Archive of Our Own

The whole thing is the algorithm's fault.

It’s late, and Beth has just finished uploading her latest video to YouTube. The internet connection on the farm is slow. Her dad had only reluctantly had it installed when she came home from college for good. She should be tired and ready to sleep – she’d worked the evening shift at the vet – but she isn’t. She feels restless and even a little bored, which she isn’t used to. On the farm, no one’s allowed to be bored . There are always jobs to do.

Except at 11:30 on a Wednesday night. Too wired to sleep and desperate to do anything other than just anxiously await likes on her minutes-old video, Beth reclines on her bed with her laptop resting on her belly, and she navigates to her subscriptions.

She watches all of the latest videos from the musicians she follows. She checks in on the family of eight building an off-grid homestead in rural Montana, and the retired kindergarten teacher with a massive organic garden in Arkansas. She pulls up her favourite Japanese kitten livestream and smiles when she finds the current litter napping in a heap. She clicks over to her recommended videos and watches a young German couple drive their renovated school bus from Alaska to Argentina, complete with breathtaking drone footage of the bus putting along narrow mountain highways. YouTube then suggests an ambient white noise video of soft, instrumental music and rain falling on trees, but she skips it. Instead, she watches a woman hike the Appalachian Trail in timelapse, and then a video of a man who does something called "stealth camping", which mostly seems to involve sleeping in his van in parking lots while attempting to evade security guards. She then watches several wildlife trail cam compilations from national parks.

Her phone buzzes. A few Instagram notifications have popped up, all from Maggie. She must be in bed looking at her phone, too. Beth opens the app and reads a comment Maggie left on Beth's last post, though it’s less of a comment and really just a string of seemingly random emojis. 

Then, by some twist of the mathematical formula that has absorbed her every click and Google search for years, YouTube queues up the video that changes everything.

Beth isn't even paying attention, at first. She’s mindlessly scrolling her Instagram feed when she hears a man grunt. She glances up.

Her laptop screen is filled with green.

It's a shot of trees and dense bush, with a stump and a log in a small clearing in the foreground. The shot is static for several seconds, and then a man walks into the frame and sits down on the stump. The angle of the camera chops him off at the chest, so she can’t see his face, but in his hands is a dead wild turkey.

“Gonna field dress this turkey.”

Beth blinks.

His voice is as rough as a mile of country road, and his tone is short, almost aggravated, like he's pissed off that she’s gone and interrupted him there in the woods with his dead turkey.

The man plucks feathers from the turkey in abrupt, efficient yanks, and in minutes, its body is bald. He sets the turkey down on the log between his feet and flicks the last of the feathers off his fingers before wiping his hands on his pants. Beth grimaces.

The man pulls out a hunting knife. It’s small; there’s a bigger, heavier knife she can see in a sheath at his hip. This one’s much shorter.

“Once it’s plucked, do the wings,” he says, his voice low and a little hard to make out on whatever device he’d used to record himself. Beth guesses it’s a phone; the video quality is good enough, but nowhere near as slick as the videos on some channels. She glances over at her own set-up, at the ring light and the professional quality microphone she’d saved up to buy for herself.

Beth watches as the man slides his knife against the turkey's wing joints and then bends them back and off, leaving pristine white bone.

"'S what you want, right there. Clean."

He's from near here , she thinks. Georgia for sure and definitely not the coast.

He cuts off the turkey's feet the same way. His hands are close enough to his phone that the microphone picks up the sound of the joints snapping.

Beth's stomach rolls over.

The Greenes are not a hunting family.

She'd grown up country, sure, but her dad never was one for hunting or for guns. 

Otis, her mother's cousin and her father's longtime hired help, would go out into the bush during deer and turkey seasons and hunt as many tags as he was allowed, always sharing several pounds of ground venison chuck and a couple of turkeys for the deep freeze. Other than that, Beth had grown up on meat from local producers and the store in town, and the occasional layer from their flock of chickens, which her dad or Shawn always took care of back behind the barn.

On her laptop screen, the man is cutting around the base of the turkey's round, feathered tail. He yanks the tail free and tosses it aside, onto the heap of feathers by his feet.

"Reach up in there and pull it all out at once," he says, sticking a hand up inside the turkey. He twists his wrist, pulls hard, and hauls out a handful of dark, unidentifiable guts.

Beth finds herself becoming quickly indifferent to the gore. She's seen dead animals many times before, after all, though watching them be gutted is unusual. Between growing up on a farm and working the last six months at the vet, blood is nothing new.

At least it's not human blood. She's seen plenty of that, too.

The man checks the turkey over, turning it between his hands and plucking off a few more feathers too tiny for her to see. The turkey is pristine; it looks like a bagged Butterball at the grocery store, just a bit skinnier.

"That's it. Pretty good eatin', right there."

The man kneels and leans towards the camera, his dirty, bloodied pant legs filling the frame. The video ends and the screen goes black.

The next video starts to play, something about a bison encounter at Yellowstone, but Beth taps her trackpad, clicking back to the turkey guy's channel.

Bow Hunting Georgia

There's no description. Just the channel's videos, of which there are a few dozen, going back a little more than a year. The banner image at the top of the page is a still shot of bush and leaf litter.

Beth clicks on a random video.

It's winter in this one, a backdrop of bare-limbed brown trees filling the shot. A man walks into the frame and crouches down in front of the camera. He drops a dead duck onto the leafy ground.

"This is how you field dress a duck."

It’s the same voice as the previous video. The same hands.

She watches as he plucks and dresses the duck. His sturdy hands move fast, like this is the thousandth time he's done this. Maybe it is.

The next video is a raccoon. It's messier than the poultry, but still strangely compelling.

Every video is the same: he hardly talks at all, demonstrating instead and only offering the occasional explanation. The shots are restricted to his hands as they work and whatever other parts of his body happen to be in the frame.

She's not sure it would matter if something else was in the video; she can't look away from his hands and his forearms.

"Gonna change the oil on my bike. It’s an ‘83 Sportster."

Beth frowns. The woods in the background are typical of his other videos, but the foreground is taken up by a pad of cracked, oil-stained concrete and a motorcycle, and, to the left, the corner of what looks like the sagging porch of a house.

This time, when he enters the frame and crouches down to get to work, his entire body is visible. He's wearing oil-stained jeans and a dark, ragged button-down with the sleeves cut off. His head is turned away from the camera as he works, his shaggy brown hair obscuring the side of his face.

She watches as he carefully empties the old oil out of the engine and into a plastic ice cream bucket.

It’s difficult to see his face and obvious that he’s not very eager to show it. But from what Beth can see, it’s a compelling face – uneven scruff along his jaw, and a serious, unsmiling mouth. He looks like he sounds – mean. Or, if not mean, exactly, then grumpy. Surly might be the right word.

He speaks less than usual in this video, and it’s difficult to see exactly what he’s doing from where he’s placed the camera. Obviously handling the camera with oily hands is as impractical as handling it with bloody ones, but Beth wonders why he didn’t have someone else hold it for him.

Maybe he doesn’t have someone.

The video ends, and the next video plays, and the one after that, and Beth doesn’t budge from his channel. She doesn’t budge in her bed, either; she lies there and stares at her laptop, unmoving, watching this guy take dead animals to pieces with methodical efficiency, his low voice flat and emotionless.

Beth doesn’t know why she keeps watching.

She just does, until she gets to the end of his channel, the very last video. She blinks and glances at the clock in the corner of the screen, her dry eyes stinging. 

It's 3 o'clock in the morning.

" Crap ," she mutters. She has to be up for work in less than three hours. 

She hits subscribe, closes her laptop, and goes to sleep.

***

Beth doesn’t usually bother drinking the coffee at work.

It’s gritty and tastes burnt, and Beth’s never too sure when it was made, just that it’s always there, lukewarm and mediocre, sitting in the hopelessly stained 12-cup coffeemaker in the windowless break room that's also used to store extra surgical equipment. But she makes an exception on this particular morning, pouring a tepid cup with a couple of spoonfuls of chalky dollar store creamer. After she greets the early shift vet techs setting up for a day of procedures in the back, she takes her bad coffee up to the front of the clinic.

Beth stands behind the reception desk, sipping her coffee as she waits for the aged computer to boot up.

While she waits, she tries to remember the last time she stayed up until 3 AM, and realises with some chagrin that she’s not certain she ever has. She’s been up at about that time before, during harvest and calving and the brief period in high school when she competed in horse shows in other counties. She’s just never stayed up that late, not even in college, when she’d stayed in and played around with her guitar rather than gone out partying with her roommates. 

No, staying out late was more Maggie’s college experience than hers, and Beth’s still not sure whether she missed out or not. She didn’t even finish, anyway, her last year obliterated by her mom’s illness and Shawn’s accident, and then the long, lonely fall into darkness that landed her and her few boxes of things homeward bound in Maggie’s car, her stitched wrist itching and her brain a blank, static hum.

Beth’s head aches and she takes a long drink of her coffee. 

She doesn’t want to think about any of that stuff.

The computer finally grinds its way to useability, and Beth shotguns the dregs and gets to work.

Clients start ringing the back door buzzer, then, dropping off dogs and cats for surgeries scheduled later in the day. Beth admits them and it keeps her busy enough not to feel exactly how tired she is most of the time.

That’s good, because every time she notices how damn exhausted she is, she’s swamped with a wave of embarrassment that she’s tired because she stayed up too late watching some redneck skin game on YouTube.

It’s ridiculous , but for some reason, she can’t seem to think about anything else.

While spraying down the floor of an empty kennel, she thinks about the video in which he’d knelt in front of the camera and skinned a woodchuck. It must have been the dog days of summer when he filmed it, because he was dressed in a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and his bare, tanned arms were so distracting she barely noticed the gory mess on his hands.

When she's putting a batch of used instruments into the utility sink to soak in virucide, she thinks about the video where he pulled the skin from a diamondback in one long piece.

When she's at the front desk and the phone and the waiting area are quiet, there's absolutely nothing to distract her from thinking about her favourite video on his channel, one she’d gone back and rewatched several times. In it, he’d shot a prize buck. He’d talked more in that video than any other. It’s the only video where he didn’t sound like the video itself was a chore he was grudgingly doing for the viewer. He sounded lighter, somehow. Happy.

On her break, Beth sits at the picnic table out back in the shade of an old oak tree. She picks at her sandwich and looks at her phone and listens to the grasshoppers rasping in the heat. It's getting too hot to eat outside, really, but the air is clean and fresh, if humid, which beats trying to eat her food amidst the smell of bleach and blood.

She jumps from app to app, checking her notifications to see what kind of numbers last night’s upload is doing. The response is modest on her Instagram and Facebook accounts, but her retweets on Twitter are encouraging. The downside is the onslaught of incomprehensible, random, and downright gross tweets in her mentions. She closes the app.

A Snapchat notification pops up, and Beth opens it. It’s from Maggie, and it’s a shot of a restaurant table loaded with two plates of tacos and a heaping platter of nachos, as well as a few beers. The video pans up to reveal Glenn, staring down at the spread with comically wide eyes and an open mouth. Then the sound of Maggie’s laughter, off-camera. The video disappears.

Beth smiles. They must have gotten together for lunch. Judging by the beers, neither of them has to work this afternoon.

