Chapter 10 Rowan
ROWAN
“You really shouldn’t be putting too much weight on that ankle.”
Lola seems to ignore me completely, making herself comfortable on a bar stool and dropping her head into her hands like a toddler who’s ready to be entertained.
I’m not a fan of how adorable it is, how cute it makes her look.
It doesn’t help that she’s still in that matching sweat set; it makes her look so soft.
And she is soft. I know because she let her side press firmly against mine as I helped her in here, and the heat of that did stupid things to my brain.
I remind myself, yet again, that it would be a horrible, awful idea to do anything with this woman. Not that she wants to do anything.
But if she did, I wouldn’t. For so many reasons.
Because the last time I let someone in, I was burned. Badly. Because as much as I’m starting to trust her now, it doesn’t mean that she still couldn’t go back to the press. Especially if she figures out the whole truth of who I am, and what I’m doing up here in the mountains, alone.
Even if neither of those things happens, it’s not like I’m in a good place to date. The only person I see on a semi-regular basis is Pete. What would me pursuing her even look like? Her wearing a wig and driving up here to see me?
And what if the press caught on to more frequent visits?
What if they didn’t, and the strain of this kind of life eventually got to her? What if she realized she didn’t want to jump through so many hoops just to follow the thread of the connection between us?
It’s not like she could do her influencing stuff up here, anyway. I don’t get reception. I don’t even get mail.
You, Elliot might have said, if he heard my going on like this, are putting the cart before the horse, my friend.
Elliot was a fan of stuff like that; the words you might hear from a football coach, or spot in cursive on a throw pillow. When he talked me into attending business conferences with him, the hosts would hurl them at our heads like ammunition, accusing us of not reaching our true potential.
I wonder if Hannah ever gets tired of hearing them. Or maybe she loves them. Maybe what she really felt our relationship lacked was tackiness. Maybe if I’d memorized a couple of generic catch phrases, things wouldn’t have gone down the way they did.
“Earth to Rowan,” Lola says, drawing me out of my thoughts and into the present, where this gorgeous woman is sitting in my kitchen, staring at me with big expectant eyes, smelling faintly of lilacs. Is it some sort of perfume? Did she have it in her suitcase? “Can we start the demonstration now?”
Lola is the last thing I need. All she does is ask questions and make me want to answer them. The gruff exterior I’ve worked so hard to develop, the isolation out here, my insistence on avoiding her probing — I can tell it’s only making her more curious.
“This won’t take long,” I say, opening cupboards and taking things out.
My kitchen scale, mat, and all the little tools Pete brought for me a few months ago, insisting I needed more hobbies.
Some of it is superfluous, for decorating the loaves, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the feeling of making them look nice. “So don’t expect much.”
“Oh, this is already very interesting,” Lola says, tapping her fingers on the counter.
This is my fault, for mentioning it to her at all. It would have been smarter to just come in here, keep the whole thing to myself. Especially after having her ankle in my hand, hearing her gasp at my touch, looking up to see her biting her lip.
I was practically kneeling between her legs already. It did not help the whole trying not to think about Lola issue.
Once again, I drag my thoughts away from her. Away from the fact that she will, once again, be sleeping in my cabin tonight. And this time freshly showered and dressed in clean, soft clothes. Instead of thinking about that, I think about the measurements for the bread. The new flour I’m trying.
Even out here, I’m not immune to the trends, especially not with Pete bringing me books and journals each month. And sourdough seems like a very practical way to spend my time.
Since I’ve stopped developing, stopped coming up with new ideas for software, it’s felt good to do things with my hands. With the sourdough thing, I can feed the starter, watch it grow. Try new recipes and make a loaf for myself each week.
The first time I tried it, all I got was a tough hockey puck of a thing. But now, I’m pretty good. As I work, grabbing jars and pulling water from the tap, Lola peppers me with questions. And I find myself answering.
“What is the rubber band for?”
“So I can keep track of where the level was before.”
“Why does that matter?”
“You want the starter to double before you use it.”
“Did you make it yourself? Or did you buy it?”
“I made it myself,” I say, maybe a bit too defensively. After my first failure at making a starter, Pete had offered to ask for a starter from a stall at the farmers’ market. But I’ve never been the kind of guy who likes to take shortcuts.
“How long did that take?”
