“And if I needed to take out a hit on someone,” I say.
“Gill from MEATLOCKER,” he answers, not missing a beat.
At the look on my face, a laugh rockets out of him. “It’s a joke, Daphne. But Gill did mention he was looking for homes for a litter of kittens.”
“I’m not sure the Cherry Hill clientele is quite that culinarily adventurous,” I say.
“And lucky for them, Chef Martín isn’t either. I have been thinking about getting a cat, though,” he says.
“One more reason I should move to Maryland,” I say. “I’m allergic.”
“The cat’s out,” he says.
“Don’t give up your hypothetical cat for me, Miles,” I say. “Barb and Lenore will actually kill me if I rob you of that joy.”
“The cat was just a pipe dream,” he says. “After an infancy with Gill, there’s no way I’ll be able to give one of those kittens the life it’s accustomed to.”
“True. You don’t own enough leather or have a motorcycle with a tiny sidecar and helmet.”
“Oh my god, that would be so fucking cute,” he says, delight lighting up his deep brown eyes.
He puts on his blinker as we approach a cherry stand.
It’s essentially a repeat of our stop at the asparagus stand, except that Barb and Lenore are replaced by Robert Sr., a portly guy in his forties, and Rob Jr., a gangly kid who’s anywhere between eleven and twenty-two. This time, I insist on paying for the two bags of cherries, and when we climb back into the cab of the truck, Miles looks at me expectantly, his seat belt still undone and the engine off.
“Aren’t you going to try one?”
“Is this some kind of kink for you?” I say.
A blush hits the tops of his cheekbones, the only part not hidden by his werewolf beard. “I just want to know if you think they’re as good as I do.”
“Okay, okay.” I dig around for two plump, long-stemmed cherries and hand him one. As if there’s some invisible countdown, we hold eye contact and pop the cherries in our mouths at the same second.
It’s sweet without being overpowering. Tart without giving that biting-down-on-metal sensation. And juicy. Juicier than any cherry I’ve ever bought in a store. So juicy that when I bite into it, sticky pink sluices out between my lips and drips down my chin.
And even though not two seconds ago I had been determined not to make a sound, an enthusiastic mm-mm rolls through me, followed by a “wow.”
Grinning, Miles grabs a Big Louie’s–branded napkin from the center console and mops up my chin before I can get cherry juice everywhere. He crumples the napkin into an empty paper cup in the cupholder, then spits out the pit from his cherry and holds the cup up for me to do the same, a strangely intimate gesture that makes my insides feel like they’ve been baking in the sun just a few minutes too long and will char if they’re not turned over soon.
“Best cherry you’ve ever had,” Miles guesses.
“Honestly, I didn’t even know I liked cherries until right now,” I say.
He says, “They weren’t my thing either until I moved here.”
“Where are you from again?” I ask. “Sorry, I forget.”
His eyes flash away from mine. “No, that’s okay.” He starts the car. “I’m from Illinois.”
“And how’d you end up out here?” I ask.
He looks over his shoulder before merging onto the road. “Followed a girl.”
“Petra?” I say.
He shakes his head.
“Ooooh, the other girlfriend,” I say.
“Number one, of two,” he confirms. “Dani. She’s actually Chef Martín’s cousin. He and his husband started Cherry Hill, and he offered Dani a job in the tasting room. So she got me one too, and we moved from Chicago. Broke up a few months later. By then, I didn’t want to leave, and she did, so she moved back to the city.”
“So that’s why you don’t think I should leave?” I guess. “Because of the one percent chance that Petra and Peter will decide to go first?”
“I told you,” he says. “I don’t think you should leave because I don’t want you to leave. And my happiness is very important. You heard Barb and Lenore.”
“I did,” I say. “I remember that lyric from the second stanza of the ballad they sang about you.”
“That was nothing,” he says. “Wait until you meet Clarence from the lavender farm.”
“You are either the friendliest man on the planet,” I say, “or a world-class serial killer.”
“Why not both?”
Clarence can’t be more than five years older than either of us, soft-spoken with curly red hair. He isn’t a farmer himself, just the attendant for the little shop in the whitewashed cottage beyond the rows of vibrant purple flowers heavily populated by bumblebees.
They sell lavender everything.
