Big Yellow Taxi
Chapter 10
Rowan would have been perfectly content to stay in her room with Daryl, even if it meant she would miss the rest of the opening night of her favorite festival of the year. But she could see how uncomfortable he was. It was written in the set of his shoulders and the stiff posture of his body. If she didn't already know better she might have concluded that the man perched on the edge of her bed wasn't attracted to her. But Daryl's reaction to her gentle touch in the pantry earlier had made her certain that he was. Rowan finally decided he must just be acting awkward because he was shy. It was unusual behavior for a man his age. And especially unusual for a man as physically attractive as him. Rowan knew there was no way that she was the first woman to have invited Daryl into her bedroom.
"It's a beautiful night," Rowan said, "why don't we go back outside..." Daryl stood up quickly and Rowan could see the relief on his face. She smiled, hoping she had done the right thing and feeling like she had. Interacting with Daryl, Rowan felt a bit like she was treading water in an unknown sea. She was used to acting on her instincts but with him she felt like she was double thinking and overthinking everything she did and said. If she had been as interested in a man from her community as she was in Daryl, she would have simply stated her intentions plainly. Not that there wasn't ever any romance, but when it came to any type of sexual relationship the men and women Rowan was used to interacting with tended to leave the guess work out. It wasn't a requirement to get verbal consent from one's partner before engaging in sex, but it was strongly encouraged.
A man from a neighboring community had once told Rowan upon meeting her that he thought she had a beautiful body and that he wanted to see more of it, in private. Several times now she had considered saying something similar to Daryl, but she was afraid it might make him more uncomfortable. A blatant statement like that might even be considered rude or inappropriate for all she knew. Rowan didn't want to make herself look like a fool. And she sure didn't want to scare Daryl off. So for the time being, she decided to follow his lead and see where it took her.
As they walked outside Rowan turned her attention to the greater world around her. The sun was getting lower in the sky, with night bringing a respite from the heat of the day. The birds were settling into their nests for the night, leaving the bullfrogs and the crickets to sing their evening song. Rowan could hear the ticking of an angel-wing katydid coming from somewhere right outside the door to her building. Hearing them was easier than spotting them since they disguised themselves as leaves.
Rowan paused, kneeling down to pluck a sprig of rosemary from her mother's garden. The rosemary bush near their back garden door was the same one that Rowan's mother had planted when she was preganant with her. It had been growing there for 25 years and producing beautiful pale blue flowers every summer since Rowan was two. Most of the blooms had gone for the season, chased away by the cooler temperatures of night. But Rowan found a sprig that still had a few blooms clinging to it. Breaking the woody stem with her fingers, she tucked it behind her ear. The strong scent from breaking the woody stem of the plant clung to her fingertips and she held them to her nose, closing her eyes as she breathed in the raw essence of the plant.
An herb as common as rosemary had hundreds of different uses including many that were culinary as well as medicinal. But Rowan always associated the herb with the traditional rosemary focaccia bread her mother baked for weddings and handbindings. The smell brought to mind promises of love eternal and vows of passion. Women sometimes even wove sprigs of the plant into the flowered wreaths they wore at festivals as a test for potential mates. Girls would say a man who didn't notice the fragrance of that particular herb was unable to give them true love. Since most of the men these woman were flirting with were already wise to this particular game, Rowan always thought it was a silly thing to do.
Rowan brushed her hands off on her skirt, the smell of the rosemary diffusing off into the air around her. When she had bent down to get the plant, she knew Daryl was watching her. Rowan had already noticed that he was very observant, and not only of her. His eyes scanned over everyone and everything around them. Rowan bet if she covered his eyes with her herb scented hands that he could describe their surroundings to perfection without even peeking.
