Ididn’t speak to Dan the entire ride to Green Acres. There was a ten-minute awkward ride from Terry’s Auto Body shop to the church to pick up Dan’s truck, during which Terry, not picking up on the somber vibe between Dan and me, chattered the entire way.
Dan insisted on opening the passenger door of the truck and helping me climb in, despite my silent protests, and I wasn’t sure if he was doing it out of kindness or to make me feel more helpless. He certainly wasn’t enjoying himself. He looked the same way my cousins and I looked as kids when being forced to do Saturday-morning chores. Was I his chore? Something else attached to the farm that he had to take care of.
I dug into the manila envelope the lawyer handed me to retrieve the keys to the house, but Dan surprised me by using his own key. I thought it was odd, but then again, I didn’t know anything about running a farm. Maybe farm managers had to have the key to everything.
The living room was large and homey-looking, with mismatchedfurniture that worked perfectly together. The walls and shelves were lined with pictures. I found a faded color photo of my mother, sitting on what must have been her grandfather’s lap while he was driving a tractor. She looked like she was about ten. There was a candid photo of my parents on their wedding day. Next to a photo of my grandfather on a Jet Ski was a photograph of two little brown-skinned girls in identical dresses with identical ponytails. One was taller than the other. It was me and my older sister, Annie. I barely had any memories of her, just occasional flashes. My mother barely spoke about her and there certainly weren’t any pictures like this on display in the house I’d grown up in. I was hugging the picture to my chest when Dan’s voice startled me.
“The kitchen is this way,” he whispered. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
I followed Dan and sat at the table. I gazed around the room, which was large for a typical kitchen—twice the size of the one at my condo—but for some reason, it felt small. A flash of memory hit me:
I was sitting at this table with my older sister, Annie. My grandmother asked us how many pancakes we wanted, and Annie said, “One million!”
My grandfather answered, “One million pancakes. Coming right up!” making us squeal with laughter. Bright sunlight was streaming through the windows and a song by Marvin Gaye was blaring through the kitchen while my grandparents shimmied around the room.
“All right, Emma?” Dan’s voice broke me out of my daydream. It was night again. The kitchen was dull and darker. There was no music playing. Annie and my grandparents were gone. “Emma?” he repeated. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I nodded. I wrapped my hands around a steaming mug that Dan must have placed in front of me when I wasn’t paying attention. “What is this?”
“It’s tea.” He turned back to the counter where he was busy doing something, but I had no idea what. He’d taken off his jacket and placed it on the back of a chair before rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, showcasing muscular forearms dusted with hair. Dan was broad shouldered, with back muscles that flexed and rippled as he made his way around the kitchen. He opened and closed cabinets, followed by the rhythmic chopping of a knife on a wooden cutting board. I felt like I was watching a sacred ritual. A low, melodic sound floated around the kitchen, and I realized that Dan was humming while he was cooking. His hips slowly swayed to the rhythm as I watched him—hypnotized—my mind straying to places that a woman with a long-term boyfriend shouldn’t go. I slowly brought the mug of warm liquid to my lips. It was unlike any tea I’d ever had before and I wanted to ask Dan the name of the brand, but watching him weave his way around the kitchen was too distracting.
I was trying to focus on something besides Dan’s hips when I was startled by the feeling of something small, hard, and slimy on my tongue. A squeal of surprise left my mouth as I almost dropped my teacup and struggled to spit out whatever I’d inadvertently ingested.
“What’s wrong?” Dan yelled, and within an instant, he was leaning over me with his hand on my back, his face a mask of concern.
After using a finger to scrape the foreign object off my tongue, I held it up to the light for inspection, hoping to God that it wasn’t an insect.
It was a tea leaf.
My face heated with embarrassment. In my defense, it was a huge tea leaf. When I glanced at Dan, he was stifling a smile.
“I think you’ll live.” His hand smoothed its way up my back as he stood to return to the stove, and I wondered if he’d meant to do it. I wondered why it felt so good.
“Why is there a tea leaf in my mug anyway?” I retorted, knowing that I wasn’t making a good argument.
“Since tea leaves are a vital component of making tea, finding the odd tea leaf in your mug is inevitable.” He smirked again. “Is this your first pot of tea?”
“No,” I answered quickly. “I just… I don’t usually drink tea. I’m more of a coffee person.”
“Ah.” He nodded.
“And I usually have tea with a teabag. It’s this handy invention that keeps the tea leaves out of your drink.”
The kitchen got quiet. The shuffling noises of Dan working behind me stopped, making me turn to face him.
“Tea bag?” he asked in a scandalized voice. “No. In this house, we drink real tea, properly prepared.”
“Yeah, I saw the way youproperly preparedthe tea.” I mimicked his accent, remarking on the way he carefully measured the leaves from the tin with a spoon and filled the pot with a little bit of steaming water from the kettle before filling it the rest of the way. “It seems way more time-consuming than just heating up a mug of water in the microwave and sticking a tea bag in it.”
“Microwave?” he exclaimed, even more upset than he was about the tea bag. He shook his head.
“What’s wrong with the microwave?”
“I’m making you another pot of tea.” He grabbed the kettle off the stovetop and refilled it. “Once you’ve finished it, you won’t ever go back tomicrowaved tea bags.” He mimicked my voice… poorly. I stifled a smile.
Unfortunately for Dan, he didn’t know that I was so hopeless in the kitchen that premeasured and microwaved foods were a matter of survival for me. Still, after having a day from hell, being catered to—and playfully teased—by a handsome and friendly stranger who knew his way around the kitchen wasn’t the most unwelcome feeling.
I’d let myself enjoy it for a little longer.
