Chapter 19
Easton
The water was colder than it had any right to be on a Tuesday in November.
Astrid was in it up to her ribs and laughing about it.
Her hair was pinned up at the back of her head.
Her arms were wrapped around herself like she was holding back the cold by force of will.
She'd gone in fast and committed, same as me, and now, she was paying for it.
I was on the bank with a towel in my hand and trying not to grin.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"You're laughing at me."
"I am."
"I hate you."
"Mhm."
She'd texted me at three.
Astrid
Lake. Bring towels. I have news.
The news was the clinic. Two more families called about appointments next week.
A woman from Caldwell's church booked her hound for the spring shots.
The Bishops referred Mrs. Bishop's sister-in-law, and the sister-in-law had a poodle.
Audrey brought wine over the night before to mark one month of being open and made her cry once, briefly, into her own kitchen sink, which Astrid told me about offhand—the same offhand she'd been using lately for things she let herself feel only after the fact.
She came out of the water, and I wrapped the towel around her, both ends in my fists at the small of her back. She put her hands on my chest. They were colder than the water. She tipped her chin up at me.
"You're warm."
"You're not."
"Make a fire."
"In a minute."
There was a fire pit at the far end of the bank. Somebody had left dry wood under the tarp by the picnic table. We had time. The sun wasn't done. The sky behind her head had gone from blue to the color of weak tea.
She tucked her face against my shoulder. The water in her hair ran cold down the front of my T-shirt.
This was the picture. The lake. The woman in the towel. The dog on the bank. Me holding her. A life I'd been quietly living for two months without saying it out loud, because saying it out loud felt like something you didn't rush.
My phone rang in my back pocket.
She went still against my shoulder.
I dug it out one-handed, keeping the other arm around her.
Shane.
She didn't look up. She knew the rhythm of who I picked up for.
I stepped back from her. I left the towel around her shoulders.
"Two minutes."
"Take it."
I walked four yards down the bank toward the picnic table.
"Briggs."
"Ford."
"Hey, brother."
"Got a minute?"
"Yeah."
"Slot's opening sooner than I told you."
"How much sooner?"
"Walker pushed his last shift to the end of the month. Captain's gotta confirm the line by Monday."
"Monday?"
"I told him three weeks ago I had a name. He's asking me to make it official."
I looked at the water. Astrid was where I'd left her, the towel around her shoulders. She'd turned her back to me without thinking. She was looking at the trees.
"Shane."
"Yeah."
"There are still some things I gotta take care of up here."
A beat.
"Things."
"What things?"
"Things, Shane."
"Ford."
"Yeah."
"How long?"
"A couple of weeks."
"I can't give you a couple of weeks. I can give you till Monday."
"Yeah."
"Brother. I want you on this line. I've wanted you on this line since the night Okonkwo turned in his paperwork. If you got somethin' in Hartsdale to close out, close it out. Call me Monday. Tell me when you're comin'."
"I gotcha."
"I gotcha is not a yes, Ford."
"Yeah. Yeah, Shane. Monday."
"I'm holding you to it."
"I'll call you."
"Don't let me down, brother."
"I won't."
He hung up.
I stood at the edge of the bank with the phone in my hand. I'd handled the call like a man about to disappoint a friend over the phone. The something I had to take care of was four yards away with a towel around her shoulders and her back to me.
I turned around.
She'd come up the bank a couple of paces toward me. She had the towel around her shoulders, and her hands tucked up inside it. The water in her hair had darkened the cotton across the front. She had the small, open look on her face she wore when she was waiting on a thing.
"Who was that?" she said.
She asked it the way she asked about my day. Curious. The voice she used when she handed me a coffee in the morning.
I crossed the bank back to her.
"Shane."
"A friend of mine. From Queens."
"What did he want?"
I let it sit a beat.
I gave her the truth.
"He runs a house out of Queens. There's a slot opening on his line. He offered it to me back in September."
She didn't move her face.
I watched it change anyway.
The small open look gave way to something slower. A woman who'd clocked a thing and was working out, fast, what to do about it.
"He offered it to you in September."
"Yeah."
