Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’ve got something for you, Cash texts, waking me.
We’ve traded texts back and forth every day for the last ten days, though I refused to let him come and help pick cherries, despite his insistence.
I’ve picked at night. I’ve picked during the day, and I’ve practically been picking in my sleep.
Emery helped me bring the cherries to the market on Thursday in her truck, but I underestimated how much extra work it was going to be without Cash.
Getting some distance and headspace while the online storm calms down has been the right thing, but it’s been hard work.
What’s that? I write and rub my eyes. I long to read more letters in the desk, but work has to be done.
Come to the door.
***
Come to the door.
“Mom?” I call.
“Yeah?” she calls back from the kitchen.
“Is someone at the door?”
She comes into my room and sits on the edge of the bed. Her eyes search mine, and I know something’s up.
“What did you do?” I swing my legs over the side.
She bundles a kitchen towel in her hand. “Don’t be mad … I called Cash.”
I slam my feet to the floor. “You did what?”
“I’m not going to lie to you, love. You look like you’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”
“Mom, that’s gross!”
“It’s an old expression – you know, like a horse who was put away covered in sweat.”
“I look that bad?” I turn away, clasp a bra and pull a worn T-shirt over my head.
“No – but you are exhausted.” She points to the black circles under my eyes.
“You need help picking. I know Lani’s dad said it was doable to make the money for the debt if you sell at another farmers’ market soon, but, Dahlia, it’s too much for you by yourself.
Besides the fact that you need to get your retail licence, or you could get in big trouble. ”
I make my way to the mudroom door, frazzled and, yes, exhausted. The door swings open on the breeze and Cash’s scent comes in like a breath of fresh air. I’ve missed him so much – his smirky smiles, his warm calloused hands and the way he seems to genuinely care about me.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he says, holding a large cardboard box in his arms.
“You said you have something for me?” I ask, avoiding the fact that I want to jump in his arms.
“Can I come in?”
I open the door and step aside. In the kitchen, Cash opens the box. It’s chock-full of bottles of lavender lemonade.
“They’re all for me?”
He takes a bottle and puts it in my hand. It’s still cold. I twist the cap, breaking the seal, and take a small sip. The sweet, floral tang is utterly delicious.
“I may drink one or two – while we pick, that is. Now, come on,” he coaxes me. “We’re burning daylight. Let’s get to it.”
We set off to the orchard. I walk slowly, swinging my basket to and fro.
Cash pulls something out of his pocket. I instantly recognize the cherry pattern round the trim – it’s the torn corner of my tablecloth. I stop and turn to him, taking it and rubbing the thin fabric between my fingers.
“Cash. Thank you! I never thought I’d see it again.”
“I thought you could sew it back on or wear it as a scarf in your hair.”
“Huh? What do you mean? It’s not long enough to be a scarf.”
“Here,” he says, taking the triangle piece of fabric. “Like this.”
He pulls my hair behind my shoulders, tucks tendrils behind my ears, and lays the fabric on the top of my head.
With the two ends hanging down, he ties the fabric at the back of my neck.
His warm, calloused hands dance across my skin.
They may be what I missed most. He smoothes the top and adjusts it with the care of a stylist.
“OK, OK,” I tease. “It’s good. Come on, let’s get to it.” I use his previous words and give him a wry grin.
“Looks good on you.” He smirks, then, “I missed this,” he says earnestly.
“Me too.”
Cash glances at me. “You know … I honestly never anticipated how people would react to what I did at the rodeo. I had no idea what a disaster it would be. They shouldn’t have treated you like that and I’m terribly sorry.”
I bang him in the leg with my basket by way of forgiveness. “It’s OK.”
“It’s not OK, but I do have everything sorted with Billy now, so you know. Kaylee and I have to work together until the finals next month, but Kaylee convinced him to let the whole couple thing go.”
“Oh yeah?” I make my way to a tree towards the end of a row.
“Yeah. I mean, what could he do? It was all over social media. No one believes we’re together any more. Kaylee made up a story about our break-up, and people bought it.”
I’ve stayed away from social media, but Lani did tell me about this particular post. “I bet Kaylee was pretty mad after what you did,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. She was upset at first. She’s a good person, but she’s let her image become everything to her since her mom died.
She liked to control it, you know? And at the rodeo there she totally lost control of how people saw us.
I made her look fake, and that was embarrassing.
Plus, it’s never a good feeling to be rejected, and her ego was already bruised by the real break-up. ”
I think back to the way she reacted about me borrowing Cash’s truck. That tracks.
