Chapter 33 KELSEY ROUNDS THE RIGHT BASE
Chapter 33
K ELSEY R OUNDS THE R IGHT B ASE
Everyone at the various stores watches me curiously as we buy ribbon, taste-test peach pie, and load two crates of bottled apple cider into the bed of the truck.
Carrie answers their questions easily. I’m a guest at the house and helping out. No one digs too deeply, at least not in front of her.
When we get back to the tree farm, I don’t see Jack or Randy anywhere. Gina sets me up at a long table in the wood building with the ribbon, wire circles, and some plastic greenery to fill them out.
“Good luck!” she says, and I get the feeling she’s pleased as punch to have dumped this task on the poor unsuspecting girl who dared show up with her brother.
When she’s gone, I snatch up my phone to text Zach.
Me: Forget the horror movie. I’m free labor.
He writes me instantly, as if he’s been waiting.
Zach: What are you doing?
Me: Sitting alone in a building, expected to produce ribbon wreaths. I don’t even know how to make them.
I glance around. On the back wall, a long counter holds the cash register and racks of knickknacks, snow globes, ornaments, candy bars, and light-up necklaces.
The two side walls are filled with shelves of decorations, carved statues, and even some taxidermy, including an entire family of squirrels in Santa hats.
I can’t seem to avoid that no matter where I go.
Zach: You want me to come?
I do, desperately. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself into. But I can’t ask him. Apparently, my fate is to make ribbon wreaths.
Me: It’s okay. This is my dystopian nightmare.
Zach: Where’s the husband?
Me: I have no idea but he better be ring shopping.
Zach: If it’s less than a carat, send it back.
This makes me smile. Zachery is good in every situation.
He sends me a link, then another, all short instructional videos on how to make ribbon wreaths. The last one says, “Impress your mother-in-law!”
I have to laugh. Zachery gets me. All the way to the bone.
The door creaks open, and I quickly snatch up a roll of ribbon.
It’s Randy.
“Hey, lady,” he says. “Did my sister scare you off? Mom’s a softy.”
“I’m not easily frightened.”
He drops into a chair on the opposite side of the table. “You’re a real trouper, that’s for sure.” He picks up a roll of ribbon. “Making any headway?”
I realize I have no way of cutting the ribbon. “I was about to embark upon a reconnaissance for scissors.”
“I got you.” He heads for the back counter, and I swiftly mute my phone and play the first video, praying I’ll learn enough to start the project in the scant seconds he’ll be gone.
But Zach’s good, sending me a clip that cuts to the chase, showing how to wrap the ribbon around your fingers and secure it with wire all around the circlet.
“Is there some wire around here?” I ask him, keeping my eyes on the video. “Something low gauge I can use to tie the ribbon on?”
“For sure. It’s in the storage room.” He heads through a back door.
Great. More time. I pick up the end of the ribbon and practice the wrap a few times. The video speeds up as the woman places all the fat loops around the edge and then secures the final one, covering the end of the wire with a bow. I can make a bow.
I shut the phone off and push it aside as Randy comes back into view. He sits again, sliding a pair of scissors and a roll of silver wire across to me. “Is it hard? If you can teach me, we’ll get done faster and I thought I’d take you into town for lunch, if you’d like.”
Finally. “Sounds great. And yes, it’s easy.” And I can assess his finger dexterity. The thought brings a blush to my cheeks, but then it’s not Randy’s hands I picture, but Zachery’s.
Nope, no. Danger zone!
I pull a second spool of ribbon from the bag and roll it to Randy. Focus, Kelsey.
It takes a few tries to show him how to wrap the ribbon around his fingers, press it against the circlet, and secure it with wire, but by the time we’re halfway around, we’re both fairly competent with it.
Rather than teach him the trickier bit with the bow, I set him to making a third while I finish the ribbon off and wire in the greenery.
When I hold it up, I think it looks good.
“Hey!” Randy says. “That’s nice.”
We keep going.
“I’m guessing that since I’m staying in your family’s homestead, your roots go way back in Glass.”
“Over a hundred and fifty years. It used to be a logging operation, but my great-great-grandfather realized pretty quick that we better be responsible about the land or we’d be out of trees.” Randy’s fingers fly around the circle.
