He grunts, grabbing the white tee shirt hanging from his belt loop and using it to dry the sweat from his brow. I sip my coffee and try not to stare at the shelf formed by his high, round ass in those tight jeans.
“How much do you remember about last night?” he asks, not looking at me.
“Bits and pieces,” I say into my cup. Maybe, if I pretend I was too drunk to remember anything, we can pretend last night never happened.
“What about the drive here?”
I don’t feel my features change, but from the look he’s giving me, my expression tells him all he needs to know. He sighs. I turn my attention to the mass of overgrown weeds next to the woodshed.
Upon closer inspection, I see that it’s not just a pile of weeds, but a tangle of old and new raspberry canes.
“You’ve got raspberries back here,” I say.
Austin wedges the axe blade into the stump and comes over to see what I’m pointing to. “How about that.”
“You didn’t know they were here?”
He shakes his head. I pick two pieces of slightly underripe fruit.
“My grandpa loved raspberries. He put them in everything. Cakes, pies, ice cream. He even tossed them in salads.”
“I remember you mentioning something about him the first night you stayed here. How long ago was that?”
“Ten years, give or take.” I pop a berry into my mouth and offer the other one to Austin. “He didn’t want me there at first. I think he was expecting me to be a little princess, like my mom, scared of getting my hands dirty.”
“Was that the first time you’d met him?”
I nod. “My mom moved out of her dad’s house before I was born. She never had anything good to say about either of her parents. But the year I lived with Gramps was the happiest time of my life.”
At ten years old, I was a mud-pie maker, through and through, and once I proved myself useful around the homestead, Gramps started warming up to me. He taught me how to stake pepper plants and pull the suckers off tomato stems so the plants would put more energy into producing fruit.
“Gramps had a lady friend, Bev. That’s what she called herself, his lady friend.” I smile at the memory. “She was a widow who lived down the road, with no interest in remarrying, but she enjoyed Gramps’ company very much. She showed me how to make jams and jellies out of the fruit we grew, and how to pickle vegetables to make them last through the winter.”
I pinch a dried-out raspberry cane between my fingers, careful to avoid the thorns, and wait for Austin to ask me what any of this has to do with what we’re supposed to be talking about. But he doesn’t ask. He just listens, like he’s genuinely interested in hearing more anecdotes from my past.
“You should pull out the dead canes and make a trellis for the new growth,” I tell him.
“How about we make a deal? I’ll do all that if you tell me why you didn’t want to go home last night.”
Austin steps between me and the berry patch, and all I can think about is how good it would feel to press myself against his bare chest. I want to ask for a hug, but I’m afraid he’ll say no. I made a fool of myself last night, offering to blow him after he’d refused to touch me in his truck.
I tell myself it was only a matter of time before he realized I’m too young for him. Too immature. Too broken. I can’t blame him for thinking I’m more trouble than I’m worth. I turn away so I don’t have to keep staring at the thing I want most in this world but can’t have.
“Cal and Holly think it’d be a good idea for me to move down to the first floor before the baby’s born,” I say. “I’ve been having really intense nightmares lately and they can be quite...disruptive.”
“I didn’t hear anything last night,” he says.
“It doesn’t happen every night, and the alcohol probably helped.”
“That’s not a habit you want to get into.”
“So Cal has already told me.” I grip my coffee cup in both hands. “They want to build me an in-law suite in what’s now the downstairs study.”
“Ah... So that’s why you were asking about reno costs.”
“I don’t want them to have to spend tons of money on me. But I understand how annoying it must be, waking up to my screams every other night.”
“In a way aren’t you preparing them for what’s to come?”