“This is really amazing, Sawyer,” I gushed, thankful he’d insisted on bringing me here. He gave me a quick tour, and I was amazed to find out his grandfather had built the place himself. The land had originally belonged to his great-grandfather, and he’d always dreamed of building on it. Sure enough, his grandfather made that happen. The cabin wasn’t overly huge by any means, but it didn’t need to be; Sawyer’s father was an only child, so it was just the three of them living here. When Sawyer became part of his grandparents’ everyday life after he lost his parents, once again the cabin was home to three.
Although it was a sad story, it was also beautiful. Sawyer joked about the tire swing that still hung from a nearby tree out in the yard. You could see it perfectly from the kitchen. It had been years since he used it as a child, but he couldn’t take it down. He still remembered the day his grandfather hung it up for him, shortly after he came to live with them, and it meant so much to him. He spent hours there, stretched out across it, reading books in the summer sun. Some parts of his childhood sounded lonely to me, but maybe that was because I had a sibling, so I never understood what it was like to be raised alone. But Sawyer talked about his childhood like it was a peaceful one, spent fishing and canoeing with his grandfather and learning to cook with his grandma.
We put our bags away inside, and Sawyer insisted we go out to the pond before dinner. It was as magical a place in person as it had been in my imagination when he’d first described it to me. There was a large dock over the water, an old canoe on the shoreline, and even a rope swing hanging from a nearby tree. I imagined this spot was the perfect dream for any young boy, splashing around during the day and stargazing at night.
“I get why you love it here,” I said whimsically, taking it all in.
“This is where I’m going to build my boathouse.” He pointed, outlining an area right next to the dock. “Next spring.” He reminded me of the details: a hammock and a skylight for relaxing, and plenty of hooks and storage for his canoe and fishing gear. It suited him perfectly. I so badly wanted to be part of it.
The dog sat with us on the edge of the dock as we slid our feet into the tepid water. It looked like a picture to me—couple, dog, beautiful landscape . . .
“How do you feel about spaghetti?” he questioned with far too serious of a tone.
“Always yes to carbs,” I said excitedly. No man could do wrong by offering a woman pasta.
“It’s my grandma’s recipe. It’s one of my favorites. Homemade sauce.” He shrugged. “I’m trying to impress you right out of the gates, so I’m starting with my aces.”
“You think you haven’t impressed me yet?” I teased, motioning my arms around at everything in front of us. “I’m enamored by everything about you.” I probably should’ve been a bit more reserved with my honest feelings, but that was the thing about Sawyer—I didn’t feel the need to hold anything back from him at this point. If he wasn’t scared off yet, with all the crying and emotion he’d witnessed in Mountain Ride, then it didn’t seem there was anything left to fear. “This has been surreal. All of this. Everything about you—you’re like a dream, but at the same time you’re the most real experience I’ve ever had with another person. You’ve seen me at rock bottom, and instead of running away, we had a late-night dance party. It’s absurd in a way, yet so imperfectly perfect to me. I was surrounded by complete sadness, yet my days ended with sore cheeks from smiling and laughing with you. Honestly, the only thing I’m trying to figure out is how I get to be the girl sitting here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been a mess from the moment we met,” I tried to explain, not sure how to put it into words. “I don’t know. It just seems to me that some girl—some normal, put-together girl—should be the one sitting here with you.”
“That’s not what I’m about. I like real. I like truth, and emotion, and honesty, and someone with a little fight in them. You have so much more fight in you than you realize. That’s what hooked me. The way you were with your family, the way you were pissed off and angry when you heard Kip singing your words, the way you ramble on and on about wanting someone to notice you behind all your notebooks . . . No one remembers normal girls, the ones who are put together and boring. It’s the fight in you that makes you extraordinary to me.”
Sawyer stared at me, and I couldn’t speak. The emotion behind his green eyes seared through me, and I never doubted what he said. When he spoke, he meant it—every time. I loved that about him, and it pulled me in, no matter how often I questioned the way we came to be. It was random, for sure, but I suppose that’s the best part of life. It’s all just happenchance. Sometimes it’s a disaster, and sometimes it’s brilliant, but either way the haphazard way it all comes together—that’s the real magic.
“I have plans for you, Whitley Rose,” he said softly, leaning in to graze my lips with his.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “And it starts with pasta.” I grinned, and he helped me up from the dock. We left our shoes there by the edge, and the image of them made me smile. It looked exactly like summer should feel—carefree, barefoot, and off on some great adventure without the worry of something as insignificant as shoes. There was grass to run through, water to splash in, porch swings that must sway . . . Even if our adventure for the time being was just us eating spaghetti on the wraparound deck, talking about his childhood and making plans for the following two days, that was enough.
Time with Sawyer felt infinite. All I could do was embrace it and hope the world had no other plan.
Chapter 19
Sawyer and I spent the night wrapped in blankets on the dock, listening to the crickets and bullfrogs. Before that there was music and dancing, and the following day he promised me breakfast and a boat ride. One of the things I loved most about Sawyer was that everything he promised me came true, even when it came to our day-to-day plans.