It’s nice. Beth’s glad her sister is out having tacos and beers with the guy she’s in love with. Engaged to, as of last fall.

Beth just wishes she could only feel glad, and not also envious. Not also sad and a little lonely.

Her thumb hovers over the red and white logo on her phone. 

She usually doesn’t check the actual views and likes on a new upload right away. She’d rather give it a day or two, let people share it around. Typically she doesn’t immediately receive a huge number of views; hers tend to stack up slowly and steadily.

The views don’t matter. They shouldn’t matter. She’s always sung and written songs for herself, since she was little, and she’d keep on doing it even without YouTube.

Still. It’s nice to know someone out there is listening.

She brings her thumb down and opens the app.

The video she uploaded last night has over a thousand views and several hundred likes, and she has a handful of new subscribers. It’s not amazing, but it’s something. 

Beth taps her history and finds Bow Hunting Georgia. She clicks on it and scrolls through the channel, looking at red bar after red bar. She really did watch the whole damn channel last night, and there’s nothing new from him today.

Of course there isn’t. Whoever he is, he has a life he’s living, and anyway, it's not even hunting season. The most recent video on the channel is nearly eight weeks old.

There’s a sinking feeling in her chest, some strange, unreasonable disappointment settling in. 

She thinks of Glenn making goofy faces over tacos, and Maggie laughing, and the way Maggie’s mom’s engagement ring looks perfectly at home on Maggie’s ring finger. She tries to think of those things and be happy, but she can’t quite seem to make herself do it.

Beth’s heart hurts.

She stands, pockets her phone, and goes inside.

***

“Beth, come on . It’s a ninety minute drive, tops, even in the worst traffic.”

Beth is sitting on the closed toilet lid, painting her toenails, her foot perched on the side of the bathtub. It’s Friday evening, and she’s having her weekly Facetime date with Maggie. Her laptop sits on the laundry hamper, and on the screen, Maggie’s at her kitchen table, drinking a large glass of wine, while Glenn putters around in the kitchen behind her.

“I know, Maggie. Same’s true on your end. You could come visit us just as easy.”

Maggie huffs and sips her wine.

“I know that, smart ass. What I’m saying is that me, home for a visit to see you and Daddy, is one thing. You comin’ to the city to stay with me and Glenn for the weekend so the two of us can have some fun is a whole different thing altogether.”

Beth frowns down at her toes, concentrating as she applies a final coat of mint green to her pinky toe. Practically impossible to get that toe painted without making a mess, but she manages.

“ Beth .”

She looks up to see Maggie staring at her, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, that look on her face like she’s about to tell Beth what’s what.

Maggie’s always been like that, taking her role as the older sister very seriously, but she became more intense about it since Shawn's accident. Since the aftermath of the accident.

“ Maggie .”

“Don’t be like that. I just worry about you,” Maggie says. Over her shoulder, Glenn pauses in the act of taking a couple of plates out of the cupboard. He sets them down, then quickly disappears off camera. 

Beth’s cheeks heat and she clears her throat.

“What are you two havin’, anyway?”

“Nice subject change,” Maggie says, a little louder, her tone dry. Glenn very casually comes back into view of the camera, just behind Maggie. “Glenn’s cooking so we’re probably getting take-out later.”

“ Hey .”

Beth snickers. Poor Glenn; he’s no Top Chef, but neither is Maggie, who can barely scramble an egg.

Beth listens to the two of them bicker back and forth so gently it barely counts as bickering at all, and swallows hard at the abrupt pang of loneliness that hits her like a punch to the chest. She replaces the cap on her nail polish and sets it aside, glancing up to see Maggie’s back; her body’s twisted around to face Glenn. Maggie laughs at something Glenn says, her shoulders shaking.

“I should let you go,” Beth says softly. “Let you enjoy your Friday night.”

Maggie turns back around to face the camera, the joy visibly draining out of her face.

“No, no, Beth , it’s okay. What were we talking about?”

Beth tilts her head.

“Maggie. It’s fine,” she soothes, forcing her sunniest smile and her warmest tone. It’s something she has, a thing she can do , that has always seemed to fool people into thinking she’s fine, just fine , even times when she desperately needed someone to see that she wasn’t fine at all. She can’t help herself.

She has to be fine. Has to .

“All right,” Maggie concedes, eyeing Beth. “Call me tomorrow?”

Beth barely resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“Okay, Maggie.”

They say their goodbyes and I love yous and end the call, and then Beth is alone.

She puts the nail polish away and picks up her laptop, carrying it back into her bedroom and replacing it on her desk next to her recording equipment. She opens up Spotify and picks a playlist, one of her favourites for quiet nights in by herself.

Of course, that’s the only kind of night she ever has.

The first song starts.

Beth stands in front of her laptop and closes her eyes, letting the sound of the music fill her chest. Her fingers tap against the outside of her thigh, drumming to the beat.

She just listens for a few bars before starting to sing softly along.

No one wants to weigh things down, but they tend to fly away, and rescue teams will look for days –

The music does something to her, something like drinking a big glass of cold water when she’s parched. Her chest goes tight, her heart pounding and her stomach turning over, a laugh crowding the music pouring out of her as she smiles, eyes closed, and sings.

Downstairs, the screen door squeaks on its hinges and smacks against the doorframe as it opens and closes.

Beth opens her eyes. It’s her dad coming in from evening chores.

She hums along with the song as she listens to the faint sounds of her dad moving around in the kitchen and then the creak of the stairs as he comes up. Moments later, there’s a quiet knock on her door.

“Beth?”

Beth opens the door to find her dad standing on the other side.

“Hey, Daddy.”

Hershel smiles faintly.

"I'm turning in for the night, Bug," he says. 

"Okay," she replies.

“Have you taken your medication?”

“I will. I’ve got the reminder on my phone every night.”

Hershel nods and doesn’t push.

"How's your sister?"

"She's good. She and Glenn are going to that Impressionists exhibit at the High tomorrow."

Hershel smiles again, but doesn't reply. Beth examines his face, her heart sinking.

He looks tired, these days. The last eighteen months have deflated him, sapped him of the energy he used to have and the quiet joy he used to take in even the smallest pleasures. Her father is old , she realises with a frightening jolt, and the farm is getting to be too much for him to manage on his own.

Her mom was supposed to be here. Her parents were supposed to grow old together .

Shawn was supposed to be here. He was supposed to take over the farm when the time was right.

But they're not. They're not here. They're gone and there's only Beth, now, and Maggie's understanding but distant voice on the phone.

If only Mom had found the lump even just a few months earlier.

If only Shawn hadn't been driving home the night of that big thunderstorm.

If only.

"Beth?"

Hershel is looking at her, now, really looking at her, and a wave of guilt slams into her as she considers how much worrying he's done over her since she had to come home from college.

The shame of it feels like a physical thing, sinking heavy inside the cavern of her chest.

"I'm fine," she says, smiling for him. "I promise. A little tired but that's all. I'm gonna head to bed now, too, I think."

Hershel watches her a moment longer in silence, then leans in and kisses her forehead.

"Goodnight, Bug."

"Goodnight, Daddy."

Her dad turns then and continues down the hallway to his bedroom. Beth watches him go, listening to the door creak open and closed in the darkness, until a sliver of light shines out from under the door.

She shuts her own door, then, and leans back against it, letting the sturdy wood hold her body up as she closes her stinging eyes and sighs.

***

Spring disappears like morning dew evaporating into the air.

Mild, sunny days give way to scorching hot afternoons and sweltering evenings that seem to drag on and on. Every day the sky is a hazy blue-grey, the air so thick with humidity that not even the thunderstorms that roll across the countryside every other night are enough to break it.

Beth stops cooking. She buys macaroni salads and rotisserie chickens at the supermarket in town, conveniences her mom always looked down on. Hershel doesn’t say anything about it. For dinner they eat those, or cold sandwiches, or crackers with cheese and pickles. 

Anything to avoid using the stove and heating up the house.

Hershel is quick to remind Beth that the farmhouse is technically air-conditioned, though Beth isn't sure the aged window units, whose motors sound like small airplanes taking off, really ought to count.

They sit at the kitchen table every evening Beth isn’t working and they eat, and Hershel tells Beth about who he ran into at the feed store that morning, or the latest county gossip according to Mr. Jackson, who rents twenty acres of grazing land from them and stops by once a week to have coffee with Hershel.  

The heat makes her sluggish and cranky, and she can't sleep at night. She just tosses and turns and sweats, the window unit and the fan in her bedroom barely making a dent in the heat.

Beth feels like her very blood is simmering.

By the middle of June, she's already fed up, and in the dead of one sweltering Friday night, she tiptoes silently down the dark upstairs hallway and lets herself out onto the moonlit screened-in sleeping porch that overlooks the backyard and the woods beyond.

Beth flips the mattress on the ancient iron day bed that's lived on that porch her whole life, throws a fresh set of sheets on it, and flops down in a sweaty heap.

She falls asleep watching the moonlight bend across the porch's wooden floorboards, and listening to the frogs croak their love songs down at the duck pond.

In the morning, she actually feels rested, but by the time she's showered and heading out the door to work, there's already sweat running down her back.

Hershel orders a new refrigerator when their old one finally starts to die. He’s gone to a farm auction in the next county the day the new one’s delivered, so Beth takes it upon herself to move everything from the old to the new, and to purge the freezer, while she’s at it.

She chips away at her project for a while, throwing old sour cream containers filled with leftover soup and bags of unused vegetable scraps and shriveled brown bananas into the trash, scolding herself silently about the waste. Behind a bag of freezer-burnt hot dog buns is a plastic container. She stares at it a moment, blinking, then pulls it out and shuts the freezer door.

It's her mom's banana pudding. There's a piece of masking tape stuck to the blue lid, the contents and date printed in her mom's tidy handwriting. She must have made a double batch, Beth guesses, and frozen some. She always did tend to make more food than they needed.

Beth puts the container down on the kitchen table and stares at it.

It's just banana pudding.

Nothing special, just a recipe clipped out of the newspaper at least twenty years ago, made with Cool Whip and instant pudding mix. There were probably better recipes out there, Beth supposes, ones from scratch, made with real whipped cream. But this was the one . The banana pudding they had all the time, growing up.

It was her mom's, so it was the best.

She pulls off the lid.

There’s a bit of Cool Whip stuck to the lid, and three Nilla Wafers arranged in a clover leaf on the semi-frozen surface of the pudding, a decorative touch her mom always liked to add. Beth imagines her mom laying each wafer on top of the pudding and pressing them gently down with the tip of one careful finger, just so.

Beth picks up her spoon and hesitates for a moment before scooping up a small spoonful of pudding and popping it into her mouth.

It's freezer burnt.

It tastes like the inside of the freezer smells, like stale air and neglect. 

Like dust.

Beth takes her spoon to the sink and washes it, then picks up the whole container of pudding and drops it in the trash.

She goes upstairs to her bedroom, where she cranks the air conditioner on full blast, climbs under the sheets, and falls asleep.

***

Beth taps the upload button and leans back in her desk chair with a sigh.

Her newest video isn't much, just a cover of “Fast Car” she’d recorded on the back porch so that the sound of the rain drumming on the porch roof and the occasional rumble of thunder in the distance were audible.

