Chapter Five Thoran
The whole town turns out for the Lumberjack Days barbecue.
They always do. It’s the second Saturday, in the arena parking lot and it’s our unofficial kick off to the festivities.
Smoke goes up off the pits behind the announcer's stand before the sun's clear of the ridge.
Somebody's truck is backed in with the speakers on it.
Kids run the bleachers and hide underneath them.
The whole lot smells like woodsmoke, cut grass and hot asphalt.
I've stood in this lot for the opening barbecue every June since I moved here. I have never once stood in it with a woman on my arm.
Vivien comes across the gravel toward me and I forget the sentence I was in the middle of saying to Adler.
She's got her hair down for once, and a plaid shirt knotted at the waist. The jeans she’s wearing show every curve and it makes it impossible to think.
Drew is half a step behind her with his hands already full of cotton candy.
She stops in front of me. Close, but not close enough.
"So." She's got that professional voice on, the one from the bay. "How do we do this?"
"Do what."
"This." She flicks two fingers between us. "There's a banner with our faces on it, it hardly even looks like me. Someone hung an AI banner, Thoran!”
“Woah! What is that? Are you supposed to be chopping wood? Have you ever even held an axe before?” Drew lets out a squeal of delight as he takes in the sight of his mother as a lumberjack.
“Stop it,” she bites back a laugh then turns to me. “There are people here who are going to ask us how we met and we have not decided what we're saying."
I shrug. "We're saying I met you in the firehouse."
"That's—" She stops and considers it. Her eyebrows furrow slightly. "That's true."
"Most of it's going to be real." I hold my hand out, palm up, and let it sit there between us. "That's the only way I know how to do it. I don’t do fake very well."
She looks at my hand.
I want to tell her the rest of it. That I've never in my life been able to make my face say one thing while my chest says another.
She can ask anybody who's ever played cards with me.
That if she puts her hand in mine in front of this entire town, I'm not going to be pretending.
She should know that going in. But I glance at Drew over her shoulder and know it isn't fair of me to say it out loud in a gravel lot with a hundred people watching.
So I don't say any of it.
Instead I just keep my hand there.
Drew looks up between us with his mouth full. "Are you guys gonna hold hands the whole time? Because that's odd."
"Here’s forty bucks," she says as she hands him the bills from her wallet. “Go try everything they’ve got until your dad gets here.”
“Bet.” Drew slips the cash into his pocket and dashes away like he’s afraid she’s going to change her mind.
When he’s out of sight, she lets out a breath, and puts her hand in mine. Her fingers are cool and they fit perfectly in mine. That bolt drops into its machined hole all over again. I close my hand around hers and I don't intend to open it.
"Okay," she says quietly, mostly to herself.
I run my thumb over the back of her hand. "Yeah, we’re okay. I’ve got you, trust me."
We start walking, and the first head turns before we're ten feet in. Then another and another. Word travels this town faster than fire ever could, and I can feel it moving out ahead of us. It’s a hitch in a conversation by the drink table.
It’s someone's grandmother going up on her toes to see over a shoulder.
Each glance makes Vivien's hand tighten in mine.
"They're all looking," she murmurs.
"They're looking at you." I steer us toward the pits. "The looking is the whole point. That's the front page of the program you're getting."
"That is a very practical way to think about it."
"I'm a practical man."
That's a lie, and I think she knows it, because she glances up at me and there's a little heat in it.
Adler catches us by the pits with tongs in one hand.
Jules hugs her before she can get her free hand up.
Somebody hollers something about the poster from the bleachers and the crowd around the tables laughs.
Then Vivien laughs too and I can tell it’s a real one.
It gets to her eyes and she leans into my side for a half second on the way past. I would build the whole fire station with my bare hands to keep her this close for another second.
Drew disappears, then reappears with some kids, and disappears again.
"He's fine," I say, before she can turn around. "Ball field. I can see him from here."
She lets out a breath. "You looked."
"I'll keep looking. I may go hit a few balls with them before the night is over.”
She goes quiet at that. The silence is long enough that I glance down. Vivien’s watching me with an expression I can't read at all. Her palm presses into mine and she leans into me again. I don't think she knows she's doing it, but I don't say a word about it.
“Thank you, his dad is going to be here any minute to pick him up. But maybe another time.”
“I’d hang out with Drew anytime.”
If Vivien is going to stand in front of this town with her hand in mine, then let them all look. Let them all decide it's real.
Because there's nothing fake about it on my end.
She's mine. She just hasn't been told yet.