“Don’t sound so excited.”
He dropped his arm. “You want to know the truth? I’m still getting used to . . .” He motioned to the space between them. “This. Us. Being . . .”
“Friends again?”
“Is that what we are?” The orange sun bronzed his skin and skimmed over every angle of his face and shoulders and the rest of him. The grazing breeze, the tingle of a leftover mist—for a moment all was forgotten and all was well.
What if I had let him kiss me that night?
The question fluttered in without warning, jarring her enough to make her sway. Beckett laughed again and reached to steady her.
“Friends, yes.” She gasped the words, coughed, forced out a wobbly laugh. “At least I hope we are. I accidentally stole a part from the hardware store tonight, I was in such a hurry to get out here and make sure you were all right. If that’s not friendship, what is?”
She caught his grin as he turned and started back to where he’d left off. “Thief.”
“Says the man currently working on four hundred hours of community service.”
“Touché.” He tossed the word over his shoulder.
She followed him across the roof, willing her sudden nerves to settle and her mind to ignore the what-if that’d gone tripping through it seconds ago. No reason to dwell on it. Nothing revealing or significant about it. Just an erstwhile flutter of a chance musing.
And even if it wasn’t, she had no business letting her thoughts wander there. Beckett had inched open that door once, and she’d slammed it shut. The chances of him opening it again were as slim now as snow in a warm front.
7
If Beckett could just forget for a couple hours that technically he was unemployed, barely into his community service, and due in Boston next week for his JAG Corps interview, tonight might turn out to be the perfect mix of rest and entertainment.
If he could forget.
And if he could get Kit to relax.
“Take a deep breath, Danby. This is supposed to be fun.” This being Maple Valley’s Annual Empty Pool Party. Every year on the Friday before Labor Day, the city threw a community-wide shindig in the newly drained pool. Live music, tons of food, probably a rambling speech from Mayor Milt at some point. The man had become an even more animated version of himself since beginning his campaign to impress some state people and bag extra funding or something.
The breezy strain of an acoustic guitar filled the air now, a meandering folk tune that echoed against the pool walls. And beyond the voices and laughter and fencing around the pool, a thousand fireflies danced in the cornfield across the street, stalks gangly and golden under moonlight.
But what were the chances Kit enjoyed any of it? All day she’d hurried around doing last-minute prep for tomorrow’s orchard opening. All day she’d worn the same look—furrowed brow, frenzied eyes.
“How am I supposed to have fun when I should be back at the orchard doing . . . doing . . .” She sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the pool wall, kicking her heels against the cement, keeping time with the staccato of her words. “Well, I don’t know what, but I should be doing something.”
Beckett couldn’t hold back a languid grin. Maybe it was the first hint of autumn in the evening air—a tinge of cool hovering over the pool, the lingering smell of chlorine blending with the loamy scent of grass and grain dust. Maybe it was who he’d seen so far tonight, so many family members and friends, and who he hadn’t—namely Sam Ross.
Maybe—most likely—it was Miss Ball-of-Nerves next to him. He’d practically had to drag her from the orchard to get her here. Cajoled her with his plan to stick orchard fliers under the windshield wipers of all the cars in the parking lot. But they’d finished that half an hour ago and she had yet to settle in and unwind.
“I know I forgot to do something. Yes, I crossed everything off my list, but I probably left fifteen things off the list in the first place, so what good was the list anyway?”
“That’s it.” He reeled to his feet. “You need pizza.” Maybe on the way he could find Coach Barton. That was the other reason he’d come tonight. The man had served nearly twenty years in the Air Force before ending up in Maple Valley. He’d be the perfect person to write a letter of recommendation for Beckett’s JAG Corps application.
If he could ever manage to talk to him. He’d just been so busy at the orchard. Helping Dad out at the railroad depot. Spending time with his sisters, his cousin. He’d met with Webster for a second tutoring session, too.
How was it his days could be so full and yet he couldn’t kick the feeling that his career, his dream, his whole life had stalled? Had it really been a full month since he’d come home, intending to stay only a couple days?
It was as if God had hit a pause button on his outside life, his real life. That is, if God was paying attention at all.
That was another thing that’d stalled—his faith. There’d been a day not so long ago when he’d honestly thought maybe God was nudging him. Opening doors. Reminding him of his long-ago JAG dream and paving the way.
But then he’d landed in Maple Valley. In jail. In court. At the orchard.
And his future felt further away than ever. Thus the gnawing need to do something—even something as small as talking to his old coach and securing a letter of recommendation.
“I don’t need pizza.” Kit looked up as she spoke. The shade of dusk deepened the blue of her eyes, and after so many days in the sun, her hair had lightened to the color of wheat.
Stop worrying about the future. Enjoy tonight. Isn’t that what you’re trying to get Kit to do? “Do too. I haven’t seen you eat all day.”
“Well, I did. I ate a Red Baron, a Gala, and a Haralson.”
“Something other than an apple. Just sit. Enjoy the music.” He patted her head as if she were a five-year-old and glanced past her to Raegan, sitting on her other side. “Keep an eye on her, will you?”
Raegan gave a mock salute as Kit rolled her eyes.
