Book Lovers(60)

“Am building,” he corrects, knocking the tailgate shut. “It’s for me, so it’s taking years, between paying jobs.”

“It’s incredible,” I say.

He sets the cooler down and shakes out the blanket. “I’ve wanted to live up here since I was ten years old.” He gestures for me to sit.

“Did you always want to be in construction?” I tuck my skirt against my thighs and lower myself to the ground, just as Shepherd pulls two canned beers from the cooler and drops down beside me.

“Structural engineer, actually,” he says.

“Okay, no ten-year-old wants to be a structural engineer,” I say. “They don’t even know that’s a thing. Frankly, I just found out it was a thing in this moment.”

His low, pleasant laugh rumbles through the ground. I get that shot of adrenaline that making anyone laugh sends through me, but the drunken-butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling is obnoxiously absent. I adjust my legs so they’re a little closer to his, let our fingers brush as I accept a beer from him. Nothing.

“No, you’re right,” he says. “When I was ten I wanted to build stadiums. But by the time I went to Cornell, I’d figured it out.”

I choke on my beer, and not just because it’s disgusting.

“You okay?” Shepherd asks, patting my back like I’m a spooked horse.

I nod. “Cornell,” I say. “That’s pretty fancy.”

The corners of his eyes crinkle handsomely. “Are you surprised?”

“Yes,” I say, “but only because I’ve never met a Cornell alum who waited so long to mention that he was a Cornell alum.”

He drops his head back, laughing, and runs a hand over his beard. “Fair enough. I probably used to bring it up a little more before I moved home, but no matter where I went to college, people here are still more impressed by my years as the quarterback.”

“The what now?” I say.

“Quarterback—it’s a position in . . .” He trails off as he takes in my expression, a smile forming in the corner of his mouth. “You’re joking.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Bad habit.”

“Not so bad,” he says, a flirtatious edge in his voice.

I nudge his knee with mine. “So how’d you end up back here? You said you lived in Chicago for a while?”

“Right out of school I got a job there,” he says. “But I missed home too much. I didn’t want to be away from all this.”

I follow his gaze over the valley again, purples and pinks swarming across it as shadow unspools from the horizon. Trillions of gnats and mosquitoes dance in the dying light, nature’s own sparkling ballet. “It’s beautiful,” I say.

Up here, the quiet seems more calming than eerie, and he wears the thick humidity so well I’m able to (somewhat) believe that I also don’t look like a waterlogged papillon. The hot stickiness is almost pleasant, and the grassy scent is soothing. Nothing feels urgent.

In the back of my mind, a familiarly hoarse voice says, You’d rather be somewhere loud and crowded, where just existing feels like a competition.

I feel eyes on me, and when I glance sidelong, the surprise is disorienting. Like I’d fully expected someone else.

“So what brings you here?” Shepherd asks.

The sun is almost entirely gone now, the air finally cooling. “My sister.”

He doesn’t press for information, but he leaves space for me to go on. I try, but everything going on with Libby is so intangible, impossible to itemize for a near-perfect stranger.

“Wait here a sec,” Shepherd says, jumping up. He walks back to his truck and digs around in the cab until country music crackles out of the speakers, a slow, crooning ballad with plenty of twang. He leaves the door ajar and returns to me, stretching his hand down with an almost shy grin. “Would you like to dance?”

Ordinarily, I could imagine nothing so mortifying, so maybe the small-town magic is real. Or maybe some combination of Nadine, Libby, and Charlie has knocked something loose in me, because without hesitating, I set my beer aside and take his hand.





18





I CAN SEE THE scene playing out like it’s happening to someone else. Like I’m reading it, and in the back of my mind, I can’t stop thinking, This doesn’t happen.

Only, apparently it does. Tropes come from somewhere, and as it turns out, from time immemorial, women have been slow-dancing to staticky country music with hot architect-carpenters as deep shadows unfurl over picturesque valleys, crickets singing along like so many violins.

Shepherd smells how I remembered. Evergreen and leather and sunlight.

And everything feels nice. Like I’m letting loose in all the right ways and none of the ones that could come back to bite me.

Take that, Nadine. I’m present. I’m sweaty. I’m following someone else’s lead, letting Shepherd spin me out, then twirl me in. I am not stiff, rigid, cold. He dips me low, and in the half-light he flashes that movie star smile before swinging me back onto my feet.

“So,” he says, “is it working?”

“Is what working?” I ask.

“Are we winning you over?” he says. “To Sunshine Falls.”

Someone like you—in shoes like that—could never be happy here. Don’t get some poor pig farmer’s hopes up for nothing.