It's fine, she figures. Good enough. Nothing could ever come close to the original, of course, but as far as covers go, it's not bad. She wishes she had something of her own, a song she'd written herself, but lately she's had nothing to say.

The space in her heart where the words come from is empty. She imagines it like a creek gone dry, just an empty hollow in the ground where something living used to run.

It doesn't matter. It's not like she's got a million followers to disappoint.

Beth opens up a new browser tab to YouTube and scrolls down, seeing new videos from a couple of her subscribed channels pop up. She's trying to decide what looks interesting when she sees it.

Bow Hunting Georgia: TROUT FISHING ON THE TALLULAH RIVER

Her heart actually skips a beat in her chest.

She clicks play and the video starts, opening on a shot of a wide, shallow span of riverbed, the far bank thick with trees. Sunlight pours through the treetops like lemonade from a pitcher, and songbirds chirp and sing in the background. But Beth hardly has time to appreciate the beauty of the location before the camera moves jerkily, turned around by an unseen hand, and Bow Hunting's face fills the frame. 

He's flushed and sweaty, and he squints into the bright sunlight.

"Hotter than a goat's ass in a pepper patch out here."

Beth snorts.

"Decided to go fishin' today. Got a good little spot on the Tallulah River I like to fish, and no , I ain't gonna tell you where it is. Gonna try to catch some trout."

No catchphrase or intro like a lot of YouTubers do, just straight down to business, like always.

He turns the camera around and sets it down on the pebbly shore of the river, the phone propped up by something, Beth guesses, and then walks a few feet away to where a tacklebox and a fishing rod lean against the trunk of a tree.

Beth watches as he silently casts his line out into the shallow green water. He doesn't look back at the camera again; he stands still on the bank, gaze focused out over the water, and doesn't say a word.

It's soothing. There's something calming, almost meditative, about watching him cast out and reel in, over and over, while squirrels and birds chirp in the nearby trees and the river flows slowly past him.

The video is ten minutes long. He catches his first fish a few minutes in, and his subsequent three catches have edits between them. By his fourth catch, the sun’s dipped below the treetops. He must have been there fishing for most of the day.

There's no outro from him at the end. After his last catch, the screen just goes black.

Beth drags her cursor along the red bar and backs the video up to his short intro, his face filling the screen again. She pauses it there.

This is the closest shot she's seen of him.

She looks at his tanned face and the patchy facial hair along his jaw. His sweaty brown hair is pushed out of his eyes for once, but the sunlight is too bright and he's squinting too much for her to get a good look at his eyes. His mouth is interesting, flat and unsmiling as it is. 

Beth stares at his still face, and eventually realises she's blushing and her chest has gone all tight.

She's got a crush on a guy she found on YouTube. An older guy with a hunting channel on YouTube.

Face flaming, she scrolls down to take a look at the comments section. 

There isn't one; comments are disabled on the video. Curious, Beth clicks the next video on his channel and finds the same. The next has no comments, either. Every video has comments disabled. Given how many offensive, degrading, and plain foolish comments she's had to deal with on her own videos, she’s a little envious. But every guide she’s read on improving social media engagement has emphasized allowing comments.

It seems Bow Hunting doesn't care much about engagement. Maybe he doesn't care whether people watch his videos. But why share them at all, then?

Beth frowns at the screen, scrolling back up to look at his paused face again, unsure why the inability to comment bugs her. Even if he did allow comments, what would she say?

I like how you only use as many words as you need.

I like that you always know exactly what you’re doing.

I like you.

Her face feels like it’s on fire.

Beth pulls her feet up onto the chair with her and hugs her legs before burrowing her face into the backs of her knees. She's embarrassed all over again, but elated, her heart thumping hard and her skin buzzing with nervous pleasure.

A crush .

How silly.

How perfectly normal.

***

Maggie takes a couple of days off work and comes home for the Fourth of July, bringing Glenn with her.

It’s nice having more people in the house again. They all stay up late every night playing board games at the kitchen table, just like they used to. Before.

It’s not the same. Nothing is. But it’s good to see Maggie, better still to see how happy Glenn makes her. Best of all is the smile on her dad’s face, a kind of smile Beth hasn’t seen in months. 

(Beth has long suspected that Maggie is their dad’s favourite, and to see it confirmed is bittersweet. Still, she’s mostly just glad to see him happy.)

They all go to watch the Rotary Club fireworks display at the high school on the Fourth, watching from the football field’s bleachers as the rockets and Roman candles are set off from way over in the empty teachers’ parking lot.

The crowd watches as the fireworks streak into the air and explode against the dark sky, everybody exclaiming in delight as if the display isn't identical to the one the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that. No one seems to mind, and Beth doesn't either, really. She barely watches the display itself, looking at the crowd instead, the amazement on the faces of the children, everyone lit up in explosive bursts of red and blue and gold.

Beth lags behind as they walk with the slow, chattering crowd back to the parking lot, watching Maggie and Glenn hold hands while her dad walks ahead, keys in his hand, leading the way.

Late that night, once everyone's gone to bed, Beth sits in the darkness of her bedroom and listens to the crickets and the frogs down at the pond, and rewatches the video of Bow Hunting fishing for trout in the bright summer sunshine, and she finds herself wondering about him.

Did he go someplace to watch fireworks tonight?

No . 

For some reason, she thinks he hates crowds. Hates loud noises, maybe, too. If he had any interest at all, she guesses he knows some out-of-the-way spot where he can sit by himself and watch the lights explode and trail like shooting stars across the sky, distant and beautiful.

She thinks maybe that's what he did tonight.

The video ends and Beth closes the browser tab and snaps her laptop shut, plunging herself into complete darkness.

It's pointless, wondering about things like that.

She doesn't know him. He's a complete stranger, and all she knows about him is what he's chosen to put out on YouTube, which isn't much.

Maybe he spent tonight with his wife or his girlfriend or a stranger he met at a bar.

It doesn't matter. She doesn't know him, not really, and getting a crush on him is downright ludicrous.

There's something wrong with her, she thinks, that she's got a crush on some stranger instead of someone from church, or someone she used to go to high school with. Someone she might meet at the grocery store. Someone her own age. Someone real.

Someone here . 

Something like embarrassment squirms uncomfortably in her stomach. Beth huffs and stands up from her desk.

She climbs into bed and closes her eyes, doing her best to put him out of her mind and go to sleep. 

In the darkness behind her eyelids, all she can see are stars exploding.

***

Beth would have been just fine going Maggie’s whole visit without dragging her guitar out in front of everyone like she's still 13, doing little piano and guitar recitals for her family after church on Sundays. But Maggie insists. It's also Saturday afternoon and a thunderstorm is slowly easing its way across the cornfields towards the farm, and they've run out of board games to play.

Mostly, it's that Maggie insists.

Maggie and Glenn sit together on the porch swing and Beth perches on the edge of her mom's favourite old wicker chair, and she tunes up and plays her own acoustic version of “Waitress Song”, and then “Solsbury Hill”, and finally “The Long Way Around”, as thunder rolls in the distance.

Beth strums the final chords, then, as she goes to lay the guitar flat on her lap, Glenn claps.

"You don't have to clap," she says, embarrassed.

“What?" he says, seeming incredulous. "No way! You’re really good! I mean, I’ve seen your videos and everything, Maggie showed me –”

Beth looks down, flattered but still embarrassed. She knows people watch her videos – that's the whole point of the channel, after all – but the thought of a specific person watching her sing makes her want to run upstairs to her laptop and delete her entire account. She squeezes the neck of her guitar and tries not to squirm.

“– but hearing you in person is really something. You ever thought about performing live?”

The only time she's really performed in front of anyone other than family was back in high school when she used to sing in the church choir, and her old piano recitals, but that was all years ago. Practically a whole other life.

“Where on earth would I perform live?” Senoia isn't exactly Memphis or Austin.

“Anywhere!” Glenn insists. "A streetcorner would be lucky to have you!"

Maggie reaches out and flicks Glenn's upper arm.

“Ow! I’m serious!”

"Leave her be," Maggie says. "Beth's shy. She doesn't care about that stuff."

Beth knows her sister's just being protective of her, but something inside her bristles, even as Glenn continues, undeterred.

“What about that place we went for lunch on Thursday? What was it – Carol’s?”

Carol's is a coffeeshop in an old converted tobacco barn with a little bookstore on the upper level. It's new, on the far side of town. But Beth has stopped in a couple of times, anyway, since coming home from college. She'd even considered applying for a job there before her dad got her an interview with Dr. Bailey.

"Do they even have live music there?" Beth asks.

"They had a sign on the door when we were there the other day,” Glenn says. “Looks like they're trying to start up a regular open mic night."

Beth shifts in her seat, fingering the guitar’s frets and looking out past Glenn and Maggie at the dark grey clouds crouching over the treetops beyond the hayfield. 

"I don't know," she says. "Maybe."

Singing and playing her guitar on YouTube is one thing, but performing at an open mic night is something else all together. At least on the internet she can't hear people booing her.

Glenn lets it go, then, and soon the distant thunder makes good on its threats as rain begins falling on the porch roof. The three of them head inside to make dinner with Hershel.

Later that night, in bed, Beth searches Instagram for Carol’s, and is surprised to find the coffee shop's account already follows the public account where she posts clips of her music. Beth's put her location on photos and videos a couple of times; someone at the coffee shop must have gone looking for locals to drum up some followers.

She follows the account back and closes Instagram.

Her phone's screen idles as she stares at it. It's late enough; she should just go to bed.

She hesitates for a moment, then taps on the YouTube icon.

A few clicks later, she's at Bow Hunting Georgia.

Tapping on his most recent video, she watches him catch his fish all over again. When it's finished, she backtracks to the beginning of the video and pauses on his face.

She wonders if he's been fishing since, or if all the recent rain has been keeping him from heading out. She wonders what he does when he isn't out hunting, what kind of job he has and whether he lives in a town or out in the sticks somewhere.

She just wonders about him.

Staring at his face, she feels strange again. Embarrassed. It’s foolish, what she’s doing. It’s more than foolish; it’s weird . Pathetic, even. She’s supposed to be a damn grown-up, even if she’s living back home because she’s too fragile and crazy to live on her own. She’s too old to have a crush on anyone, least of all someone she’s never even met.

She puts her phone on her bedside table, turns over, and closes her eyes.

It takes Beth a long time to fall asleep that night.

In the morning, they all go to church together. Afterwards, back home, Glenn packs the car while Maggie hugs Hershel and Beth in the driveway.

“We’re gonna come again next month,” Maggie says, her voice tearful. “And plenty in October, too, for the wedding. We will."

“We know, Maggie,” Hershel says quietly. “We’ll expect you. Won’t we, Beth?”

Beth nods, unable to talk around the lump that rises suddenly in her throat.

Maggie gathers Beth into a tight hug.

“Talk on Friday, yeah?”

“Of course,” Beth replies, hugging Maggie back.

Glenn closes the trunk of his car, then approaches the Greenes slowly, his baseball cap in his hands. Maggie turns and nods at him.

"We'd better get going," she says.

Beth stands beside her dad and watches the car kick up dust all the way down the driveway and then out of sight.

