Chapter 23 #2
“Oh, here, these are for you,” says Fisher all of a sudden.
He gathers up the to-go containers with the leftovers I packed for her.
Taking credit for my thoughtfulness. There’s no way for me to call this out without sounding like a six-year-old, so I settle for glaring. He flutters his eyelashes and smiles.
“Hey, before I forget,” he says to me, “can you help me add a couple things to the goat playground next weekend?”
“Yeah, I’m free, but why are you adding more to it?” They’ve got a veritable theme park as it is.
He tosses the towel on the counter and rakes a hand through his hair. “Because we are adding two more goats.”
“More animals?!” I bark a laugh. “Damn, man. Are you ever going to put your foot down and say no?” He’d better not.
“No,” he sighs. And then, so low I almost don’t catch it, “Especially not now.”
“What does that mean?” I press.
He fidgets and won’t meet my gaze. “Nothing. It’s just . . . it’s summer, so I’m trying to get started on whatever I need to do to the property while we’ve got a good stretch of weather ahead, is all.”
Weirdly evasive, but okay.
“Which also reminds me,” he adds, “when we were in Greece, how’d you get the riding mower going? It stopped up on me again the other day.”
I finish up the dishes and lean back on the counter, drying my hands on my jeans. I run him through the gambit of things it could be and give him instructions on what to try.
Bea gives me a curious, teasing look, slitting her eyes and cocking her head. “You learn all that the year you weaseled out of history and did the lawn work for special credit?” she asks.
“Special credit?” says Ellis as he ambles into the house now. “Pretty sure he almost failed that year. I had to talk the principal into letting him make up a bunch of work so he could walk at his graduation.”
My face heats when I see Bea’s confused expression.
I scratch at a sudden itch on my chest. “Uh, yeah,” I say.
“The Muntys are our family friends. Mr. Munty was the groundskeeper back then and had a stroke and couldn’t sit comfortably on the machine too long, but he needed the work, so .
. . so I worked out a deal where I’d help out during fifth period.
I just ended up getting behind. Overextended myself a bit, I guess. ”
A divot forms under Bea’s bottom lip. She’s frowning at me like I’m a problem she’s trying to solve, and for once, I’m not sure I like her attention.
“Bea, you should get Fisher to tell us why he’s acting so weird,” I blurt.
She turns that sharp look on him, and he balks. “Don’t you dare,” he says.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she says, stepping toward him with a demure little shrug and a sweet grin. “Remember how I told you that the first time we met?”
“When you showed up at my house unannounced and got my life story out of me, yes,” he bites out.
She flips her palms up toward him. “I meant it then and I mean it now. You don’t have to share anything you don’t want to share. Sometimes it feels nice to unburden, though.”
God, she’s good. It fills me with a wild and weird pride to see her acting like her old self for a minute.
“How are you doing that?” Fisher says, indignant now. “I swear I feel myself wanting to tell you everything.”
“Wait, hold on, so there is something wrong?” says Ellis.
Wren and Sage freeze just inside the doorway, and tension buzzes through the room. “What’s going on?” Wren says.
“Sage, I haven’t said anything,” Fisher says.
“Well, someone better say something now, and do it quick,” says Wren.
Sage walks over to Fisher’s side, and my heart drops to my ass when I see their eyes going glassy.
Until they smile at each other.
“It’s okay,” Sage says to him. “You tell them.”
Fisher dips down to kiss my sister’s forehead. By the time he straightens, my vision is blurred.
“Sage is pregnant,” he says.
The room doesn’t erupt. It chokes. And I’m glad not to be the only crier, for once. When Sage reaches for Ellis first, his hands are shaking when he hugs her.
“You get to be an uncle,” Sage says, muffled by his chest.
A sound cracks out of him. “Oh my god, I get to be an uncle,” Ellis says. “Oh my god.”
Next, she’s passed to Wren, who I’ve never seen smile so big.
Micah bursts in through the back door suddenly, knocking the slider off the tracks before he rights it. “Why’d it get so quiet?” he asks before he picks up on the vibe. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
That lances the emotional bubble. Especially when Sage tells him and he whoops and jostles her in a hug. I make to move in for a hug of my own, but Fisher corrals her back into his arms like it hurt him to have her away, so I decide I’ll wait.
There’s a quick squeeze on my bicep, and I look down to see Bea’s tearful grin.
She reaches up slowly and clasps me in an embrace, and I’m not sure why it brings on a fresh round of tears.
I don’t know how to feel a normal amount in moments like this anymore.
It’s like my brain does a cumulative dump of every emotion I could possibly have.
I think, What if I’d missed this? What if Ellis hadn’t found me at the bottom of that hill, and what if I were gone now?
I’m mad that my parents aren’t here. I’m so fucking excited to see Sage as a mom.
I’m mad that Merritt isn’t here for Bea. Oh my god, we’re getting another Byrd.
Bea and I stay like that until I get distracted by the feel of her against me and the sweet almond smell of her shampoo. I have to move away.
Sage and Fisher are telling us that it’s still early, that she’s due around Christmas, that no, it wasn’t planned, and yes, they’re still planning to do a small wedding sometime this year, when a faint ringing cuts through the noise.
“Is that someone’s phone?” Micah asks. “Who the hell keeps the sound on?”
“It’s mine,” says Bea. She digs into her purse and grabs it, her brow knitting when she checks the screen. “I better go take this.”
I know why she keeps the sound on, and I hate it. It feels like I swallowed ten of those foul sour candies.
I finally get my opening to hug Sage, and Fisher is crushing me to him next.
I try to come up with something I think they all expect me to say. I land on, “If it’s a boy, I call middle name.”