22. Fran
— ? —
Fran
He brings me wildflowers.
Not from the farm, he’s been paying attention, but picked from the roadside on his way back from the workshop.
A messy handful of Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans and something purple I’d have to look up.
They’re slightly wilted and completely imperfect and he presents them with such earnest nervousness that I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing.
“You said farm flowers would be redundant,” he says, still holding out the bouquet like I might refuse it. “So I stopped on the shoulder of Route 7 and picked these. A woman in a minivan honked at me.”
“You committed roadside theft for me?”
“I committed roadside romance.” He’s almost smiling. “There’s a difference.”
I take the flowers and bury my nose in them, hiding my expression. They smell like summer and car exhaust and the particular sweetness of things that grow wild without anyone’s permission. I hate how much I like that. I do not hate how much I like that.
“They’re perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”
His whole face relaxes. “Good. That’s - good.”
I put them in a jar of water and grab my jacket, and when I come back outside I see what he’s done to the truck.
The bed has been transformed. There’s an actual mattress back there, no sleeping bag, no pile of blankets pretending to be one, but an actual mattress with sheets and pillows, arranged under a canopy of string lights he’s somehow rigged to the cab.
A cooler sits in one corner. A basket that looks suspiciously like it came from a fancy deli sits in the other. It is, against my will, beautiful.
“Logan.” I stare at it. “How long did this take you?”
“A few hours.” He’s rubbing the back of his neck, that self-conscious gesture I’m starting to recognize and starting, traitorously, to find dear.
“I wanted it to be comfortable. The ground is too hard for you to sit on for long, with the-” He gestures vaguely at my belly.
Then he catches himself, holds up both hands, a full surrender I have seen before.
“Offering, not prescribing. You can sit wherever you want. I just thought, if we’re going to look at stars, we might as well do it properly. ”
“Properly.” I climb into the truck bed and test the mattress. It’s surprisingly plush. I did not come out here to be courted like a person in a movie. I am, apparently, going to be courted like a person in a movie. “You built me a bedroom on wheels.”
“I built you a date on wheels.” He climbs in after me, settling on the opposite end of the mattress like proximity is a thing he still asks permission for. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Absolutely. A bedroom implies expectations. A date implies…” He trails off, suddenly uncertain. “Possibility. I guess. The chance to see what happens.”
I stretch out, looking up at the string lights.
It’s not quite dark yet. The sun is setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink I could name in flower if I wanted to and will not, because I am not going to florist a sunset at him.
In another hour the stars will come out, and we will be lying here under them like something I would have mocked, once.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“The back forty.” He glances at me, then at the truck bed where we’re both still sitting. “But first - probably smarter to drive from actual seats.”
“Probably.”
We climb out of the bed and into the cab. Seatbelts. He starts the truck. The engine is a low familiar sound I have no business finding comforting.
“That meadow you showed me last week,” he continues, pulling onto the farm road. “Where you want to plant the cutting garden. I thought - it’s private, and quiet, and you mentioned you liked the view.”
I did mention that. In passing. During a conversation about crop rotation. And he remembered.
“Okay,” I say. “Take me to the back forty.”
The meadow is even prettier at sunset than it is during the day.
Logan parks the truck facing west, and we climb back into the bed to watch the last of the light fade. He opens the cooler and starts pulling out food. Cheese, crackers, fancy charcuterie, pasta salad, fruit. What looks like an entire chocolate cake.
“Did you make all this?”
“God, no.” He laughs. “I can barely scramble eggs without setting something on fire. There’s a place in town - Junie recommended it. I told them I was trying to impress someone, and they put this together.”
“You told them you were trying to impress someone?”
“I told them I was trying to impress my pregnant wife who I’d been an idiot to for almost two years and who was generously giving me another chance.” He hands me a plate. “The woman behind the counter gave me a very long look and then added the cake for free.”
I laugh, really laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep, and his face lights up like I’ve given him a gift I did not know I was holding.
“Eat,” he says. “Before it gets cold. Or - before it gets warm. However temperature works with cheese.”
We eat as the sun finishes setting, and the conversation flows easier than I expected.
