Happy Medium

by Sarah Adler

“I’d rather not have pictures of me on the Instagram.” “Oh, there are definitely going to be pics of you on ‘the Instagram,’ babe. A tattooed and bearded goat farmer? It’s gonna be a virtual panty-dropping spree.” “I hate everything you just said.”

“Why do it, then?” she asks. “Why do something that’s probably going to hurt?” “Oh, doll,” he says, sounding for the first time like the much older—and perhaps wiser?—soul he actually is. “Because it hurts so much more not to.”

“Don’t you think I feel it too?” Charlie asks abruptly, less irate and more . . . pleading? “Of course I . . . I feel whatever it is between us. But I don’t trust it, I can’t. Because I don’t trust you. And I think you understand that. So please don’t . . . please don’t test me.”

“The truth is this: I want to stay here. And I want you to stay with me. I want to work together every day. Sleep together every night. Plant a field of sunflowers together, one that will actually grow. I just want to be together for as long as we can. I want you to be my family. And even if it doesn’t work out and I wind up stuck at Gilded Creek for the rest of my life, it’ll have been worth it.” He pauses and takes a deep, slow breath before continuing. “Loving you . . . loving you will always be worth it. And I do love you, Gretchen Acorn. I do.”

“I will always need you, Acorn. And not for what you can do, but for who you are to me.”

“I’ve never wanted you because you were useful, Gretchen. I want you because you’re you.”