As they walked down the path and out away from the building, the cooler air hit Rowan and sent a shiver up her spine. She loosened the knot that was holding her grandmother's fringed shall around her waist. After shaking the folds out of the fabric she wrapped it around her shoulders instead, covering up the bare skin of her back and shoulders. Once she was bundled, Rowan reached for Daryl's hand. She knew she was planning to wait and let him make the next big move, but that didn't mean she wasn't allowed to offer up some subtle encouragement. She smiled and giggled a little at herself as her fingers closed around his. Instead of holding her hand, he pulled her by it, wrapping her arm around his waist and then slinging his arm around her shoulders. His body was warm compared to the cool breeze and she appreciated both the close manly smell of him and his shared body heat.
"If yer cold, I kin get ya my leather jacket from offa my bike," Daryl offered. He had taken it off and left it hanging over the seat when they passed by on the way back from loading the puppy into Rick's car. Now he wished he had kept it on him. Rowan smiled up at Daryl and hugged him a little closer. She liked the idea of wearing something of his and having his scent rub off onto her. But she liked having him hold her close even better.
"No," she assured him, her fingers grazing up and down his ribs through the material of his cotton t-shirt, "I like this."
Daryl almost told her he liked it too, but instead he kept quiet and brought his other hand up to nibble at the skin around his thumbnail. The truth was he liked holding her. A lot. Maybe even too much. Because as Rowan's slim fingers danced up and down the side of him all he could think about was lifting her up into his arms and carrying her back to the bed he had been sitting on only a few moments before. Daryl was having a hard time defining the way he was feeling. He had obviously had sexual urges before. Everyone did. Sex was like eating or drinking or going to the bathroom. It was a normal part of life. Daryl had always looked at his sexual urges the same as any other urge, they were just another nuisance chore to take care of. He had never been as strongly attracted to a specific woman before as he was to Rowan. He wasn't sure what it was about her, she was just different from other girls.
Since Rowan specifically said she liked him holding her, Daryl pulled her in tighter to the side of him. He leaned in close and took a deep breath in through his nose. Rowan smelled better than anything he had ever smelled before in his life. The odor of the weed they had smoked earlier lingered in her hair, mixing in with the piney scent of the small branch of blue flowers she had tucked behind her ear. In combination with her general feminine fragrance, the aroma was intoxicating and it made him wonder how long her womanly scent would linger on his pillows if he took her to bed. Waking up to that every day would be like waking up to the smell of bacon frying and fresh coffee brewing. Just like absolute heaven.
"That flower behind yer ear...," he finally asked, "what is it?" The scent was familiar but not one Daryl usually associated with flowers. It smelled more like the little mixed jar of dried herbs he used to flavor up his venison steaks before he grilled them.
"What do you think it is?," Rowan asked back, a hint of a teasing flirty tone in her voice. She would still sleep with Daryl even if he couldn't tell the difference between opal basil and a dog turd, but just for fun she wanted to see if he could guess it right.
"Dunno," Daryl said. He finally pulled his thumb away from his mouth. With what Rowan considered to be a very serious look on his face he leaned in closer to her and closed his eyes. She closed her eyes too, a tiny hum escaping her lips when the side of his face brushed against hers. "Smells almost like rosemary, but I know that ain't right," Daryl finally announced, pulling back and watching for Rowan's response to see how wrong he was.
"It is rosemary," Rowan gushed. She opened her mouth to say something else and quickly snapped it shut again. Daryl didn't know anything about the silly superstitions involving the plant and using it to find your soul mate. Rowan was afraid if she tried to explain the stories she would make herself sound like the silly little girl she was acting like. So she settled on a simpler and more adult explanation. "Girls here like to wear it to festivals," Rowan said, her face starting to turn red under her painted designs, "they say if a man notices the smell of it on you then it means..." Her voice tapered off and she sucked in the side of her full bottom lip, nippling on it like Daryl had been nibbling on his thumb just seconds before. Now she was the one feeling shy, afraid that speaking her wishes out loud might make it so they didn't come true.
"It means what?," Daryl encouraged. He had never had such and interesting conversation about kitchen spices before. If whatever him smelling the rosemary meant was enough to turn the tips of Rowan's freckled ears pink then he wanted to hear what it was.
