Chapter 6
Chapter Six
It was finally the day of the first hayride, and she was reasonably certain that she had picked a decent ghost story.
She opened up her phone and sent a ghost emoji to Cooper.
She’d had his number forever, but generally speaking, she didn’t use it. She had used it more in the last week than in every previous week she’d ever known him combined.
He sent back: ?
I’m going to send you my ghost story. Okay?
It’s about a little ghost who is looking for his ghost family.
And he wanders through the town of Wild Rose Point, and meets a lot of other ghosts along the way, from different eras of the town.
In the end, he finds them in the cemetery, where it isn’t scary at all.
And they’re all together. A little ghost family.
That seems like a nice story.
Well, that was the goal.
He sent her a thumbs up, and she was hoping for something a little bit more effusive, but she supposed that, given who he was and everything, this was probably a pretty good outcome. It wasn’t like he was going to extol the virtues of her little ghost story. She supposed.
She tried not to perseverate on the fact that she was going to see him tonight, the rest of the day, but she basically did. And when she drew her tarot card for the day, it was The Emperor.
Because of course it was. Because, of course, she couldn’t escape the symbolism of that man, no matter how hard she tried.
He was her whole world right now. Even the sky seemed to be the very particular color of blue of his eyes, and given this was the Oregon coast in October, it should be a lot more gray.
But it was like it had painted itself to match him, to make sure that he was always on her mind. To make sure that she couldn’t forget him, even for a moment. Like a persistent knowledge of what she wanted.
When the sun finally set, the streetlights went on, and the main street was roped off for the wagon rides. There were also group tours, both historical in nature and historical with a ghostly twist, happening there was caramel corn and cider, and a merry atmosphere.
But she was waiting for Cooper to get there.
When he did arrive, he took the horses out of the trailer and hitched them up to the wagon.
She was fascinated watching him do that.
He was so skilled, and everything. Whether it was freeing seagulls from Halloween lights, or keeping her from falling out of the wagon, or handling the horses, he was just… Everything.
And he was dressed like a cowboy. Not that he wasn’t always dressed like a cowboy, but he was a little bit more dressed like a cowboy than normal. He had on blue Wrangler jeans, a big belt buckle, a button-up plaid shirt tucked in, and a hat on his head.
It did something to her. She couldn’t say that she’d really thought she had cowboy fantasies, but right at the moment, she was having a serious cowboy fantasy.
That was all on him.
“Okay,” she said, trying to distract herself. “Let’s take the wagon around the front, and we can wait for our riders. The chamber sent me over a list of people who bought tickets for tonight. We have room for a few more walk-ups, too.”
“Great,” he said. He looked at her, with blue eyes that had haunted her this whole week. “Do you need help getting up in the wagon?”
“Of course not. I’m more than capable.”
“Are you? Because my memory is that you got a little bit tipsy in that wagon.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I live in an attic, and I manage to climb up a ladder and get inside every night. I don’t need help getting in the wagon.”
Also, if he touched her, she might explode. Or he would explode, honestly. Because the universe would do its thing and make sure that she didn’t get even the barest amount of pleasure out of that contact.
She scrambled into the back of the wagon, just to prove that she could. So there.
And then she settled against the back, as he climbed up into the driver’s seat, and slapped the reins so that the horses would move forward.
“Oh wow,” she said, clinging to the haybales as she got used to the motion.
“Don’t worry. We’ll take it really slow. I can’t have you falling out.”
She turned her head, and he turned his, and they were quite a lot closer than she had imagined. “Oh. Well. I promise I won’t. Need you to catch me.”
But I might want you to.
She thought it, she didn’t say it. She knew better than to flirt with the man.
It was a really bad idea. She swallowed hard and looked away from him.
Then she started running through her story in her head, because she was going to have to tell it soon.
And it was different to tell it than it was to text it.
They pulled up to the designated spot for the wagon, and she clasped her hands in her lap as they waited.
“It’s a good story,” he said.
“What?”
“Your story. I didn’t feel like maybe I… was as complimentary as I should have been over text.”
