Chapter Text
Booker slides into the booth across from Angie. She’s already ordered him a coffee, black, just how he likes it.
They do this once or twice a month. Gabe takes the boys, and they meet up at the diner for coffee and pancakes and friendship.
“So,” she says, and waits for him to swallow. “You and Nile Freeman, huh?”
Booker thunks his head back against the booth. “Everybody knows?”
Angie smirks. “By all accounts, you were not exactly subtle last night. And you look like you barely slept… so, you and Nile Freeman?”
She could always read him so well.
“It’s not what you think.”
“And what do I think, Book? Hmmm?”
Good grief, she is enjoying this.
“We didn’t even kiss or anything.” As he says it, he feels like the gangly, too tall teenager who didn’t quite know what to do with all of his limbs at the same time.
“Because you didn’t want to or because you’re too chicken?”
That was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Because he had wanted. And he’s never been great at reading other people, but he’d bet — well, not the whole business, but good money — that she had wanted him to, too.
“Ang–” he croaks and her hand immediately shoots across the table for his. He stares down at her small hand wrapped around his big one. Thinking about it, how easy and right it had felt talking to Nile, how carefully, how lovingly she listened, how her cheek felt against his shoulder blade as they rode his Harley, how her hands held tight to him. How it had seemed like something out of a dream. One fairytale night.
Except that he hadn’t kissed his princess and he’d been the one to flee into the dark without a final word or a glass slipper left behind.
By now she was almost certainly on the road to the airport. It was a two hour drive and she mentioned she had class to teach Monday afternoon back in New Haven.
He didn’t even have her phone number.
Angie squeezes his hand and he hazards a glance up at her. Her eyes are big and full of feeling and it’s — it’s all too much.
“Hey,” she says softly, “you know I just want you to find someone who will make you the happiest, best version of yourself.”
“I know.” His voice just about cracks on those two words. “I–”
“You just thought that, if the world were just a little bit different, she might’ve been the one?”
He shrugs, not wanting to let her know how precisely she’s articulated the thoughts he’s barely dared to think.
She squeezes his hand again and then pulls back. “Have Joe and Nicky told you about their nefarious plan for some unsuspecting 4H kids?”
Booker huffs a laugh, grateful for the subject change. “Not yet?”
“Bottle lambs. So many bottle lambs.”
“Won’t that be more work for them during their busiest months of the year, not less?”
Angie grins. “Mmmmhmmm.”
“They’ll be exhausted but the kids will have a great experience. And because they’re both too nice, they’ll feel like they have to do it again the next year, too?”
Angie adds a rapid nod to her grin.
“God, they’re idiots.”
“I know.”
“Why are we friends with them, again?”
“I think it has something to do with Nicky talking at the surly, silent Sebastien in shop class till you cracked and started talking back?”
“Hearsay.”
Nile gets the e-signature back on the lease from her subletter and sighs. All that’s left is to pack. And call her mother.
She hears Nana’s voice in her head: why put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
She should start packing. That’s productive, right? Is it too absurd, too horribly stereotypical, to bring a suitcase full of books? She could just scan the relevant chapters, but what if she has an epiphany while she’s away?
She sighs.
Stop it, Nile. Call your damn mother.
She makes herself a cup of coffee, pours the hazelnut creamer in thick. She places her phone on the table in front of her, presses “call,” and waits.
It rings once, twice, three times.
“Nile, it’s been a while since you’ve called your mama. How’ve you been, baby?”
“Hi Mama. I’m good.” A bit reluctantly, she adds. “How’re you?”
Her mother launches into a run down of what Nile assumes is gossip about the folks she went to school with — well, elementary school, she hardly remembers most of them — and their families.
It’s always like this when Nile calls.
She knows her mother isn’t trying to torment her, that all this chatter comes from a desire to keep Nile somehow engaged in the community she grew up in.
