Drive Slow

My life runs on a schedule. I'm thirty-four years old, I run the botany research program at Trilby University, and I have not done anything impulsive since roughly the second Obama administration, which is when I last had a boyfriend worth the name. My days look like this: greenhouse at seven, lab at nine, lunch at my desk, greenhouse again, home by six, tea, grading, bed. I keep my orchids in perfect rows. I keep my receipts in a labeled folder. People call me sensible like it's a compliment, and for a long time I took it as one.

But I have a confession, and since this is my story, you get it before anyone else does. I've been watching Tobias Ashford for months. He's twenty-six, he lifeguards at the university pool in the summers, and he bakes at the campus cafe at night, which is how I ended up hiring him for greenhouse hours in the first place, because anyone who can keep a sourdough starter alive for four years can keep humidity levels steady, or so I reasoned. I hired him three years ago, when he was twenty-three and I was thirty-one, and for a long time he was just the guy with the whistle. Then two years ago we stayed late one night troubleshooting a heater in the orchid wing, and I caught him laughing at my terrible plant puns, and something shifted. Since roughly this spring, my schedule has included a line item I never wrote down: watch Tobias's forearms while he repots things, and then feel bad about it.

He has this way of being quiet and paying attention. He notices when a soil mix is off before I do. He notices when I've skipped lunch. That last one is the dangerous part, if you want to know the truth.

* * *

The double-booking happened on a Thursday. I had promised Dr. Halloway I'd join her and a visiting grant reviewer for dinner at six, and I had also promised the Montreal conference organizers I'd be on the road by noon Friday, because the drive is two days on the backroads and my presentation was Saturday morning. I discovered this at three fifteen, sitting at my desk with two calendar windows open, feeling like an idiot.

I called the restaurant first, out of some instinct toward damage control, and got a hostess who informed me in a very bored voice that the reservation was non-refundable. Then I called Dr. Halloway and apologized, and she was fine about it, genuinely fine, which somehow made it worse.

That left the drive. I don't drive long distances. My car is twelve years old, it shudders above sixty, and the route to Montreal goes through about four hours of nothing. My usual conference ride, Professor Dell, was already up there. I was sitting there doing the math on bus schedules when Tobias knocked on the office door frame with a paper bag in his hand.

"End of shift," he said, setting the bag on my desk. "Croissants that didn't sell. You skipped lunch, I know you did."

"You're a lifesaver," I said, and then winced, because pool joke, and he just grinned.

"What's wrong? You've got the face."

I told him. Bus schedule, backroads, Saturday morning, presentation, disaster. He listened with his arms crossed, leaning on the door frame, and I tried very hard to keep my eyes on his face, which is a losing game.

"I could drive you," he said.

"You have a shift tomorrow."

"I switched it last week. Marco owed me. I mean, if you want. I know the route, my family used to go up there every fall." He shrugged, like it was nothing, and then added, "Honestly, Esme, you'd be doing me a favor. I haven't left campus since June."

I should have said let me think about it. That's what a sensible person says. Instead I said, "When can you be ready?"

"I've got flour on me right now. Give me forty minutes."

He was ready in twenty-eight.

* * *

We spent Friday morning at the greenhouse packing my research samples, because I refuse to present on anything I haven't prepared myself. Tobias sat on the workbench stool and watched me grind dried orchid petals with the mortar and pestle, which I did for close to an hour while he handed me jars and labeled them.

"You do that like it's a ritual," he said at one point.

"It is a ritual. Pressure, angle, rhythm. If I rush it, the powder's uneven and the assay's garbage."

"Pressure, angle, rhythm," he repeated, and a quality in his voice made me look up, but his face was completely neutral, so I decided I'd imagined it. I did not decide that for long. My hands kept grinding and my brain kept wandering somewhere that had nothing to do with assays.

"You're staring," I said.

"I'm watching your hands. There's a difference." Then he went red, actually red, and turned to label a jar with way too much attention. Well. That settled a question I'd been too careful to ask for two years.

* * *

We hit the road at noon and stopped around three at a gas station outside Middlebury. He went in for snacks and I pumped the gas, and I want to tell you about pumping the gas, because it sounds insane. The handle clicked, the pump hummed, and I stood there in the cold autumn air thinking about the words pressure, angle, rhythm, and by the time the tank was full I had to lean against the car for a second. It was the most ordinary task in the world and my body had decided to treat it like a prelude. I was damp, and flustered about being damp, and when Tobias came back with two coffees and a bag of pretzels I could barely look at him.

"Long fill-up," he said, handing me the coffee.

"Something like that."

He looked at me properly then, the way he looks at a plant that's doing something interesting. "Esme. Are you okay?"

"Peachy," I said, too fast.

He laughed, not mean, just warm, and got in the driver's seat.

* * *

The light went gold, then purple, then gone, and the