Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
LIAM
T he next two hours feel like five.
Finally, at a quarter to eleven, I hop in the truck and drive down to the main entrance, expecting to park in the lot right outside the barn, but when I pull through the gate, I discover there are no empty spots. I drive up the hill to the equipment garage and park in the staff lot. I get out and find Manny standing in the doorway of the garage, drinking coffee and looking at something in the distance.
I step into the space beside him and follow his gaze. “Is it always like this?” The place is crawling with people. Families hold Olive’s maps leading the way to the pre-cut lots while couples pick up kits for the Mistletoe Walk she dreamed up.
It feels like it used to.
It feels like Christmas.
“It hasn’t been like this,” he says. “Not in a long time.”
In the distance, I see the trailer hitched to the big tractor, and there, in the driver’s seat— “Is that Lacey?”
She greets the excited families who settle in for a hayride, the kind our dad used to give.
“It is,” Manny says. “She’s our best tour guide.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “Though I heard you might give her a run for her money.”
“That was a one-time thing,” I huff.
“Yeah, yeah, pretend you didn’t love it, kid. You’re not fooling anyone.”
I go still as I spot Olive just outside the other building. Several people are walking inside, and she appears to be greeting them.
She looks so pretty. Her smile is bright as she tucks her hair behind her ear, talking with her hands, and her eyes?—
I turn and find Manny watching me watching Olive.
He laughs and shakes his head. “You going to do something about that?”
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Ah,” he throws a hand in my general direction. “You never were brave when it came to that girl.”
I never told Manny how I felt about Olive, but clearly that doesn’t mean he didn’t know.
Manny takes another drink. “Thanks for all the help these past few days. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you’re enjoying it.”
“It’s a good change.” I shrug.
“Different from what you do, I’m sure.”
“That’s an understatement.”
He takes another drink. “How’s it going? With the job and everything?”
I cringe. How do I accurately answer this without getting into all of it?
“Work is . . . a lot.”
“But you love it, right?” He leans against the doorjamb, watching me.
In the distance, I hear the excited screams of small children. It feels familiar. I used to resent having to share our home with so many people, but now it feels . . . nice .
“I love the creating part,” I say. “Not the bureaucracy.”
Manny nods, but I know he doesn’t understand. If there’s one thing Pine Creek is free from, it’s office politics. Vying for position. My parents were intentional about making sure the staff feels like a part of the family.
Now, though, looking at it with fresh eyes, it all makes more sense. I’m starting to understand.
“You don’t think about—” Manny waves his hand out in front of him, letting the motion finish his sentence.
“About moving back here and running this place?” I scoff. “The exact thing I swore I would never do? No.”
“Huh.”
He doesn’t say anything else, just takes another drink of his coffee.
I instantly want to explain myself, to defend my choice. Does it feel selfish and thoughtless to him and the others on staff that I’m not jumping in to save this place? They understand, right?
“I went to school for game design. I’m with a top company in my field,” I say. “I can’t give that up. Even if I wanted to, it would be a bad move.”
“Hey, didn’t mean to offend,” he says, raising one hand in surrender. “I had to ask. Forget I said anything. I know it’s a sore spot.”
I soften. “It’s fine. I wish things were different.”
And I realize I mean it.
Olive is still standing at the door of the building across the way, greeting an older woman with her trademark smile, and something clicks into place.
Something that’s been off kilter for a long, long time.
Everything I thought I believed, things I was so certain of, things that I swore off—they don’t seem so true now.
She sees me.
She lifts a hand and waves at me, then points to her watch and motions for me to come over for the conversation I requested.
I wave back, and my nerves kick up. Which is stupid. This is work.
“Go get her, kid,” Manny says.
“It’s a work thing,” I say, reminding myself out loud in hopes that I’ll believe it.
“Huh.”
And he doesn’t say anything else.
I’ve never met a guy who could make one word mean eight different things.
He walks away, and I head off in the direction of the barn, aware that there are several people—all women—also going in that direction. I hold the door open for an older woman who gives me a once-over.
“Well, thank you,” she says. “It’s nice to see a young man with good manners.”
I give her a nod and look up to find Olive smirking at me. The woman walks away and Olive shakes her head. “If only she knew the truth.”
“Ha ha.” I look around the building. I haven’t been in here since I’ve been home. The back side of this barn houses Santa’s Village, where kids can get photos with Santa, dress up like an elf, make a Christmas craft.
This part of the building used to be mostly storage, but looking at the way they’ve set it up, it’s the perfect spot for classes like this one.
There are a few rows of wooden tables positioned throughout the space, and several people standing behind them, all facing my mom who is bustling around at the front of the room, looking equal parts excited and nervous.
