Weekends in Carolina

by Jennifer Lohmann

  Trey smiled, knowing where this was going.

  “‘It’s barbecue,’ the waitress replied. I pressed her to tell me what kind of meat it was and she kept telling me it was barbecue, like I was dumb or something.”

  “A reasonable assumption on the part of the waitress,” Trey said. “The rest of the South can smoke what it likes, but barbecue in North Carolina is always pork.”

  “I should’ve made not teasing me part of the deal.” Max wrinkled her nose at him, but she was smiling. “This back-and-forth went on forever. Now that I’m older I can see that my grandfather’s grimace was him trying not to bust a gut laughing, but at the time I was just frustrated. The waitress wouldn’t answer my question and Grandpa finally told me it was pork about the time I was ready to walk out. Or when the waitress was going to kick me out. One or the other.”

  “On behalf of mah state—” Trey put on his fine Southern gentleman accent “—may ah say how delighted we are that you gave us a second chance.”

  “Now you’re just being ridiculous.” She made an exaggerated motion of wiping her hands on her paper napkin. “Is there dessert?”

  “There’s banana pudding. If you can wait just a minute for me to finish my last cold hush puppy.” Trey popped the fried ball of cornmeal into his mouth, then stood. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

  Trey blinked several times when he passed the muted TV. The game was nearly at halftime and he hadn’t looked away from Max once to see the score.

  * * *

  THIS TIME, WHEN Trey offered to walk her and Ashes across the yard to the barn, Max didn’t object. She’d planned on him walking her to her door, actually. Worn a low-cut T-shirt, donned her most flattering pair of jeans and put on lip gloss in the hopes that he would notice. His eyes had warmed when she’d taken off her coat, so she was pretty sure he’d taken a peek. He was leaving tomorrow morning and that was all the more reason for her to take a chance on him tonight. When they reached her door she let Ashes in then stood on her porch with Trey.

  “I imagine you’ll be working when I leave tomorrow.” He was looking at her lips when he said the words.

  Taking a step closer to him seemed like a good first move. Give him a chance to make a second move without the risk of two different sets of expectations bumping into one another. “I work a little on Saturdays, but I’ll be around. You should come find me.”

  Their two evenings spent watching basketball and eating dinner together had been fun. When he let go of his anger, Trey managed to walk the line between serious and goofy without falling into the abyss on either side. She didn’t want him to come find her tomorrow morning; she wanted him to be next to her when she woke up. Just this once.

  He shrugged, not taking his eyes off her lips—and he didn’t take a step back when she took another step closer. “It will be a pleasure being your landlord.”

  She cocked her head. The cold air between them warmed with their shared breath and there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen for them both. Would he be okay with kissing his tenant? Would communication between them be awkward if they spent the night together? God, what if he thought she wanted something else out of this night besides good sex?

  What if I do want something else out of Trey? That last thought was stupid. He was leaving in the morning and wouldn’t come back to North Carolina unless forced.

  “Well, good night, Max.” When she pulled herself out of her thoughts, she could see he’d stuck his hand out for her to shake. “I hope to see you tomorrow before I leave.”

  She blinked, wondering when her expectations and her reality had gotten so far out of whack. She was supposed to have reached up to kiss him, not stuck out her hand for a solid shake. She took his hand in hers, because really, what else was there to do? “I’ll try to stay near the farmhouse to say goodbye.”

  “All right, then.” He nodded.

  Would that goodbye be as awkward as this one, or would the sunlight enable her to see how silly her expectations had been? More likely, she would go over every detail of the night and wonder if she could have been more forward in what she wanted. Or maybe he just wasn’t interested—wasn’t that a lowering thought?

  Trey cleared his throat. She’d been standing there holding his hand for who knows how long. Long enough for their hands to get warm together. “Thanks for dinner,” she said, reaching up to press a kiss to his cheek. What she’d intended to be a light kiss turned deeper when he pressed his cheek against her lips before pulling away.

  “Good night.” Without even a backward glance, Trey marched down the stairs and back to the farmhouse. She must have imagined him leaning into her lips.

  Max stood at the door for several seconds, cursing herself. She’d dolled herself up and all but puckered her lips for a kiss. But she had to go and think too much until she’d darn near talked herself out of making a move, and she’d sure as hell communicated “go away” before kissing him on the cheek, passing the mixed messages she was getting from her head onto his face.

  “Ashes,” she said as she shut the door, “why do I have to think so damn much?”

  * * *

  IN THE END, it didn’t matter if Max stayed close to the farmhouse to say goodbye. She may have been up with the chickens to get started on farm chores, but he’d been awake with the owls. Whatever time he’d packed up his stuff and driven off, she’d been fast asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TREY WAS SITTING at his desk in his office, trying to down enough coffee to transition from low-key farm life to the rush of Washington politics when his phone dinged. His personal email account had received a new message, subject heading “Max’s Vegetable Patch, in full bloom.” He put down his pimento cheese sandwich to read it.

