Chapter 7
Nick
His time with Zoey had kicked on well into the evening, and it had taken all of his willpower not to turn it into a sleepover event as well.
Zoey had proven quite the dab hand at air hockey, had demonstrated mostly impeccable taste in movies at the retro video store, and had known all the best spots to chase squirrels at Laurelhurst Park, which had proven the perfect spot to enjoy a late-summer sunset over ice-cream and Belgian waffles, both of which were being sold from vendor carts along the park’s winding paths.
Between chasing the ducks and enjoying a lengthy petting session from the attendees of a silent disco, Alice had had the time of her life.
Especially when Zoey had shown her a wonderfully bent tree with a little bowl-shaped outgrowth filled with a rotating assortment of miniatures.
Alice had climbed well above Nick’s head before scrabbling back down again.
‘There are free concerts here most weekends,’ Zoey had said, as they’d strolled along. Had she said it a touch coyly?
Nick was well aware of the effect he seemed to have on women, but it had been years since he’d dated and he was unpractised in matters of the heart.
His days were quiet and simple now: Alice, the farm, the mushrooms, his neighbours, his text threads with his family.
A comfortable routine of chores, reading, working out and rounding up whatever livestock ended up on his property.
And yet here was Zoey, this beautiful tiny woman with sparkling eyes and impossibly shiny hair and an expressive face that showed every feeling.
Who’d coaxed him into Portland with an honestly not-that-large mushroom order that had turned out to involve some volunteer manual labour that she’d protested the entire way.
And with whom the conversation flowed easily, smartly, whimsically.
Who made him suddenly want to stay up late drinking rum-infused smoothies at the park – no matter that they both had early starts the next day.
There had been some odd parts. The dumpster diver who’d gone lurching off down the street holding what looked like a giant wad of pink chewing gum, causing Zoey to hold up a finger and send a series of text messages asking after the wellbeing of a customer.
And then the way she’d held her hand to his chest when he’d dropped her off.
She’d cocked her head in that quiet, teasing way that wasn’t explicitly an invitation, but certainly wasn’t not an invitation.
At the sight of her full lips, with the lipstick worn partly off from the park-vendor snacks they’d shared, at those eyes staring up at him, Nick had almost thrown caution to the wind and swept her up in a dramatic, breathless kiss, one that wouldn’t have ended there.
But they were both tipsy – Zoey more than Nick, who needed to be sober enough to drive. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t, wouldn’t start something that Zoey might regret the next day.
And besides, the silhouettes of no fewer than three roommates had been evident in the front window.
So here he was, driving back to the farm, his head full of what if, what if?
Alice whined happily next to him as they chugged through Vancouver and towards Mill Plain, which hadn’t especially been on his radar for a farm, but sometimes opportunities popped up and people helped make them happen.
Nick might be on his own now, but it hadn’t always been that way.
He’d had close family and friends who’d propped him up every step along the way.
He’d started as a union plumber thanks to the recommendation of a family friend.
He’d saved his pennies and invested smartly thanks to his cousin Benji, who’d retired on his crypto earnings last year, but who’d also given much more moderate investing advice to Nick, whom he’d dubbed a ‘Boglehead’, which was apparently a boring, stay-the-course type of investor.
(He’d not been wrong.) He’d become a mycologist after a lengthy conversation with an earth sciences professor slash truffle enthusiast, who’d put in a good word for him at the University of Oregon.
(Was there a better, damper place to study fungi than Eugene?) And he’d happened across the farm listing after Cleo had texted him the Zillow Gone Wild Instagram account.
All right, so there’d been some missteps.
But just about everything that had happened in this life was thanks to someone looking out for him and helping him out.
Not in a nepotism-type way – Nick didn’t come from money, or prestige, or power.
But in a community-minded sort of way where everyone lent a hand.
It was half the reason he had Deirdre. Yes, the truck was handy for transporting mushrooms and farm materials.
And Alice when she was too wet and muddy to ride up front.
But it was also a vehicle designed for paying it forward.
If you had a truck, you were the person people called for help.
