Page 28 of Where It All Began
Phoebe looked down at the jeans she’d worn all day, which had a new hole and a thick layer of dirt and dust. “I think I can handle it.”
He gestured toward the fresh turned dirt at the corner of the field. Stalks of sweet corn poked out of the ground in tidy rows. “Sit.”
She sat cross-legged in the dirt and stared at him expectantly. “Now what?”
He sat next to her, their knees touching. “Be quiet. Just be.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, but he ignored her and closed his eyes. Skeptical and wondering if this was an elaborate set up for him to smash a clod of dirt in her face, Phoebe closed an eye. It took a minute or two of peeking at him to make sure she wasn’t in danger of a dirt strike.
Deciding that whatever he wanted to show her must be important, Phoebe reluctantly let her defenses slip. She willed her mind to quiet, wiping away thoughts like words on a chalkboard, and sat. The sun felt warm on her skin, and she heard the whisper of wind rustling through leaves and the buzz of cicadas and bees. It sounded like a never-ending conversation. The smell of the turned dirt under her was fresh, metallic.
And there it was, that buzz beneath her skin. A vibration of sameness. She felt part of it, part of the earth beneath her that she’d spent her day tending, part of the air that caressed her skin and filled her lungs. She felt John next to her, too. Her senses were keenly aware of his presence as if, somehow, he were the anchor of it all. Rooted and reaching at the same time, Phoebe felt like they were like the green stalks that stretched on beyond them in an organic patchwork.
Their efforts here would never be wasted. What was put into the land would come back. That was the promise.
She let her eyes flutter open and found John watching her, a softness on his face she hadn’t seen before. The blue of the sky, the gray of his eyes, the green of the grass. In the silence of her mind, everything was so much more vibrant.
“Find it?” he asked.
She nodded without speaking.
He laughed softly. “This is the first time I’ve seen you without words,” he teased.
“They’ll come back, and when they do, you’ll regret it,” she warned him. But he was still smiling when he opened the cooler. He handed her a fresh beer.
“Okay, I definitely felt it. But you’re going to have to explain it to me.”
“That’s my ‘why.’ That’s why instead of selling insurance like my dad or teaching like my mom, I wanted this.” He sifted dirt through his fingers.
“You’re like Thoreau, and this is your Walden Pond.”
“‘Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails,’” John quoted.
Phoebe applauded, her heart giving a little pitter pat at the gorgeous man quoting poetry to her. “My, my. A literary farmer.”
He threw a bottle cap at her. “Not everyone needs to have a master’s degree to be a nerd. I saw your face the first time you plugged in your typewriter.”
“Oh really? And exactly what did my face tell you?”
“That you were having a nerdgasm over a typewriter.”
“I feel the way about my thesis the way you feel about these fields,” she pointed out. “Also, points for excellent wordplay. You keep surprising me, John.”
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After the best pot roast he’d ever had—not that he’d be stupid enough to ever mention that fact to his mother—John buckled down to a different task at the kitchen table. His pen scratched quietly across the expanse of loose leaf paper in a satisfying production much different from how he spent his days.
Phoebe padded barefoot into the kitchen and opened the fridge to retrieve the bottle of wine she had stashed there the day before. He didn’t have any wine glasses, but she made do with a water glass.
John noticed that she’d changed into shorts—very short shorts—and a t-shirt in royal blue with a V-neck. A deep one. She’d pulled all that long, sleek hair back into a ponytail high on top of her head. But it was the red framed glasses that grabbed at him. They were nerdy and sexy, rendering him desperate for a beer and a second shower. Both cold.
John shook his head at himself. His plan to get to know her better to become less attracted to her had essentially blown up in his face… or crotch. And now he liked her even more. A woman who was willing to put her own life on hold just to help out her family? That was Blue Moon through and through. He hadn’t expected that from the ambitious Phoebe.
But that didn’t mean he was going to change his mind about the rest of it.
Phoebe skipped over to her typewriter with her wine and the little notebook she carried with her. “Thanks for talking to me today,” she said, sliding a leg over the chair and flopping down with a sigh. “I actually have some material I can work with.”
He picked up the papers he’d stacked on the table and held them out over the typewriter. “About that. I think I have an idea.”
