by Sarina Bowen
“Rickie,” she pants. That’s as close to begging as my girl is willing to go. She writhes in my grasp, her knees shaking. “Why are you so good at this?”
“Because I enjoy it.” I tease her with my fingertips again, and she throws her head back and moans. “Look at me.”
Daphne lifts her face. Holding her eyes, I kiss her inner thigh, and deepen my touch. One more kiss on her throbbing core, and she shatters in my arms. It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. She arches back into the pillow and lets out a whispered curse, her chest heaving.
Angling my body off the bed, I grab a condom out of my shaving kit, and I put it on with clumsy, eager hands. Daphne watches me with a flushed face and bright eyes. And when I return to the bed, she pulls me down and lifts her face for a kiss.
“You make me crazy,” I murmur against her lips.
“Bullshit,” she whispers, tracing one of my tattoos with a fingernail. “You were already crazy.”
I laugh into the next kiss, and I take both her hands in mine, stretching them over her head.
And then a deafening crash slams through the room, and I jolt off of Daphne’s body like a man who’s been electrocuted.
Twenty-Three
Daphne
Yikes.
It was just the wind—a sudden gust blew through the house, slamming the bedroom door.
It was loud. I definitely startled.
But Rickie is even more rattled. “Whoa,” he gasps, kneeling on the bed beside me. “S-sorry. I just…need a minute."
“Sure,” I practically slur, because the man just gave me a spectacular orgasm. I can barely feel my face, let alone speak. It's fair to say that I haven’t felt this relaxed in years.
And if Rickie says, “I told you so,” after this, I don’t think I’ll even be irritated. He’s been telling me all summer to just give in and let go. And then I finally did. He made it easy for me. The happy look on his face as he kissed me in the shower? I’m never going to forget it. For thirty minutes, I forgot all my troubles.
It's a revelation.
The breeze moves the curtains again, and somewhere in the house another door slams. The sound is muted by the closed bedroom door.
Rickie leans down and rests his head against the mattress. His back rises and falls with rapid breaths.
I’m just about to ask him if he’s all right when I hear another unwelcome sound—tires on the gravel driveway outside.
Oh boy. This is really going to kill our buzz, isn’t it?
Rickie groans. The poor man. He’s about to be left hanging again. I rise to my knees and peek out the window at the driveway below.
The car is unfamiliar to me, with New York plates. The driver pulls to the side and kills the engine. And when the door opens, I'm startled to see my friend Violet Trevi get out.
“Omigod!” I shriek. Then I lunge for the wet towel on the floor. “Violet!” I call out the window.
She turns around to find me. “Surprise! Get down here and give me the tour, quick! I want to see apple trees, but I think it’s going to rain!”
“Give me two minutes! I’m—” Naked, with horror movie hair. “Just out of the shower!”
I expect a snarky comment, or a complaint, from Rickie. But he's facedown and oddly silent.
Parking my hip on the bed, I put a hand on his damp hair. “I’m so sorry about this. I had no idea she was coming.”
In answer, he reaches a hand up and slides it on top of mine. Tonight I’ll probably be seeing those long, talented fingers in my dreams.
But he doesn’t say a word.
“How long do you expect to lord this interruption over me, exactly? I’m just trying to plan my week.”
Finally he lets out a snort. But he still doesn’t speak. He just massages my hand with his own.
I lean down and kiss his messy head. “Come and meet Violet when you can. She’s a lot of fun. Much more fun than I am.”
“Not possible,” he croaks. “Go on.” He removes my hand from his hair and gives me a playful shove toward the door.
Reluctantly, I go. And the moment I open the bedroom door, the oven timer dings. Because of course it does.
I close Rickie’s door on the way out.
After pulling myself together in exactly three minutes, I race downstairs.
Violet has shut off the oven timer, and she’s leaning against the work table, sipping a glass of water. “The pies are just starting to brown,” she says. “I thought you should make the call about whether or not they’re done.”
