15. Eden

15

EDEN

I'm floating, I'm sure of it. I wake up so relaxed I barely react when my mother stumbles into the kitchen, grumbling that I didn't make coffee. Nate texts me to ask how I slept, and I flush from my ears to my toes.

ME

Like a dream. Thanks to you 3

NATE

I'm so glad.

I bite my lip and throw caution to the wind.

ME

I can't wait to repay the favor.

NATE

Favor? That was the hottest thing I ever saw. Trust me, I am satisfied.

Does that mean he doesn't want us to do things together? Or does it mean he was satisfied by himself afterward? I try not to worry about it and spend a blissful day pulling frames from hives all over the city—my own and the ones I take care of for clients.

What a shift, to intentionally not worry. Maybe I should seek pleasure more often.

I whisper to the bees, explaining that I'm having a terrific day and thanking them for all their work. By the time I get everything tucked into the freezer, it's almost bedtime, and I'm thinking of Nate and his magic fingers.

And his dirty mouth.

My God , the things he said last night…

I wake up to pouring rain that doesn't seem like it's going anywhere—a great signal to process all my honeycomb. I get myself situated in the mudroom with my new food-grade buckets, crank up the tunes, and prepare for that sweet wholesale honey income. Which reminds me… I really need to tackle paperwork, and a rainy day would be great for that.

I bite my lip. Would Nate want to spend the afternoon working on that stuff together?

I'm not even going to pretend I don't hope we could celebrate progress with another finger bang. Or more.

ME

Rainy day paperwork party?

I expect him to be working, not responsive, so I'm surprised when I see dots appear on the screen almost immediately as he writes a reply.

NATE

Seriously? That would be amazing. Meet you around 3?

I send him a thumbs up without bothering to check if my mother will be around this afternoon. That's probably a mistake, but even if she says she's going out, I can't necessarily count on that.

I contemplate this habit of hers while I crank the centrifuge to spin the honey from the frames. It drips through the filter into the bucket, mesmerizing me while I realize my mother is always going to do what she wants, when she wants. She's not going to become someone who thinks about how her actions impact others… or someone who can be relied on to be anything other than unreliable.

It makes me sad. I stop spinning the crank and sit in the chair, my legs splayed around the drum. I don't want my mother as a roommate. The thought comes to me with such clarity, like the translucent honey after it sheds all its particles. I need to figure out how to ask her to leave. I'm still sitting with that realization when I hear footsteps on the porch.

I glance at the clock and see that it's nearly 3:00 pm, and Nate is just a tiny bit early. I smile. Since we've reconnected, he's been one hundred percent reliable. Maybe a hundred and ten, since he manages to be here when I haven't even called him.

"Coming," I holler, heading toward the front door.

"Can you keep it down?" Mom hollers from her room. "I'm practicing my pitch."

I don't bother to apologize. I greet Nate with a smile, which broadens when he leans in to press a soft kiss on my cheek.

"I missed you," he whispers.

I'm acting like a teenager who just got asked to a dance. This is the same guy I yelled at a few weeks ago, but it's also the same guy who made me come so hard I passed out on his lap.

"Let me clean up, and we can sit at the table in the kitchen," I tell him. He follows me through the house, setting a massive, ancient laptop on the table. He sees the extractor, where the last bits of honey drip from the spout into my final bucket of the day.

"That thing looks like it's seen better days." Nate runs a hand along the metal drum, staring in at the rickety clips holding the frames in place. I've converted half of the utility sink into a station to drain all the beeswax, so the honeycomb are clipped on string above a big basin with clothespins that have, indeed, seen better days.

"It's an antique." I give the ol' gal a good pat. "I bought it off Marsha when I was just getting started. She's been on me to upgrade."

I take a look at the bin beneath the wax, decide it's full enough to dump into the filter bucket, and get everything to a stopping point. I catch Nate staring at me as I lick a final drop of honey from my fingers, which of course takes me right back to the moonlit garden, remembering how he licked… me from his own fingers.

I clear my throat. "Let me show you some checklists I got."

I wash my hands, redo my ponytail, and settle in next to him at the table. I get him connected to the Wi-Fi and show him some spreadsheets I'm committed to filling out. "My sister's friend Logan gave me some basic business maintenance to-do lists," I explain. "There are lists for each quarter, month, and week. Then she even made lists for how to do each thing if I get stuck."

His brows shoot up. "That's pretty generous of her."

"Big time. I think she's putting all the sheets together in some sort of course or something to sell as a side hustle. But for now, it looks like we should each… blech. File or check on permits and business insurance."

Nate's face brightens. "That's an easy win for me. I found the business insurance stuff on my dad's desktop, front and center."

We work quietly together for a while until I get distracted by the nearness of him. Heat radiates from his huge body, warming mine. When he moves his arms to type numbers or adjust the monitor, his forearm touches mine and sends sparks shooting all the way to my nipples.

Get it together, Eden.

I manage to register my beehives with the city and the state, and that feels like a huge weight off. Eila told me it took ages for the paperwork to go through on her vacant lot project, even with her City Inspector boyfriend moving things along. But this was an online process, and it was done in a few minutes. Man, I could have had this done ages ago. I marvel at how easy it was compared to what I'd built up in my head. I'll have to remind myself not to postpone things just because I'm scared it'll be time consuming.

I smile at Nate, feeling accomplished, but I pause when I see the frown on his face. The brightness has faded to stiff concentration and his lips press tightly together.

"Everything okay?" I place a hand on his arm and let my thumb trace an arc through the light hair there.

He groans and slams the lid shut on his laptop. "No, but I'm done thinking about it today."

He turns in his chair, and he's around me all of a sudden. His legs are outside mine. His hands rest on my thighs.

I like it. A lot.

I lick my lips and close my own laptop. "What do you want to think about instead?"

The grin on his face is pure sex, but I'm still surprised in the best way when he leans forward and says, "I can't stop thinking about how wet you were for me, Eden."