13. Ivy
thirteen
Ivy
Beck's lacing his boots by the door when Reid comes down the stairs wearing the shirt.
Dark green, Bigfoot silhouette mid-stride, WORLD'S HIDE-AND-SEEK CHAMPION stretched across the front in block letters. Dani takes one look at him and stops mid-sentence.
“You actually bought that.”
“I did.”
“I've seen that shirt in the window for weeks. I cannot believe you bought it.”
“It's an excellent shirt.”
Beck looks up from his boots. “It is an excellent shirt.”
Dani turns on him. “Your opinion doesn't count. You bought that mating call.”
“The mating call was a completely reasonable purchase.”
“You stood at Alder Lake and blew it like you were trying to summon something. Repeatedly.”
“That's called field testing.”
Nolan wanders in mid-argument, takes one look at Reid's shirt, and nods with real appreciation. “Nice shirt.”
“Thank you,” Reid says, looking pointedly at Dani.
“Nobody asked you either,” Dani says, giving up, waving a hand at all three of them like she can't be bothered to fight a losing battle.
“We're leaving,” I say, grabbing my keys off the counter before this turns into a longer debate than the shirt deserves. “Some of us have groceries to buy.”
“Want to grab lunch in town first?” Beck asks, pulling his second boot on. “Then groceries after, so the cold stuff doesn't sit in the truck the whole time.”
“Look at you, thinking ahead.”
“I have my moments.”
The drive into Timber Creek feels different than it did the first time, though the road hasn't changed at all. Same curves through the trees, same stretch of pines opening up into the valley.
“Test time,” I say, reaching for the radio.
“Again?”
“I have to keep checking. Maybe there’s one you won’t know.”
I scan through a few stations. He gets three in a row without hesitating. I'm about to give up when something familiar comes through the speakers, a song I actually know. I turn it up instead of changing it.
Beck starts singing along under his breath, low, unselfconscious. I stop scanning stations and just listen. “You're doing it again,” I say.
“Doing what?”
“Being annoyingly talented at something.”
“It's a curse.”
I leave the station where it is, and we finish the song. My voice filling in around his when I join in for the chorus.
When we park downtown, he's around the truck before I've even got my door open.
His hand finds the small of my back for as long as it takes to walk into the diner, comfortable, like he's done it a hundred times.
Maybe he has. There's a version of Beck that existed before this summer I'm still only catching pieces of.
We slide into a booth by the window, no crew, no Reid, no Tessa asking pointed questions. Just us. It's the first time since Silver Bell we've had a whole afternoon to ourselves, no interruptions.
The sandwiches come with pickles on the side, and I push mine onto his plate.
“You don't want them?”
“I don't like dill pickles.”
“More for me.” He eats one, delighted. “I really like dill pickles.”
“I know. I've seen you eating them straight out of the jar in the fridge. Like a raccoon.”
He laughs, and I steal one of his fries.
I like these lulls because it means I can just ask things. Things that don't come up on a trail crew or in the middle of a card game with six other people listening.“You've got a brother, right?” I ask. “Or did I make that up?”
“You didn't make it up. Older, Air Force, like our dad. Two younger sisters, twins, twenty-four now. One of them lives in Denver, so I see her more than the other two.”
“And the other twin?”
“Nashville. No idea how they ended up that different. They used to be inseparable.”
“What about your parents?”
“Colorado Springs, since Dad retired. There's usually a decent chance I can swing through and see somebody in the winter, depending on where I end up working.”
“That sounds nice. Having a home base like that, even if you're not always there.”
“Never really thought of it that way.” He considers it for a second, like he's turning the idea over for the first time. “But yeah. I guess it is.”
After lunch, we still don't head to the store right away. We walk hand-in-hand the two blocks of actual downtown, looking at the storefronts.
“Ice cream?” Beck asks, nodding toward the shop on the corner.
“Only because you asked so nicely.”
We sit on a bench outside eating the ice cream while it melts faster than either of us can manage.
I watch him lick a drip off his hand with the same total lack of self-consciousness he brings to most things, and I think, not for the first time, I like him considerably more than I planned to when this summer started.
