5. Joy
JOY
The Soda Jerk was packed.
I hadn’t expected that. The first night I’d walked in here, the place had been half-full—a few locals, the low hum of conversation, a league night that felt like any other weeknight.
Tonight was different. Every booth was taken.
Every barstool was claimed. There were people standing along the back wall with drinks in their hands, and the dart boards had been roped off with a length of yellow cord, and someone had hung a hand-painted banner from the ceiling that read SUMMER TOURNAMENT in block letters.
I stood inside the door with my bag on my shoulder. I hadn’t come to watch.
I’d come to say goodbye.
I’d told Spencer that morning, sitting on his tailgate at my campsite while he drank coffee from the thermos he’d brought and I rolled my sleeping bag into its stuff sack. I’d said it flatly because I didn’t trust myself to say it any other way.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Early. I need to get back to Charlotte and get the content edited and posted before the brand review on Monday.”
He’d looked at me for a long time. He hadn’t argued. He hadn’t asked me to stay.
He’d set his coffee down on the tailgate and said, “Okay.”
That was it. Okay.
I’d spent the full day alone at my campsite, editing photos on my laptop, answering the brand email I’d been ignoring since Tuesday, drafting captions I didn’t feel like writing.
The Wildwood Valley content was good. It was better than good.
The light on the creek, the rhododendron along the trail, the ridgeline from the overlook—it was the best work I’d shot in months and I knew it.
The brand was going to be happy. The algorithm was going to eat it up.
None of it had Spencer in it.
I’d shot the creek. I’d shot the trail. I’d shot the campsite and the fire ring and the mountain laurel screen and the morning fog lifting off the water.
I hadn’t shot him. Not once since I arrived—not the granite outcropping, not the grass flat above the bend, not the campfire, not his hands, not his jaw, not the way he looked at me across a fire ring with coffee in his hand.
Except once.
I’d taken one photo. Tonight. Five minutes ago.
I’d walked into The Soda Jerk with my bag on my shoulder, planning to find him, say what I’d come to say, and leave before I lost the nerve.
The plan was to wait by the door until his round was done.
The plan was to be quick. The plan was to not sit down.
I’d walked in and he was at the line.
The room was loud and full and focused on the boards, and he was standing at the throw line with three darts in his hand, and his arm was coming up, and the room went quiet the way it does when someone good is about to release, and I’d pulled my phone out of my pocket and taken one photo before I knew I was doing it.
I looked at it now.
Spencer Kirk at the line. Three darts. One arm up. The focus on his face that had stopped me the first night I’d walked into this diner. The dart between three fingers, held carefully, held steady.
The shot was beautiful.
I didn’t post it.
I closed the app and put the phone back in my pocket.
The room erupted. I didn’t see where his dart landed.
I heard Frank yell something from the back corner and heard someone clap hard three times.
I heard the general noise of a room full of people who just watched something good happen.
Spencer stepped back from the line and someone handed him a beer and someone else clapped him on the shoulder.
He turned around.
He saw me.
I was by the door with my bag on my shoulder, phone in my pocket, keys in my hand. He was thirty feet away with a beer he hadn’t drunk and a round he hadn’t finished.
He set the beer down on the nearest table.
“Kirk.” Someone from the back corner. “Kirk, you’re up. Final round.”
He didn’t turn his head. He set his darts down on the rail next to the board. He put them down carefully, three in a row, the way a man sets down something he’s been holding for a long time. Then he walked away from the line.
He walked toward me.
The room got quiet. Not the good quiet, the watching-someone-throw quiet. A different quiet. The kind where people stop mid-sentence because something is happening that isn’t about darts anymore.
He crossed the diner. Long steps. Unhurried. The same walk from the first night—a man who knew exactly where he was going and wasn’t in any rush about it. He stopped in front of me.
“Stay,” he said.
My throat closed. I had a whole speech. I’d practiced it at my campsite that afternoon, sitting on the log, staring at the fire ring, rehearsing sentences I thought I could deliver without falling apart.
Thank you. I’ll remember Wildwood Valley. I’ll remember you. I have to go back to my life.
None of it came out.
“I was coming to say goodbye,” I said.
“I know.”
“I can’t say goodbye.”
He took the bag off my shoulder. He set it on the floor next to the door. He pulled out the stool at the end of the counter—the same stool I’d sat on the first night, the one nearest the wall—and he looked at me.
I sat down.
He looked at me one more beat. Then he turned and walked back to the boards.
The room exhaled. I could feel it—the collective breath of thirty people who’d just watched something they were going to talk about for a while. Frank said something I couldn’t hear. Someone laughed. The yellow rope went back up. Spencer picked his darts off the rail and stepped to the line.
West appeared behind the counter in front of me. He set a blackberry seltzer on a napkin without being asked.
“On the house,” he said.
I wrapped my hands around the can. I didn’t open it yet.
Spencer was at the line. Three darts. Final round. The room settled back into the watching quiet. He brought his arm up. He paused. He released. He didn’t watch it land.
I watched him throw.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I opened the photo app. The picture was still there—Spencer Kirk at the line, one arm up, three darts, the focus on his face that had stopped me the first night and every night since.
I looked at it for a long time.
I closed the app.