"Well," Hershel says, then goes inside, the screen door creaking shut behind him, leaving Beth alone in the yard.

***

One afternoon in late July while she’s driving home from work, Beth writes a song.

She’s stopped on the highway, waiting at a junction with a McDonald’s on one side and a gas station and a Waffle House on the other, woods and fields beyond. Near the gas station is a little roadside fruit stand, and Beth can see two bored-looking teenagers sitting inside.

Beth watches cars and trucks and a big rig cross the intersection in front of her. Her eyes wander over to the gas station parking lot, where she sees a man filling the tank on his motorcycle, the bright afternoon sunlight glinting off the helmet propped up on his head.

It’s not him . The bike’s a completely different kind, and this guy’s taller than she imagines Bow Hunting to be, skinny and gangly. Less muscle.

The man raises his head and looks directly at her, and Beth quickly looks away, back out at the intersection in front of her, embarrassed to be caught staring.

It’s not him but it coulda been.

The light in front of her turns green, and she presses on the gas and continues down the highway towards home, the gas station shrinking in the rearview mirror.

It’s not him but it coulda been.

Beth taps her fingers on the steering wheel.

It’s not him but it coulda been.

“It’s not him but it coulda been,” she sing-songs aloud, still tapping her fingers. She hums the melody a few times, looping it over and over on itself. 

“It’s not him but it coulda been,” she sings, finding the right notes before singing it again and again, once quick and uptempo, then downtempo and slower, sadder. She tries something in the middle, upbeat without exactly being cheerful.

When she opens her mouth and sings the line again, more words come tumbling out.

“ It’s not him but it coulda been, I just don’t know if I’ll see him again,

He’s been outta town and I’ve been outta luck,

Stuck on the road behind a pick-up truck. ”

Beth laughs. She’s not sure if that exact lyric will make it into the finished version, but it hardly matters. 

Just like that, she’s writing a song.

By the time she turns down the long dirt drive that leads to the farm, she’s anxious to get her hands on a pen and paper before anything can interrupt the torrent of words that’s suddenly flowing out of her.

When she gets into the house, she finds her dad sitting at the kitchen table, papers spread out in front of him, obviously catching up the farm accounts.

“Sorry, Daddy, can’t stop! I gotta get a song down!”

Before he can respond, she rushes up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

In her bedroom, she grabs the nearest pen and paper and quickly scribbles down what she’s got so far, then stands beside her bed and records the first draft in a voice memo on her phone. She badly wants to pick up her guitar and write the whole thing properly, but she needs to eat and so does her dad.

First, supper.

Once she’s thrown together two plates of leftovers, and evening chores have been taken care of, Beth sits in her bedroom with her guitar on her thighs, and she writes her song.

The moon is high in the sky by the time she finishes, when the moment comes that she knows it’s complete, as perfect and whole as she can make it. She sits back in her chair, still holding her guitar, and listens to the crickets singing outside her bedroom window.

Beth stands and sets her guitar aside, then takes a long drink from the water bottle on her desk. She goes into her bathroom and piles her hair up into a messy bun before taking a quick, cool shower. She knows she should really rest her voice and put off recording and uploading the song until later, but her excitement overrules.

Once she’s showered and dressed and she’s taken her meds, she sits down in front of her camera, without bothering to do her make-up, and she records the song. She sings it once, all the way through, and when she’s finished and she’s listened to it, she can’t find even one thing she can think of to change. It’s as close to perfect as she can make it.

She does the bare minimum of edits to the video, then uploads it.

It’s nearly 2AM when she finishes, but she doesn’t care.

She created something out of nothing.

Beth climbs into bed and falls asleep smiling.

***

It happens on the last Wednesday afternoon in July.

Beth's filing the morning's charts in the wall of cabinets behind the reception desk. In spite of her and the vet techs' begging, Dr. Bailey has refused to adopt an electronic medical record system. They have a billing and client management system on the computer, but that's as far as he’s been willing to evolve.

She's working on her last armful of charts when the bell over the door rings.

"I'll be with you in just a second," she says, without looking over her shoulder.

"It's kind of an emergency."

She knows that voice.

Beth turns around. Standing on the far side of the reception desk is a man with dark, messy hair that’s a little too long, wearing a short-sleeved, grey button-down with some kind of red embroidery on the chest. The shirt is oil-stained and somewhat sweaty-looking, and so is the man wearing it.

It’s Bow Hunting.

She stares at him, blinking, frozen to the spot. He’s staring right back at her.

His eyes are blue. Bright blue.

The man rumbles out some kind of inarticulate sound that prompts her to remember that she’s at work and he’s just walked in and her job is to greet people and help them.

Words! Say words!

“Hello,” she says, mortified when it comes out in a dry squeak. She clears her throat as she takes two quick steps towards the desk. “Can I help you?”

“Found a dog out by the highway," he says, gesturing back at the door with one thumb. A set of keys is clutched in his hand.

"Oh," Beth says. "We don't usually take strays, but –"

"No, he's hurt," the man interrupts, sounding irritated. "Dunno if he got hit by a car or what. He don’t got tags or nothin’. He’s alive but he’s hurt pretty bad.”

"Where is he?" Beth asks, grabbing a pen and a pad of paper. "What highway were you on?"

" No ," he says, sounding fully annoyed now. "I didn't leave him out there. Lord. He's in my truck. C'mon."

He turns abruptly and goes to the door, and Beth hurries out after him, into the blazing heat. He leads her to an old, blue F-150 with rust on the quarter panels. It's parked on the shady side of the gravel lot, right next to a windbreak row of poplars.

Beth stares at his back as they walk the short distance, her brain struggling to accept that the complete stranger she’s got a crush on has just walked into her work.

He drops the tailgate, revealing a furry, brownish lump lying on a grungy orange blanket.

The dog whimpers, lifting his head a bit when the man bends down to scoop him up in his arms.

"Easy, boy," the man says very softly, almost too quietly for Beth to hear. 

The dog is large and looks like a German Shepherd, or maybe a mix, she guesses. The poor thing is panting rapidly, probably from pain or stress, and he whines sharply when the man hefts him up.

Beth leads them back inside, past the reception desk and into the clinic proper. She takes them into one of the empty exam rooms, and gestures for the man to put the dog on the table.

"Dr. Bailey's in surgery, but I'll have one of the techs come do an assessment right away."

She goes to exit the exam room, but the man's voice stops her.

"Can't you look at him?"

Beth blinks.

"Um, no. I'm just the receptionist," she says, feeling small. The man just looks at her, his expression impossible to read. Beth's never had problems talking to people, even stressed or grieving pet owners, but she feels completely out of her depth with him.

"I'm gonna go grab one of the techs and start the paperwork," she says.

The man just looks at her, eyes narrowed and face blank. 

"Okay," she says, embarrassed, and quickly goes out of the exam room and closes the door.

As soon as she's notified one of the vet techs of the urgent assessment, she hurries back to the front desk, where the phone is ringing. She quickly deals with the call, then sits down in her chair and grabs a blank chart from the stash under the desk.

Staring down at the intake form, she pauses for a moment to catch her breath.

The YouTube guy she's had a crush on for weeks is sitting in exam room number two, and she's just about certain he thinks she's a complete idiot.

Great .

Beth rests her elbows on the desk, drops her face into her hands, and allows herself exactly fifteen seconds to wallow silently in abject mortification.

Then, she inhales deeply, exhales hard, and gets back to work.

She fills in as much of the intake form as she can, which isn’t much, and highlights the information she'll need from Bow Hunting when he comes out.

A short time later, the door to the clinic swings open, and out comes Bow Hunting. He approaches the reception desk, still clutching his keys in one hand.

He doesn't say anything, just stands there looking at her.

"Um," Beth says, flailing internally. "How'd it go?"

She regrets the words immediately. She never asks that when someone comes out of the back without their animal, even if they were only in for something minor.

Bow Hunting scowls.

"Poor bastard got hit by a car and left for dead. How good could it go?"

Beth swallows and doesn't answer. Instead, she reaches for the incomplete intake form. She holds it out.

"I just need some information from you, before you go," she says.

The man seems to bite back an exasperated sigh, but comes to stand at the desk and take the form. Beth looks at her monitor, pretending to be busy with something so she doesn't stare at him. 

It's tough, though. It's him . She's been gawking at him in his videos for weeks, daydreaming a whole personality for him, and here he is right in front of her, an actual person. So real that she can smell the sweat and motor oil on his clothes. Now she has to pretend like she's never seen him before even though she’s spent literally hours staring at him while lying in her bed.

Her face feels like she’s spiking a damn fever.

When he makes a soft, annoyed sound in his throat, she allows herself to look, glancing at his shirt to keep from staring at his face.

The red embroidery on his chest reads Turin Auto on one side, and over his heart, Daryl .

He looks up from the form.

"The hell d’you need my phone number for?" he asks.

Beth gulps.

"So we can call you?"

"Why?"

"To let you know how he's doing?"

He glowers at her for a moment in silence before looking down at the form and writing. When he's finished, he pushes the form across the desk at her and reaches into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet.

Beth looks down at the form.

Client name: Daryl Dixon

"The gal back there said he's gonna need some x-rays, bloodwork, stitches. How much is all that gonna cost me?"

Beth shakes her head.

"There's no charge."

He knits his brow, looking extremely skeptical.

"What is this, a charity or somethin'?"

"Nope, Dr. Bailey just doesn't charge good Samaritans."

He has the nerve to actually scoff at her.

"I ain't no good Samaritan, girl."

"No, it just means –"

"I know what it means," he interrupts. His tone makes it abundantly clear that he absolutely does think she's an idiot.

Beth sits back in her chair and looks at him, trying to remember what his voice sounded like when he shot that buck he'd wanted so badly.

Soft. He'd sounded happy and pleased and soft , and certainly sounded nothing like this guy. She can't believe the jerk standing in front of her ever gave her butterflies in her stomach.

She glares at him.

" Listen . I know you're pissed that you're the one who found this dog, but you've got no call bein' rude to me. I didn't hit the dog and leave him, and I sure as hell didn't make you stop and do the right thing."

Beth fully expects him to blow up at her, but he doesn’t. Instead he just blinks at her and doesn't say a word.

Holy shit .

She should not talk to a client that way, no matter how rude he's been.

Heart pounding and her face hot, Beth gives the form a quick look over to ensure everything's been filled out, then sets it aside. When she looks up, he's watching her in silence, his face completely blank.

"We don't need to call you, if you'd rather," she says. "He’s technically a stray."

"Whatever," he says. He grabs his wallet off the counter and goes to leave, his movements abrupt and jerky. But he stops short at the door, one hand resting on the handle.

He stands there for a long, silent moment. Even across the room, with only the side of his face visible, Beth can see him wavering. He clenches his jaw, the muscle in his cheek flexing.

“Just. Lemme know if he makes it, all right?”

"Okay," she says.

The bell over the door jingles as he shoves it open, disappearing out into the bright afternoon in a gust of hot, dusty air.

Beth stares at the closed door for a solid sixty seconds, trying to make herself accept that what just happened really, truly just happened.

Bow Hunting. She actually met Bow Hunting.

Bow Hunting, as it turns out, is kind of a jerk. A jerk named Daryl Dixon.