I glance at Olive. “Are you still working? I can come back. We can talk later?— ”
“No, here’s fine.” She runs a hand across one of the long tables. “We can talk while we work.”
I frown. “While we work on what?”
“Wreath making,” she says. “I thought we could make one for right over—” she points to the door— “there.” Her grin is wide. “For the door.”
“You want me to help you make a wreath?”
“Actually, I’m going to help you,” she says. “It’s today’s attempt at spreading Christmas cheer.”
“You’re still on that?” I ask dryly.
“You’re still grumpy, so yes.” She points to an area off to the side. “Do you want to go pick out some greens?”
“Pick out some greens,” I repeat.
She faces me. “Yes. I’ll get the other supplies.”
I start toward the door. “Let’s just talk later.”
“I thought you wanted my help,” she says.
I freeze and turn around, narrowing my eyes as I meet hers. “I do, but I?—”
She scrunches her nose. “This is what works for my schedule, so . . .”
I draw in a breath, aware that the best course of action is to go along with her crazy idea. There is no way she’s going to relent.
“Liam!” my mom calls out from the front of the room. “I didn’t know you were joining us!”
I glare at Olive. She only grins.
I wave lamely at my mom, then shrug out of my jacket, aware that a few of the women are curiously watching me.
Olive moves into the space behind a table at the back, then hisses at me— “Greens!”
OLIVE
I force Liam to listen to his mom’s instructions, then force him to start trimming the greenery he selected from the table.
He loves it. I can tell.
To his credit, what he picked is beautiful, the benefit of understanding the trees, I guess.
I notice a few of the women around us looking at him. A few are way too old for him, and I hope they’re eyeing him on behalf of a daughter or granddaughter. A few, though, are exactly the right age. The two women at the table directly in front of us, for instance, seem less interested in Jo’s instructions and more interested in her son.
It’s rude. For all they know, Liam and I could be a couple.
I get it, ladies. He’s good looking. Move along.
And now that he’s given in to the fact that I’m not going to talk to him until he indulges me by participating in this class, he’s working on our wreath so intently it’s adorable.
It’s like he wants the teacher to give him an A.
Jo laid everything out for us at the beginning, and now she’s walking around the room, helping people create their living masterpieces. I’m working on making a bow out of wired ribbon, and Liam is hot gluing the greenery to what’s called a grapevine, the base of the wreath that looks like a brown circle of bendable twigs.
“Okay,” I say, confident that it’s okay to talk out loud now that Jo’s done with her spiel, “Tell me what you want me for.”
He gives me a quizzical look.
“Wait. Shoot. I didn’t mean it like—” I snap my mouth shut. My face is on fire.
He smirks.
He turns back to the wreath and then says, “Oh.”
“What’s wrong? ”
“Um . . .” He freezes. “I think I glued my finger to the brown thing.”
“Seriously?”
He leans in closer, peering at it. “I didn’t realize this glue was that strong. I think it’s going to take my skin off if I try to pull it off.”
I move toward his hand, trying to get a better look while also trying not to giggle because for some reason it strikes me as funny. A crafter he is not.
“Do you want me to go get some soap? Or I could ask the café for, I don’t know, some oil or something?” I reach down and touch his stuck finger, carefully pulling the skin away from the glue, inching it back, little by little. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah, that doesn’t hurt,” he says quietly.
I glance up. “You can probably do this yourself.”
He shakes his head. “If I do it, I’m probably not going to have a fingerprint on that finger, so if you don’t mind—” He nods toward his hand.
Right. No big deal. I inhale a slow breath and go back to work. Only now I’m keenly aware of his eyes on me, of the proximity of my face to his, of his skin underneath my fingertips.
My heart races, and I can feel beads of sweat gathering above my lip. When I finally free his finger, I take a big step back and dab my face with the sleeve of my sweater. “Eureka!”
I say it so loudly that Liam’s two age-appropriate admirers turn and look at me.
He holds up his unstuck finger at them. “She got it.”
They turn to each other and say something, then turn back at him and smile.
I want to tell them that he’s taken.
By me.
Which he clearly is not.
I try to focus on other things. “I’m used to the occasional art injury.” I smile and go back to making my bow, but my hands are hot, like his skin branded them.
He’s quiet for a few minutes, and my brain has gone blank. I can’t think of anything except the fact that I liked being close to him. I liked having a reason to take his hand in mine. I liked the way he watched me as I worked the glue off his skin.
Oh, crap. I like Liam.
“So, uh—” I’m sweating again—“what did you want to talk about?”