Rowan looked down, fiddling with the fringe on her scarf. He moved even closer to her, putting his other hand on her waist and pulling her to face him. "What's it mean?," he asked again, "Ain't bad is it?" Rowan smiled and shook her head. Without warning Rowan's dark eyes flicked up, locking on his. Her eyes were dark, but up close they were full of so many different colors. Olive green with a rim of turquiose and more of a golden brown in the center. As she looked at him her pupils explanded, ink black crowding out the hazel green.
"If a man can recgonize the smell of the rosemary it means he'll be a good lover," Rowan said, her hesitation at saying the words gone now that Daryl had his hands on her.
"Is that why ya put it behind yer ear?," Daryl asked, "to see if I knew what it was?"
He was smiling now. The first real smile she had seen from him that he wasn't trying to hide. Rowan smiled back, shaking her head again. She had been impressed that he knew what the plant was, she wasn't expecting that, but she had just picked it on a whim with no intentions at all. The last sprig of summer blooms had called to her. Rowan reached up and pulled the rosemary from behind her ear. Sliding her hand around Daryl's back she stuffed the sprig into the back pocket of Daryl's jeans, not being shy about coping a slight and not really that discreet feel of his ass while she was in the area.
"No," Rowan told him, the tip of her finger still hooked in his jeans pocket, "I don't need a flower to tell me that you'll be good in bed. I already know."
Daryl's eyes opened a little wider at her brazen words and for a moment Rowan thought she had said too much. But then the corners of his mouth twitched back up into a grin. Daryl almost laughed out loud. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting her to say, but he wasn't expecting that. Rowan sounded so sure and so sincere about her opinon of him. Sexy and sweetly innocent at the same time. He had never recieved a compliment quite like it before and he doubted he would ever get another one.
Rowan leaned into him, her small breasts pressing against his chest. Her eyes fluttered shut and she tilted her head back slightly. She seemed to be expecting something and for a moment Daryl wasn't sure what it was. Then the tip of her pink tounge darted out to wet her lips. The hand that she had been touching his ribs with slid up, her fingers twining into the overgrown hair at the back of his neck. He almost laughed at how clueless he was being. She was waiting for him to kiss her.
The noise of the evening seemed to still around them. Even the cool breeze stopped blowing. Daryl leaned in slowly, trying to decide if he was going in for a gentle peck or something more substantial. The tip of his nose touched Rowan's and he adjusted his stance, tilting his head slightly to the right. But his lips only brushed against the side of her mouth for a fraction of a second before they were both knocked off balance.
"Mom?," Rowan gasped once she had regained her composure and footing. The woman had come running around from the front of the building and plowed right into them. Her face was red and she was breathing hard like she had been running hard for a long time. "What's wrong?" Her mother's worried and disheveled appearance was alarming. Rowan's mother approached life with a calm and soothing confidence. She always seemed ready for things before they happened. Nothing surprised her.
Instead of answering, Rowan's mother placed her hands on her daughter's shoulders and looked the taller woman over, checking her for any obvious injuries and staring into her face to make sure nothing was wrong. Realizing she had worked herself up into a panic for no reason, Lola pulled her daughter close and tiptoed up to kiss her on the cheek.
"I'm fine," Rowan assured her mother, "I'm really okay mom." Rowan paused, glancing at Daryl. She wanted to ask her mother what sort of terrible vision had gotten her so upset but Rowan wasn't sure how Daryl felt about psychic abilities. That last thing she wanted was for him to think they were all a bunch of lunatics. Rowan squared up her shoulders. Rowan cared about Daryl's opinion of her, but she also refused to be embarassed or ashamed of her mother. "What did you see?," Rowan asked.
Rowan's mother hugged her again before she explained. She had been setting up her little pop tent. The one that offered her a little privacy to do readings for the people that were waiting to speak to her. One of her friends had helped her to set up the table and lay out a few colorful scarves to cover the scratched up wood. Lola was lighting a meditation candle when the vision hit her. She saw Rowan as a little girl again, running off into the woods. And then she was missing and her mother couldn't find her anywhere. Rowan was gone forever. Her mother had lost her.