  Trey,

  I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye and to thank you for the two dinners. I’d thank you for the basketball, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. So thank you for the blinking lights and buzzer noises. I’m sure Hank’s TV will be lonely without him, but I will try to give it some company after I move into the farmhouse. Maybe I can leave it on to keep Ashes company, especially once he retires.

  I sense you will be more of an absentee landlord than Hank was, but I don’t want you to miss out on the beauty of the farm. Kelly took this picture last summer. Know that the land will be productive and make people happy.

  Sincerely,

  Max

  Trey stared at the link to the attachment, grateful Max hadn’t called him a coward for scurrying out of the farmhouse in the middle of the night like a rat with the raccoons laughing and pointing at him. He had called himself a coward.

  Standing there on her front porch, with the light from her cabin igniting her hair from behind, Max had been tempting. She’d stepped closer to him several times, even lifted her chin to look at him. The cool green of her eyes had looked dark—hot—in the dim light of the porch. Her lips against his cheek had been chapped from her work spent outside. He had wanted to press his entire self into the solid wildness she represented. He could have kissed her. He could have kissed her, wrapped his hands around her waist and stepped forward. She would have stepped back into the barn and he would have woken up the next morning knowing how it felt to be next to her soft, warm body in bed.

  On the drive home, he’d thought about each and every step he could have made into her barn and up her stairs. Lived every moment that hadn’t happened. Counted the freckles he had never seen at the soft indentation just under her hip bone, which he’d also never seen.

  His mouse hovered over the link to the attachment, switching from hand to arrow to hand to arrow in concert with his indecision. Sex with Max would have been easy. Life after would have been hard. Nearly impossible. For all that Max had been offering herself freely, the land would demand. Unlike the tub of pimento cheese, neither Max nor the land could be packed
up and brought back to his apartment in D.C.

  Bravery was easier while in his office. Here the land’s claims on him were paper shackles. He clicked the link. At the edge of the picture that popped up on his screen, Max had just finished putting something into the bed of her truck. Her arms were still reaching down but her face was up and laughing at the camera. A floppy straw hat covered her eyes and purple zinc covered her nose, but her white teeth were shining against her sun-darkened freckles. Behind her was the whole of the farm, in all of its summer glory. The camera wasn’t close enough for him to see what all was growing, but everything was a lush, bountiful green. And it looked nothing like the wasteland his father had overseen. But he could see the farmhouse in the background with its peeling paint.

  He looked back to Max smiling at the side of the photo. Neither her ponytail nor her hat could fully contain the wild curls that framed her face in a mass of orange. Snow was beginning to fall outside his office window and traffic in D.C. would be a nightmare in an hour or so, but Max and her smile and her hair was like coming across a persimmon tree with its tomato-looking fruit shining through the bare winter branches.

  Trey closed the photo and the email, then went back to his work, ignoring his sandwich for more coffee.

  * * *

  “MAX,” TINA, HER stepmom, said into the phone, “your dad just walked in the door. Do you want to talk to him?”

  Tina didn’t wait for an answer, just hollered “Nick,” into the house somewhere.

  “Hi, Patches,” her dad said into the phone, using the name only he called her. “How’s the farm?”

  “Big money for easy work,” she said. Her dad had responded to questions about the farm with those words for as long as Max could remember and, somewhere along the way, she’d picked up the habit when on the phone with him. All their conversations, phone or otherwise, started off this way.

  “You met the new owner yet?”

  “Yes, Trey was down for the funeral and to pack up his dad’s things. He’ll be an absentee landlord.” She didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

  “Farming is hard work. It’d be nicer if you were nearby, Patches.” In his voice she heard the wistfulness he’d never express in words.

  Max’s decision to set out on her own for a vegetable farm in North Carolina had hit her father hard. He had been certain Max and her brother Harmon would take over the farm together—right up until she’d packed her bags, Max had been certain the Illinois farm was in her future. Like her father, she’d thought the summers spent interning at vegetable farms were a small rebellion, that she’d tire of it and move back home.

  Then her brother had graduated from college and her mom had announced she wasn’t living in the Midwest any longer, but was moving back to Asheville, North Carolina. Her dad seemed to think Max had chosen her mother over him. Sometimes Max wondered if he was right.

  “I know. The Triangle is a good location to be a small farmer, though—much better than near you. Lots of support down here. Lots of interest in local ingredients. Another few years and I’ll even feel good about buying the farm.”

  “Farming isn’t always about feeling good. Sometimes you just have to go to the bank with your hat in hand and hope for the best.”

  Max couldn’t imagine her father ever following the advice he’d just given her. The problem was he just didn’t understand the choices she’d made. He couldn’t imagine why someone would roll back one hundred years of farming technology for a tomato too ugly to sell to a supermarket. It wasn’t her work ethic he questioned but her sense.

