18. Az
— ? —
Az
The heat is stupid.
That’s the only word for it. Stupid, obscene, autumn heat that has no business existing in Ojai, that turns the greenhouse into a sauna and makes Whiskers refuse to leave the shade under the porch since Wren brought him up last weekend.
Twenty-eight weeks pregnant and I’m sticky before I even finish my afternoon coffee, standing at the kitchen window watching Eli haul flats of dahlia starts from the propagation bench to the east beds.
Shirtless.
Because of course he is.
I take another sip of my lukewarm decaf, my choice, although I resent every watered-down ounce of it, and watch him work.
He’s been here almost six weeks now. Six weeks of bunkhouse nights and porch mornings, of showing up to every appointment I’ve let him attend, of building that maple crib and fixing the irrigation line and somehow convincing the goat named after him to stop eating Lupe’s tomato plants.
Six weeks of not being forgiven.
He knows it. I know it. The goat probably knows it too.
But here’s the thing about watching your husband haul fifty-pound flats in ninety-degree heat while his back muscles bunch and roll with every lift: your body doesn’t care about forgiveness. Your body just wants.
“Mija, you’re going to burn a hole in that window.”
I jump, sloshing coffee onto my wrist. Lupe’s standing in the doorway to the mudroom, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised in that way she’s perfected over sixty-something years of watching people be idiots.
“I’m not… I was just-”
“Mm-hmm.”
“The heat,” I say, like that explains anything. “He shouldn’t be out there without water.”
“Mateo brought him a jug at lunch.” She moves past me to the sink, starts rinsing the lunch dishes I abandoned. “Along with three of his friends. They’ve been filming from the fence.”
“They’ve been what?”
“Filming.” She doesn’t look up. “Apparently your husband is, what did they call it, thirst trap content. Until Eli caught them. He made them stop and delete it. No posting the house, the fields, or you. Mateo got the same lecture.”
I choke on my coffee.
“I’m sorry, did you just say thirst trap?”
“I know words, Azalea.” Now she does look up, and there’s a gleam in her eye that reminds me why Grandma June loved her so much. “I also know what it looks like when a woman’s been staring at something she wants and pretending she isn’t.”
“I’m not pretending anything. I’m mad at him.”
“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
” She dries her hands on the dish towel, crosses to where I’m standing, and puts one weathered palm against my cheek.
“Your grandmother was mad at your grandfather for three years once. Something about a tractor and a woman named Patsy. She still loved him. She still wanted him. She just also wanted to throw that tractor at his head.”
“What happened?”
“He bought her a new tractor. A better one.” Lupe shrugs. “She threw a shoe at him instead. Then they made up. Then they had your mother, which was maybe not the best decision, but the making up part was necessary.”
I laugh despite myself, and she pats my cheek once before heading for the door.
“The teenagers left an hour ago. Mateo’s driving them to get burritos. Your husband is alone out there in that greenhouse, and it’s finally dropping below a hundred.” She pauses, hand on the screen. “I’ll be in the barn sorting the seed order. Very loudly. For at least two hours.”
“Lupe-”
But she’s already gone, the screen door swinging shut behind her, and I’m alone with my stupid coffee and my stupid feelings and the view of my stupid husband’s stupid back as he disappears into the greenhouse.
I tell myself I’m bringing him water.
That’s the excuse I settle on as I fill a mason jar from the tap and grab the hat he left on the porch rail three days ago. Just water and a hat. Just being a decent human being. Just…
Just watching him through the greenhouse plastic like you’ve been doing for twenty minutes, Az. Real subtle.
The greenhouse is even hotter than outside, the air thick and green-smelling, heavy with the scent of damp soil and growing things.
Eli’s at the far end, back to me, arranging shade cloth over the most delicate starts.
His jeans are slung low on his hips, work jeans, the ones with the hole in the left knee that I’ve told him to throw away six times, and there’s sweat tracking down his spine, disappearing into the waistband.
He’s humming.
I stop walking, jar sweating in my grip, because I know that tune. It’s Doorstep, the song he wrote for me, the one I heard through the front door after he built the crib. He’s humming it like he hums everything, half under his breath, like the music’s just part of how he breathes.
He looks relaxed here.
That’s what gets me. Not the muscles or the sweat or the way his hair curls at the back of his neck when it’s damp. It’s that he looks like he belongs. Like hauling flats and fixing irrigation and waking up at five to help with the goats is exactly where he wants to be.