Beckett scanned the crowd as he wound his way toward the food stands set up near the waterslide, looking for Coach Barton’s telltale height. At six foot five, the man wasn’t generally hard to spot in a crowd. Ah, there, over by the beverage table. “Coach Barton,” he called, nearly bumping into a woman with a plate of pizza in his hurry to catch him.
The towering man turned, grinned, and lumbered toward Beckett, arm extended. “Beckett Walker, I’ll be darned.” Gray had overtaken what was left of the man’s hair, but he still had the athletic energy Beckett remembered. They shook hands as others joined their cluster—Coach Barton’s wife, his daughter and her husband, another coach.
“Beckett was one of my star players,” Coach Barton told the group. “Gracie remembers, don’t you, honey? I used to come home talking about him. I was so sure he’d end up playing professionally.”
“More sure than I ever was.”
“You could’ve done it, Walker. Your form wasn’t always consistent, but you made up for it with speed and quick thinking. And your three-pointers, hoo-boy. When I heard you quit in college, I had a mind to march over to Iowa City and wallop you.”
As if Beckett hadn’t gotten enough of a lecture from his college coach at the time. Hadn’t made a lick of difference. All the joy he’d once had in the game seeped away the night Mom had passed away.
Not that he’d been there. No, while the rest of the family gathered at her bedside, Beckett sat in an airport, desperate to race home after an away game in Phoenix. Too late.
He just hadn’t had the heart for it after that, had instead thrown himself into his classes, determined to finally honor Mom’s belief in his potential.
“Unfortunately, pre-law and basketball just didn’t mix.” Forced lightness backed his words now. Up on stage, the folk singer had ceded the mic to the mayor. “Actually, that’s what I called you about. I’m applying to the Army JAG Corps this fall, which means—”
His coach’s laughter cut him off. “I kno
w what it means, son. You in the Army?”
“Well, yeah—”
“I have a hard enough time picturing you as a lawyer, but in the service? Walker, you’re the kid who could barely sit still long enough to watch game tape. You messed up drills, played by impulse, not strategy. Discipline wasn’t exactly your strong suit.” Coach Barton said it all with a jovial flair, no offense in his voice.
But the skepticism pricked all the same. A churlish wind clambered in, causing a crackle in the speakers hanging around the stage. “All due respect, sir, I was a teenager then.”
“True. Still.” The coach shook his head. “I just don’t see it. But listen, you give me a call again and we’ll talk more.”
The man turned before Beckett could say another word, which was probably for the best anyway considering the disenchantment knotting its way through him now. Was it really that incredulous, the thought of him donning a uniform to serve his country? Using his law degree for something other than lining corporate pockets. Traveling overseas. Being a part of something bigger than himself.
Was it really so unbelievable?
“Beck?”
He angled, slowly, hesitantly. “Hey, Kate.” How much of that conversation had she heard?
Enough. Clearly. His sister’s eyes were full of something way too close to pity. “He’s just one person, Beckett.”
“Who clearly thinks I’m chasing a pipedream.” Up on the stage, Mayor Milt was rambling about community spirit and summer’s twilight and who knew what. “How is he even still the mayor? You’d think someday he’d get tired of waxing eloquent.” Suddenly he wanted to cover his ears, drown out the sound of the mayor’s reverberating voice and the echoes of Coach Barton’s words.
And all the doubts now piling one on top of the other, impossible to dismantle.
“Beck.” She plied him in a gentle tone.
Sometimes he hated it—the way his family members could read him so easily. He’d forgotten what that felt like, living so far away from them for so long. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, Kate.”
“You’re getting that community service off your plate. You’re spending time with your family. You’re tutoring Webster, which is so great.”
She wouldn’t call it that if she’d seen the disappointment on Webster’s face earlier this week, when Beckett had confessed he hadn’t contacted the kid’s old social worker yet, nor made any progress on finding his friend. He felt a stab of guilt all over again. Never should’ve promised to try.
“And what you’re doing for Kit. You’re helping make her dream possible.”
While his own languished. But wasn’t it his own fault? If he hadn’t come home . . . if he hadn’t stayed away so long in the first place . . . if he’d never run that car into that tree . . .
If he’d never spilled his reckless heart to Kit . . .
“I haven’t told her about the JAG Corps.” The confession slipped from him.
“What?”
“She thinks I’m going to Boston next week just to pack up my office. She hates the military, Kate. Way she sees it, the Army took away her dad and then her brother. We’re finally, I don’t know, friend-ish again, and I just . . .”
He was just a coward, that’s what.
Because, no, it wasn’t just about her feelings toward the military that kept him from telling her. It was the uncanny truth that even after years of fractured friendship, hers was still the opinion that mattered most. And if he told her, if she reacted like Coach Barton had . . .
His eyes found Kit now. Eric Hampton had claimed the spot beside her, and she was talking with her hands, animated, finally relaxed.
Kate leaned in for a light side hug. “You have to tell her, little brother.”
He did. He would. Just not tonight. Not on the eve of her big day.
Coward.
“You know, you and Kit . . . all of us always kind of thought—”
“Nope.” The cut-off was swift but effective. Kate’s lips clamped.
