What August Heard (Words Of Ruin #1)

Chapter 1

August

“Gerald, I need you to behave today.”

I patted the side of the van twice, and pulled out the flower buckets, lining them up on the folding table I’d had since college.

The Millhaven Farmer’s Market was already buzzing.

Someone three booths down was playing acoustic guitar badly and proudly.

The smell of cinnamon from the baked goods stall on my left mixed with the warm afternoon air.

I was arranging the dahlias when I noticed the man next to me.

He was older, maybe late sixties, with a neat gray mustache and the kind of hands that had done a lot of work over a lot of years. He was setting up his booth carefully, lining up amber bottles in a row like little soldiers. A hand-painted sign above his table said: Clifford’s Local Honey.

He was looking at me like he was trying to figure me out.

“Who’s Gerald?” he asked.

I looked up. “Sorry?”

“You were talking to someone named Gerald.” He looked around. “I don’t see anyone.”

“Oh. Gerald is the ghost of my deceased grandfather,” I said. “We talk a lot. He loved honey, actually. So he’s probably already at your booth. You might want to watch your stock.”

The man’s mustache went very still.

“I’m kidding.” I laughed. “I’m so sorry, I’m completely kidding.

Gerald is my van. I named him Gerald because this van here,” I pointed at the van.

“Is the only “guy” who has ever truly loved me and never left my side. He doesn’t fight with me.

He doesn’t say anything when I’m too emotional.

He just listens. He has never once complained about my long stories. Not once.”

The man blinked. Then something in his face loosened. “That’s quite a van.”

“He really is.” I gave Gerald another pat. “Gerald and I have been through a lot.”

The man went back to arranging his honey bottles, but he was smiling now.

I watched him for a second. His hands shook a little when he picked up the bigger jars, and he’d set each one down and then nudge it slightly to the left, then slightly back to the right, like he was trying to get it exactly perfect.

“Am I talking too much?” I asked. “Please tell me if I’m talking too much. I have a habit and I’m working on it but I’m not working on it very hard.”

He stopped nudging the jar. “No.” He shook his head. “Young people don’t usually talk to me much. I’m liking it.”

My chest did something warm and immediate. “Can I hug you?”

He looked startled.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Clifford.”

“Hi, Clifford, I’m August. Can I call you Cliff?”

He laughed then. It was a real laugh, the kind that comes from the belly. “Yes August, you may.”

I came around from behind my table and hugged him. He was a little stiff at first, like a man who hadn’t been hugged in a while and had forgotten what to do with his arms. Then he hugged me back.

“I’m a hugger,” I told him, stepping back. “And you looked like you needed one.”

“Maybe I did.” He looked almost surprised at himself for saying it.

“Will I see you here every week?”

“I’m sure you will.”

I went back behind my table and started re-arranging the peonies. The morning had moved slow. People were walking past, looking at things, not really buying.

“Slow today,” I said.

Cliff nodded. “Slow.”

My phone rang.

Callie’s name lit up the screen and I answered it, tucking the phone between my ear and my shoulder while I straightened a bucket of sunflowers.

“Did you pack?” she said, before I could say hello.

“Good afternoon to you too.”

“August. Did you pack?”

“I’m at the market, Callie.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I don’t have much to pack.” I moved a sunflower to the left. “You know I keep practically everything in the van.”

She made the sound she always made when she was about to say something she’d already said many times before. A short exhale, like she was gathering patience from somewhere just above her head. “I have told you a million times. Move in with me. I’ll handle the rent.”

“And I have told you a thousand times,” I said, “that I will move in with you the second my manifestations come true and I can afford to pay my half. I will own a flower shop. It will happen. And then I will be a contributing member of your household and not a charity case.”

“You would never be a—”

“I’m manifesting, Callie.”

She laughed. “Fine. Manifest faster.” I heard her moving around on her end, the sound of a drawer opening and closing. “So I was talking to Fletcher about the trip.”

I kept my eyes on the sunflowers. “Okay.”

“He asked if you were coming this year.”

My hands stopped moving. “He asked about me?”

“He did.”

“He specifically asked? About me?”

“Yes, but—”

“What did he say? What exactly did he say?”

“August—”

“Word for word, Callie.”

She sighed. “He asked if you were coming to the beach house this year. As if he doesn’t know you come every year. But there’s a reason he asked, and I need you to not get your hopes up before I tell you the reason—”

“I don’t have hopes.” I had so many hopes. They were everywhere. They were embarrassing. “What’s the reason?”

“He’s bringing someone.”

The sunflower in my hand went very still.

“Someone,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Like a— you mean a girl?”

“Yes, babe. I’m sorry.”

I put the sunflower down. I picked it back up. I put it down again. “How long?”

“Two months, he said. He wanted to give us a heads up because he’s never brought anyone to the beach house before.” She paused. “He’s such a dud, honestly. He’s in love with someone else and he’s bringing someone else to the beach house. He’s such a dickhead—”

“Stop calling your brother dickhead.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. “He’s not in love with me, Callie. If he was, we’d be together. That’s how it works.”

“August, the whole Calloway clan can see he’s in love with you —”

“The whole family keeps saying that and maybe you’re all wrong. Maybe you’ve all been reading him wrong this entire time. Maybe he just— maybe I’m just his baby sister’s friend who is eight years younger than him. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he sees me like a kid sister and that’s the whole story.”

“Right,” Callie said. “And that’s why he drives through after-school pickup traffic every Thursday afternoon just to buy your leftover flowers. And why he has a different excuse every week for why he happened to be in the area.”

I opened my mouth.

“He’s here,” I said.

“Of course he is.” I could hear her smiling. “Have fun. Ask him about the girl.”

