5. Absolutely Not Flustered
Chapter five
Absolutely Not Flustered
Sloane
Two weeks in, and I have developed a system.
The system is this: I observe Beck Calloway's competence the way I observe everything useful, which is to say clinically, as data, with the emotional investment of someone completing a professional evaluation and absolutely nothing more.
I catalog what he contributes. I track the gaps he fills.
I note the ways the orchard responds to two people instead of one, the way the harvest numbers are climbing at a rate that my spreadsheet registers with quiet satisfaction and my pride registers with something more complicated.
This is inventory, not admiration. I want to be very clear about that distinction.
He rebuilt the cider press in three days.
I have been nursing that press with baling wire, selective profanity, and the specific optimism of someone who has no alternative for six months.
The belt was slipping. The gears were grinding in a way that made Old Tom Wheeler wince every time he walked past the barn.
I fixed it repeatedly and it required fixing repeatedly and I had accepted this as the permanent condition of our relationship.
Beck did not ask permission. He assessed the situation, sourced the parts in Burlington, and spent a Tuesday afternoon in the barn while I was working the east rows.
When I came back, the press was running with the smooth, even purr of equipment that has been properly repaired by someone who understood the underlying mechanical issue rather than managed the symptoms.
I stood in the barn doorway for a full minute looking at it.
Then I put my hands on my hips and felt something that was absolutely fury and nothing else, thank you, no further analysis required.
Not because he fixed it. Because he fixed it and I had not managed to, and his capable hands on my equipment felt like a comment I hadn't invited, and the press was one more thing that was running better with him present, and I need fewer data points of that particular type, not more.
We work the west rows together in the October light, which is gold and amber through the leaves in the specific way that Iris would set up her easel for and I am categorically not noticing, except that I am, because apparently my observational faculties do not have an off switch.
His hands are calloused in the specific way that comes from years of actual physical work rather than the performative outdoor lifestyle.
He handles the fruit with the careful attentiveness of someone who understands that you're harvesting a living thing, not extracting inventory. He also talks to the trees.
This is ridiculous. I want to be on record about that.
He talks to the trees in this low, easy murmur, nothing theatrical, just the occasional word while he's checking a branch or assessing a root, and the trees seem to receive it with the general energy of living things acknowledging that someone is paying attention to them.
I talk to the trees too but I have been doing it for twenty-nine years and it is completely different.
"This one needs another week," he says, cupping a Honeycrisp and checking the stem connection with the practiced efficiency I have been cataloguing and not admiring. "The color's right but the sugars aren't finished."
"I know. I was going to leave the northeast corner for the end of the week."
"Same read." He moves to the next tree. "You're good at this."
"I grew up doing this."
"Lots of people grow up doing things they're not good at. You're actually good at it." He says it the way he says most things, easy and direct, without the qualifying softness people usually attach to compliments when they're not sure how the recipient will receive them.
I don't know what to do with straightforward. I am built for combat and diplomacy, not straightforward.
"Your feelings about my skill level are also not a factor in orchard operations," I say, which is not a normal response to a compliment, but it is the response that was available.
His mouth does the thing where amusement threatens to happen and he physically redirects it. I am beginning to recognize this expression the way you recognize recurring weather patterns.
We reach for the same crate simultaneously, his hand arriving a half second before mine, and I snatch mine back like the crate attempted something.
"I had that."
"I know," he says. "I was just—"
"I had it."
He raises both hands, palms forward, the universal gesture of a man who has decided that the strategic retreat is the winning play.
His expression is patient in the specific way that patience looks when someone is choosing it rather than just defaulting to it, and this is somehow more aggravating than if he were frustrated, because patience means he has assessed the situation and decided I'm worth it, and I have very strong feelings about being someone's worthwhile project.
I go up the ladder for the high-branch cluster because that is where the apples are and I am not going to let the general emotional difficulty of the morning rearrange my harvest strategy.
The ladder is fine. The ladder has been fine for eleven years.
The ladder shifts, and I grab for a branch, and the branch is not quite where my hand expects it to be, and then his hand is on my back.
Wide. Warm. Steady in the way of someone who moved without thinking about it, pure instinct, no calculation.
His palm spans my lower ribcage through the flannel and I can feel the contact with a clarity that has absolutely nothing to do with October temperature and everything to do with the fact that I have not been touched like this, carefully and without agenda, in a timeline that I am not going to examine right now.
"You good?" he asks.
Physiologically and strategically: no. Verbally: "Fine.
" I climb down the ladder with the controlled efficiency of a woman who is definitely not flustered.
I step away from his hand. The specific warmth of the contact persists for several seconds after, which is basic thermodynamics and not worth noting.
"The safety harness exists for the high branches," he says, and his voice has that lower register it drops into when he's being genuine rather than easy, the one I have also been cataloguing and absolutely not paying special attention to.
"I have been picking apples since I was twelve years old."
"And the apples are clearly grateful for your extensive credentials. That doesn't change the physics of ladders."
