The Off-Season Arrangement

Georgia had turned twenty-eight in October, and the birthday had hit her harder than she expected. Not because of the number itself. Because of how she spent the evening, sitting alone at her kitchen table with a frozen pot pie and the farm ledger open in front of her, counting seed invoices like they were going to change her life.

The farm had been in her family for forty years and it took most of her energy. What was left over, she spent watching TV with her dog, Tank, who was a good listener but a lousy conversationalist.

Her one real attempt at dating had been four years back, a man from the next county named Kenji who raised bees. They went out twice, and the boldest thing that happened was he held her hand during a documentary about glaciers. It fizzled out by text and she'd been fine with that, or told herself she was.

Then in November, between the last market of the season and the first hard frost, she'd downloaded one of those dating apps mostly out of boredom. She put up a photo of herself in the bean field, squinting into the sun, dirt on her jeans. Her profile said she farmed vegetables, lived near a beach that was better in the off-season, and was bad at small talk.

Andres messaged her on a Tuesday night.

"Sorry to bother you," it said. "But you mentioned the off-season beach, and I have a whole folder of photos I take in empty places. I think we'd get along. Also I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but your squint in that field photo is the most honest thing I've seen on this app."

Georgia read it three times. Then she felt her face go hot, an actual blush, the first one in years, standing alone in her kitchen in wool socks. She was twenty-eight years old, and the number sat in her chest like a stone she couldn't swallow.

They wrote back and forth for two weeks. He was thirty-three, a landscape photographer from the city, and he was funny without trying too hard, which she liked. He talked about needing quiet the way she talked about needing rain. Neither of them said anything flirty at first, and then one night he sent, "Can I say something and you pretend I didn't if it's weird?"

She typed back, "That's the worst possible way to open, so yes."

"I keep rereading your messages. Like, more than is reasonable. If you ever want to meet somewhere in the middle, I'd drive."

She sat with that for a whole day before answering. The neighbors knew her as the woman who got up at five and hauled crates and didn't have time for nonsense. The idea of doing something just for herself felt almost criminal. But she was twenty-eight and she had never once been kissed, and she was starting to understand that the quiet life she wanted was going to swallow her whole if she didn't grab something first.

"Come to Dunewell," she wrote. "I'll cook. You can photograph the dead boardwalk. Bring nothing else."

He said he'd come the second weekend of November, a Saturday.

* * *

Saturday came in gray, the sky low and the wind coming off the water with a bite in it. Georgia had cleaned the farmhouse twice, which was ridiculous, and made a stew she didn't have the stomach to taste. Tank kept giving her looks from the couch like he knew something was up.

At two in the afternoon a dusty silver sedan pulled into her drive, leaves plastered along the bumper from whatever back roads it had taken. Georgia stood on the porch with her hands jammed in her coat pockets and watched the man unfold out of it.

He was taller than she'd pictured. Dark hair going loose in the wind, a week of stubble, jeans and a canvas jacket that had clearly seen actual work. When he raised a hand to wave, she noticed his hands first. Brown from the sun, knuckles rough, a faded band of a tattoo on one wrist. Camera straps had left marks on his shoulders, you could tell even from the porch.

"Georgia?" he called up, and when she said yes, he laughed, this easy rolling laugh like he'd been holding it across three states. "Okay, good, because I've been rehearsing a line about turnips the whole drive and I was really hoping I'd need it."

"You can save it for dinner," she called back, and to her own surprise she was grinning like an idiot.

He came up the porch steps and they did an awkward half-hug, half-handshake thing that made them both laugh again. Up close he smelled like woodsmoke and coffee, and something about that, combined with the hands and the laugh, made her stomach do a slow flip that she had not budgeted for.

"Your fields," he said, looking out past her at the frosted rows. "They look like a painting. Do you mind if I come back out here with the camera later?"

"That's literally why I invited you," she said. "Well. That and the stew."

"The stew was a rumor I refused to believe."

Inside, the house was warm and the stew was fine, better than fine, and they talked for two hours without noticing the time. He told her about photographing grain elevators in Kansas and how the city made his ears ring for the first month he lived there. She told him about the frost coming early this year and the neighbor who ran the hardware store and knew everything about everybody.

"This whole town knows you're hosting a strange man this weekend," she warned him. "By Monday you'll be a story."

"Good," he said, stirring his stew. "I've never been a story before. What kind of story?"

"Depends what you do. Behave and you're 'that photographer fellow.' Don't behave and you're something else entirely."

"I'll try to be a mystery instead," he said, and she laughed into her bowl.

* * *

Around four the light went soft and silver and he got restless in that visible way, checking the window, and she said, "Go on, get your camera, I'll walk down with you."

The boardwalk a mile from her house was closed for the season, gates chained, boards bleached pale and scattered with blown sand. The beach beyond it was completely empty in both directions, just gulls and the gray water and the wind pushing at their coats. Tank ran ahead with his nose down, thrilled by nothing.

Andres stopped every fifty feet, lifting the camera, and Georgia discovered she liked watching him work. He got quiet and specific, muttering to himself about angles, and once he crouched all the way down on his knees in the cold sand for a shot of a rusted post.

"You're going to ruin your jeans," she said.

"They're already ruined," he said, not looking up. "These are work jeans. Everything I own is work jeans. I'm a very one-note man."

"A photographing turnip farmer's dream, though."

She laughed and he laughed and something loosened in her chest.

Near the far end of the boardwalk there was a low spot where rain had pooled and the boards were slick. He got there first, and without making a thing of it, he put his hand flat against her lower back, right through her coat, and guided her around the puddle with the lightest pressure. Just a steer. The kind of thing people did a thousand times without thinking.

Georgia had never been touched like that in her life. Four years of nothing but Kenji's glacier hand, and before that just her own two hands, and here was this warm pressure between her shoulder blades lasting maybe three seconds.

She didn't pull away. She could have stepped sideways, laughed it off, kept her distance. Instead she slowed down on purpose so his hand stayed a half-second longer, and when they came out the other side of the puddle and his fingers slid off her back, she felt the absence like a draft.

"Sorry," he said, glancing at her. "Habit. My sister's always tripping on stuff and I got in the habit of steering her."

"You could apologize for a lot worse," she said, watching the water instead of him. "That one you can keep."

They walked on toward the dunes, the boards creaking under them, and Andres asked, quiet, like he was testing the ice, "Can I ask you something honest?"

"That's the only kind you've asked."

"Why did you really invite me here, Georgia? Because I've been trying to figure it out all week, and I keep coming up with answers I like too much."

The wind came off the water and flattened the grass on the dunes, and Georgia thought about it for four full steps.

"I'll tell you on the porch," she said. "It needs a chair and both hands free."

* * *

They sat on the porch with the last of the coffee going cold between them, and Tank claimed the bottom step like he owned the deed.

"So," Andres said. "Chair. Both hands free. I'm listening."

Georgia wrapped her fingers around the mug mostly for something to do. "Here's the honest version. I'm twenty-eight. I've never even been kissed. Not once. The closest I got was Kenji, the bee guy, and he held my hand during a documentary about glaciers like he was checking my pulse."

Andres didn't laugh. She watched him decide not to.

"I keep waiting for my life to get louder," she went on.