“A forward thinker, then.”
“Practical, anyway. Tree farms got popular in the fifties, when people from the city would come out to cut their own in the national forest, then realize it’s nice to have someone fell it for you and tie it to the car.”
“I bet.”
“It’s not easy, picking a good one in the middle of everything, or felling one if it’s surrounded by other trees. A lot of half-felled trees met their tragic end to no good use, and we became the answer.”
“Now you grow them specifically for Christmas trees, I take it.”
“Indeed. We augment from the forest and bring them to the tents, but we thin the right parts to allow all the trees to grow well.”
I set aside the second finished wreath and reach for the one Randy has filled with ribbon. “Does everyone work on the farm, or have some members of your family branched out?”
He laughs, a deep chortle that I feel in my belly. “ Branched out. I like it. My dad is an only child, so he took it over from Grandpap. When we moved Grandmama into the cottage, we were able to rent out the homestead for weddings and events, and that helps supplement the income. Gina mainly handles all that.”
I want to ask what happened to make the business falter enough that they need to fundraise this summer, but I know to shut my mouth. It doesn’t matter. Not on the first date.
The silence stretches as we work. I guess he isn’t going to ask about me, which I probably prefer right now. I won’t have to tap-dance around my history.
Jack comes in, pronounces our work “good enough,” and takes the finished ones to hang. By the time he returns, we’ve completed the last one.
“Lunch, then?” Randy asks.
“Sure.”
We take the same green truck back into town, Blue between us, her tongue hanging out. It should be charming with the beautiful town, the dog, and the already-familiar drive.
But Randy and I seem to have run out of things to talk about.
When we sit down at a sandwich shop on the square, Blue lying under the table, I aim to come up with a safe topic. “What’s high school like here? Is there a football team? Is another sport bigger?”
It turns out Randy played football, and for the next thirty minutes, through ordering, eating, and paying the check, he finds an endless number of stunning plays, close calls, and big wins to tell me about.
I hold my smile for so long that it feels plastered on.
I’m out of practice talking about small-town things.
But Randy catches himself. “Listen to me,” he says. “Bending your ear the whole time about my glory days. What about you? What was high school like for you?”
Okay, then. This is an improvement over the last two.
“I did theater. One-act play.”
“You’re an actress?” He frowns. “From Hollywood?”
“No, no, I’m not an actress. Not in the least.” I have to fix that misperception fast.
And leave out my degree in theater arts, I guess, the one where I started in acting but switched to tech and design skills when I decided I could never handle the reality of being judged for something so personal as my looks and the way I acted a part.
I never auditioned for anything, only did small performances required for my classes.
“I was more behind the scenes,” I say quickly. “I can paint a mean garden wall.”
I reach for details that skirt the acting stereotype. “I learned how to run a light board. I was too afraid of heights to climb the catwalk to change the bulbs, though.”
Randy laughs lightly at that. “I might have been, too.”
Then it happens!
INT. SMALL-TOWN SANDWICH SHOP—DAY
KELSEY, 25, in denim shorts and a white shirt, sits across from RANDY, 28, in work jeans and boots.
He reaches for a chip at the same moment she moves toward her glass, and their fingers brush each other.
They look at each other in surprise, as if neither one of them guessed you could tell that someone was “the one” from an accidental touch.
The zip of electricity I feel is bright and sharp.
Hallmark first base! Exactly like it’s supposed to happen!
After the accidental brush of our hands, Randy takes my fingers and clasps them in his. “This all right?”
“Yeah,” I say, breathless.
I’m breathless! From holding hands!
His thumb moves across my knuckles. “You like to wear a lot of rings.”
“I do?” I mean, I know I do, but I’m not wearing any now at all. I didn’t want any confusion about my availability, plus that didn’t seem very farm-girl.
“I can tell from the tan lines. See?” He lifts my hand, and sure enough, there are the barest blurred rings of paler skin. I can even make out the ghostly circle of my favorite moonstone.
“I guess I’m outdoors a lot.” I’ve never noticed this myself. It must have happened during all the walks from the office to my car. California sunshine at its finest.