"Your concerns about my ladder relationship are not something I asked for."
He bites his lip with the visible effort of a man physically containing a response. I can see it cost him something. This is, objectively, a small victory, and I choose not to examine why it feels less satisfying than I expected.
Beck takes a supply run into town in the afternoon, which gives me two hours of the alone that I function best in, the climate my nervous system has calibrated to over two years of complete self-sufficiency.
I am cleaning equipment in the barn when I find it on the workbench.
A carved apple blossom, cherry wood, small enough to sit in my palm.
Five petals with the particular curve of a Honeycrisp blossom, a spray of stamens in the center, the whole thing executed with a patience and specificity that communicates something about the maker before I've consciously registered what I'm looking at.
Jamie never made things. This is a fact I am only now articulating to myself with the clarity of comparison.
Jamie bought things and borrowed things and promised things with the genuine enthusiasm of someone who fully intended to follow through at the time of the promising.
He brought flowers still in the grocery store wrapper with the receipt still tucked in the bag, which I always found both charming and revealing.
He was large gestures and loud love and the filling up of rooms with his presence.
He never made anything with his hands that was designed to be beautiful for its own sake, with no audience and no occasion.
I turn the blossom in my fingers and feel my chest do something inconvenient.
It is a small carved flower. It is not a declaration.
It is a man's whittling habit manifesting in an available piece of cherry wood, and the fact that it landed on the barn workbench rather than the loft nightstand is either intentional or coincidence, and I am not going to assign meaning to either option because assigning meaning is how people end up in situations they did not budget for emotionally.
I put it down. Pick it up. Put it in my jacket pocket. Take it out again. Place it on the windowsill where the afternoon light hits it at the angle that makes the grain of the wood visible, the natural pattern of the cherry running through the petals in lines that look almost intentional.
When Beck returns from town and unloads the supplies in the barn, I am pointedly examining the irrigation fitting that needs replacing.
He walks past the workbench. His eyes go to the windowsill.
Something quick and unguarded moves across his face before the easy expression reassembles, a fraction of a second where he is just a person who made something and wanted to know if it was noticed.
I think: well, this is a problem.
I do not say this out loud. I say, "The elbow joint on the south line needs replacing before it fails completely," which is both true and a completely different subject, and he picks up the irrigation assessment without missing a beat, because Beck Calloway is frustratingly good at following conversational redirects.
The group chat activates at nine-seventeen in the evening, while I am sitting at the kitchen table with the foreclosure spreadsheet and a glass of apple cider that is doing its best to distract me from the numbers.
Iris: Sloane. How's it going with the mystery man. Scale of one to ten, what's your current hatred reading?
I consider the honest answer, which is not eleven, and type: Eleven.
Gemma, within thirty seconds: You kept the carved flower.
I stare at this message for a moment.
Then type back, in all capitals, because this situation warrants capitals: HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE FLOWER?
Gemma: Captain was at the orchard yesterday for the barn cat wellness check. Theo mentioned Beck was working on something in the loft. I made the deductive leap.
A pause, then: Captain is very observant.
I reply: Captain is a golden-furred informant and I am revoking his orchard privileges.
Iris sends three laughing emojis and then: A carved flower, Sloane. That's giving very soft-launch emotional situation.
I type: It's giving none of your business.
That is accurate but also the kind of deflection that my friends have known me long enough to read correctly.
Margot appears in the chat: Can we discuss the festival booth dimensions? I need the full cider menu by Friday at noon. The layout is in the shared drive, tab three.
Iris: Margot, it is nine-thirty at night.
Margot: The Harvest Moon Festival does not observe standard operating hours and neither do I. Also I updated the vendor map. Please review.
Sloane: Margot. When is the last time you slept a full night?
Margot: Sleep is just horizontal planning. I'm completely fine!
I am fine. The two most operationally dangerous words in the vocabulary of women who mean them least. I recognize the construction because I use it myself regularly, with the same bright delivery and the same hollowness underneath, and seeing it from Margot lands with the specific discomfort of watching someone use your own armor and knowing exactly what it's covering.
I type: I'll have the menu to you by Thursday.
This is the only thing I can offer right now that Margot will accept without having to admit she needs it.
The kitchen is quiet after I set the phone down. The spreadsheet is still open on the table, the numbers still doing their unfavorable mathematics, the foreclosure timeline still running in the background of every decision I make.
The carved apple blossom is on the windowsill and I have been not-looking at it for four hours with the focused attention of someone actively not-looking at something.
I pick it up and carry it upstairs.
It goes on the nightstand, which is where things go that I want accessible without having to make a decision about them. It sits next to the lamp, small and precise in the cherry wood, catching the bedside light in a way that makes the grain glow.
The drawer is right there beneath it. The separation papers are right there beneath the drawer. Two truths living in vertical proximity, neither one visible to anyone who walks into this room, both of them shaping everything I do.
Jamie, if you sent this man to punish me, it's working.