He knew what they’d always thought. And maybe, for an all too brief, all too memorable twenty-four hours starting the night before Kit’s wedding, he’d started to wonder the same.
But he was wrong and they were wrong and there wasn’t a chance he was making that mistake again. For a whole host of reasons, really. But most of all, because he’d finally remembered what it felt like to have his best friend in his life again. He wasn’t going to lose her a second time.
“I am not racing you up a tree.”
Kit flung the words from her perch on the back of the wagon Beckett had been using all morning to transport orchard visitors from the main lot to this field. They’d reserved the cluster of trees for people to pick their own apples—just for this one September day.
She’d been concerned. Pick-your-own orchards were popular with visitors, but they often ended up with too much fruit on the ground and poorly harvested trees. Not to mention the liability of people balancing on ladders.
But Beckett had convinced her to offer the activity just during opening weekend. Which apparently made him think he could talk her into anything.
“You can bat your overgrown eyelashes at me all you want, Beckett Walker. I’m not doing it.”
He stood on the ground with a swell of people around him. And to think she’d been worried about today’s turnout. She didn’t know whether it was the advertising, the posters hanging around town, the new website Beckett had helped her design, or the fliers they’d used to canvass the pool parking lot last night—probably all of it working together—but the first few hours since opening had been hopping.
“Come on, Danby. All these people are waiting.”
“They’re here to pick apples.”
“They’re here to pick apples and see me win.” He turned to the girl in a cropped black jacket with a t-shirt underneath with the word Whatever spread across it. “Right?”
The young mom—Megan from the coffee shop, according to Rae—held a baby wrapped in a thin yellow blanket and had barely taken her eyes off Beckett since the wagon piled with hay bales had left the parking lot. “Well, I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m here because you can put my child to sleep in two seconds.”
Kit crossed her arms. “See? She doesn’t care.”
“Also in two seconds I could have this whole crowd chanting for you to accept my challenge, and you know it.”
She jumped off the wagon and brushed a piece of hay from the hair she’d left loose today. It had to be a windblown mess by now. This was the first she’d been out to the field all morning, and she’d known Beckett had something up his sleeve when he insisted she join the latest group of wagon-riders. She’d known and had willingly walked right into his playful little trap all of her own free will.
Because she wanted to assess the field, see how many apples had made it into bags and baskets instead of the ground. Because she wanted to determine whether this was something they should do again.
Because Beckett smiled and I couldn’t say no.
She squared off with him, head tipped to meet his wheedling gaze. “You can try to get a rise out of me by insisting you’ll win. You can shepherd the crowd into chanting until they’re hoarse. But there is nothing you can say that will convince me to make a fool of myself climbing a tree in front of everyone.”
He stepped into her space, so close she could’ve puffed and blown the tuft of dark hair off of his forehead. His expression was one of smug knowing. “I will run the cider press all afternoon.”
She blinked. Okay, so maybe there was something he could say. She’d spent all of an hour at the press this morning and already her arms ached. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
He let out a whoop. “Too easy.” He turned to the crowd of people spread throughout the trees. “Hear that, folks? We’re on. This is happening.”
And then her hand was in his and he was pulling her to the tree she knew he would—tallest in the field—and pointing to a lone apple hangin
g from a high branch and telling her not to fall.
“I’m not going to fall, Beck.”
“Says the woman who fell through a stairway in the very recent past.”
And then they were racing to the trunk and grabbing for the same low-hanging branch. Laughing. Climbing. Shoving through leaves and branches while the people below cheered, their paths to the top separating and then coming together again.
Until . . .
Kit’s fingers closed around the apple just as Beckett’s arm snaked around her in an attempt to grasp it first. The branch beneath her feet shook from their shared weight, and she clasped onto the trunk with her free hand. Behind her, Beckett wobbled until he reached for the trunk as well, pinning her between both arms.
She shuffled to face him, still steadying herself with one hand behind her. If her hair had been a mess before, it had to be full of knots and twigs now, and she’d likely broken every fingernail during the climb. She gasped for air, the cotton of Beckett’s t-shirt fluttering in her face. “I won.”
“You won.” His breathing was just as heavy as hers.
“Bet you’re sorry you insisted we do this.”
His chest heaved as he inhaled, exhaled, slanted his gaze to lock with hers as he caught his breath. “Not even a tiny bit.”
Suddenly the crowd on the ground, still clapping and cheering, the rustling of branches, the apple in her hand . . . it all faded as she stared at the best friend she hadn’t realized until this very moment how deeply, achingly she’d missed in the past six years.
Of course he’d left a hollow space in her heart when they’d parted ways. Of course over the years she’d yearned for a return to their earlier friendship.
But she hadn’t known—or maybe simply hadn’t been able to face—how profound the impact of their parting, how bottomless the reach of her longing.
Or how so very different things might be now if she hadn’t pushed him away . . .
There it was again. The what-if.
As if reading her thoughts, Beckett let his hands slide down the trunk behind her, his eyes never leaving her face until he leaned in—carefully, lightly, and whispered in her ear, “Congratulations, Kit.” And then even closer, “Race you to the bottom.”