He asks about the Henderson wedding, and I tell him about the mother of the bride’s latest change of heart (she’s back to blush, thank God, and I do not explain blush versus coral because we have been down that road and he still cannot see it).
He tells me about a commission request he got last week, a dining table for a family in Chicago who want something that can expand to seat twelve but collapse to fit in a small apartment.
“That’s impossible,” I say. “Twelve people? In an apartment?”
“Nothing’s impossible. It’s just math and joinery.
” He’s getting animated now, the way he always does when he talks about his work, and I am not looking at his mouth.
I am looking at his mouth. “The trick is figuring out the hinge mechanism. If I can get the leaves to fold in a certain way, they’ll nest inside the main structure when it’s collapsed.
Like-” He grabs a napkin and starts sketching.
“See, if this piece pivots here, and this one slides…”
I watch him draw, his fingers quick and sure, and I feel that familiar pull, the thing that got me in trouble in the first place, that night in his workshop. He’s beautiful when he’s solving problems. His whole face changes, loses that careful guardedness, becomes open and eager and alive.
“You love this,” I say.
He looks up from the napkin, caught off guard. “What?”
“Figuring things out. Making things work.” I gesture at the sketch. “You get this look, when you’re deep in a problem. Like nothing else exists.”
“I get that look when I’m with you, too.” He says it plainly. “When I’m trying to figure out how to deserve you.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It feels the same.” He sets down the napkin. “Both require patience and precision and the willingness to fail a hundred times before you get it right.”
“Am I a woodworking project to you?”
“No.” He meets my eyes. Amber-gold. Too much, still, even now. “You’re the reason I want to be good at anything. The reason I want to be better than I am.”
I don’t know what to say to that. So I take another bite of cheese and change the subject, because I am a coward in a pretty truck bed and the cheese cannot testify.
“Tell me something embarrassing about yourself.”
“What?”
“Something embarrassing. A story I don’t know.” I wave my fork at him. “You’ve seen me at my worst - running away, hiding, showing up pregnant on my cousin’s doorstep. I want to know something about you that makes you cringe.”
He’s quiet for a moment, thinking. Then: “When I was sixteen, I had a crush on my woodworking teacher.”
“That’s not embarrassing,” I say. “Lots of people have crushes on teachers.”
“I made her a jewelry box.” He says it to the sky, not to me.
“That’s sweet.” And it is, until I catch the wince starting at the corner of his mouth.
“With a secret compartment,” he adds, like that’s the incriminating part.
“Okay…” I draw it out, because I can feel where this is going and I am delighted.
“That I’d hidden a love letter in.” He drops his face into his hands.
I start laughing. “Oh no.”
“She found it during class. Read it out loud. In front of everyone.” He groans through his fingers. “It had a poem in it. That I wrote. About her hands.”
“Her hands?”
“She had very nice hands! They were always covered in sawdust, and I thought it was-” He groans. “I was sixteen. I didn’t know how attraction worked.”
“What was the poem?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on.” I’m grinning now. “You can’t tell me there was a poem and then not share it.”
“I can and I will.” But he’s smiling too, embarrassed and amused in equal measure, and I want to put my mouth on that smile, which is a problem I am going to have later. “Your turn. Tell me something humiliating.”
I think about it. There are plenty of options, my life has been a series of mortifying moments interspersed with periods of relative dignity, but one rises to the surface.
“When I was nineteen, I entered a flower arranging competition. My first one ever.” I pick at the label on my drink. “I was so nervous I threw up before I went on stage.”
“That’s relatable, not embarrassing,” he says.
“I threw up into one of my arrangements.” I let that land. “And then I didn’t have time to fix it before judging.”
“You presented a vomit arrangement?” The pure joy on his face is going to cost him later.
“I presented a vomit arrangement. To a panel of professional florists.” I’m laughing now too, at the absurdity of it, at him, at the fact that I am telling this story under string lights like it is a gift.
“One of the judges wrote interesting textural element on my scorecard. I don’t know if she was being kind or if she just couldn’t tell. ”
“Did you win?”
“Third place.” I grin. “Turns out the other two arrangements were worse.”