"And you've been..."
"I told him to put my name in. I haven't called him back since."
"You haven't called him."
"No."
"Two months, Easton."
"No."
She looked at the water for a beat. She came back to me.
"Astrid. Listen to me."
"I am."
"I'm not going."
She didn't say anything.
"I'm not goin'. I told him there was somethin' I had to take care of up here. The somethin' is you. I'm staying. I was gonna call him back tonight and tell him I was out."
She nodded the small nod she gave a thing when she was filing it.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"Take the slot."
The bank went quiet.
"Astrid."
"Take it."
"I don't want it."
"I think you do."
"I don't."
"I think you've been telling yourself you don't because I'm in your house and I make you dinner. I think the man you'd be on that line in Queens is the man you've wanted to be since you put on a uniform. I'm not gonna be the thing that kept you from him."
"You're not the thing that kept me from him. You're the thing I want."
She set her hand on the front of my T-shirt, where the water from her hair had been.
"I love you," she said. "I want you to hear me say it.
I love you, Easton Ford. You spent your whole adult life trying to get on a line like this one.
I'm not going to be the woman who looked at the man she loved and told him don't take the thing you spent twelve years trying to get.
I'm not gonna be that to you. You'd come to resent me eventually.
Or you'd come to resent yourself, which would be worse. "
"I'm not gonna resent either of us."
"You don't know that."
"I know it."
"You don't, Easton. You don't know how you're going to feel in two years, sitting at my kitchen counter listening to a story about a friend of yours making captain on the line you turned down.
You don't know how you're going to feel in five.
I do. I sat in a brownstone in Boston for six years next to a man who'd given up the thing he was good at because it was easier to let his mother choose, and I watched it eat him.
I'm not signing up for the version of that where I'm the one he gave it up for. "
"Astrid. I'm not him."
"I know you're not. You're the better man. I'm telling you the better man is the one who takes the slot."
I let that sit.
I had nothing to say to it that was going to move her. I knew it standing at the picnic table. I knew it, crossing the bank back to her. She was making the call alone and fast because there was no time to do it any other way.
"Astrid. Come home with me. Sit at my counter. Let me tell you the whole thing."
"I can't."
"Astrid."
"Easton."
She kept her hand on the front of my shirt. She looked at it.
"There's another thing," she said. "I should have said it sooner."
"Astrid."
"The truth is, I'm not in a place for anything serious.
Not after Brett. I haven't been since I got back.
I let myself get further into this than I had any business getting because you were across the street, and you were kind to me, and you made me coffee every day.
That was on me. I should have said so a long time ago. "
I closed my eyes. I closed them for a count of three.
When I opened them, she was still there.
Her hand was still on my shirt. Her face had the wet shine along the bottom of the lashes I'd seen on it on the floor of her front hall the night Brett came to her porch, and I'd seen on it at the town hall the night Caldwell put his hand on top of hers, and I was the only man tonight who had seen it on her.
"Astrid."
"Easton."
"You don't mean both of those."
"I do."
"You don't, Astrid. One of 'em is the truth. The other one is the door you brought to close it with."
She let a small breath out.
"Maybe," she said. "Maybe that's right. It doesn't matter which one. Either one is enough."
She took her hand off my chest.
She stepped back.
"Drive me home."
I drove her home.
The truck was quiet. The dog was in the back. The road. Her cheek against the window on the drive over, same window, different drive.
I had one hand on the wheel.
She didn't put hers on mine.
I pulled into her driveway.
She got out. She stopped at her front door. She didn't turn back. She went in.
The deadbolt slid.
I sat in her driveway for a count I did not track. Then I pulled across Maple and sat in my own driveway with the engine off and her towel folded on the passenger seat where she'd set it down before she got out.
She'd told me she loved me. She'd told me to take the slot. She'd told me she wasn't ready. She'd handed me three doors. She meant the love. She meant the take-it. She meant the not-ready. The cruelest thing was that I couldn't push against any one of them without overriding her on the other two.
She built it because she loved me.
She used Brett to make sure it locked.
I was going to take the slot.
Not because I wanted it.
Because she asked me to.