Chapter 8 #2
Then she remembered the feeling of Rowan’s arm under her hand when she had balanced herself to show off her tattoo.
She could still feel Rowan’s hand on the back of her leg.
The feeling of skin to skin contact had shot a ripple of nervousness across her body when it happened.
Much to her dismay, that feeling also sometimes crept into her thoughts when she was lying in bed at night.
She hadn’t done anything about those thoughts yet.
To herself, of course. Rowan was strictly off limits, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to.
Rowan didn’t seem interested either way, beyond the occasional glance.
They had enjoyed eating lunch together nearly every day, marking their transition into more collegial vibes, but Rowan hadn’t made an effort to get to know her outside of work.
Juniper hadn’t made an effort to get to know Rowan either, but that ball was in Rowan’s court, squarely.
Juniper had really started to look forward to their lunches together, the time they spent on their work together.
She really enjoyed picking her brain and hearing about all the experience she had criticized in their early days and weeks working together.
Day by day it became easier to let the rest of the animosity go.
And then there they were – in this confusingly hard to define gray territory, where maybe, just maybe, Juniper thought they were each entertaining the idea they might still find each other attractive.
“Should we work on the expansion plans some more?” Juniper asked.
“Sure,” Rowan replied, adjusting her eyes to meet hers.
Juniper couldn’t help the small smile that started forming. She pushed off the door frame with her hip, and she saw Rowan’s eyes flick back down before immediately catching herself and raising her eyes back up. She scratched the back of her neck.
Juniper bit her bottom lip to prevent the smile from spreading. She normally liked gloating, but somehow stifling the smile made it feel even more seductive. Tempting.
Caught you, twice.
Then she saw Rowan’s eyes shift once again, but this time to the lip she was biting before dropping her gaze to her desk, where she suddenly became very interested in organizing papers.
Really, Birdsong? Three times?
“Seem nervous, Birdsong.”
“Um, no. I’ll meet you over there in a few minutes. I just need to finish something up first.”
“Okay, whenever you’re ready.” She let her smile spread. What a convenient excuse.
Juniper crossed back into her office and was nearly blinded by the late afternoon sun beaming in through the windows where she had left the blinds drawn all the way up from earlier.
“Fuck,” she cursed out loud as she threw her forearm across her eyes.
She quickly moved across the room and tried to use the cords to draw the blinds closed, but they were stuck somehow, caught in the lever mechanism up at the top. She climbed in the chair and reached across to fiddle with the cords.
“Let me help you,” she heard Rowan say from behind her.
“No, I got it,” she insisted.
Rowan sighed. She was now standing next to her. “The chair is in the middle of the window, and you’re leaning all the way over to the edge. You’re being stubborn.”
Sharpening all her consonants to a razor-thin point to convey her aggravation, Juniper huffed, “I’m not stubborn.”
“You’re going to fall.”
Rowan’s tone was so matter of fact it sent Juniper over the edge. Juniper knew what she was doing, damnit. She let out a frustrated groan and sharply turned her head.
“No, I’m not,” bellowed out of her mouth, just as she teetered on one heel.
She felt Rowan’s hand wrap around her inner thigh to balance her, as she absorbed the weight of her flailing body against her side.
Juniper let out a breath that caught in her throat like a whimper.
Her fingers curled around the slats of the blinds, staggering sunlight around the room like broken shards of glass.
“I’m so sorry. I just reached up, ” Rowan stammered, quickly moving her hand to support Juniper’s elbow instead.
“It’s okay, thank you,” Juniper blurted out, just as quickly, in one long breath. Her eyes were still closed, fingers still gripping the slats.
“Can I… will you let me help you down?”
Juniper opened her eyes and unclenched her fingers. “Yes,” she managed to say, taking Rowan’s other extended hand and stepping down off the chair.
Even though their bodies were almost pressed into each other’s, they didn’t look at each other.
Juniper sidestepped and grabbed a notebook from her desk and sat at the center table.
Rowan fixed the blinds, easily, given her added height, before sitting across from Juniper.
They definitely needed to sit across from, not next to each other.
Juniper adjusted, then readjusted her position in her seat, the ghost of Rowan’s touch on her thigh, again, unsettling her. She cleared her throat but still couldn’t manage to look up from her lap.
“Thank you, again, for approving the job description.”
