by Penny Wylder
You can’t exactly say wake up and smell the country-baked bread, Sasha, you’re not meant for city life. You can’t exactly tell somebody that they’re glowing in a way they weren’t just days ago. You can’t tell someone what to do in their life, even when you know what’s right for them, when you know they’d be happier if they listened to you.
You can’t, because that’s up to them. They need to figure out their own lives. Make their own calls.
Even if it kills you to watch.
“Lunch?” Sasha calls from the house, and I dust off my palms, glance over my shoulder at her. She’s still wearing those jean shorts. She loves how wild they drive me. Loves positioning herself right in front of me to work, so I’m stuck staring at that juicy, pert little ass until I can’t take it anymore and I give up on work and go to peel those jean shorts off.
But I shake off that urge right now. I’m too annoyed after this morning.
“I’m good,” I call, and turn back to the fence. I figure that’ll be the end of it until I hear the now familiar sound of bare feet padding across the grass.
“What’s up with you?” a voice asks at my elbow. I’ve come to recognize that tone of hers by now. The exasperated one. The one she turns on when I don’t want to talk—but she does.
“Don’t know what you mean,” I reply, hefting the post holer into position and stomping it into the muddy grass. It’s shocking how fast the holes left by the fallen posts of this fence filled up. Nature has a way of claiming anything left alone long enough. And God knows this poor farm was left to its own devices for far too long.
Thanks to Sasha, I remind myself. Thanks to the runaway daughter nobody ever thought we’d see around here again. Thanks to the runaway I’m being idiotic enough to start falling for.
No. I’m not falling. I’m just… Enjoying this ride.
“You’ve been weird all day,” she says. “You skipped breakfast, you don’t want lunch either?”
“I’m not hungry.” I draw up the holer and squint down into the hole its left behind in the ground. A perfect square-peg hole, just big enough for the new fence post. Looks deep enough, too, at last, so I bend down to pick up the post and start to position it in the hole.
“You aren’t talking to me either.” She crosses her arms and bends into my field of view while I fiddle with the fence. Her foot starts tapping, in a nervous, energetic way that frays my already spent nerves.
“I’m a bit busy,” I point out. But she’s clearly not going to let this drop, so I straighten and wipe my sweaty hair back from my brow, squinting at her in the midday sun. The fence is almost finished. Two more posts, then I just need to finish stringing the wire along it, and it’s ready.
The house is looking miles better too. The roof is done. The gardens are weeded and re-seeded with attractive plants. The front gate has been oiled and straightened on its hinges. The electrical wiring has been finished inside, the rooms all repainted, cleaned and tidied. It’s still not a state-of-the-art modern cabin, but it was never going to be that.
It’s back to what it always was, at least. Cozy. Comfortable. Neat. A real home. The kind of home someone could live in.
The kind of home I feel like we’ve been living in for the past week. We haven’t really, I know. We’re just guests. But… It doesn’t feel like that. Not while I’m right here in the middle of it.
None of this feels temporary. Not even the way Sasha is glaring at me right now, head cocked, those shrewd green eyes of hers flashing. She knows that something’s bothering me, and she’s not going to let up about it—like anyone in a relationship wouldn’t.
Except this isn’t a relationship. She’s about to turn tail and run, in less than two days, as soon as we officially declare this farm ready for sale.
“Seriously, Grant,” she says, and I can’t help it. I relent a little, relax at the sound of my name on her perfect, smooth, so-fucking-kissable lips. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
“Farm’s looking great,” I say instead, squinting past her at the fields. We haven’t gotten around to seeding those yet, but we’ve tilled them. They’re almost in workable order. Too late in the season for any produce this year, but next spring they’ll be ripe for the planting. For whatever lucky owner wants to come and try their luck at growing anything out here.
A frown line appears on her brow. But she follows my gaze nonetheless, and studies the place alongside me. “We’ll be finished by tomorrow or the next day, don’t you think?” she agrees softly.
“Easily. Maybe sooner if we hustle on the fence and the back garden.”
Now it’s her turn to sigh and run her hands through her hair. She stretches, and I can’t help it—my gaze drops to trace her curves. The tug of her breasts under her tight T-shirt, the way her flat belly peeks out between the hem of that shirt and the edge of her tiny, sexy little jean shorts.
“I never thought it would look this good this fast,” she admits, her voice low. “When I first pulled up here…” She laughs and shakes her head a little.
I smirk. “You were very concerned, I seem to recall. About the fence, the house, the tire swing…”
She snorts. “Well. There’s one thing we still need to fix. That tire swing is definitely a death-trap.”
“I don’t know about that,” I counter, raising an eyebrow. “It always was sturdy.” There it is again. The reminder that she doesn’t even remember. The two of us taking turns on that swing, me pushing her so high she screamed. Her trying and failing to push me hard enough to get any momentum at all. Us standing on opposite sides, winding it up and letting go so it spun, and pulled us apart, both of us shrieking, hanging onto the rope for dear life as it spun.
“I bet we’ll get a lot more than you first expected,” Sasha says, eyes still on the property. Because of course. That’s all she sees in this place. Future money. A burden to offload on someone else.