“Thank you!” I grab her for a big hug. “I can’t believe you surprised me like this. Wait—does my mother know?”
Violet beams. “Yup! I called on the house phone and asked her which would be a good day to show up. She invited me to Thursday dinner. I’ve always wanted to come to a Shipley Thursday dinner!”
“I hope I didn’t oversell it,” I say with a laugh. “I mean, the food is always terrific, but you also have to put up with all my crazy family members.”
“Sign me up.” She claps her hands. “When do I get to meet the tattooed hottie?”
“Shhh!” I hiss, and my eyes flick toward the staircase. “Don’t you dare let him hear you say that. I’ll never live it down.”
“Is he here?” she whispers.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I say. It would be rude of me to kiss and tell. But Violet’s highest talent in life is information extraction.
“Can I pet a goat?” Violet asks.
“Sure.”
“A cow?”
“Absofuckinglutely. Let me take these pies out of the oven and we’ll go.”
Outside, I introduce Violet to Jacquie and Jill, my brother’s dairy goats. And then I walk her past the cows in the meadow, and past the mobile chicken coop.
“Oh, they love you!” Violet coos when the hens come running.
“No, they love treats,” I clarify. “Usually I have sunflower seeds in my pockets if I need them to move from one spot to another.”
“Well, it’s good to see you haven’t changed.” Violet rolls her eyes.
“What?”
“So quick to brush off any praise. Is it so hard to believe that chickens love you?”
“Please,” I snort. “Let’s find you some sunflower seeds so you can become their favorite human, too.”
The minute I pull out the bucket, the clucking grows louder. We each take a handful and I instruct Violet to be stingy with her love for a couple of minutes while I move the flexi-fence, post by post, to a fresh bit of the meadow. “Just watch where you step,” I say. “You don’t want chicken poo on those sandals.”
She has a fine time tossing seeds while I shift their habitat. And then we toss the rest, all at once, creating a feeding frenzy.
“Okay, fine,” she admits as we cross the grass toward the orchard. “So they’d like Genghis Khan if he had treats. Doesn’t make you any less lovable.”
“Thanks, babe.” I walk her past the cider house, toward the orchard.
“Look at all the little green apples! There must be millions of them. Is this a good year?”
“So far.” I mentally knock wood. “It’s been a little dry, but nice and sunny. It’s only July, though. A lot can go wrong before October. One bad hailstorm can ruin a whole crop. There are diseases. Pests. Any number of problems. At one point or another, we’ve had them all.”
Violet flips me a sideways glance. “And you wonder why I think you’re a pessimist.”
“Farming is literally the riskiest job in the world. There’s a reason I’m not going into the family business.”
“I just like to bust your balls. Besides—the sky is starting to look like the beginning of The Wizard of Oz.”
She isn’t wrong. Suddenly it’s as dark as a solar eclipse. “My mom said it was going to rain this afternoon.”
But Violet has already forgotten the weather. “Ooh! Look at the nice little moos!” She takes off at a trot toward the fenced area where the calve
s are kept. “So cute!"
I don’t explain that these are the last of the boys, and that they don’t have long to live. We give them a great few months on grass and milk. But then they’re off to the butcher, where they’ll become ethical veal on a restaurant menu.
There's a rumble of thunder, followed by a strong breeze that makes the grass whispery.
“Uh-oh,” Violet says, looking at the sky. And a calf bleats in agreement.
“I think we're about to get wet,” I say, just as the first fat drops begin to hit the earth around us. “Come on!”
Violet and I make a dash for the tractor shed. Raindrops pepper my still-damp hair. We just make it inside when a drenching shower begins to beat down onto the grass.
“Wow,” Violet says, twirling around in front of the open doors. “That’s impressive. Can I climb on the tractor?"
“Knock yourself out."
She steps up, seating herself on the Kubota. “This is my color." She pats the orange body. “Choosing a tractor to suit your skin tone is a totally rational thing, right?”
