The thing is, Weston said it was a "water festival."
Which, technically, yes. The Beaufort Water Festival archery tournament is indeed part of a water festival. He was not lying. He was simply presenting information in a way that allowed me to imagine something involving boats and shrimp and maybe a cold beer in the shade, rather than standing in a field at 9 AM holding a bow I had never touched before in my life.
"It's outside," he said, which I also cannot dispute.
He'd found it on his phone Thursday night while we were watching something I actually wanted to watch, and he had that look he gets — the one that means he's already mentally committed and is now just waiting to tell me. Weston gets very excited about things he has recently discovered, as if no time elapsed between "I learned this exists" and "I am now an expert in this."
"There's an archery tournament on Saturday," he said. "First one they've ever done. Historic."
I said sure, sounds fun, in the same tone I use when I'm mostly paying attention to the television.
Reader, I was not paying enough attention to the television.
Saturday came in beautiful, which I will give Beaufort full credit for — that particular April morning where the sun is doing everything right and the air is crisp enough to feel deliberate. We drove out with the windows down, Spanish moss going past, and I was in a genuinely good mood until we parked and I saw the targets.
"Weston."
"It's beginner-friendly."
"You registered us as a team."
"They had a couples division." He said this like it was an amenity. Like he had secured us early check-in.
The bow felt like a piece of sports equipment from a timeline where I had made different choices. I held it the way you hold something when someone hands it to you and you are hoping to shortly hand it back. The volunteer who helped me — a very patient woman named Diane — said I had "good instincts," which I'm pretty sure is what you say to someone when you want them to not cry.
Weston, meanwhile, was thriving. This is the other thing about Weston: he is genuinely, annoyingly good at things on the first try. He hit the target on his second arrow. He did a small fist-pump that he immediately tried to make look like he was just stretching.
I missed the target six times and then hit the hay bale it was sitting on, which Diane said still counted for something.
We came in fourth out of five teams. Weston argued that fourth was "podium-adjacent." I ate a lot of festival food while he made this case to me and said nothing, which is a communication strategy I have found very effective in this relationship.
Afterward we walked along the water, down by the refuge side, where the light was doing that Lowcountry thing where it gets golden and a little thick and everything looks like it's being lit by someone who really cares. Weston had his arm around me. He was still wearing his paper tournament number.
"Admit that was fun," he said.
"I missed a target six times."
"Seven. But in a row, which is almost impressive."
I didn't say it was fun. I also didn't say it wasn't. I took a photo of the marsh because it was that kind of afternoon, the kind where you take the photo even though you know it won't look the same later, and Weston photo-bombed it from the side with finger-guns, which he thought was very funny, and I kept the photo anyway.
He's already looked up whether there's a beginner recurve class at the YMCA.
I have not said yes. I have also not said no. I've just been watching him explain draw weight to me with an expression that I imagine looks a lot like Diane's when she told me I had good instincts.
Some things you see coming and show up for anyway.