Page 65 of At First Dance
The cottage breathes around me—quiet, pine soap, and clean cotton, and the faintest echo of hay from my sandals by the door. The bed is made like a promise. The little kitchenette hums. Outside, the cicadas start their sermon, and a dragonfly shoulders the heat like it’s paid to. I should be fine. I’m not.
I’m not because three nights ago, a man who doesn’t run from anything ran me a bath and washed my hair with the care of someone handling a relic. He carried me to his bed like weight has never meant burden. He slept on the floor with one hand curled around mine and didn’t move when I woke and pressed his knuckles to my cheek like a talisman.
No one has taken care of me like that. Not in years. Maybe not ever.
Now I can’t tell whether my skin is hot from the fever I finally outran or from the memory of his palm smoothing the towel over my shoulder blades. I only know that every cell in me—tired, wobbly, lavender-scented—keeps turning toward the house like a sunflower toward light.
So I do the only thing I trust to sort the knot. I make tea strong enough to stand a spoon, tuck my hair in a braid, open my notebook, and write until my hand cramps.
The first pages are garbage. Lines that read like notes to myself from a hospital hallway—you’re okay, keep breathing, don’t flinch when the world asks you to perform calm.Then a melody threads through that sounds like rain on a tin roof. Then a chorus that saysstaywithout saying his name. I chase it until my eyes blur.
My phone buzzes across the table.
Bailey:
Leaving you a basket on the step in 10 (soup + honey + my last two scones because I love you). No opening the door or I’ll mace you with elderberry syrup.
I huff a laugh that’s really a breath of relief.
Me:
You’re a saint and a tyrant.
Bailey:
Both can be true. Hydrate or I text Mrs. W.
I could argue, but I don’t. I set a timer for water and go back to the page.
Twenty minutes later, the boards on the porch whisper under a careful weight. I stand—because I can’t not—and watch from the kitchen window. The basket is there (gingham cloth, of course Bailey), and then there’s another shape, broader, framed by the oak’s shade. Dark tee, ball cap, forearms clean and nicked. Rowan sets a Mason jar beside the basket like he’s leaving a peace offering to a skittish animal. He doesn’t try the handle. Doesn’t call my name. Just looks at the note for a beat, tips two fingers to the brim of his cap like a promise kept, and walks back down the steps.
The tea in my mug goes cool while I stand suspended in that small, ridiculous grace. I should be the one who knowsabout cameras and angles and lines you don’t cross. He’s the one teaching me that quiet can say more than any speech.
I slide the basket inside with a toe and read Bailey’s Post-its stuck to everything like leaf tags.
soup: heat low and slow, no boiling (you’re not pasta).
scones: eat now, apologize never.
honey: from Wildflower Stan, medicine + dessert.
PS: if you don’t text me by 4 pm with??I’m breaking your “do not disturb” and bringing soup sirens.
I text the peace-sign emoji. I add a heart. Bailey responds with fifteen more hearts and a GIF of a woman fanning herself with a church bulletin. My laugh lands in the quiet and stays.
I eat half a scone on the floor with my back against the cabinet, knees up, notebook balanced on my thighs. The song keeps tugging at my sleeve. By midafternoon, there are three verses and a bridge that remembers the shape of his hand on the back of my knuckles and the small circle his thumb traced in the dark like he was keeping time with my breath.
When the sun slants to that late hour where everything turns honey thick, I drive to the market because I need produce and a human face that isn’t mine in a mirror.
Coral Bell Cove’s farmers’ market is the least anonymous place on earth—four dozen people, two dozen folding tables, and one hundred percent certainty that someone will know the way you take your coffee. I keep my sunglasses on for the drive and slip them up when I step under the awning because the kind of attention here isn’t the kind that needs a shield. Neighbor eyes. Soft and nosy but hopeful.
I see the jars first—honey like a bottled sunset under a hand-painted sign:Stan & June’s Bees (the bees did thework, we’re just proud).Then tomatoes so red they look like they’re daring you. Then Mrs. Wright.
I don’t collide with her. Instead, I stop three feet away like a sensible person, and still she reaches for my forearm the way she did when I met her in passing at the wedding, like she’s glad I’m tangible.
“Ivy.” Her smile sits in the corners of her eyes, where kindness lives. “You look better.”
“It’s the braid,” I say because I still haven’t learned how to accept simple care without a joke.