Still, as Nile listens, her agitation grows, as it always does. It was her mother, after all, who sent her away in the first place, to the fancy magnet school, and then to Nana’s. After that, Nile went from Nana’s to Brown, her only rebellion that she didn’t choose Harvard for her undergrad. Then from Brown to Yale for her PhD. The only time she’s spent in Chicago in the last decade is her customary week at Christmas, where she hides in her old bedroom claiming she has “work,” plays video games with (and loses to) her brother, Indy, and grins politely as her mother shows her off at church on Christmas Eve. Hardly a meaningful connection.
So Nile grips at her coffee mug, sips at the too hot liquid, and waits.
When her mother pauses to take breath before pivoting into another set of stories, Nile seizes her opportunity.
“Mama–” she cuts in. “I actually have something I need to tell you.”
“Oh of course. What’s up, baby? Everything okay?”
“I’m flying out west tomorrow. Gonna spend the summer at Nana’s.”
“But you were just there a couple of months ago.” Nile hears the surprise and skepticism in her mother’s voice.
“I know.”
“And you really want to spend your summer in that sleepy little town?”
Nile’s knuckles clench around her mug. “I’ve always liked it there. You know that.”
“And don’t you have your dissertation to work on?”
“Yeah, that’s kind of the point.” Nile makes a frustrated face at the phone laying on the table, and then says, as calmly as she can manage. “I think the mountain air and routine of the homestead will be good for my productivity. I can write from anywhere, you know?”
“And what about your apartment?”
Would it ever end, these concerned questions masking utter disapproval?
“I found a subletter.”
“And meetings with your advisor?”
“Dr. DeFillippo agreed to video calls once a week. “
“And–”
“I’ve got it all figured out mama. It’ll be fine.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier, more efficient to stay in New Haven?”
“This is what I want, mama.”
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Nile tries to wrap things up as quickly as she can after that. She’s never hung up on her mother — though it’s been a near thing a couple of times — and she isn’t about to start now. Finally, she makes her excuses and hangs up the phone. She takes a big sip of coffee and leans back in her chair.
All things considered, that went about as well as she could have hoped.
Being back for the reunion was both nothing like she’d thought it would be and more than she ever imagined.
It was overwhelming how much the people had changed, and also how they hadn’t.
Booker, especially.
Nile’s fallen asleep with his broad shoulders and blue eyes and long legs and calm, confident movements spooling behind her eyes, almost every night since she’s gotten back.
She has a crush and she has it bad.
She isn’t, she insists to herself, going back to Nana’s just for a boy. There are people, friends, she hadn’t been able to see during her quick dash into town for the reunion. She really is going to write her dissertation.
But if something happens with Booker? Well, she’s far from opposed.
Booker’s already at the shop and elbow deep under the hood of the Jones’ pick up truck, when Andy saunters in and tosses her keys onto their desk.
“How’s our girl Petunia?” he calls. Nana’s beloved Jersey cow is ready to calve any day now.
“Taking her damn sweet time.”
Booker laughs, and wipes his hands on the towel at his belt. Petunia is the most ornery little cow he’s ever met. She is surely holding onto her calf out of spite, only to have it at the most inopportune time for Nana or Andy.
“You’re just excited you get to start milking again soon.”
Andy shrugs, and steps into her coveralls. “Please. Nile will commandeer the milking. It always was her favorite chore.”
Booker chuckles and agrees, because yeah, he does remember Nile coming into school a couple of times pissed to high heaven because Petunia had kicked over her bucket and it must have been intentional, don’t tell me it wasn’t.
Then his brain screeches to a halt because, “Wait, Nile? Our Nile?”
Andy’s grin is absolutely wicked. “She’s staying with Nana for the summer to work on her dissertation. Got in last night, haven’t you heard?”
She knows damn well that he hasn’t heard. That nobody in the whole damn valley had heard.
“Oh, and Nana wants someone to walk the perimeter fence before she sends the pigs out to the back part of the forest for the summer. Think you can manage it tonight?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” he says, and his voice sounds thick in his throat even to him.
“That’s what I figured.”
“Nile? Ten minutes till supper.” Her grandmother’s voice calls up the stairs.
“Ten minutes. Thank you.” Nile shouts back.
She slams her book shut, tidies her desk -- she hasn’t even been here a whole day, how is it already messy? -- and jogs down the stairs.
