Aracely cracked the egg into a jar of water. She studied how the yolk spread, in needles like comet trails, or thick full light like a cord of dawn outlining the hills, so she would know how the lovesickness was holding on to him.
She swept herbs and a new egg over the man’s body, put her hands on his shoulders. She pressed down on his upper rib cage, feeling through his skin. Her hands drew the lovesickness out.
Lovesickness resisted leaving, Aracely had told him, always. Whenever Sam watched Aracely, he saw the strain in her face when she drew it out, like pulling a full, heavy bucket up from a well.
But this man was no different from any other visitor on Aracely’s table. His heart was swollen and sore with unwanted love. It fluttered inside his rib cage like wings. When Aracely took it out, it might flit around the room, running into a cabinet, bothering the apricots in the fruit bowl. But then Miel would fling the window open, and she and Aracely would chase it out the window like a bird that had wandered in.
Except tonight Aracely opened her hands, and Miel forgot to open the window. She stood against the wall, watching the floor.
Sam jumped toward the window, pulling the sash up from the sill. He tensed, only relaxing when he didn’t hear the unseen lovesickness skimming the walls or knocking against the glass jars.
Aracely caught Sam’s eye, and then nodded between Miel and the door, a look of get her out of here.
Miel caught that look, and turned to the door before Sam did.
She left the indigo room and then the house, stopping at the front steps.
Sam caught up with her.
“I don’t know,” she said before he could ask. “I’m just off today.” She shut her eyes, and shook her head again.
He wanted to touch her. It should have been easy now. But since that night in his bed, he hesitated putting his hands near her, like his fingers and her skin carried the static of the driest days. Once they’d been like glass, and the little shocks, his forearm grazing her breast or her hand accidentally finding the thigh of his jeans, passed through them. But touching each other that night had turned them to copper. Their bodies would conduct the heat of every little moment. When his arm touched her back. When they were in his mother’s kitchen making sohan, and they realized that the flame under the sugar and honey was up too high, both reaching at the same time to turn it down.
But now she was pulling away, and his own questions felt like threads of spider silk catching on his skin. What version of him did she want? Sam, or Samir, or some boy named Moon that this town had made up?
Did she want him because he hadn’t grown out of this, or because she assumed he would? How long could he want her, as Sam, before he grew up and became someone else?
“Miel,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine.” She kissed him, but it was as stiff and uneasy as the first time she’d done it, when they were children and she set her lips against his for no longer than it took to blink.
He could taste the clover and sugar on her lips, like sage honey. It made him think of her licking it off a knife when Aracely wasn’t looking.
She went inside, and he heard the soft creak of the stairs and then saw her bedroom lamp turn on. Light filled the window, and she felt as far and unreachable as the moon.
bay of trust
Aracely had tried to make Miel immune. Often, she brought home blue-rinded Jarrahdale pumpkins and deep orange Rouge Vif d’Etampes, and Miel would hide in the hallway closet. Aracely would narrate her progress from the kitchen. I’m splitting it open, Miel. Okay, now I’m hollowing it out. I’m putting it in the pot now. But Miel stayed in the closet, worried that new vines might sprout from the pumpkin’s severed stem.
That was probably another thing Aracely had almost asked ten times, opening her mouth and then hesitating. Why, to Miel, a pumpkin couldn’t just be a pumpkin. A question Aracely knew better than to say out loud. That hesitation always told Miel that the words on Aracely’s tongue had more weight than Are we out of blue eggs? or Have you seen my yellow sweater? Miel wondered if a look crossed her face that showed Aracely the thread of fear in her. Please. Please don’t ask questions. Please don’t wreck this, this life I have with you, by making me tell you.
Now, standing at the edge of the Bonners’ farm, Miel wrapped her arms around herself, fingers digging in. Light from the Bonners’ house poured onto the fields, warming the soft gray color of the Lumina pumpkins. The sight of each rind covered Miel in the feeling that it could crush her, that it could put out vines and sink them into her. It would draw the life out of her and grow bigger, and she would become small enough for it to swallow.
She was stupid to come here, and she knew it. It was after midnight, hours too late to pretend she’d stopped by to find Sam, or even to lie that she’d come to see Lian or Peyton.
But she had to see the pumpkins.