Beth's in the midst of heaving a deep sigh when the clinic doors swing open and out comes one of the techs, Lisa, vigorously rubbing hand sanitizer on her hands.

"You got that chart ready, Beth?"

Beth hands over the file folder and watches as Lisa flips it open on the far edge of the reception desk and starts writing notes. Feeling awkward watching Lisa work, Beth turns away and opens a new entry in the client database, rolling her eyes when the computer immediately lags and then freezes.

"Oof, that poor pup," Lisa mutters, almost to herself.

Beth's heart sinks.

"He didn't make it?"

“Oh, no!” Lisa says, shaking her head. “He's not exactly fine, but he's not on death's door or anything. His one leg's fractured and he's got some cuts and bruises, but no internal injuries on x-ray. Looks like he's been on his own for a while – he's underweight and he's got a pretty serious flea situation going on. But as long as that legs heals all right, he’ll be fine."

Beth thinks about the expression on Daryl's face when he asked her to let him know if the dog made it. How for a brief moment, it seemed like he really was the same guy who was excited to get that buck. 

"Oh," she murmurs. "Thank goodness."

Lisa gives her a curious look.

Beth starts to blush again and looks away, back at her monitor. Moments later, Lisa hands her the chart, then heads back into the clinic. Beth files it away and goes about the last of her tasks in a kind of a daze, until the evening receptionist arrives and takes over.

It isn’t until a short while later, when Beth turns out onto the highway and has her car pointed homeward, that she allows herself to feel what’s been waiting in the wings since Bow Hunting – Daryl – walked out of the clinic: disappointment.

Keen, painful, lonely disappointment.

She goes home.

***

The dog makes it.

Beth goes in to work the next morning, and as soon as she’s shoved her bag under the reception desk and started the computer, she heads back into the clinic, where she finds the morning techs doing rounds. They both greet her, then return their attention to the chart they’re reviewing.

She continues to isolation, a small room filled with stacked metal kennels, all of them empty except for a large one on the bottom level.

As Beth enters the room, the automatic light sensor flicks on, and the occupant of the bottom kennel starts thumping his tail against the newspaper covering the floor.

“Hey buddy,” she says quietly, crouching down in front of the kennel door.

The dog wags his tail harder and tries to stand up, struggling to gain a footing on the bright purple cast on one of his hind legs.

“No, no,” Beth urges him. “Come on, now. You need rest, mister. Lie down .”

The dog’s ears flick up and he drops back down onto his belly, his eager brown eyes fixed on Beth.

“There’s a good boy,” she says. “I just came to say hi and see how you’re doing.”

The dog presses his nose against the metal bars of the kennel door and exhales a deep, world-weary sigh. Beth smiles.

“Poor guy. Tough time, huh? How’s your appetite? You hungry?”

He cocks his head and thumps his tail against the floor several times. Beth laughs.

“One of the techs will come feed you soon, and I’m gonna see if I can find out if somebody out there is lookin’ for you.”

Beth stands and leaves him, then, and heads back to the reception area to get to work.

Once she’s completed all of her opening tasks, Beth calls the county animal control, a couple of local rescues, and the emergency vet over in Fayetteville that keeps a data bank of lost and found animals in the area. There aren’t any lost animals fitting the dog’s description. Beth provides the dog’s info to every place she calls in case an owner turns up.

CALL BACK she notes at the top of the chart for the techs, then reaches for a pink highlighter to circle it. She hesitates for a moment over it, a long-dormant juvenile urge to draw a heart around it hitting her out of nowhere.

“Jerk,” she mutters to herself. “Don’t be stupid. He’s a jerk .”

She highlights her message and caps the highlighter, then puts the file with the others.

The phone rings then, and Beth moves on.

***

Beth’s new song does the best numbers she’s ever had on any video on her channel.

She watches, thrilled, as the views multiply, and hundreds of random strangers leave comments telling her they can’t get “Coulda Been” out of their heads.

The only trouble is that opening YouTube to check her video stats leads to checking her subscriptions. Old videos from Bow Hunting Georgia are always near the top; the algorithm remains convinced that his videos must be what she wants to watch, since she’s watched them so many times before.

The algorithm is dead wrong.

Beth knows she should unsubscribe. She doesn’t think she wants to watch his next video, anyway, whenever he posts it. 

It was strange to have a crush on a person she knew only from YouTube. But now when she thinks of him, when she opens YouTube and sees his channel, all she can think about is the scorn in his voice. The contempt he seemed to have for her, a stranger. How damn rude he was.

He doesn’t seem to have any of the qualities she likes in a person. She liked him and he turned out to be a complete jerk. She was embarrassed by her crush before, but now it’s downright offensive. 

How could she have been so completely wrong about him?

She feels like an idiot, and she just wants to pretend none of it ever happened.

But somehow she still can’t quite make herself hit unsubscribe.

Instead, she finds herself avoiding YouTube altogether. She spends her free time sitting on the back porch swing, looking out at the woods and playing her guitar, trying to drum up another new song for her channel.

Trying to get over the silliest crush she’s ever had.

The only reason she keeps her phone with her is to field Maggie’s increasingly frequent texts about the upcoming wedding.

Did you drop off the deposit for the cupcakes?

Don't forget to go over and sign the agreement for the tent rental!

Can you send me a pic of the trellis in the garden when you have a second? I think we should order back-up flowers just in case, but Glenn thinks it'll be fine. IDK.

Beth doesn't mind. Maggie is hardly a bridezilla, and anyway, it gives her something to do besides just going to work and coming home, day in and day out.

Not that she dislikes her job. It's pretty good, as far as jobs go. Even better lately, since she's befriended the homeless German Shepherd still convalescing in the back, who happens to have a personality about a billion times more pleasant than the guy who brought him in. Every shift, Beth goes to visit him and bring him an extra treat from the jar she keeps at the reception desk. She doesn’t usually spend that much time with the strays Dr. Bailey cares for, but this dog’s different. She doesn’t want him to feel lonely, all shut up on his own, with nobody out there looking for him.

One afternoon when she comes in for the evening shift, she heads back to see him and finds his kennel empty.

He's gone.

She asks one of the techs about him, who tells her that he was discharged. When Beth checks his chart, she finds adoption paperwork with a blocky, jagged signature at the bottom.

D. Dixon

Driving home that night, Beth wonders what made him decide to adopt the dog. What made him come back. She's not sure whether she's glad or not that she wasn't on shift when he came in. Glad, she supposes. Probably glad.

At home, she makes toast and slices up a tomato from the garden, and she eats it alone at the kitchen table, her dad long since gone to bed. When she's finished, she locks up the house, turns off the lights, and goes upstairs to shower.

Later, while she sits at her desk combing and braiding her wet hair, she checks YouTube, the bright screen of her laptop the only light in her bedroom.

She answers a few kind comments people left on her last video. There are a couple of comments noting that she didn't do her hair and make-up. She stares at those for several moments, wondering whether a comment being rude and annoying is grounds for deletion. Finally, she decides to ignore them, hoping the lack of response will speak for her.

(She knows it won't. Far as she can tell, people either don't know they're being rude and silence can't enlighten them, or they do know but they don't care.)

Returning to the home page, she finds the algorithm vainly attempting to interest her in the video of Bow Hunting – Mr. Daryl Dixon, that is – nabbing that buck.

Beth clicks on his channel.

She rolls the cursor over to the unsubscribe button, fully convinced she's ready to do it, but she hesitates.

Unsubscribing won't accomplish anything. It can't turn back time and give her a chance to do something other than put her foot in her mouth. It won't make him understand that she was just caught off-guard. It won't make him be decent and polite to her when she was only trying to help.

It won't make him see her.

Make him like her.

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she closes her laptop, then pulls her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees to her chest, and listens to the room fall quiet around her, the only sound the soft white noise of the fan she keeps on her desk.

She goes to bed.

***

Two weeks later, Beth's at work, shelving the prescription cat food in the reception area when someone comes in, the bell over the door jingling.

"Be right with you," Beth says, without turning around.

"No rush."

The voice makes her turn around.

Daryl Dixon, former YouTube crush and new dog owner, is standing across the reception area, looking at the racks of dog food, his hands shoved in his pockets. He’s wearing beat-up jeans again and a ragged button-down with the sleeves cut off.

"Oh," Beth says. Taking a deep, shaky breath, she shelves the last flat pack of cat food cans and brushes her hands off on the thighs of her scrubs. Her stomach squirms with apprehension. She pulls her shoulders back and clears her throat. "What brings you in today, Mr. Dixon? How's…?"

Daryl looks at her blankly for a moment, then seems to prompt himself.

"Dog."

"Dog?"

"Yeah, Dog."

Beth blinks. "You named your dog… Dog ?"

Daryl huffs and rolls his eyes, apparently annoyed already. Either she has some kind of supernatural ability to irritate this man or he spends all of his waking hours pissed off.

"Yeah. So?"

Beth shrugs, considering him. At least Dog's not another dog named Khaleesi or something. She side-steps his question.

"Well, is he all right?"

Daryl's brow furrows.

"Yeah, he's fine. Why?"

Beth's stomach flip-flops. She can't seem to win with this guy. She gestures at the space around them.

"It's a vet clinic. My whole job is asking people what's wrong."

Daryl's posture changes, relaxing a little. He reaches a hand up and scratches awkwardly at the back of his neck. When he drops his hand, his face has gone all red. He clears his throat.

"Uh, he's fine, mostly," Daryl says, his tone suddenly much softer. He gestures with his thumb at the racks of dog food. "Tried feedin' him a bag of kibble I got at the gas station, but he got the shits bad." Daryl grimaces and rubs at the back of his neck again. "Like real bad. He was fine on the stuff he had here. Need a bag of that, I guess."

Beth goes behind the reception desk and quickly finds Dog's file.

"I'm pretty sure I know which food it was, but let me check. Wouldn't want to sell you the wrong one. You've probably cleaned up enough diarrhea as it is."

Daryl scoffs and nods his head.

Beth confirms the food brand and type, then comes back around the desk to stand next to Daryl in front of the dog food.

"This is the one you want," she says, pointing. "Dog might have a sensitive stomach. Poor guy. You can also try feeding him plain white rice or cooked chicken until it settles down."

Daryl nods, examining the bag of food.

"If it doesn't clear up in a couple of days or he gets dehydrated, you should bring him in, though."

"I will," Daryl says. He bends down and grabs one of the large bags of food.

"Oh, and we have carpet cleaner," Beth says, pointing at the row of red and white bottles on the next shelf. "That stuff works like a charm, I hear."

Daryl snorts again and hoists the bag of food onto his shoulder so he can grab a large bottle of the cleaner, too. The muscles in his bare arms flex.

She remembers the buck he got, the way handled that thing like it was no more than a sack of potatoes.

Beth's face heats and she turns away, going behind the desk to ring up his purchase and to put some space between herself and his damn arms.

"Need a hand?" she asks as she passes him the receipt.

Daryl shakes his head, and when he looks at her, Beth's surprised to find precisely one third of a smile on his face. It’s a smile as awkward as the day is long, but it’s a smile, and he’s directing it at her.

"Thanks," he says. He shoves the receipt in his back pocket and leaves, the bell over the door jangling behind him.