“I will not be doing that—”

“Bye, babe.”

She hung up.

I looked up.

Fletcher Calloway was walking through the farmer’s market like he had no idea I existed.

He was looking at the other booths, the baked goods, the candle stand on the far end.

He was tall in a way that made the market feel slightly smaller than it had a minute ago.

He had on a dark suit, no tie, like he’d come from somewhere that had required a jacket and he’d decided halfway through the morning that the tie wasn’t worth it anymore.

He walked up to my booth and then he looked at me.

My heart did the thing it always did. I’d stopped being surprised by it. Five years of this and it still felt like missing a step on a staircase.

I gave him my most dazzling smile.

Oh no. Why did I smile at him first? That too with the most desperate one I could manage?

My face went warm. He was going to think I was obsessed with him.

Which I was. I had been. Ever since the night at the farmer’s market five years ago, when I’d started chatting with a man I’d thought was just being friendly, and it had become very clear very fast that he was not just being friendly, and Fletcher had appeared out of nowhere and stood next to me and said, very calmly, she’s with me, and the man had looked at Fletcher and left immediately.

I hadn’t even known Fletcher was at the market that night.

He hadn’t explained how he’d seen what was happening from wherever he’d been standing.

He’d just handed me a bottle of water and asked if I was okay.

That was the night.

That was the whole thing, right there.

Now he was looking at my eyes and then looking away and I was standing here with my dazzling smile and my red face like an absolute disaster.

“Hi August,” he said.

Try to be cool. Try to be cool.

“Hey Fletcher.”

“How’s business today?”

Before I could answer, Cliff leaned over from his booth. “Slow,” he said. “She’s sold a couple flowers and I’ve sold about ten bottles.”

“Eight bouquets,” I said. “And five shea butter lip balms that I recently added to the collection, which I think is actually pretty good for a Thursday—”

“She’s a glass-half-full kind of girl,” Cliff told Fletcher. He was studying Fletcher the way a man studies someone he hasn’t decided about yet. “I haven’t known her long but I can already tell. Glass half full. Maybe glass too full.”

“Cliff.” I shook my head.

“I’ve lived long enough to know your type,” Cliff said. “You get sad. Of course you do. But it takes a lot to knock someone like you all the way down.”

I looked at Fletcher. He was smiling.

Not a big smile. Fletcher didn’t do big smiles. It was small, tucked away, like something he hadn’t completely decided to let out yet. It didn’t go all the way to his eyes. It never did. But it still hit like a mug to the face on a cold morning.

I smiled back.

I could feel my face getting warm again.

Stop it, I told myself. Stop it right now.

“I was passing by,” Fletcher said, looking away from me and back at the market. “Had some work at the bank nearby, thought I’d drop in and grab some coffee. Say hi.”

Cliff looked up from his honey bottles. “Which bank?”

Fletcher blinked. “Sorry?”

“Which bank.” Cliff gestured around. “There’s no bank near this market. I walked the whole block before I set up this morning. No banks.”

Fletcher opened his mouth and closed it.

His ears went slightly pink.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Cliff said, looking like he just won an argument.

Fletcher straightened. “I also wanted to buy some flowers,” he said. “For the house.”

I pressed my lips together.

Every week it was something different. The bank, the coffee, the dry cleaner that also did not exist within walking distance. And every week he stood in front of my table and looked at one bouquet and then bought all of them.

He did exactly that.

He looked at the dahlias for about four seconds and then he bought everything. The dahlias, the sunflowers, the peonies, the loose stems, the last two mixed bouquets that I’d honestly thought I was taking home. He paid without blinking. Then he moved to Cliff’s booth.

“I’ve been meaning to buy some local honey,” he said. “Allergy season’s coming soon, in the fall. Local honey’s supposed to help.”

Cliff looked at the twelve bottles Fletcher was picking up from his booth. “That much honey?”

“For my family. And some friends.”

Cliff looked at me. I looked at Cliff. Cliff looked back at Fletcher. “Whatever your reason for buying all my honey is,” he said, “thank you for your business, young man.”

Fletcher smiled again.

I was not going to think about his smile. I had made a decision.

I was absolutely thinking about his smile. It was the best one I’d ever seen on a face and I had seen many faces.

A dog appeared from somewhere to my left. Small, brown, very excited about existing. I saw it and my brain turned off completely.

“Oh my god, look at you,” I said, crouching down. “You are the cutest thing I have ever—”

The dog launched itself at what was left of my peony display.

Flowers went everywhere. I grabbed for the bucket and missed. Petals hit the ground in every direction like the world’s saddest parade.

“Oh no. Oh, shit—” I looked at the dog. “Sorry about saying that bad word. I’m not mad at you. I’m not. I’m sorry I sounded mad at you, but I’m not.”

I started picking up peonies. Fletcher crouched down next to me and picked up the rest. He was calm about it.

Like scattered flowers were a completely normal thing to deal with at two in the afternoon.

He handed me the whole bunch without making a big deal of it, without laughing, without making a face.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome, August.” He stood. “I’ll see you at the beach house this weekend?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I’ll be there.”

“Okay, then.”

He left. I watched him walk back through the market, hands in his jacket pockets, not looking back.

Cliff appeared at my elbow.

“That boy,” he said, “is in love with you.”

“No, no, oh no.” I shook my head. “He’s not. No way. Come on now, Cliff. He’s just—”

“You’re right.” Cliff nodded slowly. “I don’t think so either.”

We looked at each other.

We both started laughing at the same time.

I watched Fletcher walk out of the entrance and towards the parking lot.

It means nothing, I told myself. Don’t be stupid, August. It means absolutely nothing.

***