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She put that silly hat on her head and headed for a grassy meadow concealing a strawberry field.
“This way.” I offered my hand, my heart stirring when she took it.
Looking around, I found where I thought the beginning of the field was, happy when I found it without too much fumbling.
“See?” I pointed into the grass where a bundle of fat, red berries were waiting to be picked.
She gasped, kneeling to pluck one and hold it up for inspection. “Oh, it looks divine.” Her eyes cut to mine. “We shouldn’t eat them, should we?”
I shrugged and took it from her, inspected it for dirt or worms, and popped it in my mouth, biting off the crown. “It’s organic.” I chucked the waste and took a moment just to watch her.
She licked her lips, picking a strawberry and inspecting it like I had. When approved, her lips closed around it in a way that nearly drove me feral, especially when the juice dripped down her chin like a bikini girl in an eighties music video.
“Humuguh,” she said around her bite. “Dish sho goot.”
I laughed, figuring that was probably the rudest thing she’d ever done, and I was honored to have witnessed it.
Tin bucket hooked in her elbow, she took turns saving one and eating one, and I watched her like she was living art. There was plenty to admire. Like her delicate hands, her long neck. The prim bun of corn silk hair, the golden curve of her sun kissed shoulders. But while I appreciated all those things, the ones that affected me the deepest had nothing to do with her body. It was the light in her sky-blue eyes, the joy in the high apples of her cheeks. It was her excitement, her happiness that filled me up with happiness too. Experiencing it all through her struck me in the deepest, darkest, most deserted places. It had been a long time—a long, long time since that dust had stirred.
And I’d found the feeling with a girl so out of my league, she might as well live on Mars.
When she left, it was about how far away she’d be.
I shook the thought away, picking a strawberry of my own to get the taste of it out of my mouth.
We wandered deeper into the fields, the berries still largely growing in rows. Jessa finally slowed down the conveyor belt into her mouth, then stopped, laying a hand on her belly.
“I think I ate about a hundred,” she said, still bending here and there to pick more. “What will we do with all of them?”
“Aside from snack on them until we’re sick? We could make a strawberry pie or two.”
“That sounds lovely, though I don’t know how. Do you?”
“Sure do. It’s a date.”
She groaned, bending to pick a mutant strawberry that looked like three mushed together. “I hate that we have to set dates for anything.” She inspected it, looked to me for direction, and tossed it in the bucket when I nodded. “I should be home with you, not with my mother.”
I hated that I ached at her calling my place home. “We really should play nice. She hates me already, I can tell.”
“Hate is a strong word.” She tromped a little farther down and knelt at a bundle of berries.
“Hey, I can’t say I blame her. I’m no catch.”
“Ha! Sir, you are indubitably a catch. Shall I count the ways?”
“The bartender from the podunk town in nowhere, Tennessee? Somehow I doubt your mom would ever approve.”
“Well, lucky for us, she has no say.” We walked a little ways down, this time both of us kneeling to clear a patch. “And anyway, is it really what you want to do forever?”
“What, would you rather I did something more palatable for your friends and family?” I did my best to hide the sting, but it wasn’t good enough.
“No, of course not,” she answered, her eyes wide and brow furrowed. “That isn’t what I meant. I just wondered what you wanted.”
“I gave up the things I wanted a long time ago, Duchess.”
“Just because you gave them up doesn’t mean they’re not still there.”
“But they’re not. Sometimes you hit a point in life where those things you wanted are gone. As in literally impossible.”