Bringing him here to have whatever conversation he wants to have seemed like a good idea. With us being occupied, it would be easier to talk, a little trick I learned from my mom when I was young. She’d set me up with all the ingredients to make cookies or my box of markers and a blank sketch pad. Inevitably, while I worked, I’d open up about whatever was bothering me. Somehow it made talking easier.
And I thought Liam might appreciate anything that made talking easier.
“I’m working on a new game,” he says, voice low.
I watch him, silently encouraging him to go on and trying not to concentrate on the twitch in his jaw or the sharp green of his eyes.
I also get the sense that he’s letting me inside his world, even if it’s just for a moment.
“I want it to be different from the last few I’ve worked on,” he says. “I’ve, uh . . . struggled to find my footing lately.”
“Creatively?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Relatable,” I muse. “Go on.”
“I’ve been trying to land on the idea for a while, and then I saw something in one of your notebooks in your garage. A little doodle of a kid? Wearing a propeller hat?”
I stop and look at him. “You saw that?”
“Yeah, it was all over one of your notebooks. ”
“Really?” I frown, wondering if my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
He eyes me. “Yes . . .?”
“Oh.” I make a mental note to check on that because I don’t remember doodling him. Not recently anyway. It’s been ages since I drew that boy.
Only . . . apparently not.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes, of course,” I say. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“I guess I’m wanting a unique art style,” he says.
“Why not something like Castle Crusade ?” I ask. “I mean, that was a huge hit.”
He stiffens at the mention of it, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen him do this.
“I’m looking to do something new,” he says. “Something different.”
“Fair,” I say, considering. “But I’ve never made art for a video game.” I work on making a second bow, certain I’ve got the hang of it after the first one, which looks like someone sat on it. This one will be better.
“Right now, I just need concept art for the pitch,” he says. “And your style, it’s sort of, I don’t know, quirky? Whimsical? It’s cute, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.”
“You think my art is cute?” I face him, mock menace, holding wire cutters in one hand.
He shakes his head, eyes wide, but I see amusement playing at the corners of his mouth.
“You think my art is cute.” I grin to myself as I go back to my bow.
“Don’t let it go to your head.” I hear the tease in his voice.
“Oh, it’s already there, buddy.” My smile holds. “Straight up here.” I make an explosion gesture around my forehead.
He makes a point of sighing.
After a pause, I say, “It’s odd to me that you like it. ”
“Why?” he asks. “It’s great.”
“It doesn’t really seem like your style,” I say. “I mean, when I hear the name Liam Fisher the first words I think of are not quirky or whimsical.”
“What about cute?”
I laugh, and he rewards me with a smile.
And I’m not going to ruin the moment by saying so, but for a second, it’s like having the old Liam back.
“Yeah, you’re adorable,” I say. “Like a cozy teddy bear.”
“I’ll pretend you mean that,” he says.
There’s a pause, and I start thinking about the propeller hat boy. A doodle I started drawing when I was young. It’s Liam, of course, though he doesn’t realize that. A boy who is off on a grand adventure, traveling by way of his magic hat.
“What about the girl?” I ask. “Do you want her too?”
He is holding a branch in place, but he looks up. “What girl?”
“The girl with the jetpack,” I say. “She’s always trying to catch the boy with the propeller hat because he sometimes goes off on these fun adventures and leaves her behind.” I’m suddenly very interested in the ribbon I’m cutting.
“I didn’t see the girl with the jetpack,” he says.
I try not to find a hidden meaning in that phrase.
I draw in a breath. “What if they go on quests?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like the boy’s propeller hat sends them off on these adventures, and they work together to solve problems or complete puzzles.”
He sits forward in his chair.
“That’s exactly what I thought, but it’s not just the hat. There are a ton of other pieces of clothing that do crazy things too. Like, springy shoes to jump over walls, cargo pants with unlimited storage space, and if there’s a girl too, her dress could be a parachute, her backpack could have the jets on it?— "
Oh my word. His idea is brilliant. I can already picture what they look like. And all the clothing.
We start talking over one another.
Me: “And what if the boy is the son of a crazy inventor, like Doc Brown from Back to the Future or something? And the inventor made this magic hat, the shoes, the coat, the pants?—”
Him: “Yes! But the inventor tells the boy to never put those things on, like tries to warn him, but of course, he doesn’t listen. So, like, the hat can transport him all over to different parts of the map to face problems he has to solve?—”
Me: “—and he can fly and hover and go underwater. The hat becomes like a boat propeller?—”
Him: “—and the jetpack girl is totally essential on these quests because she has a completely different set of powers.”