“I’d reckon so,” I reply, my tone carefully, painfully neutral.
“What do you plan to do with your share?” she asks, head tilted. Oblivious to what she’s doing. To how I’m feeling.
“Don’t know.”
She turns to look at me at last, frowning, head tilted in concern. “You don’t know? It’ll be a decent chunk of money. You must have some plans for it.”
I wanted this farm. I wanted to be the one to take it, turn it back into what it used to be in its heyday. Or at least turn enough profit to keep going, to build a life here. A life for me, and…
It doesn’t matter.
“You know me. I’m just a simple country man,” I mutter. “Don’t have any big lofty plans in life.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Sasha protests. “I just meant… Surely you were thinking about… after…”
“Probably not as much as you. I’m sure you can’t wait to get on home to your fancy new life. This all must seem way too simple for you. Boring and slow, just like all us townie folks.”
“Grant, what—”
“That’s fine, Sasha. You like what you like. You always have. You’re exactly the same girl you used to be.”
Her frown deepens now, creasing her forehead. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t even remember. That’s the worst part. How can you be mad at someone for something they don’t even remember doing?” I laugh and run my hand through my hair again. Then I tighten it into a fist, grimace, tug at my hair as I spin back toward the house.
“Of course I remember,” she spits as she steps in my way, barring my path.
That throws me.
My brow furrows.
“I remember everything, Grant Werther. You’re the one who didn’t. You forgot that of course I know how to handle a hammer and climb a ladder—we built a whole tree house together. You forgot that we used to be friends before you got all high and mighty in high school, running with the jocks. You even forgot me—when I got here all you talked about was my mama and me leaving town. Like you didn’t even remember those summ
ers.”
I’m staring at her, wide-eyed. She never said…
She shoves past me, shoulder colliding with mine. “But you’re right,” she says, angrily. “I can’t wait to get home to my fancy life. Where I matter, where people give a damn about me.”
She storms past me into the house.
It’s too much. “Fine,” I call after her. “Then you can go on back now, Sasha. I’ll take care of the rest of this. Sell your share for you, and mail you the check. That’s all you really want, isn’t it? Go on home and leave the dirty work to me.”
I don’t look back to see if that blow landed. I don’t stop walking until I’m at the back door of the house, wrenching it open, storming inside. I can’t stand to look at her anymore. Those too-familiar green eyes, her face fallen in a sad expression. I can’t take it.
She knew. All along she knew. She thought I didn’t. What does that mean now?
It doesn’t matter. She made clear just now what she intends to do about this—about us. I’m nothing more than a passing nostalgic fling to her. She’s on her way back to the big city, and this time, I’ll need to really forget about her, if I ever want to move on with my life.
11
Sasha Bluebell
I stalk away across the fields, his words echoing through my mind.
You’re exactly the same girl you used to be.
He acted like he didn’t even recognize me. He lied. Pretended I was nothing more than some stranger whose property he owned half of, when all the time he knew everything. Now he expects me to, what? Suddenly feel nostalgic about him, this life, this place?
The fact that I do, a bit, isn’t the point.
The girl who grew up here alongside Grant Werther is a completely different person. A past life. I’ve got a whole life waiting for me back home in the city, one I built myself. I don’t need him or anyone.
You’re exactly the same girl you used to be, he said. How can I be? I’ve run as far from her as I possibly can.
I pace along the fence he’s been rebuilding. This part of the work he’s done almost entirely himself. I reach out to run a hand along the wire that makes up most of the fence. My fingers dance across the wooden posts every few feet, tracing the rough material. A splinter pricks my finger at one point, and I draw it out with a sigh, dropping the pesky little sliver of wood to the grass at my feet.
Wish I could deal with all my problems that easily. Pluck them out and let them fall to the mud.
But this one, especially, is going to be hard to rid myself of.
So I try to do the one thing I really don’t want to do.
I try to remember.
I start with the house itself. I have good memories there. Playing underfoot in the kitchen while Mama cooked. Running in and out of the living room, to… I grimace, rub my temples. But I force myself to relive that memory. Running in there to find Dad with a newspaper. Leaping onto the couch beside him, tugging at the paper. Making him sigh with exasperation, but then reach for me anyway, tug me onto his lap and ruffle my hair. He’d sit with me, let me read the paper with him, ignoring my childish attempts at pronouncing the big words in the news he always read.
Dad had wanderlust, Mama always said. He traveled for work at first, just weeklong trips here and there. I always cried when he left, but he never looked sad. He only looked sad when he came back.
That’s what made him run in the end, she told me. He couldn’t stand this life. Too country, too provincial. Too small.
He was never mean to us. Never seemed to hate us. Just… when he finally ran, his conscience didn’t let him look back. He used to send me a letter once a year, on my birthday. They’d be filled with a whole lot of nothing. Just platitudes. “Miss you, hope you’re doing well, thinking about you today.” No details about where he was, what he was doing. Why he left.
On my sixteenth birthday, the letters stopped coming.
