Page 76 of Keepsakes and Kismet

“Obviously. I have a thing for kismet. It’s kind of how I met my boyfriend.” She winks.

Boyfriend. I stand a little straighter, puffing my chest out.

“Kismet, huh?”

“Yes, Callum. Destiny. Fate. Kismet. What else would you call us?”

I think about all the things that had to happen for the two of us to meet like this. Her move to Waterton, my growth in therapy, all of our crossovers at work. The logistics of how we met. The science behind our relationship.

And I decide I like her version better.

“Kismet is the perfect word. You’re right,” I tell her.

“Get used to saying I’m right. It’s going to happen a lot, now,” she teases.

“You say that like it’s a punishment. I’d never deny you the satisfaction.”

We walk to the bed of the truck, and I pull out a lawn chair I brought for her, gesturing for her to sit.

“Why am I sitting in a lawn chair?”

“I have a lot to set up, so I thought you’d want somewhere to relax while I do that.”

Peyton tilts her head, amusement dancing in her eyes. “You brought a lawn chair to a drive-in movie so I could sit on my ass while you do all the work?”

“…yes?”

She sits down in the chair and stretches her legs, leaning back slightly. “You are a distressingly ideal man. I’m keeping you.”

“That’s the plan,” I mutter, pulling out the tarp and poles.

“Are you assembling a tent?”

“It’s more of a canopy with sides. I have the mattress pad and the blankets I brought for the truck bed, but I thought having makeshift curtains on either side would protect us from the chill. This does that, but still lets us see out of the front.” I secure the poles on either side of the truck and put the tarp over them, leaving plenty of space for me and Peyton underneath.

She cranes her neck to see what else I brought… which may or may not be everything. A thermos of hot chocolate, a bag of extra marshmallows, charcuterie, a portable heater, hair ties (Clover’s idea—she’s always looking for one), and plenty of pillows to put in between us in case Peyton needs them.

Ten minutes later, everything is set up—even the small lantern I brought, which illuminates the space without being too bright.

“Wow,” Peyton breathes, climbing into the truck bed, “Thank you for doing all this.”

She slowly crawls up toward the head of the mattress and sits, curling her knees under her.

I go in after her, careful to leave some space between us. A fleeting nervous thought reminds me that I’ll be lying next to Peyton for the next few hours. I run through my list again—do I have everything I need to make her comfortable?

Nodding toward the thermos of cocoa, I say, “Don’t worry, the hot chocolate is temperature controlled in this electric thermos—one hundred and forty degrees exactly. See? There are digits on the side.”

“I wasn’t wor⁠—”

“You don’t have to be concerned about the cheese either. The serving temperature should be right around sixty degrees.”

“Callum—”

“Ma actually got this thermos for me for Christmas, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to use it. Now that I’m using it, though, I need to take a picture. One thing about parents from the Midwest is if you’re using something they bought you for Christmas, you have to send them a picture. It doesn’t matter if months have passed. No one knows why.”

“Callum.”

“Yeah?”