pieces. But I think—I think I made him do that too. I’m just as bad as everyone else because I took from him. Didn’t I? I asked for everything and what did I give him back? Not much. Not nearly enough.”
I couldn’t even give him the right words before he left. I couldn’t tell him I wanted him. Instead, I put a flower on his wrist and hoped he understood what I was trying to say.
He’s been so much braver than me this whole time.
“I’m not following—”
“I made him feel like he wasn’t enough. We all did. He’s been spending more and more time down here because he wants someone to ask him to stay. I think. And I sent him back to New York with a let’s hope for the best .”
I put guardrails around my feelings for Charlie because I didn’t want to want something I never thought I needed. And now he’s there and I’m here, and he’s not answering my calls, and we’re both fucking miserable.
The table is silent. It’s a freeze-frame of shock. I think this might be the most interesting family dinner we’ve ever had, including the time Beckett brought all the kittens and both the ducks and let them run free beneath the table. Beckett is rigid next to me. Vanessa is practically vibrating in her chair. Harper and my parents are watching me carefully like they’re not sure if I’m going to collapse to the ground or flip the meatloaf tray.
I don’t know either.
“I’ve been seeing Charlie since the first harvest festival committee meeting,” I announce. Harper gasps like we’re on a daytime soap opera. My heart clangs around in my chest, my throat tight. “I know this is out of nowhere, but that’s it. Charlie and I were—I mean—we are together. Like a couple.”
Everyone stares at me. The clock ticks in the hallway. The wind whistles at the windows. A log cracks in the fireplace, and my heart pounds in my throat.
“It’s not,” Beckett finally says. He collapses out of his stiff-as-a-board stance and reaches for the basket of bread rolls. He drops two on his plate.
“What?”
“It’s not out of nowhere. We all knew you were seeing him.” Beckett gestures around the table with his butter knife. “We’ve been waiting for you to say something.” He gives me a bored look. “It took you forever.”
“What?”
“Shit,” he says. He drops the knife and digs in his back pocket for his phone. “I told Evie I’d call her for this.”
“For what?”
Beckett taps at his screen and places his phone into the middle of the table while it rings. “For the moment you enter reality.”
Evelyn answers on the second ring. “Is it happening?”
“Sure is!” Harper responds at the same time Beckett says, “Hey, honey.”
I gape at the phone right next to the green bean casserole. At my family, arranged around the table. Not one of them looks surprised. Did someone spike the wine tonight? Are the potatoes laced with something?
“Why do you think I keep saying you need to get laid?” Vanessa asks. “I’m not actually trying to set you up with randos. I’ve been goading you, you tiny fool.”
“What? I’m—what?”
“There was a picture on the phone tree text chain of him bringing you coffee,” my dad offers. “You looked at him the same way you used to look at those expensive fine-point pens when you were a kid. You had little heart eyes.”
“My favorite was the picture of Charlie and the goose,” my mom adds. She snickers to herself. “I still have it saved as my wallpaper.”
“I like the roof video best,” Harper offers diplomatically. She threads her fingers together and rests her chin on top of them. “I hope your hydrangeas made a full recovery.”
“Someone got a video of that?”
“Of course I did,” Beckett says, still eating his dinner like I’m not having an out-of-body experience right next to him. What the actual hell is happening? “I heard your window open while I was waiting on the front porch. Voices carry.”
“And you sent it to the phone tree?”
“To be fair,” Evelyn’s tinny voice echoes up from Beckett’s phone, face up on the table. “I think he was trying to send it just to me.”
Oh my god. Oh my god .
“You’ve been wearing his Rolex, Nova,” Beckett says around a mouthful of meatloaf. “Honestly. I’m not an idiot.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
One of his eyebrows arches up. “Do I need to be okay with who you date?”
I don’t know. I certainly don’t think so, but he’s always given the impression that he has an opinion on the matter. “He’s your friend” is all I can think to say.
“So?” He shrugs. “That just means I know who he is. I love him. I love you. I don’t see the downside.” He pours gravy over everything on his plate. “That said, if he breaks your heart, I’ll break his jaw. He doesn’t get a pass on that detail. But if you break his heart”—Beckett points at me with his fork, cheek bulging with his dinner—“I’ll have words for you too.”
“I won’t,” I whisper faintly. “Break his heart.”
I can’t believe we’re having this conversation at family dinner while he shovels mashed potatoes into his face.
“Good,” Beckett says.
“I thought I was doing the right thing by keeping it hidden,” I try to explain, even though I don’t know why. “I thought it would be easier that way.”
“Easier for who?”
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? This whole time, we’ve been doing things the way I’ve wanted to do them. Charlie let me set the terms, and he let me go at my own pace. He’s given me everything I’ve asked for without requesting anything in return.
“It was just to blow off steam, at first. But then it turned into something, and I guess I thought if it didn’t go anywhere else—if no one knew about it, we wouldn’t have to talk about it. I didn’t want to need anything from him,” I say faintly. “I was afraid of it.”
“What about now? Do you feel like you need Charlie?”
I shake my head. I can do just fine on my own, but I—
“I want him. I don’t need him, but I want him all the time.”
Charlie, who has made himself content with living at the very edges. Charlie, who thinks he’s an imposition every time he visits. Charlie, who feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere. Charlie, who wanted to hide our relationship just as much as I did but for another reason entirely. Because he didn’t think he was good enough. Because he didn’t think he was worth it.
Charlie, who has never been anyone’s first choice. Who has never been wanted.
“I’m in love with him.” I exhale, the truth of it cracking open inside of me, filling me with a delicate, boundless light. I thought I’d be afraid of this feeling, but I’m not. I feel exactly the same as I did before but lighter, like the weight of all the things I’ve been carrying around has somewhere else to go. Somewhere safe where it’ll be looked after with careful hands.
Someone with an easy smile and a flower on his wrist.
“I should hope so,” my dad says from the other side of the table. “The boy fell into a garden for you.”
I stand up from my chair so quickly it screeches across the floor and slams into the wall. “I need to go to New York.”
Evelyn whoops on the other end of the phone. Vanessa thrusts her fist into the air. Harper beams, and my mom reaches for my dad, clinging to his arm and shaking him once.
Beckett stands with me, digging around in his pocket. He’s still wearing his hot-pink fluffy earmuffs. “I’ll get the car.”
“No!” comes a chorus from my sisters and Evelyn, still on the phone. Harper lobs a dinner roll right at his head.
“I think everyone has been as involved as they need to be in my relationship, thank you.” I pat at my pockets for my keys. I check my phone again, just in case, but he hasn’t called.
I’m going to do it. I’m going to drive to New York. I’m going to tell him all the things I was afraid to tell him before, and I’m—I’m going to be brave. I’m going to give him what he deserves.
“Let the girl make her grand gesture in peace!” Evelyn shouts, the phone bursting with static at her volume. Beckett drops back down in his chair.
“You know, when you get back”—he points at me with one finger—“we’re going to have a long conversation about you hiding things from me.”
“Sure.” I edge around the table for the door. “When I get back.”
Right now, I’ve got somewhere I need to be.