“It is hard to gauge tone over text.” Of course, it was hard to gauge Cooper’s tone everywhere.
“Well, it’s a nice story. I wish I could believe it.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s about everybody being together after they die, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t actually thinking about it that way.”
But when he put it like that, yeah, she did feel like a little ghost sometimes.
Wandering, hoping to meet up with her dad again.
She looked for him and the birds all around her, and repeating numbers on the clock, in the tarot cards.
She wondered if he looked for his dad anywhere.
Or if, like he just said, he was so unable to believe in any of that that he couldn’t even draw comfort out of things like that.
“You don’t see your dad ever?”
“He’s dead, Eliana.”
“I know that. That’s not… That’s not what I mean. I see my dad in the wind. I see him when the flowers bloom. I see him in my brother’s smile. It’s hard for me to remember him now, but I feel him. I can’t hear his voice, but I know what it was like to have him with me. To have him love me.”
“I find that too painful to remember.”
That made her chest clench tight. After all these years, he still found it too painful.
“I’m sorry. That’s… It’s really awful.”
“You don’t find it painful to remember your dad?”
“Memories are all I have. It’s painful that he’s gone. But if I got rid of the memories… What would there be?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Except a legacy. In my case, that’s what I have.
I have that ranch, and I need to make a brewery work.
Because it’s what he wanted. He didn’t want us to have to ranch hard forever.
He didn’t want to have to do it. He wanted more, and I want to make more happen.
In his name, in his memory. It matters to me. ”
“I know you’re going to do it. I really do.”
Just then, the first group came up, a family of five, and he got out of the wagon, and helped the kids get on board, and then even gave the adults a hand up, and she was instantly envious, because they got to touch his hand, and she had been stubborn and feral, and hadn’t allowed it.
But she didn’t have time to stew about it, because more and more groups arrived until the wagon was full, and it was time to take the first route around town.
She took a deep breath and began her lightly spooky story, which incorporated some of the town history, as she went into the different ghosts that her little ghost met on his way around.
The kids were charmed, and not scared, which was definitely the idea behind choosing that story, and when they finished the first ride, she could only hope that they’d all had a great time.
The next round of people had a group of kids that were a lot more rambunctious, and her story was punctuated by continually telling a little boy named Aiden that he needed to sit down.
She didn’t mind the rowdy kids, honestly. They were cute. Though she did have to pull one of the little boys back into the wagon after he nearly tipped himself over the side, and she could’ve done with the parents paying slightly closer attention.
Still, she felt like it was successful, and when Cooper pulled the horses back to the stopping place and then got out of the driver’s seat, she was reminded of the tension between them.
It had been interrupted for a moment. It had been distracting enough that it hadn’t been the only thing on her mind, which was kind of magical. Except that it was the two of them.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
He lifted a brow. “Do you know how to get the horses ready to go back in the trailer?”
“No. But I could learn.”
“I think teaching you would take longer than actually doing it.”
He had a point. And it wasn’t like she wanted to learn just for the sake of it. Not that she didn’t like horses, but she couldn’t say that they were a hyperfocus of hers.
Eliana and Cooper were very different people because of the families that they were born into.
She was off in the clouds half the time, thinking about things like curses and magic and manifestation, because her mother and her grandmother believed in those things so strongly.
Because they had seen those things show up in their lives over and over again, and they had passed that wisdom on to her, on to Marcus.
And then there was Cooper. Who had his feet so firmly rooted in the soil of Wild Rose Point, and didn’t seem to be overly focused on things he couldn’t see or touch or smell.
She had to wonder if he would be that way if he had been raised in different circumstances.
If he would love horses. If he would be a cowboy.
Would he want to start this brewery? Would he have wanted a ranch?
Was he a cowboy because it was in his blood, passed down to him by his father, or because it would’ve been in his blood no matter what?
Basically, she was wondering if they were destined to be two completely opposite people from the beginning of time, or if there was common ground somewhere between them, some understanding that the two of them could find somewhere.