“Totally. Although you’d also look nice in John Deere green," I tease her.
She tosses her hair. “That’s my evening tractor.”
“Cool, cool. So where is this cabin your brother rented?" I have a vague memory of Violet mentioning a possible trip to Vermont. But I never expected her to surprise me.
"It's not far. It's really more of a house, at this place called Green Rocks.”
“Oh, I know where that is." It’s an enclave of summer rentals.
"Tomorrow he and his wife are going hiking with Dave and Zara. Can I hang out with you instead?"
"Sure you can. I’ll take a day off. You could stay here tonight, actually."
"Oh goody. Because I brought an overnight bag. Now I just have to call Leo and tell him I’m keeping his car. Dave will have to pick him up to go hiking. Oops!”
“Oops!” I laugh, feeling so grateful to her for showing up. “I’ve missed you terribly.” Violet graduated from Harkness in May, and got a job in New York. It won’t be easy to keep in touch from here on out.
“I miss you, too, babe!” Violet’s eyes practically glow with happiness. “And how unlike you to say so out loud. So it must be true.”
“Well, get used to it. I miss you so much that I'm not going back to Harkness because you’re not there anymore."
The smile falls off Violet's face. “You're not allowed to make that joke until you tell me the real reason you’re transferring.”
“I can’t,” I whisper. “It's complicated.”
“It’s Reardon's fault, right?” she growls. “I know it is.”
“But also mine,” I say firmly. “And I don't want anyone to know how stupid I was.”
“Come on. Like we haven’t all been there. I've got my share of stupid. My family would crap their collective pants if I told them all the scrapes I got into before graduation.”
That might even be true. But Violet never managed to upend her entire life like I have. And I won’t burden her with my ugly story. It would put her in a strange ethical position.
"I'll tell you what," she says. "I'll stop asking you about Reardon if you tell me something dishy about this tattooed hottie living in your house."
"Fine,” I say quickly. “He's a really good kisser."
“Omigod!” Violet's shriek echoes off the sides of the tractor shed. “When did this happen? Tell me everything."
I hesitate. That would honestly take weeks. Somehow the story of Rickie and me has become a twisty epic journey punctuated by strange encounters and intimate conversations.
“Oh wow,” she says, drawing her own conclusions about my silence. “You did the nasty with the bad boy hottie. Where? In a hay loft? Actually that sounds sneezy. On the bed of a pickup truck?”
There must be something wrong with me because both of those options sound dreamy. "Not quite," I say slowly. But we were getting there.”
“What stopped you?”
I think back to the slammed door and Rickie's reaction. Bad timing is a theme with us. "Actually, you’re the culprit," I tell Violet. "He and I were fooling around when you drove up the driveway."
Her jaw drops comically. “You’re. Joking.”
“I’m not.” I try to hold a serious expression, but my lips twitch, because Violet is so funny when she’s freaking out.
“Oh my God! Oh. My. God.” She covers her face with her hands. "I'm sorry. I thought it would be fun to surprise you.”
“It is fun.” I give her toe a gentle kick. “Stop with the dramatics. It’s fine. I'm sure we'll pick things up again another time.”
“You have to,” she says. “I can't be responsible for getting in between you and a great guy’s generously sized dick.”
“How do you know he's a great guy?”
She hoots. “So he is generously sized? You didn’t argue that part. And I already know he’s a great guy.”
“He’s definitely not Reardon,” I point out.
“That’s a good start. But honey, we learn from our mistakes. You wouldn’t be so caught up in Rickie if he was anything like Rear-end Halsey.”
“Wouldn't I?” This is my biggest problem of all. “I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t trust myself at all.”
“You should,” she says, swinging a leg over and hopping off the tractor. It’s still pouring outside, and the rain smells like fresh ideas and the color green. “Honestly, you made one mistake. Just one. And there’s something broken about that asshole, Daph. He’s not normal. I’ll bet he doesn’t even know anymore where the lines are, or when he’s crossed them.”
