Page 44 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About
Twenty-Six
J osh struggled to think of a time he’d been laid so low.
There had been the time in San Francisco when a woman he’d genuinely thought was his girlfriend scoffed at him when he’d suggested celebrating the holidays together.
That’s not what this is , she’d said dismissively, at which point he’d realized all the energy he’d put into that relationship was for naught. That was a true low.
Then there was the first time he’d opened the Pinchy Boi app after selling it and seeing the bland art, the garish ads crowding the screen real estate, the microtransactions that instantly ruined all his careful tuning of the game. A subterranean low.
When his parents told him, after he’d settled all their debts using the Pinchy Boi windfall, that they were divorcing? Mariana Trench territory.
Now he was plunging through the earth’s crust and into the mantle. All the work, all the sweat he’d poured into his pumpkins and Squash 2.0, and he was back at the start again.
Sadie, well, she hadn’t been work. She’d been a joy right from the start. Or if not exactly a joy, a puzzle he couldn’t bear to put down. He’d hoped that if he didn’t work at it so hard for once, the pieces would fall into place naturally. They almost had.
Nate had asked to use Josh’s soap-making supplies, and he welcomed the distraction.
Since Sadie’s arrival, he’d been getting lazy about making the loofah soaps people snapped up at the market, but Nate offered to chip in some labor for a share of the profits.
Nate’s honey was essential to the soap, after all.
The morning had started humbly, with a walk into the woods to pick up some of the smashed Squash 2.0s. He would need some seeds if he was to try again, which he would. He wasn’t going to quit on his squash.
Now he sat at the table, slicing the dried innards of loofah gourds to drop into the soap Nate was currently alchemizing in a big pot on the counter.
Josh wasn’t going to succumb to self-pity; he wasn’t going to make any drastic moves.
He was going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
He had to bring himself back to the time before Sadie.
While he’d prioritized her this season, he’d barely paid attention to his pumpkins or Squash 2.
0, not that they needed much attention once they had soil and water and sunshine.
He hadn’t developed any new squash recipes to bring to the market.
He’d neglected his Instagram presence, barely posting since they painted the ball of paint orange.
And his sales hadn’t even suffered, honestly. And even if they had, he wouldn’t have felt bad about it.
Back when he’d been making video games, his goals were to funnel money to his parents and impress potential dates.
To ease all of their burdens so that everyone, himself included, could be happy.
Now happiness was a foreign concept. As he sawed through a piece of loofah, he realized that this sure wasn’t it.
“I don’t like making soap,” he said to Nate.
Nate laughed. “Then why do you do it?”
“Because I try too hard. I couldn’t be a simple farmer. I had to grow giant pumpkins competitively and get myself a blue-check social media presence and supply all the local small businesses and develop a new breed of squash and make all these extra products to sell.”
“I thought you liked doing all of that,” Nate said.
“I thought I did, too. But when things got busy, dealing with the fallout from Stu’s pumpkin massacre, and spending time with Sadie, I realized that I have not been working smart.
I assumed it took a big range of products and lots of income streams and social media renown to be successful.
Or to feel successful, if I’m being honest. And letting that stuff slide didn’t affect my bottom line.
The community I serve is right here. And the loofah soaps are novel and fun, but there are other local soap makers.
Maybe I need to figure out my lane and stay in it.
I almost lost Sadie because I tried to engineer her into my life instead of meeting her where she was.
I mean, I’m losing her anyway, but at least this time it’s not because I messed something up. ”
Josh had been scammed by Silicon Valley, the place that told him that every second spent not working was time wasted.
So he’d created all this extra work for himself.
Some of it was gratifying, but he didn’t have to do all of it, all of the time.
He could try to slow down. Stu had told him so many times, You can’t rush a radish , and Josh had rolled his eyes.
But of course he’d been right. Radishes don’t care about the principles that made billionaires out of thin air and thinner ideas.
