Chapter 9
A couple of weeks passed by, mostly uneventful, though their shared lunches had started to take a pleasant turn. Rowan looked up from her book, of course not to watch the sway of Juniper’s hips, just to acknowledge her presence in the small kitchen the staff shared.
“What are you reading?” Juniper asked as she set her steaming lunch container down on the table Rowan was sitting at.
“A book on oysters.”
“Seems… broad,” Juniper laughed, settling into her seat next to Rowan.
“My dad and I are looking into re-populating the oyster colonies in the bay.”
“I do better with plants. Remind me again, what’s an oyster colony?”
Rowan leaned forward in her seat, interested in the way Juniper took interest in what she wanted to share.
“Essentially it’s a community of oysters living in close proximity to each other. They filter water, cycle nutrients, and help protect the coastline from things like erosion. Oyster populations and their habitats are essential for maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems.”
“Good for our community, good for your dad’s business. Like shucking two oysters with one knife?” Juniper squinted her eyes playfully. “I don’t know, that saying doesn’t translate well does it?”
“You tried.” Rowan chuckled. “We’ve been taking my boat out on the weekends, surveying to find the right spot. We think we found one.”
“Yeah? You got your old jon boat up and running again?”
Juniper bit down on another bite of her food, and Rowan tracked her movement from lunch container to pillowy lips. With her guard down, the next words escaped Rowan before she realized what all that memory jarring might unleash.
“You remember how much fun we had on that thing together?”
“I sure do.” Juniper softly smiled before averting her eyes back to her lunch, a tender fleeting moment Rowan wanted to hold onto.
The summer after their junior year, Victor had caught the biggest tuna of the season and celebrated by buying the small boat for Rowan with some of his earnings.
He couldn’t afford to buy her a car, most people couldn’t around there, but he bought her something she ended up loving and using more than she ever could a car.
She had gotten two full summers’ use out of that boat, along with most of the falls and springs bookended on either side.
“It sat there in his shed unused since I left. I guessed he never had the heart to sell it.”
“I bet he hoped it would come into use again one day.”
With an appetite long gone from several layers of regret, Rowan picked at the crust of her half-eaten sandwich and wanted to change the subject entirely. “What do you have for lunch?”
“Fiddleheads. You want some?” Juniper asked.
She tilted the container for Rowan to get a better look. It was a sad sight to compare Rowan’s lunch of a basic turkey sandwich to Juniper’s lunch of sautéed garlicky fiddleheads paired with what she thought looked like roasted venison loin.
“What’s a fiddlehead?” Rowan replaced her bookmark and leaned in curiously.
“They’re the fronds on top of fern crowns.”
“Still lost, Junie…”
“The little curly parts on top of a baby fern.” Juniper curved her fingers in the air in illustration before she stabbed one to hold it up. “You can harvest them in mid-spring here. You gotta get them while you can though. They’re only good to harvest for a couple weeks.”
She watched Juniper slide it past her lips. Juniper watched her watch her. With eyes wide, Juniper licked her bottom lip to catch the rest of the juice.
“I’ve never tried these,” Rowan admitted, transfixed.
“Taste one.”
Juniper stabbed another deliciously fragrant, verdant green fiddlehead with her fork and turned toward Rowan.
In a momentary blip of her rationality, willpower, whatever she wanted to call it, Rowan didn’t take the fork from Juniper’s hand.
Instead, she leaned forward and let it slip into her own mouth.
Realizing her misstep, she pulled back, crunching a few times, letting the flavors explode across her tongue as she closed her eyes.
“Fuck that tastes good.”
“Like if a green bean and an artichoke had a baby, right?”
“I give them free rein to fuck each other senseless if that’s what the result is.” Rowan pointed down at the container, acknowledging internally that maybe she just wanted a reason to talk about fucking.
Juniper raised an eyebrow and laughed. “I can show you where to forage these some time. If you’re interested.”
“Tonight?” That was… eager.
“Yeah, actually, that would work. Wanna meet where Mr. Barlow sells his stuffed clams on the side of the road? The spot I forage from is not too far from there.”
Rowan raised a hand and patted her heart. “Ugh, Mr. Barlow. Sweet, sweet Mr. Barlow.”
