“Where have you been?” I asked Conrad when he came back in the door. He’d been gone all morning.
He didn’t answer me right away. In fact he was barely looking at me. And then he said, shortly, “Just running errands.”
I gave him a weird look, but he didn’t offer up any more information. So I just asked, “Wanna keep me company while I go to the florist in Dyerstown? I have to pick out flowers for the wedding.”
“Isn’t Jere coming today? Can’t you go with him?” He sounded annoyed.
I was surprised and a little hurt. I thought we’d been getting along really well these past few weeks. “He’s not going to be here until tonight,” I said. Playfully, I added, “Anyway, you’re the one who’s the flower-arranging expert, not Jere, remember?”
Conrad stood at the sink with his back to me. He turned on the water, filling a glass. “I don’t want to piss him off.”
I thought I heard a trace of hurt in his voice. Hurt—and something else. Fear.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen this morning?” I felt worried all of a sudden. When Conrad didn’t answer me, I went up behind him and started to put my hand on his shoulder, but then he turned around and my hand fell back to my side. “Nothing happened,” he said. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”
He was pretty quiet at the florist’s. Taylor and I had decided on calla lilies, but when I looked through the book of flower arrangements, I ended up picking peonies instead. When I showed them to Conrad, he said, “Those were my mom’s favorite.”
“I remember,” I said. I ordered five arrangements, one for each table, just like Denise Coletti told me to.
“What about bouquets?” the florist asked me.
“Can those be peonies too?” I asked.
“Sure, we can do that. I’ll put together something nice for you.” To Conrad, she said, “Are you and your groomsmen doing boutonnieres?”
He turned red. “I’m not the groom,” he said.
“He’s the brother of the groom,” I said, handing her Mr. Fisher’s credit card.
We left pretty soon after.
On the way back home, we passed a fruit stand on the side of the road. I wanted to stop, but I didn’t say so. I guessed Conrad could tell, because he asked, “Want to go back?”
“Nah, that’s okay, we already passed it,” I said.
He made a U-turn on the one-way street.
The fruit stand was a couple of wooden crates of peaches and a sign that said to leave the money in the container. I put in a dollar because I didn’t have change.
“Aren’t you going to have one?” I asked him, wiping off my peach on my shirt.
“Nah, I’m allergic to peaches.”
“Since when?” I demanded. “I’ve definitely seen you eat a peach before. Or peach pie, at least.”
He shrugged. “Since always. I’ve eaten them before, but they make the inside of my mouth itch.”
Before I bit into my peach, I closed my eyes and inhaled the fragrance. “Your loss.”
I had never had a peach like that before. So perfectly ripe. Your fingers sank into the fruit a little just touching it. I gobbled it up, peach juice running down my chin, pulp dripping all over my hands. It was sweet and tart. A full-body experience, smell and taste and sight.
“This is a perfect peach,” I said. “I almost don’t want to have another one, because there’s no way it can be as good.”
“Let’s test it out,” Conrad said, and he went and bought me another peach. I ate that one in four bites.
“Was it as good?” he asked me.
“Yeah. It was.”
Conrad reached out and wiped my chin with his shirt. It was maybe the most intimate thing anyone had ever done to me.
I felt light-headed, unsteady on my feet.
It was all in the way he looked at me, just those few seconds. Then he dropped his eyes, like the sun was too bright behind me.
I sidestepped away from him and said, “I’m gonna buy some more, for Jere.”
“Good idea,” he said, backing away. “I’ll go wait for you in the car.”
I was shaking as I piled peaches into a plastic bag. Just one look, one touch from him, and I was shaking. It was madness. I was marrying his brother.
Back in the car, I didn’t speak. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. I didn’t have the words. In the quiet of the air-conditioned car, the silence between us felt blaringly loud. So I rolled down my window and fixed my eyes on all the moving objects on my side.
At home, Jeremiah’s car was parked in the driveway. Conrad disappeared as soon as we got into the house. I found Jere napping on the couch, his sunglasses still on his head. I kissed him awake.
His eyes fluttered open. “Hey.”
“Hey. Want a peach?” I asked, swinging my plastic bag like a pendulum. I felt jittery all of a sudden.
Jere hugged me and said, “You’re a peach.”
“Did you know Conrad’s allergic to peaches?”
“Of course. Remember that time he had peach ice cream and his mouth swelled up?”
I broke away and went to wash the peaches. I told myself, there’s nothing to feel guilty about, nothing happened. You didn’t do anything.
I was rinsing peaches in the red plastic colander, shaking excess water off the way I’d seen Susannah do so many times. While the water was running over the peaches, Jeremiah came up behind me and grabbed one, saying, “I think they’re clean now.”
He lifted himself onto the kitchen counter and bit into the peach.
“Good, right?” I asked him. I held one up to my face and inhaled deeply, trying to clear my mind of all the crazy thoughts.
Jeremiah nodded. He’d already finished it and was lobbing the pit into the sink. “Really good. Did you get any strawberries? I could eat a whole box of strawberries right now.”
“No, just the peaches.”
I put the peaches in the silver fruit bowl, arranging them as nicely as I could. My hands were still shaking.