This goes on for another few minutes, and we’ve completely stopped working on our wreath. Once the creative whirlwind dies down, we sit back and look at each other. Then, simultaneously, we say: “We need to write this down.”
“You just came up with all of that off the top of your head?” he asks.
I bite my lip, feeling suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t play video games, so what I said might be really stupid.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s not. Not for the kind of game I’m thinking of creating. It’s cooperative. For girls and boys. I’ve never heard of a game like it before.”
“Plus,” I add, “I think it will appeal to kids.”
“ Yes, ” he says. “Younger kids are an untapped market at our company. Developers often target teens and young adults, mostly male, honestly, and they have nothing . . . softer. Or whimsical. Nintendo does, but beyond that? I think it could be the thing I need to get me back—” He clams up and goes back to the wreath.
I frown. Did he just shut down again?
“Get you back to what? ”
“Nothing,” he says. “I just think it’ll impress my bosses.”
I don’t want him to stop talking.
I don’t want him to shut this door.
The Liam I knew had a lot of thoughts and a lot of feelings. When they got to be too much, that’s when he’d retreat—and that’s when I’d imagine him flying off to some foreign land, solving problems and puzzles. That’s when I drew the jetpack girl because I wanted a way to reach him, and I never found one in real life.
“Hey, do you want to go for a walk?” I ask. “I feel like I need to go get my iPad so I can make notes about what you’re wanting.”
“So, you’ll do it?” He sets the wreath down.
“Of course,” I say. “And if you want to throw in the crazy inventor idea, it’s all yours. I’ll just need ten percent off the top.”
He smiles, but looks away, almost like he doesn’t want me to see it.
We wave to Jo, to let her know we’ll be back, and then head outside, both shrugging into our coats. Mine gets twisted and I can’t find the sleeve, so Liam steps forward. “Here, let me.”
He holds it out so I can put it on, then falls into step beside me. “Where is your iPad?”
“Back at the office,” I say. “Jo drove us down here.”
“I’m, um . . .” He points in the direction of the staff parking lot, I’d guess where his truck is parked.
“I assume we have you and Lacey to thank for the crowd that’s out here today?” he asks as we walk.
I shrug. “All we did was get the word out.”
“You gave people reasons to want to come,” he says.
“Yeah. We might’ve.” I smile. It’s nice to think that all these patrons might be here, in part, because of something I did.
“What happens once you come up with the idea? You pitch it to your boss, and then what?”
He scrubs a hand down his chin, not looking at me. “Then they decide if they want to move on it. If they do, they have the choice of letting me head up the project or not.”
I frown. “Wait, so someone else would be in charge of a game that came straight out of your head?”
“Yep.”
“That’s dumb.” It’s out before I can censor myself.
He laughs ruefully. “That’s the way it goes. Like, they’re making a sequel to Castle Crusade , and I’m not on the team for that one.”
I stop walking. “Wait, what?”
He stops and shrugs, as if it’s no big deal. But it has to be a big deal. Right?
“You can’t be okay with that,” I say. “It’s horrible, Liam, that’s your game.”
His smile is sad. “Not anymore.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighs. “I sold it to them.”
It feels like there’s a story there, but I don’t press. If he wants to tell me, he will.
We walk in silence as I follow him to the staff parking lot where we get into his truck. “Wait. What if you did it yourself? Is that a thing? The way so many musicians can put music on Spotify now.”
He starts the engine and pulls out, driving slowly through the main area, carefully avoiding all the people. “It’s a thing.”
“So, do that.”
He laughs. “It’s not that easy.”
“But you did Castle Crusade all on your own, right?”
He presses his lips together and a frown line stretches across his forehead. “I did,” he says, thoughtfully. “That was all me. Just a fun project I did with an artist buddy of mine.”
“And this giant company loved it enough to buy it,” I say, switching into cheerleader mode. “But you were the brain behind that game.” I look at him. “I would not like someone else dictating what I did with my art. I mean, the art I make for myself. Making art for the tree farm or like, another business is different. But the stuff I make for myself . . . the stuff I used to make for myself . . .”
Now I’m looking out the window, thinking about how I’ve left my creativity on the side of the road. I abandoned that whole side of myself, and now that I’m rediscovering it, it’s working overtime. Keeping me awake at night. Giving me ideas about a video game, of all things, which is not something I know a single thing about.
Creativity doesn’t care. When it’s flowing, it’s best just to hold on.
Like Liam and the ATV.
“Are you going to finish that thought?” He parks the truck outside the office.
“No.” I get out and start walking toward the building. When he comes up beside me, I say, “Let’s go finish brainstorming your game.”