Wildflower by Mae Wood

Author:Mae Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heart Eyes Press LLC

I didn't change my plans to make Juliana comfortable. I didn't care a bit whether she was happy. She was here to make my mom feel better, not to do anything for me.

We didn't talk at all on the hour drive up to the first orchard, and that was fine with me. I let the music fill the space between us and the phone chirp out directions that I followed without comment. It had been a long time since I'd been up to these farms. Printed directions were in the console, but I didn't want to get us too lost.

I kept my hands glued to the steering wheel and my eyes straight ahead. When she tried to start a conversation, I nudged the volume up a notch on The Cure album I'd stuck in, which didn't exactly help. Robert Smith sang about love and longing and need, and I wanted nothing to do with any of that.

Especially from the woman seated next to me.

I didn't look at her. I didn't talk to her. But I could feel her. I could smell her. This time it wasn't oranges or spice that nipped at my nose. It was something bright and warm. Beer, I thought. It had to be something with the brewing.

I dug around in the truck's console for some gum, and an overwhelming artificial cinnamon blocked out her scent.

The only thing I had left to battle was that pull I felt toward her. Like a magnet or gravity, it felt inevitable, yet I wasn't going to let it win.

I was stronger than it.

When she tried to get out of the truck at the Jensens' orchard, I snapped at her. "Stay in the truck."

She didn't though. I hadn't expected her to, but I had to try.

She followed me around at a distance, silently helping with what she could. And she wasn't in her bee suit.

"Goddammit, Juliana. Get in your suit."

The night was mild, and all I wanted her to do was put on a suit so I wouldn't see her shape, so I wouldn't think about touching her, about feeling her warmth, about that kiss in my beeyard and about what had been so close to happening the last time she'd been out with me. I popped another piece of cinnamon gum in my mouth even though I knew the bees wouldn't like it. But anything to get through this night.

It was after midnight when we wrapped at the second orchard. I'd run out of gum and I'd switched over to The Smiths, which only made me grumpier.

How had I never realized that all these songs were about longing and need? I'd remembered them as expressing the feeling of disconnection I knew too well in my younger days, but they weren't only that. Buried under the disaffection, there was want.

And I knew what want was. I'd always wanted—I'd wanted more than I had, I'd wanted to be exceptional, I'd wanted to be somewhere else, I'd wanted to be someone else.

But I couldn't remember wanting someone so acutely.

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