Page 131 of Cherry Picking

“Go on. He’s right there, and you’ve been staring at him since we parked.”

I walk the ten feet over.

The grass has completely taken now, a seamless green carpet where the sod line used to be. I take the ceramic swift out of my pocket and set it at the base of the stone, where the granite meets the border. Evie found it at a swap meet in Pahrump and told me I should keep it.

I sit on the concrete border, the sun hot on my neck.

“Hey, Zig. Thought we could chat. I signed four years in Charlotte. Four million a year. I could’ve gotten more on the market.” I pull a stubborn weed from the grass. “We made it to the playoffs but lost in the first round. Six games. I got two goals and a lot of bruises, and Dad called after every single one to tell me what I did wrong.”

A car crawls past on the access road and disappears into the distance.

“I fired Ted. I’ve got a new guy now who’s about forty and visibly terrified of me, which I’m currently working on.”

I scrub a hand through my hair, feeling the grit of the morning’s work.

“My girlfriend’s name’s Evie. She’s the one who made this hole nice and pretty for you.” I put my palm flat on the grass. “Now she has a key to both my condo and my rental house.”

The swift is already leaning a little in the grass. I straighten it, and it goes right back to the tilt. Symmetry is overrated, anyway.

“I wish you two could’ve met.” My eyes start to burn. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “I miss you, Zig. We had a good run, didn’t we?”

I stay until my legs go pins and needles from the concrete, and then I stay a little longer.

When I finally look back, my father has moved. He’s on his feet, working his way slowly along the row toward a bench two plots down, doing a lap because he can and because he’s decided he’s going to keep doing it.

He gives me all the time I need. When I get up and join him, he’s sitting with his hands stacked on the head of the cane, looking out at the flat brown hills past the fence.

“Alright?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll come back next month?”

“First Saturday,” I tell him.

“Is your girl coming over for dinner?” he asks.

“She’ll be there.”

“Good,” he replies. “Tell her not to forget that pie.”

He extends a hand with a single, sharp nod. I pull him up to his feet, and we walk back to the truck together, taking our time under the white sky. There’s no reason for us to hurry. Today, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

EPILOGUE

EVIE

The wall beside the window in Briggs’s condo has officially run out of real estate.

I’ve spent the better part of the year curating this mess. A grainy shot of the horizon, caught the morning we were both awake at four and neither of us would admit why. A charcoal sketch of Briggs passed out on my sofa with his legs hanging off the end. A brown, brittle dahlia pressed and dried by hand.

Even a grocery list I lifted from his fridge, because seeing the good yogurt, whatever she likes in his handwriting felt like something worth keeping.

It’s a map of us, more or less.

“You’re messing with the alignment again,” Briggs mutters from the sofa. He’s propped up with a bag of frozen peas leaking condensation onto his shoulder—the first casualty of the season. “You fixed that last Tuesday.”

“The dahlia was leaning.”