Sawyer had once mentioned how he’d come to live with his grandparents and the transition to that “new normal,” as he’d put it. Our time together translated the same way, becoming routine as if we had always been part of each other’s schedules. Time moved effortlessly as the days quickly passed.
On weekdays we were both fairly busy. I was making some good headway at the record label, drudging through clerical work while working with a couple of artists who were using my lyrics. Sawyer was busy with his residency. On the weekends it was just the two of us, with no responsibilities, and the chaos of the world stopped. He cooked us amazing food, and we ate outside every chance we got. I became quite fond of writing in his canoe while he read the paper in the early morning hours. We stayed up late to stargaze and dream about what was to come and woke early because our days together commanded us to jump from rope swings and laugh in the sun.
Weeks passed this way, faster than anyone would hope, but yet recognizing a time before our lives were this full of each other had become a distant memory.
I spoke to my father more often than I had before his heart failure, and that filled my soul. He had a checkup at Stanford, and his heart slowly showed some improvement. He still had a long way to go, but any improvement was unexpected, so it was welcome news. I hoped to have enough money to go home in the fall for another visit.
As Sawyer worked on the cabin, I often stretched out on the porch swing or even across his old childhood tire swing, writing and thinking about everything between us. I thought back to the beginning of our relationship and the complete disaster I was. I suppose when someone is with you through your very worst, it makes sense that they end up with the very best of you. That was so completely true for us. If Sawyer thought I radiated then, I couldn’t imagine what he saw in me now.
I thought back to what Sawyer had said about the seasons, about the picture of us he had in his head. He’d been right about this summer; we were spending our days splashing in the pond and sleeping under the stars, just as he’d promised. I imagined in a few weeks when the weather started to
cool we would live out his prediction of being tangled in blankets by warm fires.
“Can I take you somewhere tomorrow?” he asked quietly as we spent another night on the wooden swing on the back porch. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the crickets and bullfrogs made themselves known. These nights with Sawyer were perfect.
“Of course,” I replied. “What’s on your mind?” I studied him, trying to read his expression. There was definitely a hint of sadness in his eyes. Usually his face was lit up with such joy and humor. He was definitely feeling something far more serious now. “Is everything okay?”
“Tomorrow is an important day for me,” he said softly, tracing the freckles on my arms as I lay across him on the swing. “It was a day my grandma celebrated in a pretty big way, and now that she’s gone, I just . . . Will you come with me? To celebrate her?”
There was so much emotion in his voice. I knew his grandparents meant a great deal to him. He talked about them often, and his stories were always filled with love and warmth. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he felt without them. This heartache was still relatively new for him; not even a year had passed since he lost them both.
“She celebrated everything in a big way,” he explained with heavy nostalgia in his voice. “She always made a big deal out of every occasion, big or small. Before she passed, even after I became an adult, she still made ordinary days feel important. It could have been something as simple as the last day of school. She would wake me up with Cap’n Crunch in her favorite porcelain teacup. It belonged to her mother, so I never touched it otherwise. With gestures like that, she had a way of making an ordinary day feel like magic . . . I miss that about her.”
“Grandmas have a way with magic.” I smiled back at him.
“Any time she bought me a gift or made me something special, she made me go on an elaborate treasure hunt in the woods out back to find it. I would have to follow her intricate maps and decipher her clues until I found the treasure. Tomorrow is a day that meant a great deal to her, a day we used to spend together, so it feels important for me to celebrate her even though she’s gone.”
“I like hearing you talk about her,” I replied warmly.
“We used to have a huge breakfast feast for dinner every time it was a special occasion. That was always my favorite part of any celebration. It was just this ‘thing’ we did. Biscuits and gravy, gypsy sandwiches, grits, bacon . . . And she made the best homemade chocolate cake. It was perfection.”
“She sounds wonderful.” I sat up on the swing to face him.
“The ironic thing was, she wasn’t even crazy about chocolate cake. Her favorite was lemon, and I knew it, but she always made chocolate because that’s what my grandpa and I liked best. Grandpa and I always tried to celebrate her in a big way when we got the chance. I wanted her to feel just an ounce of how special she made me feel. Once she won an exhibit at the county fair, some quilting thing—she was ecstatic about it. I told her she deserved an entire day for herself, where she got to do anything she wanted. Of course she requested we celebrate by having a picnic in the park, then she wanted to head out fishing—stuff she knew I liked to do. As a kid I thought that was just an amazing coincidence, until of course I got older and realized she did it for me. She so badly deserves a celebration with lemon cake tomorrow.”
He stared out into the night, and my heart ached for him. I squeezed his hand, and he smiled despite the sadness in his eyes. “So let’s make a cake,” I said quietly in agreement. I loved how vulnerable he seemed in moments like these.
He nodded. “I want to take you to their spot. They’re buried on a hillside where she grew up, about an hour from here. Her parents used to own a farm, and my grandfather worked there one summer. It’s the exact spot they met. I want to eat lemon cake and bring her flowers—daisies—and I want you to come with me.”