“Honestly, though, since she’s been capitalizing on being single … her fans actually seem to like her better now.”
“They like that she feels more available, I guess,” I say, stepping up on a ladder. This is something I’ve forced myself to do lately without Cash and his long legs and arms to pick the highest cherries.
“You noticed?”
I half turn. “My friend, Lani, follows you guys. So she tells me stuff.”
Cash picks below me and looks up. “A lot of those old posts were staged, so you know. Or old pictures, reused from before.”
We don’t say much else for a while. We fall into the familiar rhythm of picking cherries together, dumping them into crates when our baskets and bags are full, and moving to the next tree. Cherries aren’t usually supposed to keep growing into August like this, but my trees do.
One last cool breeze for the morning rushes down the row. I breathe it in, the smell of late summer, and the fact that Cash is back.
“Cash?”
“Hmm?”
“You said that you broke up with Kaylee because you saw me at the rodeo that first time. Did you mean…?” I don’t finish the question. I drop a cherry into my basket and tilt my head. “We hadn’t even met then.”
He pops a single knuckle and drawls, “No, we hadn’t.”
I step closer. “So, why then?”
He looks down, thinking. Then, unblinking, he stares up at me and says, “I don’t know how to explain it.
In that moment, everything stood still except you.
” He steps closer and takes off his hat.
“I always thought I had a plan for my life, but then you and this place threw me for a loop. Everything felt upside down, but in the best way.”
“It was the same for me,” I admit.
“What was?”
I wave my hand around and look up at the bluebird sky, “All of it. With … the world standing still when I saw you. You and this place throwing me for a loop.” I sigh. “But, Cash, I don’t want to ruin your plans.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I peer at the screen, then immediately put it back.
“You OK?”
“Yeah. But I’m not answering,” I say with authority, not wanting to get upset.
Dad has been sending lots of I told you so type messages since the Young Producers competition. He also had a co-worker show him Sally Hunter’s video of me and Cash. I’ve told him we’re not dating. He has the gall to tell me to stay away from him.
“Is it Wyatt? I shouldn’t have assumed—”
“No. It was my dad. And I only went on the one date with Wyatt.”
I wait for it to stop buzzing and sit under the shade of the tree where I left my lemonade.
Hey, I write. Out picking. What’s up?
Can’t answer a call?
Can call later. Just busy right now.
With that Indian kid who thinks he’s a rodeo star?
I flinch. I want to scream, but I hold it together and keep my face neutral. I don’t want Cash to know how awful my dad is. I turn off the screen and stare into space.
Then my phone buzzes again. He’s not good enough for you.
Cash sits next to me and reaches as if to touch my hand, but rests his on the ground instead. I sip my lemonade and pretend I didn’t notice.
He clears his throat like he feels the tension too. “What’s going on?”
“My dad’s just being himself. I’m embarrassed to even call him family.”
I’m not ready to tell him everything yet. Most people think I’m exaggerating about my dad until they see him in action. Cash has seen a glimmer, but not the whole show.
Cash takes my bottle of lemonade and sets it to the side. He clears twigs and rocks from behind us and lies down. I’m flushed with anger, but lie down too.
I begin to relax as Cash tells me more about his plans. He’s going to win at the finals in Pueblo, get a bigger and better sponsorship, and go pro. Pro rodeo riders travel all over the country, he says, and he’s excited to see new places.
I smile to myself, because I too want to see new places, but in this moment, lying here with him, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
It makes me wonder, though, even with the social media chaos dying down, if much can happen between us.
I want to be here on the ranch, and he plans to travel around rodeoing.
I turn when he pauses and catch him staring at me. I snap back and ask questions about what it takes to go pro. Lots of dedication, winning money at sanctioned events and training, he tells me.
He asks what I’ll do after I pay off the debt, and I tell him that, honestly, I don’t know yet. I just need the ranch to be secure.
We talk and talk about everything and nothing at all, and we lose track of time watching big fluffy clouds float across the sky. My eyes grow heavy and Cash scoots closer to my side. Instinctively, I roll on my side towards him.
“Dahlia?”
“Mm?” I mumble on the brink of sleep.
He brushes a strand of hair out of my face.
“Is this OK?” he asks as he goes to slide an arm under my head. I nod sleepily and rest my cheek on his large chest, wrapping my free arm round his waist. His chin brushes against my forehead and, for the first time, I feel the barely-there stubble on his face.