Marlowe
King asked me to meet him at the homestead on an ordinary evening, no particular occasion mentioned, and I arrived to find the whole property transformed in ways I hadn't anticipated at all — string lights woven carefully through the trees near the creek, a small table set with considerably more care than our usual takeout dinners typically received.
"What's all this?" I asked, taking in the scene with growing curiosity.
"Wanted tonight to be deliberate," King said, crossing the yard to meet me, something nervous and warm in his expression that I rarely saw from him. "Not overshadowed by anyone else's celebration. Just us."
We ate together beneath the string lights, easy conversation punctuated by his obvious, endearing nervousness, and I found myself increasingly certain, watc