Sawyer and I had become quite close in the weeks since we’d returned from Mountain Ridge. I couldn’t imagine not being there for him for something this important. “That sounds wonderful,” I said sincerely. He pulled me close, and I appreciated his realness more than he knew. The way he could be emotional and pour his heart out in front of me really meant something. Usually people kept that part—all the hurt and heartache—masked and buried. But with Sawyer, there was no hiding it, and he made no apologies for it either. When he was happy, which was most of the time, he lit up my world. He was full of joy and laughter, and I felt it through my entire body. When his heart felt heavy, he wasn’t afraid to show that side either. That mattered.
Another night passed with us under the stars, and with the two of us together, wrapped up in each other, I felt nothing short of invincible.
***
Morning came, and Sawyer headed into town to get a few things from the market. He returned with beautiful, fresh pink daisies and all the ingredients we needed to attempt a lemon cake.
“Have you ever made one of these before?” He grinned, pulling out baking supplies from the lower kitchen cabinets. I shook my head as I perused the recipe. I was standing in the kitchen in one of his old comfy T-shirts. “That shirt looks good on you, by the way.” His mouth curved up into a smile.
“I’m thinking about keeping it,” I replied with raised eyebrows, grabbing a spatula off the counter. “It’s lonely in the city without seeing you as much during the week. I can’t sleep on the nights we’re not together. If I’m wearing this, maybe it will be more bearable. It’s soft, and it smells like you. I’m kind of fond of it.”
“I have a better idea,” he stated with a devilish grin. “Don’t pay your rent at the end of the month.”
“I wasn’t planning to. I never pay it on time,” I replied with a laugh, only half sarcastically. “Darryl hasn’t evicted me yet. It’s no secret that I usually need an extra week or so to pay. Wait a minute. What happened to you? You usually side with my mother when it comes to me taking more responsibility of my life. You probably pay your rent early. Don’t pretend like you’re not that guy.”
He wrapped a strong arm around me and leaned in close to my ear. “That’s not what I meant,” he said softly, gently kissing my neck. “I’m Mr. Spreadsheets, remember? That’s why your parents are so fond of me.” I giggled, but he didn’t stop kissing me. “I meant you should stop being lonely in your apartment. Come stay with me. All the time.”
“Sawyer, we are not there yet,” I said lightheartedly, pulling my face away from his to make eye contact. “We are light years away from that. At the very least I need several months to really hook you before you realize I can’t cook and just how much I suck at paying my electric on time. Trust me, I hate that I barely see you all week. I’m lucky if I’m able to come over to your place to catch a late-night movie or whatever during the week. But that’s also kind of the point. You’re still gone a lot, so it’s not like we would even see each other that much more.”
“I know I’m gone a lot for my residency hours, but I’m almost done. That will change soon,” he said persuasively. “Just think: instead of having to wait for you to come over after a long day, you could just already be there. I think it would be nice. And we’re together here every weekend, so it kind of makes sense. Then eventually, you know, we can just stay here all the time.”
“It just seems so soon. You’ve never even been to my apartment. There’s a reason for that.”
“You always suggest my place instead because I have better food. There’s no shame in that,” he teased.
“Sawyer, you wouldn’t even be able to find my kitchen. I have piles of clothes and shoes everywhere. The worst part is, it doesn’t even really bother me. I find it oddly charming, like I’m never far away from a good outfit. But it’s not all that pretty to outsiders. We are so not there yet.”
“Just tell me you’ll think about it,” he urged, giving me the sweetest face. “Look, I never thought I would even be saying that. I’m old-fashioned when it comes to that kind of thing, moving fast and all that. You probably know that abo
ut me.”
“You, the newspaper reader—you’re scared of time moving at all,” I razzed.
“I’m just saying it feels right to me. I don’t know,” he replied genuinely. “I mean you’re standing in my kitchen, wearing my T-shirt, holding sugar and a spatula—that’s pretty much everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”
“Well, once I burn your grandma’s lemon cake, we’ll see how charming you find me then,” I teased. He pulled me in and kissed me again.
“Just say you’ll think about it. Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll make a spreadsheet of pros and cons. I’ll let you know,” I answered with a grin. I really needed more time to process it. I’d never considered something like that, but he had a point. We spent every spare moment we had together, so it wasn’t a terrible idea. But I still felt like we had so much more to learn about each other first. Not to mention my fairly traditional parents would likely threaten to disown me. That would make the cons list.
We spent the rest of the morning baking the cake, and I had to admit, it turned out far better than either of us expected. We loaded up the car with the food and flowers and headed out.
Instead of a Jeep like the one Sawyer rented during our time together in Lake Tahoe, he actually drove a pickup truck. That made me smile—a boy from Tennessee owning a truck. He sounded like a guy in one of the songs I wrote. We drove for about an hour to a gorgeous hilly area with a mixture of fields and trees. Sawyer parked and led me to a beautiful spot underneath a gigantic willow tree that cascaded down toward the ground. It looked like its own natural fort. It was a beautiful spot for something that meant so much to him.
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