Chapter 19 #2
"We could leave them," she says, looking at the tables.
"Beck's truck is here."
"We could leave them in Beck's truck."
"Beck went inside."
"He left his truck."
"Beck trusts Millhaven," I say.
She looks at the tables then at the truck. "Are we loading Beck's truck in the dark."
"It'll take ten minutes."
"It's cold."
"It's December."
She picks up a table, I pick up a table and we load Beck's truck.
It takes twelve minutes, not ten, because the tables have a specific stacking order that Beck has opinions about and I know the opinions, and she asks while we're loading and I explain, and she picks up the system after the second table and then we're just doing the thing.
"He has opinions about table stacking," she says.
"He has opinions about most things."
"He gave me the local price the first week I was here."
"I heard."
"Before I'd done anything to earn it." She hands me a table to position. "Why did he do that?"
"Because Beck can tell who's going to stay," I say. "He's been in this town his whole life. He knows the difference between people visiting and people arriving."
She's quiet for a moment. "Could he tell with me?"
"Apparently."
Another table. "How?"
I think about Beck's version of it — the sandpaper grits, the good paint, the window hardware. "You knew what you needed before you asked. You took his recommendation. You bought the good paint." I position the last table. "People who are just passing through don't buy the good paint."
She stands at the tailgate looking at the stacked tables with the expression of someone receiving information they didn't expect.
"I bought the good paint because—" She stops. "I don't know why. I just knew it mattered."
"Yeah," I say. "That's it."
We close the tailgate.
The street is quiet now, most of the event crowd gone inside, the lights still running along the storefronts in the December dark. The whole street looks like a thing that knows what it is. Our breath in the air.
We're standing at the back of Beck's truck and there's no reason to stand here except that neither of us has moved yet.
"The Nikon," I say.
She looks at me.
"You said you were going to load it."
"I did.”
"You were going to photograph this."
She looks down the lit street — the string lights, the storefronts, Millhaven made beautiful for the occasion. "I didn't have it with me."
"There's next year," I say.
She looks at me. Something moves in her expression — complicated and warm and the thing it does lately, the thing that is neither fully closed nor fully open, like a door that's not quite latched.
"Is there?” she says. Not quite a question. Or not only a question.
We're doing it again — the standing in the normal amount of space that has recently stopped feeling like the normal amount of space, both looking at each other in the string-light dark.
Her face. I've been noting the details of her face for three months and I have a complete inventory and it's all still new, and right now she's looking at me in the December dark and I want?—
The door to Bellamy's opens.
"—I said the truck is on the far end, Cole, the far end." Mags, carrying something, Cole behind her with something larger.
We both move — not conspicuously, not with guilt, just the natural shift of two people interrupted in a private moment by the public world reasserting itself.
"Oh good," Mags says, arriving at the truck. "You loaded the tables."
"Beck's stacking system," I say.
"Obviously." She hands me the thing she's carrying, which is a box of lights she apparently needs returned to the truck. "Cole, put that in the back."
Cole is looking at me. He's doing the thing where he's not saying anything, which is a lot of effort for Cole and I appreciate it.
"There are two more boxes," Mags tells him.
"Right," Cole says, and goes.
Delaney looks at me. I look at her. Her expression is the one she has when something is exactly as predictable as it should be.
"Two boxes," she says.
"Two boxes," I confirm.
Mags glances at us knowingly and then at the lit street. "Good event," she says.
"Good event," Delaney says.
Mags nods with the serenity of someone who sees everything and keeps most of it to herself when it suits her. "Walk her home," she says to me.
"I was going to," I say.
Mags goes back toward Bellamy's.
We walk home.
Elm Lane in the December dark, the quiet after the event, our footsteps and the sound of the town settling. Four blocks never takes this long. Four blocks has started taking however long it takes.
At her gate we stop.
"The Nikon," I say. "Load it tonight."
She looks at me. The gate between us, which is not much of a gate, is more symbolic than functional, and she knows it and I know it.
"Tonight," she says.
"While you still want to."
"I still want to. I've wanted to for a while,” she says quietly.
The silence has everything in it.
"Goodnight, Delaney," I say.
"Goodnight," she says.
I walk four houses.
I don't look back. I've trained myself not to look back because looking back is not the version of this, I'm going to be.
I go inside.
I stand in my kitchen.
I want to kiss her.
Not as a new realization — as a fact, I've been managing for two months arriving at a new level of unmanageability.
Standing in the street with the ladder geometry and then again at the truck with the is there that was not only a question — that's twice tonight that I could have and didn't, and I know why I didn't and the reason is still correct.
She's three months from March.
She loaded her grandmother's camera and that's something she needed to do for herself before she could do anything else, and I'm not going to stand between her and that process because I want to kiss her in the string-light dark.
I know how to be patient.
I also know that patient has a different feeling than it did three months ago. Three months ago, it was the patient of principle. Now it's the patient of I know what I want and I'm choosing to wait because she's worth waiting for and not because I'm required to.
That's a different kind of waiting.
I get a glass of water.
I stand at the kitchen window.
I think about is there said in the tone of a door that's not quite latched.
I think about next year.
I think yes. There is.