The utility kitchen leads to the actual kitchen, which is smaller and less industrial-looking. We take off our shoes in the mud room in between, and I show her all the basics: the pantry that is heavy on orange marmalade, the living room with thebrick fireplace and the black-and-white photos of early days at Eckhart Groves, the old floral rugs my grandpa can’t part with because they were Grandma’s favorites, and the antiques in the entryway.
Upstairs, I take her straight to the deck.
Thick, leafy green stripes stretch out before us, hills hazy in the distance.
“It’s like a zen garden,” Harmony says. “The clean lines, the repeating pattern. It’s … calming.”
“That’s a really good way to describe it. I’ve always liked this spot but … never really understood why.”
“The order in the chaos. Plus all the fresh air, nature, quiet.”
“Hmm. Makes sense.”
Indoors again, we pass all the bedrooms on the way back to the stairs, and I point to one of the doors.
“I used to stay in that one.”
“This was your room?” she asks.
I nod and open it up, flicking on the light and gesturing for her to check it out. “Every summer from eighth grade until I left for UCLA. It used to belong to my uncle Rick while he was growing up, but he moved to Minneapolis and works like crazy, so he pretty much never visits—and when he does, he prefers to stay at a hotel. Rachel and Garrett used it before me, but with our age gaps it was never at the same time. By the time Rachel started her summers here, Garrett was an adult, and by the time I came, Rachel was pregnant and living with Ari’s dad. My grandparents left it like this.”
Harmony studies the walls—my Iron & Wine and Lord Huron posters and some faded instant-camera pictures of me and my siblings during Christmases and other family gatherings over the years. She eyes the acoustic guitar in the corner (an old one handed down from my mom) with the capo clipped to the head, then the handful of guitar picks on the desk next to a stack oftattered books. Thumbing through a copy of Strunk and White’sElements of Style, she says, “You have parts of this highlighted?”
“I was serious about my craft.”
“Kind of ironic,” she teases as she kneels next to a vintage wooden orange-crate full of CDs and picks up Birdy’s self-titled album. “Your journalism craft is all about the rules, but your songwriting craft kind of thrives on taking creative license with them.”
“Hey, I’m not the one singing, ‘I can’t get no satisfaction.’”
“Double negative.”
“Right. Or, ‘the magic between you and I.’”
“The singer is the object, not the subject.”
I narrow my eyes at her accurate critique. “Or ‘the way I are.’”
“Verb conjugationfail.”
Now I fold my arms. “Are you secretly a grammar nerd?”
“No, but I did take AP English.”
“That’s … pretty sexy, to be honest.”
Harmony sets down the CD and stands back up. “Even though I sometimes like to split infinitives?”
“Just you knowing what an infinitiveis”—I grab her around the waist—“makes me want to lock the door and throw you on the bed.”
“Yeah, well, I’m really liking this whole farm-boy thing you’ve got going on.”
“Are you?”
I strain my reach to shut the door and lock it.
Next thing I know she’s kissing me senseless and unzipping my jeans. I spin her around so I can hold her against me while I handle her breasts from behind through her shirt, and then I reach lower and unzip her jeans too and push them down her hips. She turns back toward me and kicks her jeans the rest of the way off and starts on her panties but I stop her. “Keep those on,” I whisper.
Partly because we’re not in a fully private situation and it would be best to stay as dressed as possible (in case someone knocks and we have to pretend we weren’t doing anything risqué) and partly because I’ve always wanted to try something.
