“Yes,” I say, then something in her sparks another answer out of me. “August. Second and fourth Saturdays. Signup at the store.”
She beams, grabs her friends, and vanishes, leaving me with the smallest sense of victory in my chest.
Jordan, meanwhile, is everywhere at once: restocking, chatting with half the crowd, totally in their element, fixing small talk and displays with equal care. They belong to the pace and rhythm of this place; they always have, walking through the crowd like it’s their living room, at home in every word and gesture. I watch them when I think they’re not looking, wondering what it must feel like to fit this well.
By eleven, when the rush eases, Jordan slides next to me, leaning into my space, close enough I catch woodsmoke and earth.
“You know half these people came just to see you,” they murmur.
“That’s not true,” I reply, reflex sharp, because I don’t know what to do with the idea that it could be.
Jordan shrugs, unconcerned. They quietly rearrange tote bags, logo out, just so, without another word.
I cross my arms, lips pressed flat, holding on to skepticism with all I have. But under it all, beneath years of discipline and distance, something is moving, subtle and uncomfortable, like the first heat after a long winter. It’s warmth. It’s being seen. It’s belonging, and I have spent all this time pretending I didn’t need it, as if caring undermined everything else.
The market’s a swirl of sound: laughter, music from the bandstand, the hum of a place where anonymity isn’t an option. Jordan fusses with the display, but I can feel them watching me, waiting to see how I’ll react. I stand beside them, digging for that irritation I know I’m supposed to feel, but I can’t quite reach it. Instead, I’m here—a woman in sunlight, paint under her nails, and a hole in her chest that feels, for once, a little less hollow.
Just a farmers market, I tell myself. Just a Saturday. Nothing more.
Except my arms have uncrossed. My shoulders have unknotted. And when a man approaches, toddler perched on his shoulders, asking about paint for a nursery, I answer him steady and unforced. I don’t even need the customer-service smile. The real one is already there.
Jordan catches my eye, grinning. It’s a quiet thing, a secret. I don’t acknowledge it; I can’t. I am a fortress, stubborn and reinforced, but every stone is softer than the last.
For now, that’s enough.
By late afternoon, the market is winding down. Vendors pack up with the kind of tired efficiency that comes from being “on” for eight straight hours, their smiles wilting at the edges as tables get folded and bins get stacked. Kids still chase each other in ragged loops across the thinning green, burning off whateversugar reserves got stockpiled, sunlight turning thick and amber as it stretches the shadows across the grass. We break down our booth exactly how we set it up: me pointing, Jordan lifting, both of us circling each other like we’ve always done this, even though today is technically our first. The stiffness I’d carried from this morning has melted away, left somewhere between Ruthann’s hand squeeze and the seventeenth customer who stopped to say how much they loved the holiday windows. My shoulders have stopped knotting themselves up. My jaw, miraculously, is unclenched.
“Seventeen tote bags,” Jordan says, collapsing a cardboard box with a single, smooth move. “One man. Seventeen. What is a person even supposed to do with seventeen hardware store tote bags?”
“Maybe he’s founding a cult,” I say, stacking paint sample decks into their crate. “The Church of Practical Storage Solutions. Tote bags are like, the faithful’s badge.”
“Or he’s got seventeen identical Christmas presents to wrap, and this is just his most efficient route.”
“Or he’s building a fort.”
Jordan pauses, table half-folded, and squints at me, eyebrows up, mouth twitching. There’s an expression I know—a genuine kind of amused, except they’re trying not to show it.
“A tote bag fort.”
“Sturdy. Portable. The ultimate shelter for a man with questionable decision-making skills and seventeen tote bags.”
That gets them. Jordan laughs, a sudden, real sound, short and warm, and something in my chest flips in a way I am one hundred percent not going to examine in broad daylight. We finish loading everything into the truck while still laughing—which is not how I thought this day would end when I woke up at 4:45 replaying our argument on a loop. But here we are, Jordan pushing the empty dolly, me hauling the last crate, both of usgrinning over a guy who’s probably, right now, constructing a questionable tote bag dwelling in his living room.
By the time we get back to the store and unload, Melvin is there, waving us off, insisting he can close up on his own even though technically he opened this morning and I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.
Outside, I turn toward my house, expecting to walk alone, but Jordan falls in beside me like it’s a given. Their hands are shoved in their pockets, and their pace matches mine, slow and easy. The air is thick and soft, the kind of July evening that presses against your skin and makes your shirt stick. The streets are quiet; the market crowd has scattered, probably lining up for dinner or a beer at the diner. Our footsteps echo a little on the sidewalk. We talk about nothing important, but we don’t need to. The tote bag guy, obviously, and then the woman who spent twenty minutes comparing every single shade of white in our fan deck before picking the exact one she grabbed first. The band on the bandstand—a trio of retirees, surprisingly good covers of ‘70s folk songs. Jordan tells me about a raccoon nest in a chimney, so elaborate it had different rooms, and I tell them about the time I tried to patch the bathroom ceiling crack and wore plaster in my hair for three days straight. Conversation slips between us the way it always does: unforced, familiar, zero resistance, until somewhere on my street it slows, trailing into pauses that feel more comfortable than any words.
My house sits at the tip of a little row of Victorians. By Sleighbell Springs standards, it’s modest, but to me it’s still too much house. White clapboard, blue shutters, porch light already glowing because I forgot to turn it off this morning—which is a pretty good summary of my housekeeping philosophy. The garden is a riot, tomatoes heavy on the vine and the zucchini working hard on a unified front to take over the universe. Drew’sroses bloom along the walk, pink and stubborn, determined to thrive just because they can.
We stop at the foot of the porch. Jordan turns, and I notice that the space between us is smaller now, not by much, but enough that my brain catches on it. The porch light casts this hazy golden halo, brushing Jordan’s hair with gold and sharpening the lines of their face so they look almost carved. Neither of us says anything. One second. Two.
I look up. Jordan’s already looking down at me, and the moment lengthens, elastic, pulling itself out farther and farther. Their gaze is steady, the same as always—seeing everything, giving away nothing unless they want to—and for the first time I realize I can’t read what’s underneath, which is terrifying, because I thought I’d always been able to read Jordan Vale. But right now, something’s shifted, and I missed it happening.
My chin tips up. I’m not aware of choosing to do it. My body just does, and my brain gets dragged along for the ride, three seconds behind. Jordan moves closer, barely—a tension, a tilt, weight shifting from heels to toes—
And my chest locks up. Not a flutter, not a skip—a full seize, like somebody hiked all the air out of the room, and instead of anything poetic or breathless or romantic, what pops out of my mouth is, “Goodnight,” two octaves up and way too fast, and I’m up the porch steps and through the door and I slam it shut before the word’s even finished ricocheting off the porch.
The latch clicks. Quiet. Final.