Since he’d bought the thing, he’d helped move equipment for a preschool, crates of records for a fundraiser, and a travertine table that was so heavy it was a wonder it had made it out of the quarry.
Which was why it was so strange to Nick that Zoey had so vociferously protested his efforts to help with her fridge. He had the truck, and he was willing to help. It was as simple as that.
But apparently it hadn’t been. Zoey had been absolutely ready to wheel the refrigerator down to her shop on a couple of taped-together skateboards. Baffling.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love an independent woman. Zoey was smart, funny, driven, and successful. And gorgeous, although that was not germane to his current train of thought. But he found it mystifying that someone would try to do it all on their own, by choice.
As he pulled up the farm’s driveway, his phone dinged with an urgent calendar reminder.
Ugh, that was right. Darina was coming by tomorrow morning to discuss tax breaks and programs for small businesses. She’d been a bit disappointed when he’d said that mushrooms were his thing and not weed, because apparently that was the focus of most of the programs.
But she’d heartened when she’d found something of interest on the property that apparently unlocked some sort of additional funding or tax incentives.
She’d been coy about what exactly that was – something about easements or improvements – but had suggested she come by to show him precisely how he might benefit.
Darina had also been very adamant about her punctuality.
Small people were often punctual, he’d noticed over the years.
Perhaps because it was easy for them to get lost in crowds otherwise: it was better to arrive early and get a good seat than have to jump for visibility through a thronging pack of people.
Nick, at six foot two, had always tried to move to the back of any venue so that shorter people could get a decent view.
It was just part of being a good neighbour.
As such, Nick was up bright and early the next morning, never mind that he’d spent a solid hour staring at the ceiling reliving his evening out with Zoey.
Although mostly he’d relived the moment where he’d almost kissed her.
What if he had? What would Gwyneth Paltrow have done?
(Both of his sisters loved Sliding Doors and would reference it whenever they were weighing a major life decision.)
Nick raced through his morning chores so that he’d have time to show Darina around. But apparently to no avail. For in spite of Darina’s exhortations about punctuality and the calendar invite she’d sent via both Google and iCal, Nick’s driveway was empty save for his truck.
Perhaps he should’ve treated this meeting like a visit from a tradesperson and assumed that Darina might arrive anywhere between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. within a one-week window. Oh well. He had time to check on the greenhouse.
The white heads of the mushrooms on their racks greeted him as he went inside. The earthy scent of the place wrapped around him, grounding him in the way that he loved. How could you not adore mushrooms? Talk about community. People could learn a lot from them.
He set to work sweeping and checking for signs of pests, then sprayed the compost on each of the shelves to keep it moist – which the mushrooms loved. He was so lost in his work that he didn’t hear the commotion outside until Alice’s ears started twitching.
Pulling off his gloves, he went outside, trying to listen for what had caught Alice’s attention.
There it was: an engine, but not one of the lifted trucks driven by lunatic teenage boys around the windy backroads that turned to slip ’n’ slides when the endless rains hit come October.
More like a two-stroke engine. Or not even that.
Whatever it was, it was in trouble. And possibly in the embankment just off the driveway, the spot where the wildflowers exploded in summer and families of stray cats multiplied.
Pumpkins, too, the result of his neighbours up the street tossing their food scraps into the ditch.
Alice by his side, Nick hurried down the unsealed driveway, preparing to act as a human jaws of life.
A tiny Smart car had trundled off the road, landing at an awkward angle in the drainage ditch. Darina was wedged inside, dressed in some sort of tutu-like outfit that had fluffed up all around her. Well, in the bits where the airbag hadn’t.
Nick wrenched the door open. ‘Darina?’
Shoving the airbag aside, the tiny, glittery woman blinked up at him with bloodshot eyes. Ah, so Zoey’s mushroom smoothies weren’t the only thing she’d been imbibing on Belmont. Although a container of said smoothie had exploded all over the passenger seat, coating it in green froth.
‘You’ve been at The Smoothie Maven, huh?’ He said it gently, trying to assess whether she was injured or just shaken. Had she suffered a bump to the head? Was anything broken?