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Damn I love this girl.
“Yes. No, hang on.” She runs back to her car, and I take the moment to take her in.
She’s wearing a Blue Horizons hoodie that I have no idea where she found, black leggings, and the purple fuzzy socks. Her hair is all over the place from hours of being in the car, and I have never seen a more lovely sight. This time she comes back with a brown box, which she sets on the ground in front of her. It should probably feel weird that we’re having this conversation on the side of the road, but somehow it doesn’t.
Lifting the cupcakes just a little, I tilt my head toward the truck so she knows what I’m doing as I walk to the passenger’s side and put them in. I want my hands free to talk to her, and I don’t want to put the cupcakes on the ground, especially since she went out of her way to bring them to me. Moose barks at her as I open the door, and I have to tell him no. He can’t get out and run around in the road.
When I return to stand in front of her, it’s clear she’s very nervous, so I step forward and take her hand in mine.
She looks up at me and mumbles, “They really are good cupcakes.”
“I look forward to eating them with you.”
A heavy pause hangs in the air between us. I know I should be saying something, but I’m just so happy she’s here, and at the same time I want to know why she’s here. The grand gesture was supposed to come from me, but here she is, and I have to give her this moment even though she’s already got me.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she drops my hand and takes a step backward.
“Clay, I have so much I want to say to you. I’m not even sure where I should start.” She takes a deep breath. “But I’ll start here.” Her hand lightly waves toward the box. “I want you to know I did hear what you were saying in Austin, but what you don’t know is I’ve listened to every word you’ve said, ever. When we went snowboarding before New Year’s, you were talking about how it’s your thing, and kayaking is Ash’s, baking is Avery’s, and it got me thinking. What is my thing? So I made a list.” She bends down, rummages through the box, and pulls out a piece of paper. It’s been folded twice. She opens it but doesn’t hand it to me; she just stares down at it.
“What’s on the list?” I ask, trying to prompt her to keep going.
“A bunch of things I thought I might like.”
Instead of reading the list to me, she sets it back in the box and pulls out a pair of boxing gloves.
“In January, after I got back to New York, I thought it would be fun to take boxing classes. I signed Cora and myself up, and while she looked like a professional goddess beating her bag and giving it sidekicks, I felt like an elf swatting flies. I went to three classes thinking I would eventually like it, but nope, I decided it wasn’t for me.”
A smile lifts one side of my mouth. She might have felt like an elf, but the thought of her in tiny shorts and those gloves is hot, and she doesn’t even realize it.
“You’re smiling because you think I’m ridiculous.” She frowns.
“Nope. That’s not it.” My smile grows even more.
She lets out a small sigh, blinks hard, and then keeps going.
“So then I thought I would try cross-stitching. After all, I travel so much, and I thought it would be fun to do on the road.” She picks up a wooden ring with fabric over it and strings hanging off of it, and it looks like a mess. “As you can see, this didn’t work out so well either, as I had to keep looking from the instructions to the fabric and I didn’t like it.” She bends back down. “Avery likes to bake, so I thought cooking might be fun.” She pulls out a large ziplock bag. “See this, it’s supposed to be a croissant. Instead it turned out like a flat brick. And these here”—she holds the bag out and twists it—“pasta noodles, only they don’t look like pasta or taste like it when you cook them. I don’t get it either—it’s just flour, eggs, salt, and oil.”
My gaze travels back up to her face, and she looks so distraught.
“I’m sure it didn’t taste as bad as you’re saying.”
“Oh, it did. I froze these because I knew one day I would want to show you, and here we are. I should warn you: I’m not a good cook—at all. I can make like four dishes, and you’ve already had one of them.”
She drops the bag into the box and pulls out a very dead plant. I can’t help but chuckle.
“Yeah, you’re laughing now, but just you wait. Cora loves plants. That’s her thing. Her condo is overflowing with greenness and beauty, so I thought I could get a few too, maybe grow some spices to cook with. Well this is what happened when we went to Nashville in February. I have no idea how she keeps all her plants alive while traveling.”
Next, she pulls out a very expensive-looking camera. She pauses as she looks at it reverently and then looks at me.
“Photography?” I remember her saying something about a camera when we were looking at the bats.
“Yes. Actually . . .” She bends down, puts the camera back, and lifts a framed picture. “I do see the appeal of taking a pretty picture. I took online tutorials to learn about patterns, balance, negative space, depth of field, light and shadows, and I’ve taken a lot of photos over the last couple of months.” Her fingers rub lightly across the one in her hands, and then she holds it out for me to take.
The picture is of me and Ash in the recording studio. She must have taken this when she said she popped in to watch us a bit. Clearly we both had no idea. We’re caught mid-laugh with huge smiles while looking at each other. There’s a lightness to both of us, and it’s clear we are happy to be there and doing what we’re doing. The picture is beautiful.
“Emma,” I murmur breathily.
“The thing is, I don’t know what to do with all the pictures. They just sit on my computer, and I doubt they’ll ever be looked at again.”