On my eighteenth birthday, when I left for college, I burned the ones I had saved. I didn’t need that reminder. No more than I needed him.
But I only ended up doing the same thing he did, I realize. I ran too, I left Mama behind to deal with it all herself. I wrote off this whole town because of him.
No wonder people hate me now that I’m finally back. They look at me and see my father. They see another runaway. Another person who abandoned them for something bigger without a backward glance.
I look up, surprised to find the fence has ended. I’ve circled all the way around to the front of the house without realizing, and now my feet, almost by habit, have led me away from the fence line. Toward the big tree out front, the one I first noticed when I pulled up. The one some part of me remembered, even when my conscious mind didn’t want to.
The tire swing is still hanging from its thick lower branch. Up close, I can see that the rope doesn’t look damaged at all. It’s grimy, dirty from all these years out in the weather. But it’s thick and steady as ever, and the tire dangling from it looks exactly the same way it did years ago when I took my last spin on it.
I can see it now. Me and Grant. He still scrawny, but starting to get taller, leaner. Starting to have that athletic build that would eventually turn into every muscle a guy can possibly have.
Back then, we’d play tag across this front field, barefoot. Chasing a couple of the neighbor kids, having them turn around and chase me in return whenever I managed to catch one of them.
Grant would always grin when he caught me, apologize through that gap in his front teeth, a gap that’s long since vanished now.
I remember the way I used to catch him stealing peeks at me whenever we’d sit down around the dining room table in the kitchen for lunch. Mama would be out back eating with the grown-ups, his parents, and other kids’ parents. They’d leave us to our own devices, and we’d shoot eyes at one another, elbow each other for taking the last slice of bread, eating the last helping of stew.
I remember later on. When we were older, maybe at the start of high school. Just before he made friends with the jocks. Before that group of kids all drifted apart, before we made other friends, forgot about each other. I remember him pushing me on the tire swing out front, the way I’d scream higher, then shriek with fear, delight, some mix of it all.
I remember the two of us standing opposite one another on that same tire swing. Pushing it around and around until the rope was wound up tight. Then standing up at the same time, letting go, so it spun as fast as it could. We’d hang onto that rope, our hands touching, both of us shrieking. But our eyes were locked the whole time, like we couldn’t get enough of that feeling. That adrenaline rush, and… each other.
I used to wonder if he wanted to kiss me. I used to think about it. I even almost kissed him, once. But Mama came out, called me home, and I let the moment pass.
I let Grant Werther go.
My feet lead me across the yard, until I find myself standing below the tree. I circle the tire swing, taking it in. I tug on it once to test its weight, and I’m surprised to find that Grant’s right. It is sturdy. Maybe even as sturdy now as the day my father first strung it up.
That’s why I never think about this. About any of it. It hurts too much to think about anything right after Dad’s leaving. But it’s been here all along, at the back of my mind, tugging at my subconscious.
My memories of Grant are all tangled up with Dad leaving, with heartache and pain. But still, I never forgot him. Still, I knew him again the moment I saw him. I’m still the girl I used to be—and he’s still the boy he was too. My brain was trying to remind me, trying to show me what I so desperately wanted to forget.
I walk past the tire swing, letting it drift back and forth on its rope as I approach the tree trunk instead.
Sure enough, I find it on the first try. The set of initials carved one on top of the other. Almost like the initials kids would carve later, in high school, with their sweethearts. We hadn’t dared to put a heart around it back then. Neither of us wanted to admit we liked each
other. That would be putting ourselves at risk, going too far out on a limb. We just circled it, flirted, made eyes at one another the way kids do, without ever taking it farther.
But I remember. I remember lying on the grass out here with him late one night, before sophomore year of high school started, before he made it onto varsity track and drifted away, started hanging out with the athletes, the hot girls, the cool kids. Before I lost him—before I pushed him away so far that he couldn’t help but let himself get lost.
I wanted to kiss him. I wanted more. I never had the nerve.
I reach out and brush the tree trunk.
SB
GW
Right there in front of me. The evidence I’d been looking for all along. Grant and I used to be close.
But he abandoned me first. He started hanging with another crowd, stopped coming over to the farm. He never kissed me. That’s the part that really rankles. He never took this chance when he had it.
Then I came back, gave him another chance all over again, and he got angry.
Angry because he thought I forgot him. He believed the same thing I did. I thought he forgot, he thought I forgot…
No wonder he’s pissed, I realize. It’s the same reason I was so angry at first.
Suddenly, it all makes sense. A little too much sense, and it makes my skin itch, to know that I’ve hurt him, too.
I trace my fingers across those initials, over and over.
Deep down, I’d always believed Dad was right about this town. This place is a waste, I remember him shouting at Mama, late at night after they both thought I was in bed. The year before he left. The year he traveled all the time, tried not to come home at all if he could help it. The year he spent trying to talk Mama into leaving with him. But she wouldn’t budge.
This is my home, she said. I like this life.
I can’t stand it, he’d always say. How can you live like this, cooped up? Trapped? There’s a whole world out there. Opportunities! We could make so much more money doing the same thing we do in a bigger city, out in the Midwest…