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“Cute.” He grins and shows it to me.
It is cute. The lighting is good and we look as though we’ve been photographed through rose-colored lenses. Then he opens his app and my stomach flips.
“Send it to me?” I ask.
“Yeah, ‘course,” he says, his thumbs flying.
“Zeke?” I place my hand on his wrist, my heart hammering against my chest.
He looks up, his eyes round.
“Don’t post it, okay?”
He frowns and lowers his phone, confused.
“Why not?”
I don’t know how to explain it quickly. To explain that I won’t be able to resist reading whatever comments he gets or that I don’t have the heart to read that other people don’t like the way we look together. Even when I have the words on the tip of my tongue, I know he won’t understand.
With a sigh, he types something into his phone and then passes it to me.
“I know my world can be hard. But spending time with you makes me happy. I want to post this and I want everyone to see how happy you make me. But it’s up to you. If you really don’t want me to, I won’t.”
I don’t think I blinked the entire time he was speaking. I look down, just to cut the tension, because he just said something so jaw-dropping that I can’t quite believe I’m not dreaming.
But reading the caption he drafted doesn’t make it feel any more real.
Nothing better than a Portland sunset with my best girl.
He’s added a little bird emoji after the caption which I don’t quite understand, but it’s sweet and makes me think of when he helped me take care of that poor bird at Willow’s wedding.
“Well?” he asks, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I heard a little waver in his voice.
How can I say no to that? I nod and press thePostbutton on his app. He nods too, as if in thanks, and without taking his eyes off me, tucks his phone away in his pocket. Then, with a quiet smile, he settles down into his chair. I do the same, taking a long sip of my beer to the soundtrack of neighborhood kids careening down the hill on their makeshift cardboard sleds.
“A few years back, the school needed a new furnace,” he says, still digging into the backpack and retrieving plastic cutlery and Tupperware. “It was still running on the same boiler system from when it was built.”
I glance around and take in the hundreds of families perched on the hillside. It’s clearly a large school, but I wonder how far this district extends. Zeke passes me a Tupperware container cut into little sections like a bento box, filled with what looks like grilled salmon, roasted potatoes, and bright green beans.
“So, the school needed to update the furnace,” he says, returning to his story as I spear the tender salmon with my fork. “So, when the school priced it out, they realized they would have to replace the chimney.”
“That’s a shame,” I say, staring at the tall cylinder that gives the school so much character.
“The bigger problem,” he says, finishing a bite, “is the swifts.”
“The swifts?”
“Vaux’s swifts,” he says, nodding toward the chimney, “are a migratory bird that fly south from British Columbia on their way to warmer weather. And every year, in September, they make a stop here, to roost. In that chimney.”
“So, they saved a chimney in order to protect some birds? How very Portland.” In the city that doesn’t salt icy roads because of the salmon, of course a school would save a chimney for a few birds.
“They did.” He nods and stares at the structure with something like awe. “The community came together and raised the funds necessary to add supports and keep it up.”
“That’s really cool,” I say, biting into a buttery, herby potato. “Lucky birds.” I study the long supports propping up the chimney.
“But it’s not just a few birds.”
“How many are we talking?”
