Chapter Three – Rowan #3
I slip inside the main house to fry chicken like my mother isn’t standing in my head, reminding me not to dry it out.
Music through the open windows tells me she’s put the record back on and maybe the shower, too.
Steam and Stevie drift in tandem across the grass.
I stand at the stove and get every timing right that a man can get right when he’s not sure what he’s doing with his life is right at all.
By the time she appears on the porch in bare legs and damp hair—the tank and shorts swapped for a soft T-shirt that announces a band I haven’t heard of—the light is syrup, and the yard smells like hay and my mother’s rosemary that refuses to die.
I bring the plates out, set them on the little table, and try not to watch her sit down like I set a table for a woman on purpose.
“Looks incredible,” she says, lifting her fork.
“Tastes better,” I answer, because confidence can be cooked into things even if I can’t seem to put it anywhere else today.
We eat. It’s quiet in all the right places and talk in the rest. She tells me about a girl in Des Moines who pressed a letter into her hand after a show and said, “You made me feel less alone,” and how that ruined her—in a good way—for a while.
I tell her about the fourth-grade field trip where I explained photosynthesis to a kid who hated science and watched his face change, and how I keep chasing that same look in kids when I volunteer at the school garden.
We are, without either of us naming it, handing each other the little anchors we tie to our ankles so we don’t float away.
After, I wash up while she dries, which is a domestic choreography that makes my bones ache in a way swinging a post driver never has.
When we finish, she lingers with the towel in her hands, and I point my chin at the porch swing because if we’re going to flirt with fire, we might as well sit where I can face the yard and remember I’m responsible for more than my heartbeat.
We swing. Fireflies start up in the low places, a hundred small yeses. She tucks her feet under her and leans back, head tipping to the board like she trusts the piece of wood and me by extension.
Her phone buzzes on the little table next to us. She flips it, face down, without checking. I raise one eyebrow.
“I’m off the clock,” she says.
“Then learn the cricket chorus,” I answer, because that’s a choice, too. She does, eyes half-closed, mouth going soft in a way that is going to ruin me for years if I let it.
The sky loses its last blue. The swing’s chains creak like an older man telling a story he’s earned the right to repeat. We’re one degree from asleep when a truck crunches up the drive and brakes too quickly.
Crew.
I don’t sigh out loud. Ivy sits up, reflexes quick and brittle. “Expecting him?”
“No,” I say, which is the problem.
He hops out with a grin and a six-pack, sunglasses in his hair even though the sun bit it an hour ago. “Crashing the party,” he calls, too loud for this hour.
I stand. Ivy stands too, a fraction behind me, and it isn’t the wrong picture.
Crew clocks it. He’s not dumb. His smirk tips to a question mark that I don’t have the patience to answer in front of anything with ears.
“Evening, Ivy,” he says, easy as a man walking into a room where he expects clapping. “You stuck around after all.”
She doesn’t flinch. Good girl. “Guess I did.”
“Carl says two to three days,” I add, like we’re sharing a farm report.
He laughs and hands me the six-pack like a peace offering. “You two good?” he asks, finally looking at her with something that isn’t entirely show.
“We are,” she says, simple as a line drawn right where she wants it.
He takes that in, nods once, and backs down the steps. “See you later,” he says. Some party crasher.
When his taillights get swallowed by the trees, the night exhales again. Ivy doesn’t look at me, and I don’t look at her. We sit back down and swing until the bugs turn from chorus to lullaby, the six-pack resting on the porch earning every drop of condensation.
“I should sleep,” she says finally, voice soft as church.
“Yeah,” I say, because I don’t trust myself to say anything else. I walk with her to the bottom of the cottage steps like I wasn’t going to. She climbs two, then turns back—close enough that if I leaned, my mouth would find the place at her temple that feels like a secret.
“Thank you for today,” she says. “For… all of it.”
“Get some rest,” I answer, because I am not a poet, and if I become one on this step, I’m done for.
She nods, opens the door, and the warm square of light swallows her whole. It takes a long time to go off. Long enough to make a man think about the plans he had for staying unbothered and what it means to abandon them.
I sit on my porch with a warming beer from Crew’s gift and watch the yard breathe.
Crickets trade the line to katydids. An owl stakes its claim at the tree line.
Somewhere in the grass, the little calf with the ridiculous name sighs in her sleep.