Nate nodded. “Did you know my great-great-grandfather was one of the first students in the beekeeping course at the Tuskegee Institute? My family moved to Indy during the Great Migration, but they wanted to get out of the city to keep bees, and picked Blossom County. I’m lucky that I consider it an honor to stay in this lane that was paved for me.
So if you don’t want to make soap anymore, I will gladly take all this equipment off your hands and move it over to my place. ”
“What if you didn’t have to move it as far as that?”
Nate looked at him askance. “What do you mean?”
Josh explained the upshot of his investigation into Go Hog Wild.
“And now Zach needs a buyer?” Nate asked.
“He’ll sell it for a song. I scared the bejeezus out of him.”
“The bejeezus you say,” Nate replied, chuckling. Then he reflected on the property itself. “He built all those cabins…”
“Erica would run a hell of a venue for ren faire and LARP types.”
“Hell, it’s big enough to be its own ren faire. And the bees could be part of it.”
Josh clapped Nate on the shoulders. “We could finally be neighbors. And you can definitely take over soap making if you want,” he said to Nate. “I’ll supply you with loofah, instead of you supplying me with honey.”
“You got yourself a deal,” Nate said. “And I’m sorry things aren’t working out with Sadie. To be honest, I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be into the spooky ones.”
“Did you know her when she was younger?” Josh asked.
“Sure. I’ve known Stu all my life, of course, and she was always his little shadow, hiding behind him at the market.
And I’d be there with my dad. She used to make little baskets and bouquets to sell.
I don’t know if I ever spoke a word to her.
She wasn’t unfriendly, but always kept to herself.
Playing with twigs or whatever, off in her own world, that type. ”
“She’s got a real attachment to that world of her own, I tell you what,” Josh said.
“I get it,” Nate said. “Her mom’s a real piece of work. Stu means well but always does things his way. She needed something for herself.”
But wasn’t everyone messed up by their parents?
Therapy finally tied Josh’s need to solve other people’s problems to his efforts to keep his parents together.
Seemed obvious in retrospect, but lots of big revelations do.
Of course, he wasn’t exactly making stellar progress in that department, as his gymnastics to provide Sadie with a pumpkin and a place to live proved.
The difference was that he had asked first, and Sadie had wanted his help.
But again, he was forgetting that doing what other people wanted never guaranteed he would get what he wanted.
“What should I do differently next time, Nate? You’re happily married. I need some guidance here.”
“Why do you say next time?”
“Because you can’t talk people out of leaving. It’s a big decision and Sadie has obviously made up her mind. I told her I loved her, and she told me she loved me, too. But it’s not enough.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nate said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I don’t think someone who’s about to move away would be carrying a stack of library books into your house.”
Josh turned to see Sadie had come in the front door and was indeed placing a pile of books onto the coffee table, with telltale white stickers affixed to the spines.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” Nate said. “I’m going to pour these soaps quick and I’ll be back for the equipment later. Pretend I’m not here.”
Josh nodded absently, his eyes on Sadie while he gave Nate a genial pat on his shoulder.
“Oh, you’ve got it so bad,” Nate said in a low voice.
Josh walked to the living room and peered at the books Sadie had brought home. A truly assorted library haul. A mix of novels and nonfiction books about natural dyeing, plant identification, and folk art.
“Nate’s here,” he said.
“I heard his voice when I came in,” Sadie replied. “Shall we go up to my room?”
Josh hollered back into the kitchen. “Nate, stay as long as you need! Drinks in the fridge. You know the deal.”
Nate’s deep chuckle tumbled through the house as Josh and Sadie exited the front door. His heart was racing.
Once they were ensconced in her room, her mouth was on his before he could prepare himself, accompanied by the sweet vanilla scent of her.
She plunged her fingers into his hair and he pulled her tight, to contrast with the soft strokes of his tongue against hers.
He brought one hand up to grip the back of her neck and she relaxed into him, her mouth pliant and supple, her tongue velvet and eager.