22. Beck
twenty-two
Beck
I've changed shirts twice, which is more consideration than I've given my appearance in roughly a decade. I'm standing in front of the mirror in the crew-house bathroom second-guessing a button-down like it's about to be graded.
It's not that I don't know how to take someone on a date. It's that I haven't done this in a while, not the real version, planning and reservations and a destination I've kept secret for almost a week. Ivy and I have spent plenty of time together. But this is different. Something I planned for her.
I hear her coming down the hall and step out to meet her. Whatever I was about to say gets lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
She's wearing a sundress, soft yellow, simple, nothing complicated about it. It falls mid-thigh, and my brain decides this is the moment to stop functioning entirely.
“Beck.”
I drag my eyes back up to her face. She's trying not to smile and mostly failing.
“Were you staring at my legs?”
“Yep.”
That gets a laugh out of her, surprised, like she expected me to deny it. “Do you have a thing for legs?”
I look at hers again, briefly, because I seem to have lost all self-control tonight. “I have a thing for yours.”
She doesn't have a response ready for that. I count it as a win and grab my keys before she can recover.
We're on the road before she starts fishing for information. “You're really not going to tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Not even a hint.”
“You'll find out.”
“Is it Silver Creek?”
“You're persistent. I'll give you that.”
She tries a new angle every few minutes.
I keep my mouth shut and enjoy watching her try.
Last Sunday, at the Grangers', I cornered Annie in the kitchen under the pretense of helping with dishes and asked what she thought Ivy would enjoy for a real date night.
Annie didn't even pretend not to know why I was asking.
She mentioned a restaurant in Silver Creek Ivy's always liked, and then, almost as an afterthought, an old drive-in that re-opened last year.
I did the rest of the research myself. Annie just pointed me in the right direction.
Dinner's at a place with good food and low lighting. The kind of ordinary place that feels right for tonight instead of something that would make Ivy wonder if I was trying too hard.
“You made a reservation,” she says, once we're seated.
“I did.”
She looks pleased, more than making a reservation probably warrants. I decide I like being the reason for that particular look.
We talk about simple things. A story from her childhood involving Reid, a slingshot, and consequences that followed him into his twenties.
Something ridiculous that happened at the crew house this week that I somehow missed entirely.
Places she's traveled, which turns out to be considerably fewer than the places I've lived.
We spend a few minutes comparing the strangeness of growing up rooted versus growing up in motion.
A song comes on somewhere in the background, quiet under the restaurant noise.
“Who's this?” Ivy asks, testing me, the same way she has been since the truck ride to Timber Creek all those weeks ago.
“Tom Petty.”
“You didn't even think about that.”
“There's nothing to think about. It's Tom Petty.”
“That feels like cheating.”
“How does someone cheat at recognizing a song?”
She doesn't have an answer, just shakes her head and goes back to her dinner, smiling.
I watch her across the table, not because of how she looks, though the dress hasn't left my mind.
It's the way she laughs at her own jokes half a second before she finishes telling them.
The way she leans forward when she's interested in what I'm saying instead of just being polite.
How easy this is, sitting here with her, talking about nothing important, like we've done this a hundred times even though it's technically our first real date.
That's the strange part. It doesn't feel like a beginning. It feels like something that was already built, getting one more layer added to it tonight.
When dinner's finished, Ivy thanks me, tells me she had a great time, like the evening's winding down.
“We're not done,” I say.
She pauses. “We're not?”
“Dinner was the first part.”
That gets me a look I'm going to remember for a while, equal parts surprised and delighted. I’m pleased as I lead her back out to the truck.
She notices we're not heading back toward Timber Creek. “Where are we going?”
“You'll see.”
She gives up trying to guess for a few minutes, watching the road. Then the sign comes into view, covered with string lights glowing against the darkening sky.
I hear her breath catch a little. “The drive-in is open?”
“It is.”
She turns to look at me, genuinely delighted in a way that makes every hour I spent researching this completely worth it. “I haven't been here since I was a kid.” She cranes her neck to see the massive screen as we pull into a spot.
A few minutes later, I've got the bed of the truck set up, blankets spread out, a couple of pillows I borrowed from the crew house without drawing any attention, a small cooler with drinks and some snacks despite the dinner we just ate. Nothing elaborate. Just comfortable.
Ivy climbs up and takes it all in, the blankets, the pillows, the whole setup, then looks at me.
“You really planned this.”
“Told you I could do better than plants.”
She laughs, settling in beside me as the previews start, and for a minute we're just two people watching a screen light up against the darkening sky, warm evening starting to cool now that the sun's fully gone.
I notice her shiver a little before she says anything.
“Cold?”
“A little. Should've thought that through.”
I've got a spare clean shirt in the truck, something I keep around.
I dig it out and hand it over. She pulls it on over her dress, the long sleeves swallowing her hands, the hem falling well past where the dress ends.
Something about the sight of her in my shirt does something to my brain that even the dress hadn't quite managed.
I pull the blanket up over both our legs and let her settle against me, her head finding my shoulder like it belongs there, which, at this point, it does.
The movie starts. We watch some of it. Ivy narrates her disagreement with a character's terrible decision-making under her breath. I whisper back that the character clearly has no survival instincts. Somewhere next to us somebody shushes us, not unkindly, and we both go quiet, trying not to laugh.
I lose track of the plot about an hour in, not because anything's wrong, just because I'm paying more attention to Ivy than to the screen. The way she reacts to things. The warmth of her against my side. How completely unbothered I am about missing whatever's happening in the movie.
She catches me looking. Again. “What?”
I don't answer. I kiss her instead, slow, nothing behind it except wanting to, and she kisses me back like she'd been thinking about it too.
When we finally separate, she looks at the screen, then back at me. “We missed something.”
“Probably.”
“I have no idea what's happening in this movie.”
“Neither do I.”
She laughs, settling back against me, and I put my arm around her again. The movie keeps going without either of us paying it much attention.
I don't know when it happened, but somewhere along the way my relationship with Ivy stopped feeling temporary.
I don't want it to end when summer does.
I don't know yet what that means, in practical terms. Ivy's future isn't settled any more than mine is.
My winter work will take me somewhere, same as always.
Her graduate program's nearly finished, and after that, who knows.
But the uncertainty doesn’t feel like a countdown. It just feels like something we haven't solved yet. We'll figure it out. I pull her a little closer and let the movie keep playing to an audience that isn't really watching it.
By the time we head back to Blackpine, the night's cool, stars thick overhead, Ivy still wrapped in my shirt with the blanket draped over her lap for the drive.
At the crew house, she pulls the shirt off over her head, dress underneath slightly wrinkled, and hands it back to me.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
I take it from her, and she looks at me for a second, something warm and a little soft in her expression.
“You did better,” she says.
“Good.”
She heads inside, and I stand on the porch a minute longer, shirt still in my hand, thinking about how I'd only planned far enough ahead to give her a good date tonight. Dinner. The drive-in. Getting the details right.
I hadn't thought about what came after. Wanting another one. And another after that.
Not just until the assignment in Timber Creek ends.
After.