Beth stares at the door for several long moments, a strange feeling bubbling up in her chest. It's something like relief, but more excited than that. She doesn't know what to call it.

A few days later, Beth’s on the phone with a client when Daryl walks in the door again. She’s surprised; he bought the largest bag of dog food they stock, and she can’t imagine that even poor, underfed Dog managed to eat all that in only a few days.

The reception area is otherwise empty, and Beth watches as Daryl shoves his hands in his pockets and turns away from her to look at the shelves of cat food. He’s wearing a pair of jeans that have a few patches and oil stains on them, as well as the embroidered button-down he wore the day he brought Dog in. There’s a smear of what looks like motor oil near his elbow. He must be on his way home from work, she guesses.

Trying not to get too distracted, Beth finishes booking the appointment.

“Hi, Mr. Dixon,” she says as she hangs up the phone. “Thanks for waiting. What can I help you with?”

He clears his throat and approaches the desk, though he stops short of touching it or leaning on it to talk down at her, like some clients ( always men , she thinks, uncharitably) will do.

“Uh, yeah, Dog’s fleas are back. You got stuff for that, yeah?”

“Sorry to hear that,” Beth says. She stands up and sets the phone to do not disturb , something she is definitely not supposed to do, then comes around the reception desk and goes to the rack of flea and tick products.

“Pretty sure Dog got a flea bath when he was in, but sometimes it’s not enough and they come back. You might be better off with this,” she says, pointing to a liquid treatment.

Daryl takes the plastic package off the rack and examines it.

“My place backs up onto the woods and there’s a lotta ticks back there. Don’t wanna get stuck tryin’ to wrestle him to the ground to tweeze ticks out of him.”

Beth smiles. “Nope, doesn’t sound like a fun time for anybody.”

Daryl huffs a short little laugh out and glances at her. His eyes are so blue she can’t help but stare for a moment, hoping desperately she’s not starting to blush.

“I’m tryin’ to teach him to hunt, but between you and me, he ain’t exactly a natural.”

Beth considers playing dumb and asking him about hunting, but something about that makes her stomach squirm. It’s just so weird that she knows things about him, and she finds herself wishing she didn’t. Maybe if she hadn’t known who he was when he walked in that first day, she wouldn’t have messed things up so badly.

“Maybe he’ll surprise you,” she says, instead. “Lots of dogs like to have jobs to do, and he seems pretty eager to please.”

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees. “Even dogs gotta stay busy, right?”

“Yup.”

Daryl smiles at her again, that awkward half-smile, and this time Beth knows for sure her cheeks are turning pink. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just looks at her and looks at her, and then he looks back down at the plastic package in his hand. Beth watches, fascinated, as his cheeks darken.

Huh .

“All right, I’d better…” He makes a gesture towards the door, and Beth shakes herself.

She retreats back behind the desk and rings up his purchase. Beth’s just turning away to switch the phone back on and deal with the voicemail waiting for her when he stops at the door and looks back at her.

“Uh.”

It sounds like the start of something, and she’s sure he’s going to continue speaking, but he doesn’t. He just stands there with one hand on the door, looking back at her.

“Is there something else I can help you with?”

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Thanks.”

Daryl just about shoots out the door, then, and it swings closed behind him before Beth can say another word.

A week later, he’s back, this time looking for something to get skunk spray out of Dog’s fur.

“Told the dumbass to leave it be,” he tells her, “but he don’t listen for shit. Got sprayed, point blank.”

Beth grimaces. 

“I’m not sure who I feel worse for, Dog or you.”

Daryl shrugs his shoulders, that funny half-smile on his face.

“It was pretty nasty. Went through three bottles of tomato juice before I had to cop that that’s probably just an old wives’ tale.”

Beth laughs.

“That’s a common one,” she says. “We do have some good de-skunking products, but there are some home remedies that work just as well. We’ve got a pamphlet about what to do for a skunk encounter. Hold on.”

She goes to the rack of informational leaflets near the door and finds the one with the stock photo of an unapologetic-looking skunk on it.

“Here,” she says, offering it to Daryl. “Pretty sure there’s a recipe in there that you can just whip up at home.”

Daryl reads the pamphlet and nods.

“Huh. Hydrogen peroxide. Didn’t try that.”

Beth examines his face as he reads the pamphlet. The information she’s just given him is nothing more than what anyone would find on a quick Google search. She knows he’s got the internet on his phone, if not at home.

Daryl smiles at her and shoves the pamphlet in his back pocket. He grabs a bag of Dog’s food and a bottle of dog shampoo.

“Might as well get food while I’m here,” he says, heading for the counter.

Beth heads around the desk and starts ringing up his purchase.

“Damn fool dog is gonna be so relieved to get the stink off him. I made him sleep in the garage last night.”

“Poor guy. Does he usually sleep in a kennel, or do you let him sleep with you?”

Beth looks up to see Daryl’s cheeks turn pink. He doesn't answer immediately, and clears his throat.

“Never thought I’d let a big, slobbery dog sleep in my bed, but I’m tryin’ to pick my battles.”

Beth laughs and gives Daryl the total. Beth catches his wince, and watches as he takes out his credit card.

"You know,” she says, “Dog probably doesn’t need prescription food, maybe just not gas station food. There's a Petco in Peachtree City you could check out. A lot of stuff is way cheaper online, too."

He just looks at her for a long beat, silent, then looks down, nodding his head.

"Probably, huh?"

Just like that, she knows she’s said something wrong. It’s like he’s slammed an invisible barrier up between them. She’s only trying to help him; vet care is expensive on its own and their food and retail items have a huge mark-up.But she doesn’t know what to say because she doesn’t know what she’s done wrong. She watches helplessly as he hefts the bag of food up on his shoulder. She hands him the receipt.

“Thanks, Beth,” he says, then turns to go.

She tries to think of something to say, but nothing comes out, and then he’s heading out the door, into the bright afternoon sun.

This time, he doesn't come back.

***

The back half of August drags out like the last five miles on a road trip home.

Beth goes to work and comes home. She helps her dad repair a section of fence at the far edge of the east pasture because he’s still too stubborn to hire more help, even with Otis on disability after he injured his back. She records covers of songs and uploads a couple to her channel. She writes one new song and uploads that too, but it’s not as popular as her last original song, and her subscriber count plateaus. She wonders whether infinite exponential growth is a reasonable expectation of the YouTube channel of someone who doesn’t have a record deal. She starts running again, like she used to in high school, early in the mornings before the heat really kicks in. She does wedding errands for Maggie, like picking up bundles of thin willow branches, and fifty tiny glass bottles, which she painstakingly labels and fills with bubble soap from Dollar General.

She keeps busy. Really busy.   

She almost watches old videos on Daryl’s YouTube channel dozens of times, but stops herself.   

There's no point. Even if he uploaded something new (which he hasn't since his trout fishing video) there'd still be no point. What she's looking for – his smile, that sweet, awkward half-smile – isn't even in his videos.

On their Friday evening Facetime, Maggie asks if Beth's bringing a date to the wedding. Sitting up a little straighter against her bed’s headboard, Beth shrugs.

"Yeah, right," she says, doodling in the margins of the notebook she keeps handy for their chats these days. There have been so many things to do for the wedding that Beth needs to write things down, worried that she’ll forget something important and ruin Maggie’s big day.

Beth wants it to be perfect for Maggie. She wants her sister to have this one nice thing, after everything that’s happened. It’s going to be hard enough that Mom and Shawn won’t be there. The wedding itself should at least be everything Maggie wants it to be.

"What do you mean, 'yeah, right'? Don’t act like you're undateable. Why don't you ask somebody?"

"Like who?"

Maggie rolls her eyes like Beth's choosing to be difficult just to exasperate her.

"Like anybody! There's gotta be somebody you could ask."

Beth puts the finishing touches on the tiny dog she's drawing in dark blue ink.

"I don't think so, Maggie," she says. She sighs a little. "Asking someone around here to the wedding would be awkward for a couple of reasons, considering you've dated just about every guy in the county."

" Beth !" Maggie yelps, but Beth hears Glenn bust out laughing in the background. Maggie turns around to look at him. "Don't you start!"

"Kidding," Beth says.

"I know. Brat. Anyway, how are the bubbles coming along?"

Beth flips a page to check her tally.

"I've glued 25 out of 50 tiny plastic bubble wands to the cork stoppers. Twenty-five to go."

"Okay," Maggie says, making a face like she's running down a To Do list that exists solely in her mind. "We're in pretty good shape. Just gotta wait for the last couple of RSVPs to roll in."

"Do I have to RSVP in writing or is Facetime good enough for the Maid of Honour?"

Maggie smiles and just looks at her for a moment before speaking.

"You know, Beth… I can't thank you enough. I can always count on you to pitch in, whatever it is. I couldn't have done this DIY thing without you."

Before Beth can respond, Glenn's voice pipes up from somewhere nearby.

“I dunno if you can really call this wedding DIY, Maggie. More like BDI – Beth’ll Do It!”

“ Glenn ,” Maggie gripes, but the glare she shoots at her fiance falters and she laughs.

"I don't mind at all," Beth says. "I'm happy to help."

"I know you are," Maggie says, turning serious. "You've always been like that. Even when you were too little to do anything but get in the way, you wanted to help.”

Beth watches as Maggie’s eyes turn glassy and tearful.

“Ugh,” Maggie says, swiping at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I’m so emotional about everything lately. It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Beth says. “There’s a lot going on. It’s an important time for you.”

Maggie smiles softly and nods, then bites her bottom lip as she continues to eyeball Beth through the webcam. 

“Beth… Has Dad talked to you?”

“Yeah, of course. I saw him when I got home from work. Why?”

“No, I mean… Has he talked to you?”

Beth takes in the anxious expression on Maggie’s face.

“What do you mean?”

Maggie makes a soft, irritated sort of noise in her throat and shakes her head.

“Talk to Dad. Make him talk to you. You can tell him I said to and he can be mad at me if he wants.”

Alarm bells start going off in Beth’s body.

“Maggie, what are you talkin’ about?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Maggie says firmly. “I swear. But just… Just talk to Dad, okay?”

Maggie says her goodbyes, then, and they end the call. As soon as her screen goes dark, Beth snaps her laptop shut and heads out of her bedroom and downstairs. She finds her dad out on the back porch, on his favourite chair, watching twilight take hold of the woods at the far end of the farmyard.

“Look, honey,” he says, pointing. “Lightning bugs.”

Sure enough, there are. They float low over the tall, weedy grass that grows unkempt at the edge of the woods. It looks like only a few at first, but as they glow and extinguish, over and over, their light brief but vibrant, it becomes clear that there must be dozens of them. The sight of them is magical, though Beth’s seen them every summer her whole life. They’re still magical.

Beth sits down in the deep wicker chair beside her dad’s chair, and pulls her legs up onto the tattered seat cushion, tucking her feet beneath her.

This is her mom’s spot. Or it used to be.

“How’s your sister?” 

Beth looks over and observes her dad’s profile.

“Maggie’s fine. We talked about wedding stuff, mostly. Glenn’s fine, too.”

A smile pulls at the very corner of Hershel’s mouth.

“That’s good to hear.”

