21. “I can do eggs.”
“I CAN DO EGGS.”
YASMINE
The house came through the trees.
A long, low farmhouse with white paint gone soft with age and a porch running the full width. It sat in the land like it had grown there, tree line hugging it close after decades of quiet agreement.
Hale put the truck in park. “This is home.”
I looked at it. Then a little longer at the way the light fell, roofline catching just enough, the rest dropping off into shadow. In my head, the shot was perfect, though I knew the camera would never catch it exactly right.
I reached for my camera bag anyway.
He brought me in through the back, through a screen door that creaked long and slow, into a mudroom with boots lined along the wall and a raincoat hanging from a peg.
The kitchen opened off the mudroom, and beyond that, a hallway.
The ceilings stretched high above us, the wide-plank floors worn down to a color you couldn’t buy, the plaster walls holding sound in a way cheap drywall never could.
I trailed my fingers along the hallway wall, feeling the cool texture under my palm.
“It needs work,” Hale said.
It had honest wear from being lived in hard for a long time, patches and fixes made for function. But underneath it all…
“The bones are good.”
“Yeah.” There was pride in his voice. “I’ve got enough now to start fixing it up.”
“But not too much.”
“No.” He smiled. “Not too much.”
I moved deeper down the hall and slowed.
Photographs.
The frames filled every stretch of wall, slightly crooked, spacing uneven, black-and-white prints older than either of us, bleeding into faded color from the seventies and eighties and nineties.
I stopped in front of a portrait of a man standing outside a younger version of this house, squinting into the sun. He had Hale’s jaw and Hale’s way of standing, like impressing people would never be on the agenda.
“Your dad?”
“Yeah.” Hale stepped beside me. “Him and my Mom. Their wedding portrait’s over the fireplace, but this one’s my favorite.”
The next one was older, formal, tinged amber with time.
“Grandparents,” he said. “On my dad’s side. The house was theirs before.”
“And before that?”
“His parents built it.”
I lingered, hyper-aware of him watching me study his people.
I didn’t have photographs like this. I had my own work on my walls. Images from places I’d passed through, proof I’d been places. Not this.
“You have other family?” I asked, moving before he could read my face too closely.
“Uncle and aunt on the east coast. Some cousins. We don’t see each other much.”
I nodded.
The hallway opened into a room that couldn’t decide if it was an office or storage. Boxes against one wall, toolbox on a desk with papers stacked mid-sort. And books.
Everywhere.
Not pretty display books. These had been worked over. Cracked spines, dog-eared pages, margins crammed with notes in handwriting I recognized as his. They sat in stacks on the desk, in piles on the floor, balanced on the windowsill like they might fall any second.
Postcolonial theory sat next to thermodynamics. Automotive engineering wedged in beside philosophy and architectural history. Academic journals slumped over notebooks filled with equations.
It looked like the inside of his brain, spilled across a room.
“Sorry,” he said. “The study’s a mess.”
I stepped closer and found picture frames half-buried under a stack of papers. Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Hale Henry.
“I thought your degree was in literature.”
“It is.”
I picked up another frame. Different degree. Different field. “Exactly how smart are you, Hale?”
“Covid was boring,” he said, like that explained everything.
It didn’t at all.
“Hale?”
“Hmm?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you make no sense on paper?”
His brow lifted.
I shook my head. “I don’t get you.”
“What’s to get?”
“You’re kind. Like, actually kind. You run your own business. You’re not an asshole.” I paused. “Which already puts you ahead of most men.”
His mouth twitched. “Low bar.”
“And you read everything. You’ve got opinions about everything. Art, music—” I gestured vaguely at the room. “All of this.”
“You’ve got degrees you don’t use. You’ve never left the state, and you’re just…” I huffed a quiet breath. “Fine with it?”
He leaned back against the desk, watching me like I was the one being confusing.
“Darlin’,” he said, easy as anything, “I think you’re workin’ real hard to make me complicated.”
“I’m not.”
“Ain’t much to it.”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Don’t pull the just-a-simple-country-boy routine on me.”
He sighed, shrugged. “I like my life, Yaz. Haven’t had much reason to change it.”
I squinted at him. Didn’t believe him. Wasn’t sure if that said more about him or me.
He just smiled and held out his hand. “Ready?”
I set the frame down carefully and he walked me out through the back door, and the land opened up.
I stopped.
The yard stretched long before giving way to something wilder. Split-rail fencing stood half reclaimed by vines, old growth tangled with new.
The sun sat at exactly the angle I would’ve asked for.
I moved toward the tree line, camera already in my hand before I registered reaching for it. A creek ran along the far edge of the property, still water pooling under low branches, the sky reflected in it.
I shot the fencing. The outbuilding off to the side, boards weathered to silver-gray, rusted hinges, paint peeling back in layers like sediment. There was texture everywhere here.
Then I heard them.
I turned.
A chicken coop. Neat. Well-maintained. Completely at odds with my understanding of Hale Henry’s life.
I looked at it.
Then at him.
“You have chickens.”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
My gaze went back to the coop, to the bobbing, purposeful movement behind the wire.
“Hale.”
“What.”
“You have chickens.”
“I heard you the first time.”
I crouched at the edge of the wire and lifted my camera. Afternoon sun caught the green-black sheen of their feathers.
I shot longer than I meant to.
He stood back and let me. Didn’t check his phone. Didn’t rush me. Just watched.
When the light went flat, I stood and looked at him.
“I like them.”
“It’s not giraffes in the Serengeti.”
“I like them.”
He smiled.
He opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
“It’s not bad. It’s just not a lot.”
“Hale.”
“I can cook,” he said, still staring inside like the contents might change if he waited long enough. “I just don’t like cooking for one. Doesn’t seem worth it.”
He closed the fridge. Opened it again.
“I can do eggs.”
I raised a brow.
“I’m very good at eggs.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve made every variation that exists. Scrambled. Poached. Shakshuka. Had a whole Turkish eggs phase. There was a three-week frittata period.”
“A frittata period?”
“Covid was so fucking boring, Yaz.”
I laughed under my breath. “That’s your origin story?”
“Pretty much.”
I sat at the kitchen table, its wood worn smooth from generations of elbows pressed into it.
He pulled a cast iron skillet from the cupboard as the sky outside deepened into that last shade of blue. A sun-faded cotton curtain stirred in the breeze, its delicate embroidered edge brushing above tiny pots of herbs lined along the windowsill.
I found myself wondering where I would fit in a place like this, if I would fit at all.
Would he make room?
The question tasted dangerous, sweet and terrifying at the same time. Because part of me wanted to see him clear a little space in all this old wood and say, yeah, that’s yours now.
I didn’t say any of that. I sat back.
And he made eggs.