“One of your guys?” I ask, as another person fixates on my gash and I feel the need to touch it again to take stock of just how much I’m bleeding.
She nods as we reach her house and she swings the frontdoor open—it’s not locked, for some inane reason—and gestures for me to go in first.
She closes the door behind her. “One of my farmhands. I can spare one today, if you want to clear up that path.” She shakes her head, stomping through a living room decorated in happy yellows and oranges. “I try to get up there every so often and clean it up some, but this season has been a bit hectic.”
“You do all that yourself?” I ask, taking in the framed photographs along the wall, the big windows that spill natural light throughout. The books along the half-wall that separates the kitchen and living room, and the wild number of sunflower-related things that fill her house.
Sunflower-themed word magnets on the fridge, sunflower books on the coffee table, a sunflower blanket folded neatly over one arm of her couch.
She shrugs. “I know it’s not my property, but it used to be part of the farm, a long time ago. It’d be nice to be able to walk around over there.” She pauses. “I mean, you know. If there weren’t going to be apartments or anything.” She shakes her head. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, really.”
“We wouldn’t be building for a while, you know. We can clean it up and get a good year or two of use out of that land, if you wanted.”
She looks at me, her eyes locked on mine, and I get the feeling it’s the first time she’s actuallyseenme today. “Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah. That sounds like a great way to use the land before we start building.”
“Cool,” she says.
And something tells me she forgot why she invited me in.
“Um, can I use your bathroom?” I ask, gesturing to my forehead.
“Oh my god, yes. I’m sorry,” she says, waving me along behind her. She heads for the stairs along one wall, and I follow her up, my hand trailing along the banister behind hers.
When we reach the second floor, she makes a left, heading into one of two bedrooms upstairs.
As I pass by, I peek in the opposite one, and it looks like a guest bedroom. A daybed done up in—surprise, surprise—sunflowers, with a few racks of books and a TV.
The one I follow her into must be hers.
And I’m floored by just how plain it is. A fluffy white comforter surrounds a queen-size wrought iron bed frame. The room is full of neutral tones, with a number of blankets folded across the foot of her bed and thrown across an armchair by the window that looks out over the sunflower fields. Next to it is a small side table, only really large enough for the coffee-stained coaster centered on top of it.
It’s so easy to picture her there in the morning, a cup of coffee in her hand as she looks out over her farm. Or maybe she reads for a little in the morning, if the number of books in this house is any indication.
“What happened to all the sunflowers?” I ask, completely forgetting the cut on my head.
She laughs softly as she pushes her bathroom door open and beckons me inside. “Oh. Well, you know. My whole life is sunflowers. Anything people buy me has something to do with sunflowers. And I love them—don’t get me wrong—but sometimes it’s nice to have a blank space, you know?”
I nod. “Clear headspace. An area that is only yours that no one else can influence,” I say. “I get it.”
She lets out a long breath as she grabs my arm, directing me toward the vanity. I peer into the mirror, crinkling my nose at the cut on my forehead that reallydoesn’tlook allthat bad, aside from the smeared blood all across my face. I poke at it, seeing if it’s scabbed over yet, and a little drop appears that promptly begins running down my skin.
She roots around in the cabinet beneath the vanity until she finds her first aid kit and plops it on the edge between us. She shakes her head when she sees the look on my face and then focuses on the fresh drop of blood. “Just couldn’t resist, could you?”
I shrug, giving her my best smile as I turn to face her and lean against the vanity. She washes her hands, drying them on a fluffy white towel hanging off a hook on the wall.
She runs a cotton ball under the faucet and stands on her toes to press it against my skin. I hunch down so she can reach easier, watching her eyes dance around my face, searching for bits of dried blood. Her touch is delicate. Careful.
And while I have no doubt in my mind I’d be able to wipe the dried blood off my own face and slap a band-aid on there in two seconds flat, I like the way she does it.
“Thanks for cleaning me up.”
She fixes me with a look as she tosses the cotton ball into a trash can next to the vanity. “We’re working together, right?”
I nod, trying my best not to grin too hard at the pinched look on her face. “Working togethervery well, if I can say so myself.”
She glares at me again while squeezing a dot of Neosporin onto a fresh cotton ball and dabbing it along my forehead.