Beth plays with the hem of her sleeve as they sit together in silence for several long moments, both of them still watching the lightning bugs bob along like tiny lanterns. Finally, she swallows and looks over at her dad again.

“Maggie said you need to talk to me. Or I need to talk to you. Or both, I guess.”

Hershel exhales a long sigh. 

“Your sister was born early. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“Hm. Well, she was. Three weeks. Not enough to worry the doctors much; she was healthy as could be. But early enough that her mother and I were caught flatfooted. She was like that from the get go, Maggie. Impatient and headstrong and sure of herself.”

Beth nods, content to listen to her father arrive at his point in his own time. With him, she’s learned, there’s always a point, even if he takes the scenic route getting there. She doesn’t mind. It’s good to hear him like this, like he’s still himself, like all the loss he’s been through somehow hasn’t changed the very core of him.

“I had asked Maggie to give me time to talk to you, but that was unfair of me, to expect her to keep something from you.”

“I understand, and I’m not mad or anything, but the suspense is kinda killin’ me, Daddy.”

Hershel chuckles quietly, then turns to look at her.

“Maggie has decided to come back and take over running the farm. With Glenn, of course, and not right away. There’s the wedding and their jobs and apartment to deal with. And it will take some time for them to learn their way around the business end of things.”

Beth blinks hard, surprised to find her eyes filling with tears.

“Am I… Are you tellin’ me to move out?”

Hershel shakes his head.

“No, Bug. You’ll have a home here as long as you need it. Always. Your sister insists on it, but so do I. You don’t have to go anywhere if you’re not ready.”

Beth looks away, out at the darkening farmyard, her initial shock and confusion dissipating. It feels like every word her dad’s saying is loosening something in her chest, lifting a weight she didn’t fully realise was dragging her down.

“What about you?” she asks.

“Well, I plan to stay, too, Beth, but I think it’s about time I entered the retirement stage of my life, don’t you?”

Beth laughs softly, a lump rising in her throat.

“Yeah, Daddy, I do.”

Hershel reaches across the space between them and takes Beth’s hand in his.

“My girl. I’m a fortunate man to have been blessed with the daughters I have. It’s been the great pride of my life to watch the both of you grow, so different, such individuals, but so similar, as well.”

Beth rubs her thumb against the sun-aged back of her father’s hand. His grip is still so strong and his fingers so calloused that it’s hard to hold onto the simple fact that he’s growing old before her eyes, just like she and her siblings grew up before his. 

“Beth.”

“Yeah?” 

"Your mother wouldn't have wanted you to stay here, like this. Taking care of me. You know that, don't you?"

Beth inhales sharply.

“Well, mom didn’t want to get cancer either, Daddy. This isn’t really what any of us planned.”

Hershel makes a noise that’s nearly a chuckle, except for how joyless it is.

“No, it isn’t. But it’s what we have,” he says. A long, silent pause passes, and then he looks over at her. "I never meant for you to stay here for me, honey."

“I know, Daddy, but… Maybe I needed to be here for a while, too. Anyway, where else would I go?"

"Anywhere you want, Beth. You aren't broken. And neither am I."

Before Beth can come close to processing his words, Hershel reaches into the breast pocket of his shirt and pulls out a folded sheet of bright yellow paper. He unfolds it and hands it to her.

OPEN MIC

THURSDAY NIGHTS 8 TO CLOSE

CAROL’S

“Maggie told me your recent songs have done well. I’m no computer whiz, but I’m not so out of touch I can’t find my own daughter’s YouTube channel. You have a gift and you’re sharing it. That’s a beautiful thing. Your mother would be proud of you. I know I am.”

Beth looks up from the flyer to find her father smiling at her. She’d always assumed he found her interest in music a bit frivolous. His words mean more to her than thousands of strangers’ YouTube views ever could.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she says softly.

Hershel squeezes Beth’s hand, and the two of them sit together in the gloaming, silent, hands clasped, and watch the fireflies dance. 

***

Six days later, Beth goes to her first open mic night.

She wears her favourite going-out jeans and the cowboy boots she got for her sixteenth birthday, and layers one of her nicer tank tops with a light cardigan. She puts on the heart-shaped necklace her mom gave her, and she does her make-up. She French braids her bangs back from her face and tucks the end of the braid into a high ponytail.

Last, she puts on all her bracelets, covering up the scar on her wrist.

“Don’t be nervous,” she says to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You’re just going to check it out. No pressure.”

She makes herself wait until 8:00, then she heads out the door.

Beth drives into town and across it, to Carol’s. The red brick building is easy to spot, it being the only place open on the street.

Parking in the gravel lot, she sits in her silent car and looks at the light pouring out of the building onto the empty street.

Music. She can hear music.

Beth grabs her suede messenger bag off the passenger seat, pulls the keys from the ignition, and gets out of the car.

She heads into the coffeeshop through a vestibule papered with flyers for local businesses and upcoming festivals in the area. Inside, the air is rich with the smell of freshly ground coffee. The place is busier than she's ever seen it, though it’s been a while since she’s stopped in. Abruptly she regrets not ever taking the time to drive over on her lunch break. 

The main level is dominated by the wide wood bar in front of the kitchen. Behind the bar, two baristas hustle back and forth, making drinks and taking orders. A dozen or so bistro tables are scattered around the space, shouldered by mismatched old dining chairs. Most of the seats are occupied by an equally eclectic assortment of people Beth either knows or at least recognizes from around town. A few large, squashy sofas line the perimeter of the room. Overhead is a mezzanine lined by dark metal railings, where the bookstore is housed.

The music she’d heard from the parking lot turns out to be a young man playing fiddle on the far side of the coffeeshop, where a corner has been cleared and a simple stage built. A microphone and stand are plunked in the middle of it, and heavy drapes of plum velvet hang behind, partially covering the exposed brick walls.

Picking her way between the tables, Beth finds an empty space at the bar and has a quick look at the handwritten chalkboard menu hung overhead.

After one of the baristas takes Beth’s order, Beth looks around the room, trying to scout out a spot to sit without making herself too conspicuous.

The fiddler on stage finishes a reel, and the handful of people near the stage give up a round of polite applause.

Something nervous quivers in her stomach, and she keeps looking for a spot to sit, turning around to peer at the scant tables along the wall leading back towards the restrooms.

Beth sucks in a surprised breath.

There, sitting at a table by himself, staring down at the phone in his hand, is Daryl Dixon.

Beth swallows hard and turns her head so that she’s not staring at him. She can't help herself, though; she glances at him again, quickly, before looking away. He looks nice, like he cleaned up after work before coming here. His hair looks combed and he’s wearing a dark long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans, with what looks like a leather vest on top. 

On anybody else, the leather would look like some kind of pretentious biker tough-guy pose. Not on him, somehow. On him it just looks like it belongs. 

She stands there, glancing over at him every few seconds, but he doesn't look up from his phone. No one comes to sit in the empty chair at his table.

“Vanilla latte?”

Beth swivels her head around to find the barista pushing her latte across the counter.

“Thanks,” she says, but the barista is already hurrying back to the espresso machine.

Beth faces the big room and its lack of free seating, then hauls her courage up and turns back towards the tables along the wall.

She walks over and stops a few feet from him.

"Hi, Mr. Dixon?"

He looks up from his phone, appearing almost startled.

"It's Beth,” she says as he continues to stare at her without speaking. “From the vet? I probably look different out of scrubs."

“No,” he says, sounding strangely winded. “I mean – yeah. Hey.”

“Hi,” she says again, her stomach turning over with nerves. Come on, Greene. “Um. Listen, are you waitin’ on somebody to join you?”

He blinks at her and makes a funny sort of scoffing sound.

“No, I ain’t waitin’ on nobody.”

Beth glances around the room, then back to him, hoping he’ll take the hint, but he just keeps staring at her like she’s the most surprising thing he’s ever seen in a coffee shop.

“Um, do you mind if I sit?”

The question seems to finally prompt him into action, and he puts his phone down on the table and shakes his head.

"No, seat's all yours," he says, sitting up straighter, his face suddenly going a bit red.

Beth sets her latte down on the table and sits, relieved.

"Thanks," she says. "I wasn't expecting it to be so busy tonight."

"Busier than usual," Daryl says, taking a sip of what looks like plain black coffee.

On the stage, a young man Beth's pretty sure she recognizes from high school takes the stage. He gets as far as saying something about a priest and a rabbi walking into a bar before Beth pointedly tunes him out and turns back to Daryl.

He's watching her.

"So," she says, her stomach giving a nervous little flip, "you must be a regular here, then?"

Daryl's face screws up a bit and he shrugs his shoulders.

"Not really. I mean, kinda."

"What's that mean, kinda?"

Daryl shrugs again.

"It's my friend's place. She bugs me to come by sometimes. Open mic nights've been quiet lately, else I wouldn't have bothered."

"You don't like the local talent?" Beth asks, as she takes a sip of her latte.

"I'll let you know when I hear somebody talented," Daryl says, shooting a withering look at the amateur comedian on stage.

Beth snickers.

Daryl ducks his head and leans back against the wall behind him, and Beth watches him out of the side of her eye, trying not to stare, as he brings his hand to his mouth. He bites at his knuckle for a moment, his knee bouncing restlessly in place as he does it.

The comedian on stage finishes a joke Beth misses, most of it having been drowned out by the noise of the espresso machine and the hum of conversations all around them.

Daryl clears his throat.

"You, uh, you meetin' somebody here tonight?"

"Nope," she says. "Don't have anybody to meet."

It looks like he wants to ask something more, but he doesn't, and the conversation lulls towards awkward silence. Beth clears her throat.

“How’s Dog?”

Daryl rolls his eyes.

"He's all right. Got his cast off this week, but you weren't there."

"That's great! Yeah, I took a day off so I could run around and do some errands for my sister. She's getting married here in October, but she lives in Decatur, so I'm doing the legwork."

“Pretty nice sister.”

Beth laughs. “She’s not bad, but we didn’t always get along as well as we do now.”

“I meant you, doin’ that stuff for her.”

“Oh,” Beth says, suddenly self-conscious. She shrugs. “Thanks.”

Daryl doesn’t say anything to that, and instead takes a long sip of his coffee while looking over at the stage. 

"You got your name on the list?"

"What list?"

"The list,” he says, pointing with his chin at the stage. “So you can take a turn up there."

"What? Heck no. I just came to check the place out."

"You came down here to watch some jackasses who think they're funny do stand-up comedy and you ain't even gonna sing somethin'?"

“Nope. Like I said, I’m just here to case the joint. Anyway, this is a latte," she says, pointing down at her coffee.

“So?”

“So milk’s no good for the vocal cords. No singing for me tonight.”

Daryl makes a scoffing sound, but it's not unkind.

"So that latte's your insurance policy against gettin' up on that stage?"

Beth laughs.

"Yeah, I guess you could call it that."

Daryl half smiles at her, then takes another sip of his coffee, and as Beth watches his face, a thought strikes her.

How does he know I sing?

Before Beth can say a word, a woman approaches the table. She's middle-aged, with a cute grey pixie cut, and she's dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose, jewel-toned top. She's pretty, with blue-grey eyes that spark with something almost like mischief as she looks from Daryl to Beth.

