Chapter 7: Strawberries & Sin
The farmer’s market hit us like a wall of life. The smell was the first thing—damp earth, overripe peaches, the sharp tang of basil from a herb stall, and underneath it all, the sugary promise of funnel cakes. Music from a lone guitarist with a hat on the ground fought with the rumble of conversation and the periodic shout of a vendor.
We moved as two pairs, then as a knot, then separating only to be pulled back together by an exclamation over heirloom tomatoes or a batch of wildflower honey. Ellie had her woven basket hooked over her elbow, already cradling a bundle of rainbow chard. Nancy drifted beside her, their hips nearly brushing, a study in complementary curves under their sundresses.
The electricity from the car hadn’t dissipated. It had gone subterranean, humming through the packed dirt under our sandals.
I saw it before it became a game. Ellie, pausing at a stall overflowing with jewel-toned jams. She leaned forward, both hands on the edge of the table, to read a label. The neckline of her dress gaped just enough, offering a shadowed view of her cleavage to anyone behind her. To me, specifically, because I felt the pull like a magnet. She knew I was watching. A slight, deliberate shift of her weight, and the fabric tightened across her backside.
A few stalls down, Nancy did the same thing. She was examining a pile of rough-skinned potatoes, bending from the waist, one hand reaching out to test their firmness. Her curls spilled over her shoulders. The hem of her dress rode up the back of her thighs. Mary, standing beside her with a bunch of carrots in her hand, went very still. Her eyes locked onto that exposed strip of skin.
It was a provocation. A quiet, smiling one.
The game was on.
Ellie straightened, caught my eye, and winked before sauntering to a berry vendor. Nancy giggled, whispered something to Mary that made her blush to the roots of her short blond hair.
We continued. The dance became more overt. At the cheese stand, Ellie asked for a sample of a soft goat cheese. The young woman behind the counter, maybe college-aged with faded green streaks in her hair, handed her a cracker with a dollop. As Ellie took it, her fingers grazed the woman’s. She smiled, a warm, genuine thing. “Thank you. It’s lovely.”
The woman’s eyes dropped to Ellie’s mouth, then to her chest, then snapped back up. A flush crept up her neck. “Y-you’re welcome,” she stammered.
Nancy, at the same moment, was asking a bearded man about the acidity of his apples. But her attention was sideways, watching Ellie. She mimicked it, leaning on the apple cart with an artless grace, turning her full, sun-kissed smile on the now-confused cheesemonger as she reached for a sample. “This looks incredible.”
The woman blushed deeper, fumbling another cracker.
I moved closer to Ellie, my hand finding the small of her back. Mary appeared beside Nancy, her posture stiff, her engineering mind clearly calculating angles of exposure and audience attention.
“See?” I muttered into Ellie’s ear, my voice low. My gaze flicked to the flustered shopkeeper, who was now studiously rearranging wax-wrapped cheese rounds. “You make every girl question their sexuality with that look.”
Ellie just hummed, sucking a spot of goat cheese from her thumb.
Mary’s voice was tight beside us, meant for Nancy but loud enough for me to hear. “We don’t have that problem. We both look like boys half the time.”
There was a sharpness there, a rare piece of insecurity laid bare amidst the crates of produce and the chatter. It was the echo from the car, given form here in the crowded market.
Nancy straightened instantly. The playful seductress vanished, replaced by something fiercely protective. She turned to Mary, cupping her face. “Don’t you dare,” she said, her voice soft but absolute. “You look like Mary. And I love looking at Mary.”
But the seed was planted. I felt it too, a old, familiar gnawing. Practicality was a suit of armor, but sometimes it felt like it obscured the shape beneath.
Ellie slipped her arm through mine, pulling me away from the cheese stall towards a quieter corner near buckets of sunflowers. She faced me, her back to the crowd, her hands coming to rest on my hips.
“Listen to me,” she said, her voice losing its playful lilt, gaining a bedrock certainty. “That girl back there? She saw a beautiful woman. A fantasy. She doesn’t know the curve of your spine when you’re asleep. She doesn’t know the weight of your head on her chest, or the way you solve problems aloud in the shower.” Her thumbs stroked the bone of my hips through the dress. “Mary looks like a force of nature waiting to be focused. You look like a secret I get to know. That’s not boyish. That’s… essential.”
I leaned my forehead against hers, breathing in the scent of her skin mixed with market basil. The noise faded for a moment. She was my anchor, my translator.
A squeal of laughter from Nancy pierced our bubble. We turned to see Mary, now holding a giant zucchini, pointing at it and then emphatically at a display of much smaller, curved cucumbers, her face serious. Nancy was doubled over, clutching her stomach, tears of mirth in her eyes. The vegetable vendor, an old man with a grizzled face, was chuckling along with them.
Mary’s serious, analytical comparison had broken the tension. She’d used her practicality not as a shield, but as a tool to make her girl laugh.
She caught us looking. She held up the zucchini with a resigned shrug, a small, real smile touching her lips. See? the smile said. This is what I’ve got.
Ellie squeezed my hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go rescue that squash from your daughter before she gives that poor man a lecture on structural integrity versus aesthetic application.”
We drifted back into the current of the crowd, the four of us converging again, our basket heavier with loot. The game had changed. The flaunting had softened into something else: a series of knowing touches, a shared secret in a glance, a silent conversation that flowed beneath the bartering and the sampling.
As we turned to leave, the sun lower now, I saw the young cheesemonger watching our retreat. She wasn’t looking at Ellie or Nancy with vague longing anymore. She was watching the four of us as a unit. How we moved, how we touched, how we shared the weight of the basket. Her expression wasn’t one of blushing confusion. It was one of quiet, profound curiosity.
Mary saw it too. She glanced at the woman, then at our interlinked group. She didn’t stiffen this time. She just nodded to herself, as if filing away a useful piece of data.
“We should get stuff for dinner,” Mary said, slipping her hand into Nancy’s back pocket. “And maybe,” she added, looking at me and Ellie with a glint in her eye that was all engineer, “we should open that bottle of wine we’ve been saving. I have some theories about tensile wires and clean lines I’d like to… discuss.”
The look Nancy gave her was pure, unadulterated heat. Ellie’s laugh was a promise.
We walked back to the car, not as provocateur and observer, but as a circuit fully connected, the current between us live and humming, ready to power whatever came next.