"Right. Irrigation."
She nods and escapes out the back door, and I stand alone in the kitchen wondering how I managed to make everything so much worse.
So there's no trip into town. No lunch, no day off. Jacques turns up midafternoon to sort out the irrigation, and I've never been so grateful for something to do with my hands. We work our way down the lines with him, checking the drip valves and clearing the blocked emitters while he explains which sections are running dry before the harvest. Iris works the far end of the row. We speak only when necessary, both of us pretending the morning didn't happen.
But something has changed.
I feel it in the way Iris looks at me and then quickly looks away. In the way she keeps finding reasons not to be in the same row with me.
By evening, I can't take it anymore.
"We should talk about this," I say.
She's on the terrace, watching the sunset, and she doesn't turn around when I speak.
"Talk about what?"
"About what I said this morning. About—" I run a hand through my hair. "About whatever is happening between us."
"Nothing is happening between us."
"Iris."
She turns, finally, and her face is a mask of careful control. But her eyes give her away—there's something there, something scared and wanting, that matches what I'm feeling.
"I shouldn't have said what I said," I tell her. "It was regrettable and bumbling and—"
"Was it true?"
The question stops me cold.
"What?"
"Was it true?" She steps closer, and I can see the pulse jumping in her throat. "Do you actually find me—" She can't seem to finish the sentence.
"Yes." It comes out before I can dress it up. "Yes. I do."
"Cat—"
"And I know it's a mess. I know you didn't come here for this. So if you want me to shut up and never say it again, I will. We can just—"
"Cat. Stop."
She's right in front of me now, close enough that I can see the pulse going in her throat. Her hands are curled into fists at her sides, like she doesn't quite trust them.
"I don't—" She stops. Starts over. "I don't do this. I don't lie awake thinking about somebody. I don't lose my place halfway through a sentence because they walked into the room."
"But you have been," I say. It isn't a question.
"Yes." Barely a word. Her eyes are too bright. "I keep telling myself it's the jet lag. Or the wine. Or the—the everything. That it isn't real."
"And?"
"And it's not working." She says it like it costs her something. "It's not nothing. Is it."
"No." My throat's gone tight. "It's something."
Neither of us moves. The sun's dropping behind her, turning the fields an absurd, unreasonable gold, and I think if I breathe wrong the whole thing might shatter.
