Eight heads turn toward me. The guys are scattered across the farm, working together to harvest their fall crop.
“Hold up!” calls the one voice I know well enough to recognize, and I slow my gait. A horse whinnies as Sid pulls the reins of a mule attached to some kind of reaper. He hops off and one of the other men takes over, driving the mule through the fields, breaking down a line of grain. My nose twitches at the dust.
Sid hurries to catch up with me before I can escape down the gravel drive. “Did you get anything to eat?”
“I’m fine.” I try to ignore him, pressing forward down the path.
“Wait—why are you carrying all that shit?” He’s noticed both the pack on my back and that I have April’s in my arms. “You know you don’t have to cart that stuff everywhere, right? That’s what the apartment is for. Living in.”
I sigh, turning toward him to explain that once again, I am fine. I would rather not leave all my worldly goods ona strange man’s property without anyone to monitor them. But as he draws closer, my tongue lodges in the back of my throat.
He’s dressed in jeans and a worn white T-shirt, chaff sticking to the spots where his sweat has leeched through the cotton. There’s a hint of the shape of his nipples pressing against the fabric. My eyes dart around for something else to focus on. But there’s so much of him to notice and nothing to obscure my view. Farmwork has rendered him slick, so his shirt clings to every angle of his body. His piney cologne hits me in the same wave as the natural musk of hard work.
I’m only used to seeing men this bare in magazines. April found one that compared thebeach bodsof every guy who ever played Spider-Man and has religiously carried it around ever since, but those pictures never thrilled me the way they did her. They had muscles so sculpted, the veins were visible. To me, they looked dehydrated, their bodies seconds away from digesting those pretty little muscles. I never understood the appeal.
Sid does not have the body of some fictional Spider-Man. His shoulders are rounded, and while there’s a definite narrowing of his frame from his muscular chest down to his hips, there’s still a healthy layer of flesh puckering over his hip bone. I try not to notice how low his jeans are riding. He needs a belt, but maybe that felt too restrictive, working in the sun. At any rate, he needssomething to distract me from the thought that keeps circling inside my head, that if I reached out to touch his stomach, it would feel soft and warm.
“So you’re heading out?” he asks. The only response I can muster is a formless gurgle. His brow pinches. “What was that?”
“Oh! Just saying thanks for… thanks.” I blink myselfback to sanity, determined to look at his face. Work and sweat have rumpled his hair so some falls forward into his eyes, but if I focus on his broken nose, I can convince myself that this man is not making my stomach spin.
It’s got to be the sweaty shirt. I’ve been starved for male contact, and now my hormones are latching onto the first flash of masculinity they find.
“Sure,” he shakes his head, clearly not believing I’m sincere.
Guilt and anger prickle through me. “No, I mean it.Thanks.”
“Whatever.” He’s clearly taking the bags as a sign I don’t trust him. Which, to be fair, I don’t. But it’s notpersonal. I don’t trust anyone, so he could stop being pissy about it. I nearly say so, but he swings his arms, agitated, and my eyes are pulled to the roll of his shoulders instead. “I need to get back to work. You know where you’re headed?”
“Yup.”
“And you know how to get there?”
“Yes. The bus… does it cost money?”
“No, it’s a basic service. Comes by every hour.”
“Thank you.” With that, I resolutely put one foot in front of the other, walking away.
The gravel crunches behind me. Relief hits me as the tension severs between us. He let me go. I’m not being held hostage on the farm.
As I ride the wagon into town, the polite silence isn’t nearly so comforting as it was yesterday. It gives me too much time with my thoughts. I know what I should be focused on—April, in the hospital, waiting for me. April, who needs medicine. But no matter how hard I try to stay on task, my mind wanders to eight years ago and a boy with hair that stood up straight on end, a gap between his front teeth.
Curtis.
Curtis, leading me beyond the protection of our camp once my mother was asleep. Curtis, pressing me against an oak tree, his mouth working across mine. Curtis, peeling off my blouse as he whispered that he loved me. Andme, whispering the same words back. I can almost feel the pressure of his chest against my ribs, stringy and lean.
I don’t know why I’m thinking of him now, except that I keep returning to the same cold truth. He never got the chance to grow into a man the size of Sid Charles. The boy I lovedneverlooked like that.
My hands shake as I open my bag, digging around for something I usually keep buried, for fear it will stir up dark memories. For a second, I worry I’ve lost it, before my hand closes around the small, weathered surface of a carved cedar heart.
I pull it out and press the token to my lips.
“SERIOUSLY? THAT’S IT?A hundred dollars?”
“A hundred dollars is a lot, miss. You’re lucky the rate for gold is so high,” says the man at the counter. Behind his desk, the exchange is filled with bags of vegetables, a couple of bicycles, broken hockey sticks and just about every other random piece of garbage you could imagine. Workers pull crates using everything from wagons to proper pallet jacks. All these goods are headed for the resale store down the hall, including my mother’s earrings.
IfI agree to sell them.