He canceled a world tour for this.
He canceled everything for this.
And I still haven’t forgiven him.
“You’re watching me,” he says without turning around.
I jolt. “I’m not-”
“You are.” He reaches up to adjust a corner of the shade cloth, and I watch the muscles in his shoulders shift and hate myself a little. “You’ve been standing there for two minutes. I can hear you breathing.”
“That’s creepy.”
“That’s marriage.” Now he does turn, and there’s a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, that crooked half-smile that used to make me forget my own name. “What’s in the jar?”
“Water.” I thrust it toward him, keeping my eyes firmly above his collarbone. “You’re going to get heatstroke.”
“Thoughtful.” He crosses to me, takes the jar, drinks half of it in three long swallows. A drop escapes, slides down his throat, and I track it without meaning to. His grin widens. “You’re still staring.”
“I’m glaring. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Staring implies interest. Glaring implies I think you’re an idiot who doesn’t know how to stay hydrated.”
He laughs, that low rumble that I feel somewhere behind my ribs, and drains the rest of the water. “Fair enough. You bring the hat too, or is that just decoration?”
I throw it at his face.
He catches it one-handed, of course he does, and settles it on his head, still grinning. “Thanks, Flower.”
“Don’t call me that.” I look anywhere but at him.
“Az.”
“Don’t call me that either,” I say.
“Mrs. Jackson?”
“Eli.”
He holds up both hands, jar dangling from his fingers, the picture of innocence. “I’m running out of options here. What should I call you?”
“How about ‘the woman who’s still mad at you’?”
“That’s a mouthful.” He sets the jar on the propagation bench, pulls the hat lower against the angle of sun coming through the plastic. “Also, you’re here. In the greenhouse. Bringing me water.”
“Basic human decency.”
“You watched me work for twenty minutes.”
“I was assessing. Making sure you weren’t damaging the starts.”
“Uh-huh.” He takes a step closer, and I should step back, I should, but my feet don’t get the message. “So that’s all this is. Assessment.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing else.”
“Nothing.”
He’s close enough now that I can see the individual drops of sweat on his chest, can smell the salt and heat of him underneath the soil and green. His eyes are that impossible pale blue, like winter sky, like something that shouldn’t exist in this temperature.
“You’re lying,” he says softly.
“I’m not.”
“Az.” He doesn’t touch me. He waits for me to close the distance.
But he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the greenhouse, like the heat and the dahlias and the six weeks of careful distance don’t exist. “You’re lying, and you’re allowed to be.
I know what I did. I know you’re still-” He stops, swallows.
“But you’re also here. And I’m gonna hold onto that. ”
“It doesn’t mean anything.” I say it to the dahlias, not to him.
“Okay.”
“It doesn’t.” Quieter this time.
“I believe you.”
“You don’t.”
“I believe you believe it.” He smiles, that small sad one that breaks my heart every time. “And that’s enough. For now.”
I should leave. I should turn around and walk back to the house and spend the rest of the afternoon pretending I didn’t come out here for exactly this, to stand too close to him and feel the pull I’ve been fighting since I watched him walk onto that stage seven years ago and thought oh no.
Instead I say, “The shade cloth needs another tie on the east corner.”
He blinks. “What?”
“It’s going to come loose in the wind tonight. There’s a storm coming; you can smell it under the heat. The cloth needs another tie.”
“You came out here to tell me that?”
“I came out here because you’re an idiot who doesn’t drink water.” I’m already moving toward the east corner, toward the pile of rope and stakes Mateo left by the door. “But since I’m here.”
We work in silence for an hour, maybe more.
The heat gets worse before it gets better, pressing down on the greenhouse like a physical weight, and I have to sit twice because June decides to use my bladder as a trampoline.
Eli brings me water without being asked, refills my jar from the jug by the door, doesn’t say anything when I drink it too fast and have to pee again.
The teenagers don’t come back. Lupe’s true to her word. I can hear her in the barn, sorting seed trays with enough noise to wake the dead. The goat wanders past the greenhouse twice, bleating at Eli like he’s personally offended, and Eli bleats back each time until I laugh so hard I snort.
“You’re ridiculous,” I tell him.
“He started it.”
“He’s a goat.”
“A goat with opinions.” He ties off the last rope, wipes his forehead with his arm. “There. East corner secured. Happy?”
“Mildly satisfied.”
“High praise from the woman who’s still mad at me.”