“You’re not gonna get away without paying as a grown ass adult, Rowan,” Juniper laughed. “You might still be cute, but I don’t think the charm will work like it used to.”
Rowan laughed with her. “Maybe it’s time for me to settle my tab.”
Still cute, huh? We’ll see about that charm.
An invitation and a challenge. She smirked as Juniper took her last bite and stood up from the table.
Later that afternoon, after standing around the back of Mr. Barlow’s truck to eat their fill of stuffed clams, and after Rowan secretly slipped two extra $20 bills into the driver’s side visor clip, they consolidated to Rowan’s truck and made their way to a clearing near a large wooded area close to the middle point of the river on the reservation.
For the next half hour, they talked and enjoyed each other’s company while foraging, making sure they were harvesting correctly in the way Juniper was taught, as she was now teaching Rowan.
They only pulled from fern crowns that had all their fronds, kept track of which ferns they pulled from and those that already didn’t have full crowns, and made sure to not over-harvest the area.
They’d also found a couple big hen-of-the-woods mushroom clusters that Juniper promised to roast up for lunch the next day.
Juniper dropped the full basket into the open passenger window after they finished the journey back to the truck. Rowan wondered if the cause of Juniper’s fidgeting was also the cause of her own – the flood of memories from the last time they’d been in this truck together.
Rowan lifted up the back of her baseball cap to scratch her neck and then checked her smartwatch to find the timing of that day’s sunset. “Would you want to find a spot to sit in the field? The sun should be setting here soon. It might be nice to watch since the skies are so clear.”
Juniper eyed her for a few hesitant seconds. “Sure. It is a nice evening.”
Rowan grabbed a woven blanket from a storage box under the back window of the truck bed.
After finding an open patch of grass that didn’t look too bumpy, she unfurled the blanket and sat down.
She crossed her ankles, leaned back onto her hands, and smiled up at Juniper. Juniper looked frozen in place.
“Are you going to sit?” Rowan patted the blanket beside her.
“Yes, sorry,” she sighed as she took a half step forward then stopped again, accidentally kicking up the edge of the blanket. “Sorry, so much on my mind today.” She plopped down finally.
“I can tell,” Rowan said. Me too. She thought. She looked down at their feet, now side by side. “Same taste in work boots I see.”
Juniper smiled and nudged Rowan’s foot clad in the same brand of slip-on field boot. “I alternate between these and gardening boots most days.”
“You seem to also have a large collection of heels.”
“Those are just for the office,” Juniper shrugged.
Rowan tried not to think of how they might also look in other scenarios, ones perhaps with less clothes.
The thought of Juniper, in her power standing over her, was doing things to her.
She was starting to regret, possibly now more than ever, that she’d never let Juniper truly have the chance to boss her around a little bit.
She groaned internally. This was not the way she was supposed to be thinking about Juniper.
The whole day, actually, she had willfully ignored the internal voice yelling at her to stop while she was ahead.
After all, preventing herself from feeling anything further for Juniper was the whole reason she even took that job interview.
That seemed like months ago at this point, even though it had only been a couple weeks.
She was coming to realize how much of a fool’s errand she was really on.
Sitting together but apart, they watched silently as the horizon blushed, then goldened as dusk took over the late spring sky. She tried to be discreet in the moments she also watched Juniper with the same awe.
“Do you ever want to lay back on the ground and become one with the grass?” Juniper asked.
Caught off guard at the sudden question, Rowan chuckled. “All the time.”
Juniper had always had the most random thoughts and rarely hesitated at expressing them.
It was one of the things she loved most about her, how forward and unabashed she was in revealing parts of herself.
So different than Rowan had been, and something that had drawn her to Juniper over a lifetime.
Rowan cleared her throat before trying to share more about herself.
“That really started to wear on me while living in the city — not having direct access to nature. It’s part of what made me want to come home.
Real nature, not something artificially re-planted in a walled off city block after all the original organic life was ripped out.
City life, for as dirty as it can be, can also feel so sanitized. ”
Juniper didn’t respond to that. After a long pause, she asked, “If you were going to pick me up at a bar in the city, what kind of a pick-up line would you use?”
Rowan now suspected that nervousness might be contributing to the way her thoughts were fluttering around.