When I got home, I had a cup of tea and then lay in bed staring at the ceiling, going over things in my head, trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Why Landon had left so suddenly.
It was a restless night, and a worse morning, mowing the still-damp lawn before heading downtown for my shift.
I’d never been nervous going into Rose City Teas before.
“Hey, Darius.” Kerry was working the front register. She was a twenty-something white woman with piercings up and down both ears. She wore this garish, itchy-looking cardigan over her black Rose City T-shirt, the kind where you can see the fibers stretching upward like trees reaching for the sun.
“Hey.” I looked around. “Where do you need me?”
“Stock room. But later.” She cocked her head toward the tasting room. “Mr. Edwards has a tasting for you.”
“Cool.”
After missing the last tasting, I had been kind of worried, so it was a relief when I knocked on the tasting room door and Mr. Edwards swept me inside.
“You’re in for a treat today. We just got a new batch of Wuyis in.”
Wuyi rock tea is a kind of oolong from the Wuyi Mountains in China, known for its heavy minerality, smokiness, and stone fruit notes. The Wuyi Mountains are also, supposedly, the home of the original tea bushes in China, which they use to make a tea called Da Hong Pao, or Big Red Robe.
The finest leaves sell for something like $30,000 an ounce.
Mr. Edwards had only tasted the expensive stuff once, through sheer luck, on a visit to China a few years back.
He said it was the taste of a lifetime.
“Mind grabbing some gaiwans?”
“Okay.”
I pulled down the gaiwans from the top shelf of the cupboard.
“It’s nice to have a tall guy here to help. Don’t need the step stool as much.”
I rinsed each gaiwan in warm water and then dried them as carefully as I could with a soft towel. As I set the table, Landon poked his head in.
“Hey, Dad,” he said. “What’re we doing?”
“Da Hong Pao. Come on in.”
Landon nodded at me and took a seat at the long table, while I pulled out tasting cups and spoons for us. Mr. Edwards grabbed the kettle and started pouring while I picked up my notebook and sat next to Landon.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
My skin hummed.
I wasn’t sure if things were still weird between us or not.
But then Landon reached over and put his hand on mine. I rubbed the top of his hand with my thumb.
Mr. Edwards handed around each cup of leaves for us to smell before he poured the first steeping. We sipped, and took notes, while Mr. Edwards poured the second steeping.
“Kind of bashful,” Landon said. His dad slurped a spoonful and nodded. I took my own taste.
I didn’t even know what bashful tasted like.
“Um. Smoky?”
