Carolina Reaper

This is what you do now every night. The bus left a trail of dust almost covering a road sign pointing to the nearest town. 50 miles away from anybody is how I like it. 

He was standing at the stop. Fleece-lined canvas, wool beanie pulled low, mud caked on my boots from a morning already spent in the garlic. I had promised his mother—my step-sister—hard labor and no trouble. I expected a lazy, complaining teenager I would have to babysit until the family decided he had learned something.

He stepped off last. Twenty-two, tall, city-gym pretty already starting to bronze at the edges under this sun. Dark hair still trying to hold a style the wind did not care about. One bag. He said almost nothing. Quiet as a held breath.

“Linda,” I said.

“Rowan.” His voice was low, polite, like he was placing a bet he already knew the odds on.

We walked to the truck. His mother had left gaps, so I asked. He laid out the city trouble without dressing it up: people who did not forgive, his grandpa had to step in and settle his debts and put down an ultimatum that boiled down to the military or the dirt. He had chosen the dirt.

Heat sat under my collarbone when I looked at his mouth. I kept both hands on the wheel. He eyed me the whole drive, taking in the jacket, the braid fraying at my neck, the way I drove like I had somewhere better to be.

His breath went shallow when the last streetlight dropped behind us. A small, unhurried lift sat at the corner of his mouth. Predatory, if I said it out loud. I did not.

He asked questions. How come he was seeing his step-aunt for the first time in his life only now. He pointed at my face and said I looked too young for the title. I kept my eyes on the road.

“I’m not blood related to your mom,” I said. “Your granddad married my mom when I was already fifteen. He already had your mom that was two. We grew up together but we were never in the same room long enough for it to matter.”

That story put more color in his mouth, not less. He kept looking.

“What do you like,” he said. Not a list. Not hobbies. “Out here. When nobody’s watching.”

Quieter, like he already held the shape of the answer: “Where’s your husband.”

His shoulders dropped with every answer I gave, even the short ones. The questions, the looking, the way isolation made him sit up like he’d found a game with no referee. Heat sat in my throat. I kept my face still. I poured the facts out the way I poured water on peppers—enough to keep them from dying, not enough to flood the bed.

He carried the look of a kid who had never been told no by a body that wanted something from him. Money, a last name, a face that photographed well. Used to taking. Used to people folding because it was easier than making a scene. I was not going to be another easy yes on a farm fifty miles from anyone who would care. I had promised his mother hard labor and no trouble. That promise sat under my feet, and I stood on it.

Wow, sis. You grow up a rich spoiled pervert and ask me to be his prison guard. Fifty miles from town, no neighbors, no witnesses, and she dumps him on me like hard labor is a moral rinse cycle. This is not okay. I promised her anyway. That did not make it okay.

Maybe he was just trying to butter me up so I would cut him some slack. Stupid city boy.

“Husband’s gone,” I said. “San Francisco. Decorative marriage. I bought this place with half the settlement so I wouldn’t have to call anyone for a bailout. That’s the whole story.”

He made a small sound that might have been a laugh. “Terrible hand”

I did not answer that.

We pulled in at dusk. Pepper rows stretched out in the leftover heat, habanero trellis dark against the sky. Garlic beds closer to the house, the soil still holding the day’s warmth. He unloaded the one bag and followed me through it all while I laid down the law. Dawn start. No guests. No phones in the fields. Spare room with a lock I would not use unless he gave me a reason.

“You work, you eat, you sleep,” I said. “You do not wander. You do not invite anyone. The farm might break you.. be ready”

He nodded. Almost nothing. His dark eyes tracked the sweat at my collarbone when I shed the jacket because the leftover heat still sat in the valley like a weight. Denim painted on my hips. I had chosen not to care about that for years. His gaze dropped anyway and stayed there, unhurried, like he was measuring the seam.

In the kitchen I treated myself to top-shelf bourbon. He drank water. I told him again the harvest would break him. He answered with another gambling line, low and polite.

“You’re pushing all your chips in on a dead hand if you think I came here to rest.”

I looked at him over the rim of the mug. “Good. Rest isn’t on the list.”

That night I sent him walking the acres with a headlamp to check for clogged emitters or punctures in the drip lines.  He kept going until I turned off the porch light so I would stop watching.

The house held still when he came in.

“This is what you do now every night.“

Hallway too narrow. He passed too close. I put a hand on his chest to stop him and did not move it. His shirt was still damp. Heat sat between us anyway, the kind that had nothing to do with the valley.

He looked down at my hand, then at my mouth. Deceptively polite. Unnervingly quiet.

“Is this the moment where we kiss, Aunty?”

I shoved him into the spare room. Hard enough that his shoulder hit the door frame. I locked my own door from the inside and stood there with my palm flat against the wood, counting my own breathing the way I counted days until I could send him back. Aunty. Fucking idiot.

“Fucking idiot,” I said out loud so he would hear me clearly.

"Aunty!" Is what I got in return from behind the door of his room. It cracked me up.

My palm still held the heat of his shirt, the damp give of his chest under it, like I had not taken the hand back at all. I had promised his mother I would work sense into him. I had not promised her I would keep my hands to myself in a hallway after dark.

Sleep did not come easily. I lay there with the bus stop behind my eyes, the way he had eyed me like the farm was an unsupervised playground, the way every answer I gave made him look more awake. 

Morning would come whether I wanted it or not. Dawn start. Pepper rows. Garlic that did not care about step-relations or city trouble or the fact that I had put my hand on his chest and left it there a second too long. He would be in the fields. I would be in the fields. We would not talk about the joke. We would not talk about the heat.

I poured another finger of bourbon in the dark and drank it standing up, the way I always did when the house felt too small. Fifty miles from town. No one to hear a thing. That was the point of this place. That was also the problem.

I set the mug in the sink and did not rinse it. Tomorrow I would show him how to work the walk-behind tractor. I would keep the distance. I would set him straight. I had promised his mom.

In the spare room, the floor creaked once. Then nothing. Good.

I went to bed with the lock thrown and the windows open to the pepper smell. 

I closed my eyes. Enough.