Page 6

“Elderflower. From last year. This summer’s batch is still brewing.”

“You make it with sugar?”

“I don’t make it with anything—it’s my dad’s. But no, it’s an infusion. Elderflowers. Lemon peel. Nothing else.”

It’s all I need to hear. I lift the bottle to my mouth and take a swig without calculating how I’ll offset the carbs in the beer, or the sugar in a liqueur. Such free consumption is rare for me. So I take another swig and enjoy the burn as the botanical spirit ravages my throat and chest with the same fire as the rough vodka my dad drinks, but a lighter finish on my tongue. “That is good, my friend.”

Poet smiles as the clouds shift in the sky and let the moon cast a celestial glow over the Whitlock family farm. It changes his whole face. The short beard on his jaw seems to soften and those eyes…yes. I wasn’t wrong about them being the colour of the Baltic Sea in high summer.

It makes me miss Juodkrantė. But not enough to be anywhere but here. Where Aras is. My son is my life.

You need more than that, Oscar. You deserve more.

Aras’s mother has a sweet voice. It echoes in my head as I return the gin to Poet Whitlock and watch him take a drink. He doesn’t seem in much of a hurry to rejoin the wedding party.

Am I?

I do not know. I like people and I like fun. But that feeling from the ceremony, it’s heavy in my bones tonight and tracking the movement of Poet’s long throat as he swallows seems to be the strange and only cure.

Perhaps it is the gin.

I drink some more, for science, of course. And the burn is fiercer this time.

I cough and rub my chest. “Like magic, no?”

Poet isn’t looking at me. He turns back as the last syllable leaves my mouth and pauses. “Did you say something?”

“I said your father’s gin is magic.”

“It is,” he agrees. Then taps his ear. “I’m deaf. I need to see your lips when you talk.”

“Okay,” I say…slowly.

Poet snorts. “Not like that. Just be yourself, I’ll figure it out.”

“There is nothing I can do to make it easier?”

“I don’t need easy.” Poet reclaims the gin and takes a swig of his own before setting it aside. “And it’s not a hardship for me to look at your mouth.”

I’m not caught off guard much. And I’m around queer men enough that I’m pretty good at knowing when they’re flirting with me, or with each other. But Poet throws me. I don’t know what he means and I find myself flailing. A beat of loaded silence—for me—that has him appraising me for a heated moment before he starts walking again.

I don’t have to follow him. I know the way back to the gardens. To where Skylar is waiting for me and perhaps annoyed I’ve already been gone so long when he probably wants to leave soon. But my feet move of their own accord and I trail Poet through the darker parts of the farm to an open-sided barn.

There’s a ladder to a loft-style platform.

Poet climbs it.

I reach the foot of the wooden apparatus and wait for him to glance down before I speak. “What is up there?”

“A view.” Poet extends a hand in invitation. “It’s one of the only places on the farm you can see the North Sea and the land together.”

Sold. I climb the ladder to where Poet sits on the sturdy platform, his back to a wall that seems as old as time. The air smells of sawdust, hay, and salt, and the wood feels warm—sun-drenched—to my palms.

I heave myself into a space that doesn’t seem too small until it’s just us in it. Or maybe I’m too big. Matis, my brother thinks so. I think he spends so much time in front of screens his body has shrunk.

Not like Poet. I do not know this man but I can’t picture him with a phone in his hand. His gaze glued to an iPad. He’s a man of the earth—I see it in every part of him from those Baltic eyes to the muscles and limbs built from honest work.

He makes room for me.