I take in his face. He’s not as handsome as Zachery, but that’s like comparing someone to Brad Pitt. Most men would lose.
His face is tan and well honed with a sharp jaw and broad, sweeping eyebrows. His eyes are hazel, the glittery kind that always make me think of the sparkle batons I loved as a kid. I had one just like his eyes, gold and brown and green and blue.
“You still owe me at least twenty minutes of high school bragging before we’re even,” he says. “Were you an A student? I bet you were. You look sharp as a tack.”
Nobody ever says I look smart. Sunshine, yes. Pretty, sometimes. Bright, often.
“I thought blondes couldn’t be smart,” I say.
He reaches out to tap my nose. “You’re the whole package, I bet. Beautiful and brainy. And crafty, too. And a farm girl, so you know hard work. Girls like you don’t come into Glass, Wyoming, very often.”
The glow in my gut is warm and good. This is happening.
I glance around the tiny restaurant. “It’s all so beautiful here and the shops are quaint, and that homestead of yours is a dream.”
“It’ll be mine when I want it. Jack took the original cabin when he got married, and Gina prefers to live in town. It’s too much house for me right now, although Mom thinks it’s set up nicely to be a bed-and-breakfast. All depends on how I settle down.”
During this, his fingers keep their easy pressure on mine.
“Is that what you want?” I ask. “A bed-and-breakfast close to the tree farm?”
“I think it sounds all right. This is where I started, and this is where I’ll end up.”
Unlike me. I shot out of that dairy farm the first chance I got. My father without my mother was unbearable while I was growing up. And it never got any better, no matter how many times I went back between college semesters to try again. He was toxic and mean, and most of us escaped.
Without the glue of our mother’s care, we scattered, talking only a few times a year. Twice, we managed to get everyone back at Christmas, but the way it ruined everyone’s holiday made most of us quit trying. I haven’t gone back in years.
I really don’t want to go there, and this is looking good. I want to know more about Randy. The urge to jump as many hurdles as possible is strong. “Do you have other interests? Anything else you ever wanted to do?”
He shrugs. “No point in it. Jack went to college. Got an ag degree. Then he came back and did the same things he was doing before, minus about forty thou in our parents’ savings. Didn’t seem much point in it, so I skipped.”
“That wasn’t that long ago. You could still go.”
This unsettles him. “I don’t see any reason to leave. And if I like somewhere else better, doesn’t that mean I never belonged in the first place?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about you? You left your parents’ farm.”
This is hitting close to home.
We’ve strayed from the formula. The questions are going too deep. Aren’t we supposed to be baking something? Cupcakes? A pie?
Where’s a bunch of carolers when you need them?
But then I hear it. The strains of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”
I peer out the window at the sun-drenched landscape. A teen boy in shorts and a tank top saunters by.
The sound grows louder.
“There they are!” The woman who took our order leaves her damp rag on a table and heads to the door.
“It’s the school choir,” Randy says. “They’re doing the same rounds they do at Christmas. It’s amazing how the whole town is getting into the spirit of the fundraiser.”
“The school lets them wander and sing?”
“It’s the last week of school. We timed the dance to be their last day to encourage people to come celebrate. The teachers are tired, so I guess they went out caroling.” He grins. “I bet some of them sneak off to Harvey’s Sweet Shop to buy candy.”
A group of ten children, all aged ten to twelve or so, sing as they walk along the sidewalk of the square. Behind them is a woman with a harmonica, blowing an occasional note to keep them in tune.
They see us watching them and pause on the other side of the window. The woman at the door throws it open so the sound can penetrate.
“And a happy New Year!”
Now it does seem odd, since it’s only about to turn into a happy June, and of course the kids are all in shorts and sandals.
But for my purposes, it’s perfect.
The script is holding up exactly right.
And when I think about it, I can see myself at the homestead, greeting the latest visitors, baking bread from scratch and sending them off with a jar of my own preserves with a cute checkered bow.
And kids. Two of them, totally into their grandma Carrie.
This is what I was thinking of. Randy described it exactly.
The dairy farm life without the dairy farm work.
Living like my upbringing without the bitterness.
And with a bonus—the opportunity to meet new people all the time even though I live in a tight community.
I think I just found my dream.