“About a week.” When I pull the lid from the jar, the room fills with the smell — a little sour, slightly yeasty. The precursor to fresh bread.
“Why do you need to feed it each day?”
“The starter is like a culture. There are bacteria in here that eat flour, and what they excrete is what holds the bread together.”
“Are you dumbing down the science for me?” she asks.
That makes me laugh, and I glance over at her quickly, which makes me spill some flour on the counter. Outside, the world is still gray, but the lights inside are warm, and they make her glow. Her hair is dry now and practically golden in the light, and her cheeks are pink.
“Don’t answer that,” she says, tilting her head. “I know that you are. But that’s okay. I hate science.”
“You can’t hate science.”
“Why not? I’m sure there are plenty of things you hate.”
Elliot and Hannah, and business in general, come to mind, and I push them away before Lola — with her piercing gaze — can peel back my layers and see their faces hovering there like a television inside my mind.
“Everything is science,” I say, cutting a glance at her. “Your clothes, your phone — hating science is like hating existing.”
“Edgy.”
I laugh again, but this time I don’t spill a thing. Silence stretches between us, and I finish up what I’m doing with this loaf — mixing the flour, starter, and salt until it’s fully incorporated, then washing my hands and putting a tea towel over the whole thing, setting it to the side.
“You’re not going to bake it?” she asks, and I shake my head. It’s not that I’ve forgotten she’s here, exactly, but just that I feel comfortable. Like I’ve forgotten my body in these moments.
Before, everything felt like a performance. I was always aware of how I was perceived and wondering if it was good enough. With Elliot. Definitely with Hannah.
“It’s not ready yet,” I say, opening the fridge and pulling out the loaf I finished a few days before. It’s been proofing in the fridge for about forty hours, which, according to my data, is just about the perfect time at this elevation. “But this one is.”
“So what do you do now?” she asks.
“Why don’t I show you?”
It’s stupid, and I know it. I shouldn’t be doing anything to invite more contact between the two of us, but I do anyway. And Lola, of course, jumps on the offer. She stands gingerly, then, to my surprise, shrugs off her jacket and lays it over the back of her chair.
Now, she’s wearing only the soft purple sweatpants and a simple white tank top. Maybe the teachers were right about the power of the shoulder, because my entire body is suddenly hot.
She uses the kitchen counter to help her walk over to me, and I let the ball of dough fall out of the bowl, focusing on the instruction rather than the scent of her, the heat of her, so close to me.
I could reach out and put my hands on her waist. I could turn her around, press my mouth over hers. I could lift her up and set her on the counter, step between her legs—
“This one has already been stretched and folded, and it’s been in the fridge,” I say, sprinkling flour over the board, wrestling with my thoughts. One half of my brain is still focused on this, on the bread making.
The other half is focused on the chipped nail polish on her hands, the rolled band of her sweatpants at her waist, and the thin, tanned strip of skin between the two.
“So now it just needs shaping.”
“To the salon!” she says, glancing at me, and I raise an eyebrow at her. “You don’t get internet out here, do you?”
“No,” I say, and then, because the irresponsible half of my brain has taken over, I reach for her hands and set them on the dough, working them the way I’ve learned to. “You want to kind of cup it like this, shape it. We want it to be a perfect ball.”
She goes quiet, focusing on the task at hand, and I pull back from her. Hopefully she doesn’t notice how hard I’m breathing, my body’s reaction to her.
I’ve never been the kind of guy who pants over women. Sure, I’d had crushes — I had a crush on Hannah for a long time before I did anything about it — but it’s never felt like this before. If Elliot were here, he might describe it as an itch you can’t scratch or the worst kind of thirst.
Actually, if Elliot were here, he’d say he wanted to tap that.
“How’s that?” Lola asks, turning to me, and when she tries to brush her hair out of her face with the back of her hand, she leaves a trail of flour in its wake.
“Great,” I say, voice rough. “Looks good. Let’s get it in the oven.”
When I notice the way she glows at my praise, I decide enough is enough and slam back down my defenses, focusing solely on the task at hand.
Move the dough, put it in the warmed Dutch oven. Set the timer. Wash my hands.
If Lola notices my walls, she doesn’t let them deter her. Instead, she takes her spot at the breakfast bar again, and when I’m drying my hands, she says, “So, what do we do now?”