He wraps his lips around the harmonica and makes it wail, quite impressively, like a train whistle.
“You just here for the summer?”
His shrug comes with a noncommittal teeter. “Depends how much I like it.”
It’s a dangerous answer, one filled with a promise of unknowns and everything I shy away from, but the smile on my face might as well be tattooed there the way the black lines are on his arm. My urge to touch him and the ink on his skin is almost unmanageable. I shove my hands in the pockets of my overalls to stop myself from acting like the complete freak I suddenly long to let myself become.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I challenge.
“Of course it does.” He blows into the harmonica and makes another sound I feel in my bones. “We’re in a town of wineries. Wine and old stories always go best together.”
“Ah. You’re thirsty for history?” I quip.
His grin cracks me wide open.
“Thirsty for history.” He rolls the words around on his tongue. “I like that.” He pauses, leaning over the counter toward me until he’s close enough I inhale his spicy, woody scent—I want to bathe in it. “I’d say I’m parched.”
His words are loaded, and we both know it. He might be parched, but it isn’t for history.
I’ve spent thirty-four years attracted to men who mirror me. Cautious and steady. There have been some good ones—some great ones even—but none of them have had lasting power. I’ve never had a great heartbreak like some people speak of, it’s just never been right. This nameless man in front of me doesn’t appear to be any of those things, and yet I’m completely at the mercy of his presence.
Swift as a second hand ticking on an old clock, my heart beats in a way that makes mealmostthink I’ve been chasing the wrong thing.
“Plus,” he says, standing upright so he’s no longer leaning into my space. “Ben Franklin once said wine was constant proof God wanted us happy. You know that?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond. “People misquote him to saying beer, but it’s always been wine.” He grins like this really means something to him. “Seems like a sign.”
“A sign?” I ask with a laugh. “I’m not sure about that. You have a name, Mr. Harmonica-Playing-History-Teacher?”
“Nash,” he says, extending his hand out to me. “Nash Fletcher.”
“Well, Nash.” I put my hand in his and squeeze, the swirls of our palms and fingertips connecting like lost pieces of the same puzzle. “I’m Rue. Rue Conway.”
“Rue Conway.” He gifts me with another smile. “I like that.”
The way he says it, I do too.
My mother joins me behind the counter. “Well, who have we here, daughter dearest?”
I jerk my hand from Nash’s, my face heating by forty-four degrees. Like I’ve just been caught naked with him instead of shaking his hand.
Nash is unbothered. A man like him probably always is. “Nash,” he says easily, shaking my mom’s hand so the bracelets up her arm jangle slightly. With her wild hair, bold-colored clothing, and beads, her arrival is more like a pour from an old bottle of patchouli oil.
“Iris,” she coos, seemingly already in love with him. “Rue’s mom.”
“Nash is a teacher,” I tell her as I fidget with the condom tins. “And was apparently in the market for the old Hohner we had.”
“Is that so?” she asks, regarding him.
“Traveling substitute, actually,” he corrects.
At this revelation, I straighten. Because what the hell is that?
I must not hide my thoughts because Nash chuckles before saying, “Unusual, I know,” then blows a note into his harmonica.
My mom’s eyes light right up behind the lime-green bedazzled frames of her glasses.
He continues. “I couldn’t handle the same classroom year after year—know what I mean?” I do not. “Felt smothering to have everything be so predictable and routine.”
My mom nods, as if completely aligned with this back-ass-ward philosophy. I, on the other hand, have never related to a single sentence less, and my heart sputters.
