Easy Company

Declan called on a Wednesday, not texted, actually called, which Wren had learned by now was a habit of his that seemed almost old fashioned in a world of ellipsis bubbles and voice memos.

“I have a proposition,” he said, no greeting, the way he always started conversations like they were already in progress.

“That sentence has never once led somewhere good.”

“This one’s harmless, I promise. There’s a farmers market on Saturday, the good one out past the reservoir, not the sad one downtown with three stalls and a guy selling honey he definitely didn’t make. I need a second opinion on reclaimed barn wood for the judge’s sideboard, and you’re the only person I know who’d actually enjoy spending a morning doing that instead of resenting me for asking.”

“Is that a work outing or a Wren outing?”

“Does it have to be one or the other?”

She should have had an answer ready for that. She didn’t.

“Fine,” she said. “But if the honey guy’s there, I want to hear you tell him his honey is fake to his face.”

Deal. Though for the record, I have never once done that and never will, because that man terrifies me.”

Saturday arrived warm and bright, the kind of morning that made even a farmers market feel like an event worth dressing for, and Wren found herself standing at the edge of the parking lot at nine, waiting for Declan’s truck, feeling more nervous than the occasion warranted for what was, by his own framing, mostly a work outing.

He pulled up eleven minutes late, apologizing before he’d even rolled down the window.

“I got stopped by my mother,” he said, as if that explained everything, which apparently it did. “She wanted to know why I was going to a farmers market on a Saturday instead of doing something useful, and I told her reclaimed wood was extremely useful, and she did not believe me.”

“Is she wrong?”

“She’s never wrong. It’s infuriating.” He grinned, reaching across to open her door from the inside, an old habit she was starting to recognize as entirely unconscious on his part. “Get in. I promise the barn wood guy is the highlight of my week and I will not apologize for that.”

The market sprawled across a converted horse pasture, stalls set up under white tents, the air thick with the smell of kettle corn and someone’s overzealous incense stand. Declan moved through the crowd like he knew half the vendors personally, because it turned out he did, stopping to greet a woman selling pickled vegetables, a man with a truck full of salvaged doors, an elderly couple running a stall of hand forged hardware that Declan spent ten full minutes examining with genuine, unperformed interest.

“You actually love this stuff,” Wren said, watching him turn a wrought iron hinge over in his hands like it was something precious.

“I love things that were made by somebody who cared whether they were good or not. It’s rarer than people think.” He set the hinge down carefully, thanked the couple by name, and steered them toward the back corner of the market where a man in overalls presided over stacks of gray, weathered wood. “This is the guy. Old Pete. He salvages from barns getting torn down across three counties, and he will absolutely rip you off if he thinks you don’t know what you’re looking at.”

“Good thing I brought backup.”

“Good thing you did.”

Old Pete turned out to be exactly as advertised, sharp eyed and quick to size up a buyer, though he softened considerably once Wren started asking specific questions about grain density and weathering patterns that made it clear she wasn’t there to be talked into anything.

“She knows her wood,” Old Pete said to Declan, approvingly, like this was the highest compliment available.

“She restored the Whitfield sideboard.”

Pete’s eyebrows went up. “That was you? I heard about that piece. Good work.”

Wren felt an unreasonable amount of pride at that, standing in a horse pasture being praised by a stranger for craftsmanship, and she caught Declan watching her with an expression that was warm and a little smug, like he’d known this exact moment would happen and had brought her here specifically to enjoy it.

They spent twenty minutes selecting boards, arguing pleasantly about which pieces had the character the judge’s dining room deserved, and by the time they loaded the truck bed Wren had genuinely forgotten this had started as a work outing at all.

They ate lunch at a picnic table near the edge of the market, kettle corn and lemonade and a shared plate of something fried that neither of them could identify but both agreed was excellent, and the conversation drifted the way good conversations did, away from furniture entirely and into something looser.

“Tell me something true,” Declan said, out of nowhere, licking sugar off his thumb. “Something you wouldn’t tell a client.”

“That’s an oddly specific request.”

“I contain multitudes. Also I want to know you better than I know your professional opinions on grain density.”

Wren considered it, the sun warm on her shoulders, the noise of the market comfortable rather than overwhelming. “My dad left when I was nine. I restore furniture partly because fixing something broken feels like proof it can be done.”

She hadn’t meant to say that much. It surprised her on the way out.

Declan didn’t rush to fill the silence that followed, which surprised her more, given everything she’d learned about his habits. He just watched her for a second, something careful in his expression.

“That’s not a small thing to tell someone over kettle corn.”

“You asked for something true.”

“I did.” He reached over, not quite touching her hand, just resting his fingers near hers on the picnic table, close enough to feel like an offer rather than a demand. “For what it’s worth, whatever you build stays built. I’ve seen the sideboard. It’s not going anywhere.”

It was, Wren thought, exactly the right thing to say, delivered with exactly the right amount of warmth, and she felt herself leaning into the easy comfort of it the way she’d lean into a warm room after being cold too long.

“Your turn,” she said. “Something true.”

He was quiet a moment, the first real hesitation she’d seen from him all day. “I used to think being liked was the same as being needed. Still working on figuring out the difference.”

“That sounds like something you didn’t mean to say either.”

“No,” he admitted. “It really wasn’t.”

They sat with that for a moment, the market noise washing around them, and something in the day had shifted from easy to something a little more fragile, a little more real, the kind of afternoon that would be hard to explain later without making it sound like more than it was, or possibly less.

He dropped her home as the light was starting to go gold, and he walked her to her door with the wood samples still in the truck bed, an oddly formal gesture for a man who otherwise treated formality like a joke.

“Thank you for today,” he said. “For the wood expertise, and the honey guy roast you promised and then chickened out on.”

“I never promised. I said I wanted to hear you do it.”

“Semantics.” He was smiling, but there was something underneath it too, something more careful than his usual charm. “I had a genuinely good day, Wren. I don’t know if that’s professional of me to say.”

“I don’t think you’re very worried about professional.”

“No,” he agreed. “Not really.”

He didn’t kiss her, though for a second she thought he might, and instead he just squeezed her hand once, warm and brief, and told her he’d see her Thursday for the workshop meeting, and walked back to his truck with the easy, unhurried confidence of a man who’d gotten exactly what he wanted out of the day without having to ask for any of it directly.

Wren stood at her door a long moment after he’d driven off, replaying the afternoon, the honesty over kettle corn, the careful way he’d said still working on figuring out the difference like it cost him something to admit.

She liked him. That much felt certain, uncomplicated, easy in the specific way the whole day had been easy.

It was only once she was inside, keys still in her hand, that she let herself notice the small, stubborn fact sitting underneath all that ease: she’d spent the whole ride home wondering what Rory would have said, if she’d asked him the same question over kettle corn instead.