Chapter 13 #3
Anita sighed and looked at her tenderly. “It’s okay, Ro. Not one person on this earth knows what another is going through except them. If you don’t judge me, I don’t judge you.”
“That’s very, very fair.”
“Now come sit down and eat. You’re looking scrawny.” She turned her head to yell down the hall. “Junie, did you know Rowan was so skinny? You haven’t been feeding her anything at lunch?”
“What?!” Juniper yelled exasperatedly from down the hall.
Rowan laughed. This was exactly like she remembered. The warmth, the good kind this time, enveloped her.
Juniper finally emerged out of the hallway, and Rowan immediately had an intense desire to snuggle into her.
To breathe her in. To kiss her again. She thought of all the little things she wanted with her, like fixing dinner together, then snuggling on a couch to watch a movie.
Fuck, she wanted to feel that soft, dimpled ass beneath her hands again too.
“What are you talking about?” Juniper’s sharp but playful question brought her back to reality.
“I said,” Anita emphasized, “that you need to start taking an extra lunch to work because my baby girl is too skinny.”
Juniper rolled her eyes and looked at Rowan. “Do I need to bring you lunch every day? Because I will.” She jammed her hand against her hip.
Rowan looked at Anita instead. “I mean, I wouldn’t turn that down,” she said with a playful shrug.
Anita flipped her arm out, palm up, in Juniper’s direction to underscore her point. “See.”
“No, we’re not going to do the gang up on Juniper thing again,” she directed at both of them, a warning finger in the air.
Anita and Rowan passed a teasing look to each other, and they both started laughing.
“Pick a side, Birdsong,” Juniper declared as she crossed over to them.
“Hell no,” Rowan responded, which caused Anita to laugh even harder.
Anita winked at Rowan. “You can’t just threaten people, Junie.”
They really had the same personality. It was like Anita copied and pasted herself to make Juniper.
Anita motioned to the kitchen. “Come in here and let me fix you something to eat. Cornbread’s in the cast iron on the middle of the table already.”
Juniper started to pull out paper bowls for the chili on the stove.
“No, no.” Anita huffed quickly and shooed Juniper aside. She pointed to the cabinet with a glass pane on the door. “Get the good stuff out. The Blue Willow.”
After Juniper sat the bowls down by the stove, she and Rowan sat at the kitchen table while Anita pulled a pitcher of strawberry drink from the refrigerator. She poured out a glass and handed it to Rowan, and then went back to the stove to scoop out a bowl of chili for each of them.
“Thank you,” Rowan said, happily letting the zing of the drink hit the back of her cheeks after her first sip. It took real effort not to gulp the entire glass down.
“Oh, I don’t get any?” Juniper quipped.
“Junie, my first born child, you live here. And you have two legs to walk you to get a cup and two hands to pour it out.”
Rowan laughed into her already half-empty glass and looked over to Juniper.
Juniper scrunched up her face at her. “Don’t look at me,” she whispered through her smiling glare.
Anita placed a warm bowl of chili in front of each of their spots at the table, and then a cup of strawberry drink in front of Juniper anyway. Anita sat down with them, her own cup in front of her.
Rowan finally set her glass down to turn her attention to the chili. “I missed that zing in the back of the cheeks.”
“That’s the best part of strawberry drink,” Anita agreed.
Strawberry drink was a favorite in their community, and it was really just as simple as the name suggested. Muddled strawberries, some kind of sweetener, and water. The simplicity let the strawberries shine, and that was part of why it was so good.
Anita looked between the two of them and back again, eyes gleaming and a smile creeping across her face. “What a day.”
Rowan scraped the last bit of chili from her bowl into her spoon and ate it. She slathered softened butter on her slice of cornbread and took a bite. She closed her eyes in satisfaction, sat back to finish savoring it, and caught Anita’s gaze when she opened her eyes again.
“That was so good. I missed that too. Thank you.”
Anita was still smiling. “Hmm,” she hummed into her cup, a combination of joy and mirth in the vibrations. “You know what next month’s moon is?”
Rowan shook her head and felt the tenseness reverberate from Juniper sitting diagonally from her.
“Strawberry moon,” Anita confirmed.
“What’s that?” Rowan looked between the two of them, a cautious smile on her face.
“You ever noticed how a strawberry is shaped like a heart?”
Rowan nodded.
“She brings us messages of love. She tells us it’s time to let go of old conflict and welcome everybody back home.” Anita chuckled into the palm of her hand then winked at Rowan. “She also tells us it’s time to name the babies. I’m sure you know how babies are made.”
“Mother.” Juniper’s warning glare looked almost comical with the way her eyes had doubled in size.
Rowan felt her cheeks get hot, but she laughed through it. She folded her arms over her chest as she noticed Juniper bring her fingers to her still kiss-swollen lips. “She fed me some strawberries earlier.”
“I’m sure she did.”
Juniper’s chair screeched as she scraped it against the linoleum floor to stand. “I should have dragged my feet on organizing your request for this little dinner even longer.”
“You can pretend to fight it, Junie, but we all know how the story goes.”
Rowan certainly had an idea of how she wanted the story to go, and she was cautious to remind herself not to skip too quickly through the timeline.
Earlier that night Rowan had almost given into all of her physical desires.
But Juniper deserved to be treated with intention, and that did not include some heat-of-the-moment fumble in her dad’s truck the first time.
That could come later. Definitely more of that needed to come later, but on the kitchen counter, in the shower, on the floor, against the bookcases and then again on her desk.
Juniper leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. Getting the hint that it was time to leave, Rowan stood up and walked around the table to kiss Anita’s cheek and hug her shoulders.
“How does that old song go?” Rowan asked.
Anita took the bait. “Which one?”
“It’s the time of the season… for lovinggg,” Rowan sang the classic line by The Zombies.
Anita squealed with laughter, grabbed the hand towel she had draped over her knee, and swatted Rowan with it. She sidestepped out of the way just quick enough to avoid a pop on the thigh.
“What do you know about old folks’ music?” Anita asked, trying to get her laughter under control.
“She’s always been a grandpa at heart.”
Rowan looked over at Juniper’s position leaning against the counter with her arms crossed, ready to go.
Rowan tried to convey her ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it,’ face as honestly as possible.
Juniper simply rolled her eyes and did her best to suppress the smile that threatened to make itself known.
After they’d said their final goodbyes, Rowan closed the screen door behind them.
No sooner had it shut did she feel herself pressed against it and Juniper’s lips pressed into hers.
Rowan tangled her hands into Juniper’s hair and deepened the kiss reflexively, reigniting the intensity that they had discovered together earlier in the afternoon.
Breathlessly, Juniper pulled back but kept Rowan’s shoulders pinned against the door with her hands. “It’s the time of the season for loving, huh?”
Rowan shrugged innocently and smirked, trying to calm her racing heart. “So it is.”
“And you think you’re so funny going on about it to my Mom of all people?”
Juniper let her go to poke a finger into her chest, but Rowan grabbed it and squeezed her hand into hers.
“First of all, she started it. Second, I would feel more threatened if you didn’t have to stand on your tiptoes to do it.”
To further make her point, Rowan placed a quick kiss at the top of Juniper’s forehead as she threaded their fingers together. Juniper glared at her playfully but allowed herself to be led down the steps.
“Shut up.”
“Have a good night, girls.”
They both jumped at the voice booming through the open window.
“Night, Auntie,” Rowan answered loudly as she pulled Juniper into her side. “Fuck, I forgot the window was open,” she whispered into her ear, laughing.
“You forget she’s sneaky like that.”