Elizabeth #2
“I notice a lot of everything.” He said it plainly, like it was a limitation and not a talent, and went back to looking at the labels, and I went back to giving him the rounds as we walked, ticking them off the clipboard like the safety card before takeoff, brisk and funny and in control, a woman entirely on top of her own life and absolutely not counting the inches between his shoulder and hers.
“Five rounds,” I said. “Pie eating is the kickoff. Low stakes, high humiliation. It exists to loosen everyone up and let the town place its bets. Costume showcase—yes, you’ll need a costume, no, we are not discussing it yet, stop making that face, you have a whole face happening right now.
Pumpkin carving. Talent.” I paused on the word, and his jaw set.
“Yes. Talent. No, you may not do marksmanship; Jude already asked and was already told no. Then the Harvest Ball and Mr. Pumpkin announcement.”
“Is that it?”
I stopped at the foot of the gazebo steps and turned to face him, because this was the part that actually mattered, and you do not deliver the part that matters mid-stride.
“Then there’s the Harvest Promise. It’s the oldest thing in the whole festival—older than the contest, older than the maze, older than me, and I’ve been doing this since I was tall enough to hand out flyers.
Whoever’s crowned Mr. Pumpkin stands up at the crowning, in front of the entire town, and makes a promise to Sweetbriar.
Out loud. For the year. The fire chief promised the town a new ladder truck one year and then had to start a fundraiser to actually get it.
The pharmacist promised free flu shots for seniors, and we held him to every dose.
It’s not a joke, and nobody in this town treats it like one.
You win, you promise the town something real, and then you spend a year being the kind of man who keeps it. ”
He was quiet. Looked at the empty stage, the steps where it would happen, and I watched him turn the whole idea over with both hands like it had a real weight to it.
He took it seriously, and I felt that oh no go through me again, low and certain.
Because the men who deflect everything are easy.
I have spent my entire life surrounded by men who deflect everything, and I can banter with that in my sleep.
It’s the quiet ones. It’s the ones who go still and actually weigh what you handed them.
Those are the dangerous ones, and I had just handed this one the heaviest thing I’ve got and watched him hold it like he understood exactly what it was.
“Okay,” he said. Just that. Like he’d set it down somewhere safe.
We walked back toward the gazebo with the frost gone now to dew, the last of the smoke lifted off the field, and the sun came through the half-turned maples in that low slanting gold, and I felt the whole morning sliding sideways into something I had not budgeted for.
Something dangerously pleasant. Two people walking a pretty farm, in no hurry at all, his shoulder a careful and deliberate eight inches from mine, the worry stayed down where I kept it, and for about thirty seconds I had the awful, seductive feeling that I could just—be here.
In the morning. With him. Not performing, not managing, not staying a half-step ahead of everything. Just here.
Which is exactly the kind of feeling that gets a girl seen. So I reached for the joke, because the joke is what keeps me safe.
“One ground rule,” I said, brisk, and hopped up to sit on the gazebo rail, partly for the high ground and mostly so I’d have something to do with my body that wasn’t standing close enough to him to count his eyelashes, which I had embarrassingly begun to be able to do.
“This happens every single year; it’s a documented occupational hazard, and I find it goes better if I get ahead of it. ”
He came to a stop in front of the rail, hands back in his pockets, looking up at me with the patience of a man who has all day and has decided to spend it right here. “What does?”
“The contestants fall in love with me.” I studied my clipboard with enormous professional interest. “It’s the access.
The clipboard. The way I believe in them when no one else will.
I’m essentially a coach. It’s pure transference.
Extremely well documented in the literature.
” I stuck my hand out, all business, and grinned at him, because the grin is armor and the armor was holding, mostly, around the edges, if you didn’t look too hard.
“So. Promise me you won’t fall in love with me, Officer Hartford. Saves us both the paperwork.”
I meant it to be a joke. I have said far funnier things to hold off far heavier ones a thousand times in my life.
It’s the oldest trick I own. But he looked at my outstretched hand.
And then he looked up at me sitting on the gazebo rail, and he didn’t laugh, and he didn’t take it, not right away, and for one full terrible second the whole farm went quiet enough that I could hear the few brave bees working the last of the frost-burnt asters down by the hives, and I could hear my pulse beating in my ears, which had no business being that loud over a handshake.
Then he reached up and took my hand.