The record in the cottage hits the end of its side and spins against silence, soft, steady, like a heart that refuses to skip.
I sleep like I’ve been worked, not like I’ve been worried, which is a trick I learned back when finishing a chore was the only way to tell a day from itself. I’m up before the birds vote on a key. Coffee. Boots. Lists I don’t write down because my hands remember them.
By the time I circle back past the oak, a square of light is on in the cottage. She kept the hoodie. I don’t see her, but the record player hums low under the morning—needle resting where she forgot to lift it. It’s a small, human mess that makes my mouth do something unfamiliar.
“Morning,” I say, tapping the frame.
She answers from the kitchenette, hair braided down her back, sleeves pushed to her elbows. “You own any mugs that aren’t chipped?”
“Wouldn’t trust ’em if they weren’t,” I say, handing over her coffee—I know the way she likes it enough now that I don’t have to guess. She wraps both hands around it like she’s claiming something warm on purpose.
“Busy day?” she asks.
I nod once, my answer simple enough. There isn’t ever a day that isn’t busy on the farm.
She grins, then tips her chin toward the yard. “Put me to work.”
I should send her back to the couch with her book and a command to conserve energy. I don’t. I point her at the hose and make a motion of filling the animal troughs. Despite my use of the English language, Ivy seems to understand.
We meet in the middle over the hose when I turn the nozzle wrong and christen her calves by accident.
She gasps, laughs, tries to shield herself with her arm, fails, then flicks water at me with the same stubbornness she used on that fence splice yesterday.
The drops land cool on my forearms. A ten-second water fight, and then we remember we’re adults.
The daily chores pass the time as usual, but it’s different with Ivy here. For someone who seems like she lives in such a frazzled state of mind, she brings a calmness over the farm I haven’t seen in a long time.
As we wrap up the last chores, we head for the truck and roll back to the house. I promised fajitas, and the way her eyes lit up like I’d handed her fireworks makes it impossible to back out.
We fall into an easy rhythm in the kitchen. Ivy slices peppers from the garden while I sear steak in the cast-iron. She bumps my hip when we trade places at the stove—light, accidental-on-purpose—and I pretend the sizzle in the pan is the only heat in the room.
“Today was… unexpectedly wet,” she says, lining the peppers into neat color bars and flicking an imaginary droplet off her wrist.
“Chores, a hose fight, and you declaring war on a water trough,” I say. “You’re getting the real tour.”
“I was merely defending myself,” she counters, her smile curving. “You flicked first. For the record, I won,” she says, eyes bright.
“You switched the nozzle to jet. That’s cheating.”
We plate everything and eat at the island like normal people with regular days.
She tells me Butterscotch needs her own social media account.
I tell her my youngest brother, Holt, swears he can smell rain two hours before it hits, yet he is wrong at least half the time.
She laughs and steals the last wedge of lime off my plate without asking.
When the dishes are rinsed and stacked, we take cold tea out to the steps. Dusk folds over the yard, cicadas tuning up. Somewhere down by the creek, a frog starts sounding like a squeaky hinge.
“So Carl should have the part tomorrow or the next day,” she says, thumb tracing condensation on her glass. She tries to make it casual but doesn’t quite stick the landing. “So… soon.”
“Soon,” I echo. The word sits between us like a coin no one wants to pick up.
She tilts her head toward me. “You’ll help me test-drive my spaceship out of the ditch era?”
“I’ll drive behind you with hazards on and a tow strap ready,” I say. “Full-service package.”
Her smile curves, slow and warm. “Chivalry looks good on you.”
“Careful. You’ll start rumors.”
“About the surly cowboy who makes excellent fajitas?” She nudges my knee with her toe. “Let them.”
The porch light throws a soft halo across her bare legs and the hem of her shorts. I should look away. I don’t. She catches me and doesn’t look away either, and the air gets thick enough to chew for a beat.
She clears her throat first, mercy in the sound. “Thank you. For dinner. For… today.”
“Anytime,” I say, meaning it more than I should.
She stands, gathering her empty glass. “Walk me back to the cottage?”
“Of course.”
We cross the yard shoulder to shoulder, not touching yet close enough to feel it anyway. At her door, she turns, hand on the latch, searching my face like she’s memorizing a map she plans to use again.
“Night, Rowan.”
“Night, Ivy.”