Nana’s dining room is right at the bottom of the staircase. Nile glances at the dining table, expecting to see placemats but no place-settings – setting the table was always Nile’s job – but her eyes snag on…
“Booker?”
“Hey,” he says, with a small, awkward wave.
“I didn’t know you’d be joining us for dinner.”
“Nana asked me to check the fence lines. The pigs are going out to the back forest tomorrow.”
“Ah.”
Ah? Goddamnit Nile, get your shit together. Still her brain is coming up with a total blank. Booker is here, sitting at her grandmother’s dining table and she cannot think of a single damn thing to say to him.
After a moment standing there with her mouth flopping open and closed like a fish, she manages, “I need to set the table,” and dashes into the kitchen.
Thankfully, her brain comes back online before dinner, and Nana keeps the conversation about the homestead – Petunia and the pigs and the chickens and harvesting and canning – for the start of the meal.
But then Nana gets up to refill the green beans and pork chops for seconds, and Nile is left alone at the table with Booker.
“So,” she says slowly, “any fun projects at the shop?” Nile winces at the obviousness of the question, the choppiness of her delivery. She can – and has – presented on Foucault, museums, and the display practices for non-Western art at conferences and taken questions from the room of crotchety old art historians without batting an eye. But somehow talking to Booker is too much for her.
“Not right now,” he says. His eyes flick to hers and then back down to his plate, where he is valiantly pushing one final green bean around with his fork. “Uh, Joe and Nicky have their shearer coming on Saturday. They could use an extra pair of hands, if you wanted to--”
“I would love to.” Booker looks at her, finally looks at her, and she sees the crinkles at the corner of her eyes, the upward twitch of his lips. She can’t help but grin.
“I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Looking forward to it.”
And then Nana bustles back in with more food and somehow everything is easier after that.
Nile’s elbow deep into cleaning the milking pail, when she hears the roar of an engine down the driveway.
Petunia had gone into labor immediately after dinner with Booker that first night. Even though Nana immediately called Andy, Petunia was an old pro and had her calf up and nursing before Andy could even get there. Nile got to name the little bull calf – Monet – and Andy’s hopeful he’ll make a good 4H project.
All this means Nile gets to milk the cow every morning, a chore that hardly felt like one, her forehead against Petunia’s warm flank, her hands moving rhythmically against her teats. It also means Nile gets to do all the washing that goes along with milking. All the milk so far has gone to the pigs – Nile shudders to think about how much more washing and sterilizing there’ll be when they start keeping the milk to drink.
Nana calls out, “Nile, your ride’s here,” and so Nile pushes those thoughts to the side for later. She dries her hands and steps out to the front porch. Nana’s in her favorite rocker and Nile presses a kiss to her cheek. And then there’s Booker, boots crunching as he strides across the gravel towards the porch. The early morning sun makes his hair almost glow and he looks good in jeans and a t-shirt with a work leather jacket.
“I hope you’re not too disappointed I brought the truck today,” he says with a tip of his head to the red and dented, extended cab pick-up truck behind him. Nile wagers it’s at least twenty years old.
“Of course not,” Nile says quickly.
“Joe and Nicky asked me to bring some tools, so–” He cuts himself off and looks at her a little more closely. “Wait. You’re not?”
“I like you for more than your very sexy motorcycle,” Nile says, before she can think, and Christ, she just said the word sexy in front of her GRANDMOTHER. Nile feels her face heat with the strength of a million smouldering fires.
“I–” he starts. His eyes flick over Nile’s shoulder, to Nana, still sitting in her rocker. Nile doesn’t know what kind of expression is on her grandmother’s face at the moment and is too mortified to look. “Well, um, good,” he says, glancing down to his feet and then back up at her. Maybe it’s her imagination, but it’s almost shy?
“Good,” Nile says and screams internally at the awkwardness.
“Shall we?”
“Yes. Let’s.” Nile practically sprints to the passenger side door of the truck. She rests her head against the cool metal for a moment before climbing in.
Be cool, Nile. You are a strong, confident, intelligent woman. You are about to spend a nice day with some old friends. It’s fine. Everything is FINE.