Big Man(21)

I can’t start to fall for him. Not when he’s… who he is. A country man, a farm boy, a representative of everything I left behind. Everything I thought I was over in life.

I pad into the shower alone, leaving him on the bed. He watches me go, his eyes dark, unreadable, and I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. He must be. He knows this can’t last, too.

Still. We can enjoy it while it does.

That’s what I tell myself as I plunge my head under the shower tap and try to block out the rushing sound in my ears. The sound of something like regret.



That night, after dinner, Grant stops me as I stand up to do the dishes.

“It’s my turn,” I protest, but he ignores that and clasps my hand instead. Leads me out back. I laugh and tug at his grip. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” is his only reply. I’m learning that my country man likes to do that—make mysterious promises.

I have to admit, he’s lived up to all of them so far. So even though I roll my eyes and sigh, I do relax and let him lead me.

We pad across the grass together, barefoot. That tickles something at the back of my mind, a distant memory. Doing this before. Tiptoeing through this dewy grass, feeling the mud squish between my toes and tickle the soles of my feet. For some reason, in my memory, it seems like Grant was there. Though of course, I know he can’t have been. I remember him from high school now, vaguely—the big handsome guy who hung out with the jocks. We didn’t really cross paths much, even though our parents were friends.

Well, Mama, anyway, was friends with his parents. As for Dad…

I shake that thought off the way I always do. Douse those memories in kerosene and light the mental match. I don’t need to go down that road. Too much could catch fire.

I force myself back to the present, to the Grant who’s here with me now. The Grant I never knew back then. The one I wished I’d known better, if he was anything like the man he is now. Maybe if we’d been better friends in school, I wouldn’t have written this whole town off as useless.

He leads me out into the fields. We climb over the fence together, he lifts me up easily while I swing my legs over the posts. Then, hand in hand once more, we tiptoe through the fallows, over the now-empty fields that will one day—probably not until next year though—hold crops again. These fields will grow food, sustain life. Be productive in a real, tangible way. The kind of productivity that’s easy to wrap your head around. You get your hands dirty, dig in this soil, and in turn it feeds you.

At the core of it, that’s what life is really about. All the stuff I get up to back at home in the city, that’s all a kind of crazy distillation of this. It’s fun, but it’s not quite as… real, somehow.

It’s not simple, anyway. It’s not easy to understand. It’s not feeding yourself off the fruits of your labor—except maybe metaphorically, with all the money I make from being a desk jockey, running errands and playing glorified secretary. I feel like I’ve been lost behind a computer screen for the last few years, and only now am I waking up to it. Remembering what life used to be like a million years ago… before.

Before I let the stress get to me, start dictating my life. Before I let other people control everything—my schedule, my plans, my happiness.

Back when things, just like life on this farm, were simpler.

“You doing okay, City Girl?” Grant asks, tugging on my hand a little. I realize I’ve been lagging behind him, my feet slowing as I tilt my head back to take in the sky, the stars, the endless expanse above us.

I shake myself and jog a few steps to catch up with him. “Doing just fine,” I say.

“Not too dirty and messy for you?” he asks. I know he’s joking now. He’s seen how down and dirty I’m willing to get.

In more ways than one.

“Never,” I promise, and he laughs softly.

Then we round the corner, past the fields, toward the trees that edge the borderline of Mama’s property, and I gasp.

I don’t know how he set this up. He must have taken a while, snuck out in between projects back at the house somehow. My eyes widen, taking it in. He’s built a whole tent out here—not a simple pitch tent either, but a big billowing thing made of silk, taller than both of us, with open sides. In the center is a little fire pit, and there is a tray, with all the ingredients for s’mores arranged on it. Not to mention, a little bucket of ice with a bottle of wine cooling in it.

“I know you’re used to the finer things in life,” he’s saying. “I just wanted to point out that you don’t have to be fancy to know how to pamper someone properly.”

I laugh, not sure what to say. Not sure what this feeling is beating in my chest, as he kneels down on the blanket he’s laid out as the base of the tent and sets about building up the fire.

The peak of the tent stands out stark white against the night sky, stars twinkling all across the background. It looks like something out of a movie or a painting. It looks fake, all of this. Too pretty to be real. Especially when he gets the fire going and beckons me down to his side.

I drop down beside him, snuggle in next to him as we listen to crickets in the distance. Fireflies wink here and there over the field, and we hear the soft hoots of owls, the distant reverberations of frogs somewhere in the forest, where there’s a little stream that runs past the property. I breathe in deep, savoring the scent of the fire crackling away merrily at our feet, mingled with the cool, crisp fall air, so fresh that I can’t believe I ever thought I could breathe properly at home. You never notice things like that—stale, muggy, smog-choked air—until you’re away from it. Until real fresh air fills your lungs, and suddenly you realize what you’ve been missing.

It’s not just the air I’ve been missing, I realize.

Grant hands me a stick, a marshmallow already speared on its tip, and I grin at him. Huddled up beside him, wrapped in the blanket that he tugs up over our knees, I set about toasting this marshmallow to perfection. He’s a burner—he just sets his on fire, blows it out a few times, and calls it a day. Me, I like to slowly toast it. Get all the sides evenly browned before I slide it off the stick onto the chocolate-covered graham crackers to make the sandwich.

“You’re such a perfectionist,” he accuses me, and I elbow him, eying his attempts.

“You’re so lazy,” I counter.

“Not lazy.” He takes a huge bite, chases it with a sip of the wine he’s poured for us both. “Just practical. I get things done, you know.”

I laugh. “I’ve noticed. You’re making good headway back at the house.”

“Can’t say you haven’t been a big help, City Girl. Despite appearances.”

I snort and roll my eyes. “What, like I can’t do work just because I dress fancy?”

“You can’t blame me for making assumptions.”

“Sure I can. Why are you so biased against city people anyway?”

“Why are you so biased against everyone in this town?” He raises an eyebrow.

I bite my lip. Fair. “They never liked me,” I reply, shaking my head.

“That so?”

“I mean… I don’t know. I was never super close with anyone here.”

“So that’s their fault then?”

I laugh. “No. I just didn’t jive. I wasn’t built for this life.”

“You seem to be enjoying yourself this week,” he points out.

I heave a deep sigh, leaning back against his side, my eyes on the open sides of the tent. Out beyond the tent, the fireflies continue to flit across the field and along the edge of the forest, their lights winking like tiny stars against the dark grass. “I like it here, sure. It’s just… I don’t know.”

For once, he just waits me out in silence.

I draw in a deep breath as I try to find the words to explain. “I had to get away,” I finally say. “To prove to myself that I could. To prove I wouldn’t get stuck here.”

“Is that really such a bad fate? Being stuck here?”

I laugh again, faintly. When we’re sitting out here in this field, surrounded by nature, by magic almost, sharing these s’mores and wine, after a long hard day that left my muscles aching pleasantly—not to mention a long night before that of sex that left me feeling happier and more fulfilled than I have in ages… No. I have to admit, it’s not. “I suppose I can think of worse fates,” I murmur finally.

We lapse into silence for a while, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Then Grant sets up another marshmallow, and we go back to playfully bickering about the proper way to roast them and which one of us is committing a cardinal sin by not putting the right amount of chocolate on the graham crackers first (clearly him, because you need two bars of chocolate to make a proper s’more).

In retribution, or maybe just to prove his point, he smears some of the chocolate across my face, and then it’s war. I rub some into his beard, and he tackles me across the tent. Pins me underneath him, both of us panting with effort as I struggle to get free.

“No use,” he tells me, those dark eyes of his going serious now. “You’re all mine now, City Girl. There’s no escaping.”