Without either of them saying a word, Beth can tell that the two of them know each other well.

"Looks like we didn't need a seat-filler after all, but thanks for coming down, anyway," the woman says to Daryl, her tone wry. She turns to Beth and smiles. "And you even brought a friend."

Daryl clears his throat.

"Carol, this is Beth. Beth, Carol."

Carol rolls her eyes, still smiling, and gives Daryl a gentle nudge in the shoulder with her elbow.

" Please . You don't have to introduce her. I'd know Beth Greene anywhere."

Carol must mean from Instagram, Beth guesses.

"Daryl didn't tell me he finally mustered up the guts to actually ask you out! About time. He's only been talking about you non-stop for at least the last three months."

Beth blinks.

Three months? But Daryl only brought Dog into the clinic six weeks ago.

Wait – ask me out?

Beth looks over to find Daryl glaring at Carol in silence, his cheeks red, looking downright furious.

" Oh ," Carol says. Her mouth snaps shut and she stares at Beth for a moment before turning to Daryl. A wordless conversation happens between them. After a few moments of awkward silence, Carol turns to Beth, smiling wanly.

"It's really nice to meet you, Beth. I hope I see you again soon. You've got a beautiful voice. That stage is ready for you any time you want it, and I’m not talking open mic. I mean that, all right?"

Too bewildered to really process the compliment, Beth just smiles at the other woman and murmurs her thanks.

Carol reaches out then and squeezes Daryl's shoulder quickly before turning and heading back towards the kitchen.

Beth looks at Daryl's downturned head. He doesn't say a word or even meet her eyes, but from what she can see of his face, he looks mortified.

She's so confused.

Months? How?

Then, it clicks.

He'd assumed she was here to sing. Carol seemed to think the same. Carol knew about her from Instagram, or maybe even her YouTube channel, and there's every reason to think Daryl knows the same.

"Do you, um… Do you follow my Instagram, Daryl?"

“YouTube,” he replies quietly, almost guiltily.

“ Oh .”

Daryl stands up so abruptly that the table wobbles and their coffee cups rattle.

"I don't wanna make you uncomfortable, or… I'll go."

"Daryl, wait."

He either doesn't hear her or doesn't care – either way he hightails it for the exit, and Beth has to jump up and trot after him to keep up.

She follows him out of the coffeeshop, and he's halfway across the small parking lot by the time she's outside. He's actually going to run away from her rather than stop for a minute and just talk to her.

On the back of his leather vest are a pair of faded angel’s wings.

"Daryl, stop!"

He stops in his tracks, gravel crunching beneath his boots. His shoulders are tense and he just stands there for a long moment before turning around to face her.

His face is absolutely miserable.

"Daryl, just… Just hold up a sec, okay? Can we talk, maybe?"

He shifts his weight on his feet and side-eyes her, looking downright suspicious.

"Talk about what?" he grumbles.

Undeterred, Beth cocks her head.

"You've really been watchin' me sing on YouTube this whole time?"

Daryl winces, like she's just accused him of peeping in her bedroom window or something.

"Yeah."

"That day you found Dog and brought him in, you knew who I was?"

"Yeah," he says again, quietly.

Beth shakes her head, and she can't help it: she laughs.

Daryl frowns fiercely and turns halfway from her, like he wants to make a run for it. Her heart clenches. She closes the gap between them and, reaching out, she grabs his hand.

"Daryl, no. Wait . You don't get it."

"Get what?"

"I subscribe to your channel."

"Huh?"

"Your YouTube channel. I've watched every single one of your videos at least three times. Some of 'em, I've lost count. The night I found your channel, I stayed up until 3 AM watching you. When you walked into the clinic, I couldn't believe it. I was so embarrassed because I liked you so much without even really knowing you, and then suddenly you… You were real . You were right there in front of me and all I could do was stick my foot in my mouth."

Daryl blinks at her, bewildered.

" What ?"

"Get out your phone and go check, if you don't believe me."

"But it's just me field dressing turkeys and shit. You serious?"

"Yes," she says, shrugging. "I liked you, so I kept watching."

He stands there, staring at her, apparently at a loss for words. Beth clears her throat.

"So, um... You like folk-pop?"

Daryl huffs out a sound that's nearly a laugh.

"No, I like you ," he says. 

"Oh."

He likes her.

"Your voice is real pretty," he says. "I like your cover songs, but that one you put up a while back, the one you wrote? The one ‘bout bein’ stuck in traffic? That one's real nice."

Beth gulps, her heart pounding hard.

"I wrote that song about you," she says.

Daryl gapes at her.

" Huh ?"

"I did. I mean, I was thinking about you when I started writing it, and then it kinda took on a life of its own, so it's not literally… It's hard to explain. But yeah. You're the reason I wrote that song."

Daryl shakes his head like he can't quite believe what she's saying.

"Damn," he says. 

"But… When you came into the clinic that day with Dog, you were so… You were so rude . I don't get it. Why didn't you say something?"

Daryl shakes his head, looking embarrassed again.

"I'm a dick," he says plainly. "I was surprised and worried about the damn dog and I just choked. I ain't nobody's idea of a ladies' man, but even I couldn't believe how bad I messed that up. I'm sorry, Beth."

"You came back, though," she says. "I… I liked that. That you came back. It kinda felt like I got a second chance with you."

He tilts his head, peering at her like the words she's saying make no sense to him.

"Why'd you stop coming around?" she asks.

Daryl shakes his head, looking ever more confused.

"Didn't have the balls to just ask you out, and I know that's your job, bein' nice to people, and it seemed like maybe I was buggin’ you or somethin'."

"Oh," she says, thinking back to telling him about the other places he could get pet supplies. The way his face fell. "Oh, Daryl… We're kinda hopeless, huh?"

Daryl scoffs again and shakes his head.

"Yeah," he mutters. "Guess that's one word for it."

His voice has gone all quiet now, and suddenly she remembers again what she'd liked so much: his voice, when he got that buck.

Soft . Gentle .

Beth looks at him, at the way his hair is hanging in his eyes, at the way he's looking back at her, uncertain, but something hopeful there, too. It hits her all at once what's actually happening between them, the door that they’ve nudged open.

What they've accidentally found.

She realises she's still holding onto his hand.

“So… You’ve wanted to ask me out for a while, huh?”

Daryl huffs, a mildly exasperated sound.

“Yeah. Couldn’t seem to pull the trigger, though. You’re a lot more intimidating than you know, girl.”

“ I’m intimidating? Have you ever looked in a mirror, mister?”

Daryl scoffs, his cheeks turning red.

“Yeah, unfortunately,” he says.

“Hey,” she says, letting go of his hand only enough to lace her fingers with his and squeeze. “Don’t do that.”

Daryl looks down at their joined hands, then up at her, his expression perplexed, like what she’s done and said is strange and confusing. Maybe it is.

Maybe she is, to him.

"Daryl, can I ask you somethin’?"

"Sure," he says.

"Why'd you start a YouTube channel?"

He raises his eyebrows.

"I just mean, you know. You're not very…" Beth winces, trying to find the right words without insulting him. "You just don't seem like a YouTube guy."

Daryl takes that in stride and doesn't respond right away. He stands in silence for a long moment, apparently thoroughly considering her question. Eventually he clears his throat.

"My dad, he uh... He taught me most of what I know, how to hunt and fish. How to fix things. My bike and my truck. Junk around the house, that kinda thing. All 'cause of him that I know that stuff."

He goes quiet again for a moment, and Beth doesn’t try to fill the silence.

"'Bout all he was good for, really, showing me how to do things. Wasn't real nice about it. Didn't make it easy or fun, that's for sure. But still. He showed me how to do things."

Beth examines his face as he speaks, reading between the lines of what he’s said. There's much more there, she guesses, than he's willing or able to share. She thinks back to how little he says in his videos, and feels humbled that he's sharing anything with her at all.

"Dumbass never could keep a steady job or put food on the table real regular or none of that. Was a mean drunk and didn't hide it. But he showed me how to get my own food. Fix my own truck. That's not nothin'."

Beth knows, somehow, without even really knowing this man very well, that that’s not something he’d tell just anybody.

"Thought maybe there might be somebody out there needed to know shit like I know. Maybe… maybe some kid out there could just look it up, 'stead of having to deal with a dad like mine."

Beth's heart gives a lurch that’s downright painful.

She could fall in love with this man. She thinks she's already halfway there.

"Dunno. It's stupid, probably," Daryl says, giving her a sidelong look. Beth realises she hasn't said anything and he just shared a whole lot.

She takes a deep breath.

"I started my channel to keep busy after I tried to kill myself last year," she says. "So no, I don't think it's stupid, Daryl. I don't think that's stupid at all."

It's a risky thing to say. She's never said something like that to anyone. She's never been so blunt about it. Her dad and Maggie and Glenn are the only other people who even know about it, and they seem to have decided that it’s best if they carefully avoid acknowledging it ever happened. 

But Daryl doesn't look freaked, or disdainful, or what she fears most, like he pities her. Thinks she’s pathetic.

His free hand reaches out and takes hers. He holds both of her hands in his, and he looks down at them, running the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. He clears his throat.

"You wanna go out sometime? With me?"

Beth grins.

“Yeah, I do.”

Daryl exhales a tight breath, like he was prepared for her to reject him. He smiles that odd, half-smile she’s already so fond of, and just like that, all of the pain and disappointment she’s felt since the day he walked into the clinic goes out of her in a rush.

He likes her.

Gripping his hand in hers, Beth leans in and kisses him, quick and light, on his lips. She pulls back just enough to see the shock on his face, his eyes wide as he looks down at her like she’s just done something completely out of left field.

“Sorry,” she says. “Too soon?”

Daryl’s free hand clasps her elbow before she can pull away, and he shakes his head.

“No, ain’t too soon at all.”

Letting go of her hand so he can gather her closer to him, he leans down and kisses her.

Beth rocks back on her heels, breathless, as he kisses her like there’s nothing else in the world but the two of them, nothing at all he’d rather be doing. When he pulls back to suck in a quick breath, she sways on her feet, held fast in the circle of his arms, her heart pounding and her lips buzzing. Pure joy surges through her, and she laughs softly.

“This is a pretty great first date,” she says. “How’re you gonna top it?”

Daryl’s eyebrows draw together.

“First date?”

"We went out and had coffee. We got to know each other a little bit. And now we’ve had a first kiss. That’s a first date."

Daryl shakes his head.

"If this counts as a date, I think maybe you oughta raise your standards, girl."

“My standards are serving me well right where they are, thank you very much, Mr. Dixon.”

He smiles at her like he doesn’t fully believe her, but rather than argue, he pulls her closer.

"Here I thought the best thing I'd get out of a YouTube channel was TenPoint might send me a free crossbow."

Beth laughs and kisses him again.

They stand there in the gravel lot, listening to the crickets chirp, and make plans for their next date.

He's gonna take her out. 

He doesn't know it yet, but she's gonna ask him to hold her hand while her sister gets married.

They're gonna fall in love.

Somehow, Beth knows it. It's been a long time since she's been sure of anything. But, standing there holding his hands in that parking lot, she's sure of him. She's sure of them.

She's sure that one day soon, with him watching, she’s gonna stand on that little corner stage and sing.