“Of course, hopefully it’s posted soon. I can help with interviews. If you want.”
“Thanks. That would be nice. Helpful.” Juniper watched herself pick a cuticle underneath the table. “So, I wanted to get your thoughts on an idea I had.”
“Absolutely,” Rowan fired back, almost before Juniper had finished her thought.
They were both being awkwardly eager. Juniper took comfort in that it wasn’t her alone feeling this way. She took a steadying breath.
“I have had this idea for a few years now, really ever since I moved home before finishing school,” her voice trailed off at the realization of what she just said. Off balance, she mentally chastized herself. In so many ways.
She slowly looked up at Rowan, but Rowan’s face didn’t say anything. She was looking at her as intentionally as ever, as she had every other time they had sat down to discuss their work together in the last two weeks.
“Um,” she continued, “I’ve always wanted to start a mobile delivery service for the produce grown in the Tribal garden.
I worry a lot about accessibility. Expanding the garden’s central location with the current funds now means that we’re not able to replicate the garden in other areas of the Rez for a while.
And I get it. It makes sense. We don’t have the funds or human power to operate across multiple locations at this point.
But I still worry. We don’t even have a mechanism for any kind of distribution, even in the central garden. ”
“I understand. That’s something we should definitely think through.”
“I have this idea to convert my mom’s powwow food truck. Obviously I know a lot about the food truck business,” she added with a giggle, lightening the intensity of the air around them.
“Obviously,” Rowan chuckled back.
“But I also know that’s not going to happen right now either,” she said as she felt her tone dropping again.
Rowan sat back, and Juniper felt herself flush as she watched her roll her sleeves up to her elbows. Precise hand movements revealing what appeared to be very capable forearms. Gloria had been right in her initial assessments.
Rowan crossed one leg over the other, draping one of those exposed forearms over her thigh in that sexy dignified older man way, like President Obama. Yeah, Juniper was a lesbian, but it was Obama for fuck’s sake. And there was Rowan. Looking all dignified, older. Also, sexy.
You’re a fucking mess, Juniper Banks.
“Have you considered using funds to build a farmer’s market to distribute the produce?
I know it’s not as accessible as the mobile delivery service idea, but it could be a good place to start.
To create a central hub that people are familiar with.
It’s constant, they know it’s there, they know when it’s open. ”
“I hadn’t thought of that… actually.”
Rowan leaned her forearms against the table and pressed her weight into her elbows while lacing her fingers together. She was excited, and it was frustratingly attractive to Juniper.
“At my old organization, we saw how community farmer’s markets served a real purpose in food deserts. I guess the better term now is food apartheid, since it describes the system that creates inequitable food availability.”
“Oh, that makes sense. The desert part implies it’s a naturally occurring ecosystem, not something caused by humans.”
“Right, exactly.” Rowan’s eyes were glowing. “So, your plan is to sell the produce?” She asked.
“Elders will always get a box of produce free each month, shifting to each week once we get our outputs higher. Other community members will have to pay for now, which I already don’t like.
Ideally, we should be able to provide all of this for free, but we have to create program income in order to have sustainability, much less if we want to keep growing.
And we were thinking of opening it up to non-community members in the future, once we start harvesting the additional crops from the land expansion piece.
Then we could shift charging to them and open the free produce boxes up to all community members. ”
“Something we worked on was a campaign to sort of stretch everyone’s dollar a little more.
When someone spent $2 on produce, if they were receiving cash assistance, they got $2 more to spend, which was subsidized by the government.
Maybe you could try something like that with some of the grant funds?
We’d have to play with the pricing model, maybe get someone from accounting to help with that part. ”
That was actually a really good idea.
“Do you think something like that could work here?”
“I think so. It could be a way to bridge that gap in the meantime. What fresh food is anyone getting at the dollar store? This is an immediate accessibility improvement. A huge step toward your goal of providing it all for free.”
“Well, it’s not just my goal. It’s our Tribe’s goal. But thank you. You said you helped work on something like that?”
“I did.”
“Could you write that part of the proposal?”
Rowan flashed a smile. “I would be happy to. And one day, we’ll get you the food truck.”
The one day, the we, those words were not lost on Juniper. Despite her rational brain telling her this was not her best idea, her defiant heart tugged her in the opposite direction anyway. She flashed a smile back.