Page 28 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

“What to do for dinner?” Josh asked as they walked back to his car.

“You said you were going to choose,” Sadie reminded him.

“That I did, that I did,” Josh mused, kicking a rock along the sidewalk. “How hungry are you?”

Sadie was starving. Famished. But not for food. Each of his touches, every stroke of his thumb, had been outlining a hollow inside her. She was like the installation art. Josh dared put his hands where it didn’t make sense they could go, and now everything had gone strange and topsy-turvy.

“I’m pretty hungry,” she answered. “But I’m also eager to get back home, so I’m fine with something quick.”

“Usually, I like to take my time,” Josh said, in a tone that indicated he definitely picked up her meaning. “How do you feel about apples?”

“For a whole meal?”

“As an ingredient. Maybe sweet, maybe savory.”

“Sounds good.”

“Perfect. I know a spot.”

He navigated to a place outside Indy, a family-owned apple orchard with a food stand whose apple crisps were sized for at least two, and so laden with ice cream that it seemed impossible to consume them as anything other than a meal.

But then there were the deep-fried brussels sprouts, topped with goat cheese, candied pecans, and chunks of tart, crisp apples.

They shared an order of each, “a well-rounded meal,” Josh declared, and they ate it in the golden early evening light, the air buzzing with the orchard’s resident yellow jackets and the heady energy between them.

Josh always waited for his cues, and it wasn’t until Sadie had placed an affectionate hand on his knee, sitting side by side at a picnic table, that he reciprocated, with a possessive grip to the inside of her thigh.

She was wearing black jeans, as always, and cursed the sturdy fabric for dulling the sensation that would be electric when it could be skin on skin. Soon.

The drive home was tense with expectation, though Josh’s goofy singing interrupted her daydreams of how she wanted him, what she was going to say when they got home, what it would be like to let herself indulge.

Josh’s hand rested on her leg, perilously close to the junction of her thighs.

When he tapped it, matching the beat of a song, Sadie sank into that feeling and struggled not to touch herself elsewhere. Her blood thrummed in her veins.

“Remember, we’re just having fun. It’s a break from our routines. Call it an intermission,” she blurted aloud at last, between songs.

“Intermission,” Josh repeated.

“Ground rules,” she said. “No sleeping over, no exclusivity, no introducing me to friends or family.”

“Can I talk about you with my therapist?” Josh asked.

“You have a therapist?” She wished she hadn’t sounded so surprised, but this was Indiana, not California. What did this disgustingly handsome and successful and well-adjusted man need to work on anyway?

“I grew up hearing that money was at the root of my parents’ problems. So when I was young, flush with cash, and fresh off the turnip truck, I wanted to communicate to anyone in my life, including people I dated, that they wouldn’t have to worry about money with me.

I spent so much, on cars, on my apartment, on dinner reservations, on tickets to things, on clothes.

I wasn’t trying to say ‘I’m rich,’ though of course I was doing that.

I was trying to say, ‘I will take care of you.’”

Sadie gave him a pitying look. “Something tells me you didn’t attract people who picked up your meaning.”

“And now you know the kind of stuff I talk through in therapy. A good use of money, I will say.”

“Totally. You can talk about me with your therapist all you need to. Do you have ground rules?”

Josh was quiet for a moment while he thought. “You have to be honest with me.”

“I can do that.” He would be far too cautious and polite to put her in any truly sticky spots anyway.

“Okay, now I can ask you the big question. If you hate Pea Blossom so much, why did you agree to come back?”

There were other big questions, like where was she going to put all these feelings, or how could she politely run away from Josh at the end without making him feel it was all his fault? At least she could entertain this question.

“I’m at a weird juncture with my work and I thought some time away would clarify things.

I have a little more money now, so I can be choosy with what I do next.

But I don’t know what I want that to be.

The Brynn Bianchini project took over my life in a bad way.

I don’t feel like I made any kind of artistic statement with it, and that troubles me. ”

“It’ll be interpreted however people want to interpret it, though, right?” Josh asked.

“No one interested in what I do is going to have anything insightful to say about it. Brynn Bianchini is a fucking discourse killer, a goddamn land mine.”

“Fair enough, but you could have taken your…intermission…anywhere. Why Pea Blossom?”

Sadie fiddled with her seat belt. Why had she promised to be honest? “Morbid curiosity, I guess. Without Stu around to drive me up the wall, and vice versa, I wanted to see what it was like when I could be here on my own terms.”

“And there’s pumpkins.”

“It’s like when you hear an old song you love that you totally forgot about. The pumpkins are so familiar and somehow fresh and exciting at the same time. I’m a different person now than I was when I ruined the pumpkin patch.”

Josh quickly glanced from the road to lock eyes with her.

“Of course you are, Sadie. You were literally a child. The bad feelings you have about Pea Blossom are the feelings of a child who, no offense to Stu, and maybe some offense to your mom, sounds like she deserved better parenting than she got.”

That was too much honesty from a man who had clearly picked up a thing or two in therapy. Sadie didn’t have a response to a truth bomb like that.

The rest of the ride home, she was quiet.

His hand stayed on her thigh. Josh had been right that a day away from his house, her father’s wreck of a home, the pumpkin patch, had been good.

It gave her a chance to know what she wanted from him.

His touch was powerful, and she didn’t know that she could accept any more of it on this day.

Their last encounter had involved no touch at all.

But witnessing Josh find his own release made her remember the fun of sharing pleasure.

Still, she had to take things step by step.

She had to ease her way toward another human body, one that was unpredictable and came with its own set of desires.

So in that pause, when they were back in his bedroom, like standing at the beginning of a maze, wondering which way to go, she knew it was her time to lead again.

“I’m going to tie you to the bed if that’s okay,” she said.