Shipped(59)

Inclining my chin, I begin walking. Graeme falls into step beside me. There are no real paths through this highland farm, so we amble between tree trunks and over roots. Soon the camera clicks and exclamations of delight from the guests fade away, and the only sounds are the soft shuffle of our shoes and the flutter of leaves on branches.

“Say ‘tortoise,’?” says Graeme.

Huh? I whip around to look at him, eyebrows raised, and he takes my picture. “You didn’t.”

His smile widens. “I did.”

“You’re not posting that on the company’s Instagram, are you?”

He scrubs a hand across his stubbled jaw. “Hey, I’m sorry for posting a picture of Walsh. It was just so compelling—”

“Don’t worry about it. All’s fair in love and war.”

His lips tip into a mischievous grin. I swallow thickly.

A rustle in the underbrush steals our attention and we stop walking. I gasp as a giant tortoise emerges from behind a grove of bushes not twenty yards away.

And it’s not just any tortoise. It’s a massive mamma jamma, nearly as big as the armchair back in my apartment. It must weigh hundreds of pounds and is probably older than the Second World War. When it stretches out its long, wrinkly neck to tear up mouthfuls of grass, the claws on the tips of its paddlelike feet leave deep gouges in the dirt.

“Holy crap,” I breathe.

We venture closer, making sure to keep a respectful distance away so as not to startle it. I lift my phone and take a video. When we’re about fifteen feet away, Graeme sinks to the ground.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Absorbing the moment.”

Tugging down the hem of my shorts, I follow suit, kneeling onto the dry earth next to him. We sit there for several long minutes in companionable silence, observing the grazing tortoise, which is either blissfully unaware of or indifferent to our presence.

Graeme raises his camera. “You never told me about your parents. What’s their story?” Click.

“A very boring one.”

He casts me a sidelong look.

I crisscross my legs beneath me. Grass tickles my thighs. “My folks moved to Idaho for my dad’s job when I was two. He’s an engineer for the navy.”

“There’s a naval base in Idaho?”

“I know, shocks the hell out of most people. It’s on Lake Pend Oreille. They test submarine sonar and whatnot. Pretty high-level, secretive stuff.” I zoom in on the tortoise and take a picture.

“And your mom?”

“She works for the post office and runs an Etsy business on the side. Music-themed wood carvings.”

“They sound like hardworking people.”

“They are.”

“Makes sense.” When I raise my eyebrows at him, he continues. “I figured you learned your work ethic from somewhere.”

Graeme draws a knee up to steady his camera and silence falls between us again.

Curiosity nibbles at me. “What was your mom like?”

His eyes flick to me and away.

“If you’d rather not talk about her, I understand—”

“She loved ABBA.”

“ABBA?”

“ABBA. She knew all their songs. When I was a kid, she’d blast her ABBA CDs in the kitchen while she cooked dinner and we’d sing along at the top of our lungs. She was a terrible singer though. Really, really awful.” He laughs at some private memory. “She hated the color yellow. She loved teaching, but she didn’t like the politics of being a professor. She wanted to travel to Petra in Jordan more than anywhere else on earth, but she never made it there. And… she would have liked you.”

Warmth creeps across my collarbone. “You think so?”

“Definitely. And I’m not just saying that. She met my ex years ago, and she did not like her. At all.”

“What was the deal with your ex?”

“We dated through college. We met freshman year at Cornell and even stayed together long-distance for a while after I transferred to Michigan.”

“What happened?”

Graeme unzips his backpack and stows his camera. “My mom got sick. Avery couldn’t handle it. I went from carefree, doting boyfriend to caretaker. Weekends away turned into endless doctor’s appointments. Months of experimental therapy. Drained bank accounts. We lasted a semester after Mom’s diagnosis before it got to be too much for her to handle.”

“If she really cared, she would have stuck with you.”

“That’s what my mom said. But it didn’t make it any less hard at the time.”

“What about your girlfriends after Avery?”

“There haven’t been any after Avery. No one serious, at least. Women don’t like to date a sob story, and I didn’t really have time for a girlfriend until…”

Until his mom wasn’t sick anymore.

“You must have been lonely.”

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. His deep sigh says it all. Graeme pushes to his feet. I stand too and he faces me. “I—” He swallows. “You have to understand, I was a mess after my mom died. I quit my job and shut everyone out. I barely talked to people. Barely left the house. It was bad.”

Sympathy curls around my heart and I want to reach for him, gather him in my arms, but I hold myself still.