Eventually we make it to Mercer's, and the grocery run goes fast now that we're not distracting each other with pickles and family history. Beck earns his keep on the top shelf, same as before.
“Top shelf. You're up.”
He takes down a box of pasta without effort. “Is this why you brought me? Free labor?”
“One of the reasons.”
“What are the others?”
I don't answer. I just reach up, kiss him quickly on the mouth, and grab the next item on the list while he's still catching up, blinking like he's trying to figure out what just happened.
People greet me the whole way through, same as always. Marlene asks about the crew. Mrs. Caldwell wants to know how Reid's doing, which makes Beck smile, since he's learned by now half of Timber Creek considers my brother a minor local celebrity.
At checkout, Marlene mentions her nephew works dispatch over near Cedar Ridge and says things have been busy lately. Multiple new starts. Dry conditions everywhere. Crews starting to get stretched thin.
“You been staying busy here?” she asks.
“Quiet since that lightning fire,” I say.
“Good. Hope it stays that way.” She hands over the receipt like the conversation was never anything more than small talk, because for her, it probably wasn't.
We're loading bags into the truck when someone calls Beck's name from across the lot. A guy about Beck's age, sunburned, wearing a faded fire crew shirt from somewhere I don't recognize. He jogs over with his hand extended.
“Beck Hale. No way.”
Beck squints at him for a second, like he's paging back through a long list of fire assignments, before it clicks. “Tate. Been a while.”
“Two years, at least.” Tate glances at me, then back at Beck. “You working around here now?”
“Temporary reassignment. Blackpine.”
“Small world. You hear things are picking up over past Miller's Gulch? I heard they're already moving people around.”
“Heard something similar.”
They talk for another minute, mostly names I don't know and fires I've never heard of, the shorthand of two people who've shared dangerous work in places I've never been. Tate eventually waves goodbye and disappears into the store.
“Look at you. Running into someone here you know,” I tease once we're back in the truck.
Beck shrugs as we pull out of the lot. “Fire world isn't that big. You work enough assignments, you run into the same people eventually.”
I think about that. People in Timber Creek know me because I grew up near here, because I keep coming back to the same town every summer.
Beck knows people because he's been everywhere, because his whole life has been a series of temporary postings that somehow added up to more connections than mine, spread across half the West instead of concentrated in one valley.
It’s late afternoon when we make it back to the crew house.
Tessa meets us at the door, eyeing the bags. “That's a long grocery run.”
“We got everything on the list,” I say.
“That doesn’t address what I said.”
“It's the only response you're getting.”
Beck carries the heaviest bags in without comment, and Tessa gives up the interrogation, mostly because Reid distracts her by announcing he's starving and asking what's for dinner.
Later, once the groceries are put away and dinner's still an hour off, I settle into my usual spot on the porch, laptop balanced on my knees, chasing the one corner of Wi-Fi reliable enough to access the internet.
I've got maybe twenty minutes of actual work in before the screen door creaks and Beck comes out with two glasses of water, setting one down beside me. He sits in a nearby chair.
“I have to work,” I tell him.
“I'm not stopping you.”
“You're sitting there.”
“I'm allowed to sit.”
“You're distracting me.”
“I'm sitting quietly.”
“It’s still distracting.”
He laughs, low and easy, but doesn't move.
I go back to my screen and read the same paragraph three times without absorbing a word of it, too aware of him next to me, the afternoon sun still bright over the tree line.
Eventually he does get up and presses a quick kiss to the top of my head on his way back inside. “I'll leave you to it.”
“Thank you.”
“Dinner in an hour.”
“I'll be in.”
He disappears through the screen door. I sit here for a minute after he's gone, not working, just thinking about how easily this has all folded into place.
A week ago, telling Reid felt like a major event, something we had to plan and manage and get right.
Now Beck bringing me water on the porch is just normal.
Somewhere during the past week, having Beck around stopped feeling new. It simply started feeling right.
Right enough I don't want to think about how things that feel permanent often aren't.