She isn’t wrong. But I fell for it anyway. I’d like to think it wouldn’t happen again.
But I’m still scared.
Twenty-Four
Rickie
I raise my head off the quilt. I hardly know what day it is, let alone the time. But I hear voices outdoors. They’re drifting in through the window, which is only opened a crack.
Waking up isn’t easy, especially when the afternoon’s disasters come back into sharp relief. After Daphne left my bedroom in a hurry, I’d locked the door and then sat down on the bed, burning up with humiliation. I discarded the condom I hadn’t needed. And when it began to rain, I closed the window most of the way and then fell into a dead sleep.
Now Thursday dinner is underway, and I’m still only halfway conscious.
Shit.
I rise and take a little care getting dressed. I put on a nice linen shirt and my best pair of shorts. In Vermont, that’s practically black tie. I brush my teeth and tame my slept-on hair.
And when I look in the mirror, I’m startled by how sharp the guy looking back at me appears. I mean, I’m a good-looking man. That’s a given. But the guy in the mirror looks solid. When in truth, I feel like a hot mess.
This afternoon, a door slammed, and I’d practically lost my mind. Who does that?
I grab my flip-flops and descend the stairs toward the laughter and the voices. When I exit the kitchen door, I see that I haven't even missed dinner. A very long dining table has been arranged in the grass. It’s set with real dishes and silverware. Running down the center are a parade of mason jars. In every other one are flowers from the garden that I’ve helped weed. And there are candles in the alternating jars, burning where the wind can’t knock them out.
A dozen or so people stand around on the grass, drinks in hand. The rain showers have knocked a lot of the humidity out of the air, so it's a beautiful night for an outdoor dinner party.
And I feel nothing. Like I fell asleep and never fully woke up. Like I forgot how to feel alive.
“Hey, there he is.” Dylan taps a frisbee against his thigh. “What happened to you this afternoon?”
“I took a nap, and it almost killed me.” I cross to where he’s standing. Nearby, Chastity is chatting with Daphne’s cousin and the cousin’s boyfriend—the guys we saw at the noodle shop.
“Want a beer?�
�
“Of course.” Dylan fetches one from a metal tub full of ice, and opens the top with a church key in his pocket. “Thanks.” When I close my hand around the bottle, the sensation of the icy glass against my palm is the first sign that I might eventually be alive.
I take a refreshing sip as my gaze wanders around the lawn of its own volition. But I don't see Daphne anywhere. What the hell must she be thinking right now? I came at her like a beast today. I talked a good game. And then I got spooked, and couldn’t close the deal.
My face heats at the memory of jumping away from her on the bed, like I’d just been tasered. Then I collapsed on the bed, panic crushing my chest. I was instantly clammy, as if someone had drained all the life out of my body. My heart had raced so fast that it honestly felt dangerous. All I could do was lie on the bed and try to remember how to breathe.
“So what did you guys do today?” Dylan asks. “You and Daphne.”
“Why?” I bark.
Dylan shrugs. “Chastity and I came in after the rain, and there was nobody at home. Those pies were just sitting there on the table, you know? I feel like I deserve some recognition for not sampling.”
I make a shocked face. “Hands off my pies. Who knew those took so much work? And I’m no good at rolling them out, so your sister literally pried the rolling pin out of my hands and forbid me to touch the crust.”
“Daphne? Nah.” Dylan snickers.
“Then your mom took your grandfather to some event in town. And the wind was kicking up, so it didn’t look like a good gardening day. So we were going to have sex but then we said nah.”
Dylan snorts then shakes his head, just like I knew he would. “I know you say these things to freak me out, but it doesn't really work on me. You’ll have to try Griffin.”
“Good to know.” I swig my beer. “Actually, it started raining, and then I turned into Rip Van Winkle. What did you do all day?”