Page 100 of Good Directions

26

ANTON

If I’ve ever wondered what the shittiest feeling on earth is, I have officially figured it out. Because this is it.

This raw, gnawing, hollow feeling that seems to be swallowing me whole, only to spit me back up and leave me sitting here to rot. All while the world around me flitters around like nothing is wrong. Everything is perfectly normal.

Like it doesn’t hurt to inhale. Or even more to exhale.

Cary sets two beers down on a small wooden table in between the two Adirondack chairs on my back deck. The sound of the glass bottles clinking against the metal coasters fills the still summer air, echoing through my ears, making the empty feeling inside me feel even larger somehow.

I look over at them, sighing heavily, then look back out over the unfarmed field in the back that I lovingly refer to as the back forty. This spot, especially on a perfect summer day like today, is usually a happy spot for me. My back deck, my best friend, and a couple of cold Southern Brothers beers—absolute perfection.

Today? Meh…

“Which one’s mine?” I ask, keeping my eyes straight ahead.

“The one that says dipshit on it,” he replies without skipping a beat. He drops down into the other chair, easing back, as if he didn’t just halfway insult me.

For a second, I think about looking back at the beers. Because I would not put it past him to actually have written dipshit on one of them.

And well, frankly, I probably deserve that. For one reason or another.

Instead, I reach over, grabbing the one closest to me, and take a long, hard swig. The easy-going, mellow, hoppy taste hits my taste buds, its familiar flavor a comfort, even if Sob Story isn’t my normal go-to. I’m generally a Party Mode kind of a guy. Then again, given the moment…

“In case you were wondering, I stopped by the auxiliary greenhouse, and all of the saplings are looking very happy in their temporary home.”

“I wasn’t wondering,” I mutter, taking another swig.

“That’s a lie.” I can feel his eyes on me, like laser beams boring holes into the side of my head. Still, I don’t budge. “And this isn’t you.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” I shrug.

“I want you to tell me why you lost your shit. Over saplings that we were probably gonna dig up and redistribute in a couple of weeks anyway.” He pauses, but only long enough to suck in a breath to continue to berate me. “I’ve heard a lot of bullshit spouted from your mouth over the years, but nothing quite like trees aren’t meant to be disturbed. It’s a fucking sapling, Anton, not a hundred-year-old live oak…”

I turn and look at my best friend. The man who knows me better than anyone. And I do mean anyone. I have five brothers and a little sister, and still, this guy right here knows me better. His face is as serious as ever, his features not betraying a damn thing.

Not to say he doesn’t have a point. He is the best horticulturist around and he knows better than anyone what those trees need. And it was time to move them. Because my trees aren’t meant to be disturbed was bullshit. Well, at least about these trees. We move our peach trees all the time as they grow to give them more room to develop the proper canopy. That’s why Calvin and Jorge knew exactly how to help Sawyer. Because they’ve done it a hundred times.

Still, Cary went straight for the throat.

“Don’t hold back now…”

“You called me out with Tizzy. I’m calling you out,” he counters.

“I didn’t call you out.”

“I very distinctly remember standing in the small grove, trying to inspect a tree, while someone stood there and harped on me about how it was perfectly healthy, just like all the others, and that I was fooling myself if I thought I could distract myself enough with work to forget that I’d fallen in love with a wild-child chocolatier at the beach.”

I smirk, almost reflexively, then quickly try to hide it, remembering the moment. The late summer sun was scorching, but there was a good breeze that when it hit you just right, offset that heat in a way that made you want to relish it. Only a few days home from a trip Willa had forced him to go on, my childhood best friend should have been up to his armpits in paperwork organizing vendors for Rhythm and Brews, the massive beer and bluegrass festival Hickory Hills puts on every Labor Day weekend—another job he gets voluntold for every year—but instead, he was out in the small grove, inspecting every last tree we have.

“That was different,” I scoff.

“It’s not. Not really. Because this doesn’t have anything to do with trees. Just like it didn’t then either. And you know it.”

I know no such thing…

I scoff again, blowing his assessment off. Cary Adler is a smart man and knows a lot of things. This is not one of them.