  One Christmas she’d teased her father that she was the natural hybrid of a Midwestern farmer cross-pollinated with an Appalachian hippie. Her father had responded with a grunt. When she’d told her mother the joke, her mother had laughed until she’d cried.

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ve got my goals all planned out.”

  When her father didn’t know what else to say, he grunted. Max interpreted this grunt as “Of course I’ll worry. I’m your father,” but she didn’t press him. A quick conversation with her brother and she was off the phone to make her dinner. Max had only been cooking in her real farmhouse kitchen for a couple nights and she still got a kick out of using as many pots as possible, if only because she had counter space to put them on. She thought about having a beer while she cooked but, in deference to Hank’s memory, got out a can of pop instead.

  * * *

  TREY WATCHED THE senator’s golf ball sail into the trees. “That was a powerful swing, sir.” Some men in power wanted to hear about the world as it was. Some about the world as it could be. This particular senator wanted to hear about his successes and never his failures. He also claimed to be undecided on the bill Trey was lobbying for, so Trey would compliment the man’s golf swing if his ball landed in China.

  Even if the words left an oily taste in his mouth.

  A Sunday spent golfing with senators and congressmen was work. As were the drinks he’d had with staffers from another senator’s office who were writing a bill that Trey wanted a hand in. And the lunch he had planned for tomorrow. He shouldn’t have to remind himself that he was helping to make legislation for his country. He’d come to D.C. after college to shape policy decisions and was more influential as a lobbyist than he’d been as a Capitol Hill staffer. The work he did was important.

  Trey walked up to the tee, arranged his shoulders and aimed the ball to the trees, coming just short of the tree line. He had some pride after all. “Must be the wind, Senator. Ball’s just not going where it should.”

  There was not enough Scotch in Scotland to make the ass kissing feel good, education bill or no education bill. The snow from the previous week had melted and the groundskeepers must have a top-secret chemical in their arsenal because the grass was green, even in February. Mother Nature’s seasons had no place on the golf course.

  Together they climbed into their cart and rode off to the trees. The senator liked to drive. Trey was playing caddy—all part of the sycophant role he was starring in today.

  “I heard your father died,” the senator said. “A shame. You have my sympathies.”

  Trey had received flowers from the senator’s wife after the death of his father. She must have told him. “Thank you.”

  “I hear he was a good man.”

  Even though the senator had heard no such thing, another day Trey might have agreed with the senator because he wanted his vote. “He was the reason I got into politics.” A dodge was the best he could muster today.

  The sun was bright and shining overhead, though the cold was crisp. They couldn’t ask for a better February day to be outside playing golf. The senator was in a good mood. Trey could get a commitment on the vote today if he played his cards right.

  “My dad owned a small farm. I inherited it.”

  “What are you going to do with the farm now?”

  A vision of hair blowing wildly in the wind flashed through his mind. Max was probably also working today. She’d be outside, but instead of tromping on grass made green through fertilizer and water, she was probably tilling—or something. Trey was fuzzy on the details of what she did in the fields, but whatever it was, she had turned his father’s wasted land into a productive thing of beauty.

  “I don’t know,” Trey said, wanting to go back and despising himself for the weakness.

  “Sell it,” the senator said. “Durham County, North Carolina. Is that right?”

  “Yes. It was once a tobacco farm.” He didn’t want to say what it was now. Didn’t want to sully the image of Max’s lushness by letting the senator know she existed.

  The senator’s club banged against the others as he pulled it out of the bag. He was good at show but failed at substance. His wife was the political brains in the family and if they’d been of a different generation, she would be the senato
r.

  “A friend of mine is doing developments all around that area of North Carolina. Luxury houses on large plots of land. He’s always in the market for good acreage.”

  Visions of Max competed with memories of piles of crushed beer cans and the smell of his father after a bender. The lines in his mother’s worn face growing deeper and deeper when she came home from work every day. The rot in the wood of the front porch that spread through the family living in the house. The fights and the taunts and the stench of country poverty made worse by a man who couldn’t get out of his own family’s way.

  Selling the land would make wanting to go back meaningless. Impossible. Max wouldn’t come out of the front door to welcome him. She wouldn’t offer him a bed or breakfast. The farm and all of its memories could finally be erased from his mind.

  “Have him call and make me an offer.”

  Trey barely managed to lose the golf game. His heart wasn’t in it, and the senator was a poor enough player Trey had to work at each and every stroke that went awry. But between losing the golf game and selling Max’s love out from under her, he had the senator’s vote.

  When Trey got back to his apartment, he stood under his showerhead until evolution granted him gills.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAX HEARD ASHES barking as she walked from the greenhouse to the farmhouse for lunch. He’d always barked at a ringing phone, and the ring seemed to escape his increasing deafness.

  “Hello?”

  “Max, it’s Trey.”

  “Oh. Hi. How are you?”

  “Fine.” Even over the phone she could hear the tightness in his voice, the kind of tone people used when they delivered bad news. She couldn’t imagine what bad news he could be the messenger for, but she sat down anyway.