"I'm right here," Rowan assured the woman, smoothing down her mother's silky copper hair with her hands as the woman clung to her. "The furthest I went was to the parking area," Rowan soothed.
"Wasn't gonna take her no where," Daryl interjected. He paused a moment, kicking at the dirt between two paving stones before he added, "Ain't no kidnapper." The truth was he had been thinking about taking Rowan out for ice cream, which was mostly just an excuse to get her on the back of his bike. But that was before she started up with all the sex talk and the touching. Then he had only been thinking about taking her back to her room and kicking her dog off the bed, not snatching her up and taking her out to the woods like some psycho killer.
"Oh!," Rowan's mother exclaimed. She turned to face the young man like she hadn't realized before that he was standing there despite having almost knocked him down into the lilac bushes. He was very attractive. She had been too busy at the market earlier to really take full notice of him. He was ruggedly handsome and much older than she originally thought. There were even a few white hairs mingled into the blonde hair of his goatee. And did he ever have eyes for her daughter. His gaze was fixed on Rowan. Lola had seen men look at her daughter like that before. It usually meant they were about to get their hearts broken and for a moment she felt pity for him.
"I'm so sorry," Lola said, "I in no way meant to accuse you of anything." Rowan stepped forward and took her place next to Daryl, linking fingers with his. She wished it had been under less strange circumstances, but she was still happy to have him meet her mother.
"Mom this is Daryl," Rowan announced with a grin so big it showed her crooked tooth. Something about saying his name just made her smile. "Daryl, this is Lola, my mother." Lola reached for Daryl's free hand with both of hers. She was covered in the same freckles as her daughter and they bore a striking resemblence in their facial features. They even had the same tattoos on their hands. Rowan was taller and had darker eyes and hair. But other than they they could have been the same woman in different stages of life. Lola's smaller hands closed around Daryl's larger one. Her hands were surprisingly warm to the touch. The only thing about her that wasn't warm and coppery colored were her eyes. They were a clear aqua blue, the pupils in the center reflecting the colors of the sunset. She held onto Daryl's hand a moment longer, as though she was testing his mettle through the skin of her hands.
"Blessed be," Lola told him. Daryl had come to understand by now that this was the standard statement for both greeting and leaving people so he gave her a little nod in return. "I would like to stay and visit but I have to get back to the festival," she told him. Then just as suddenly as she had arrived, the woman turned and hurried off. Rowan giggled and shook her head.
"Don't worry," Rowan told Daryl, her hand releasing his so she could snuggle in under his arm again, "it's not you. My mom always gets a little squirrely when she knows my Dad's coming for a visit." Rowan's simple explanation combined with the word squirrely made Daryl laugh along with her. He laughed harder than he could remember laughing in a long time. If there ever was a word for how that woman had been acting, squirrely was it. He could see the strength in her eyes and feel it in her hands, but she was running around like she was a few bricks shy of a full load.
"They divorced?," he asked. Rowan shook her head. Her parents had never been married. She was the product of a passionate love affair.
"My grandfather brought my father here to go on his first vision quest," Rowan explained. She had a sweet smile on her face and a peaceful faraway look in her eyes as she spoke. The story of how her parents met was one of her favorite stories of all time. "He heard my mother singing and he followed the sound, thinking it was part of his vision and he was about to find his spirit guide." Rowan stopped to giggle again before she continued on. "Instead he found my mother bathing naked at the edge of the river."
"What happened next?," Daryl asked at the risk of sounding like a pervert. He had gotten caught up in the story. It was so much better than the story his brother told him about how he came to be born, which pretty much amounted to the depressing tale of how his father stopped beating his mother long enough to fuck her and then forgot to pull out. And besides the content of her story, Rowan had a way of telling it that made Daryl feel like he was seeing the events unfold with his own eyes.
"Well nine months later I was born," Rowan teased, tickling Daryl's ribs to make him laugh harder. She loved the sound of his laughter. As he laughed, Rowan moved quickly. She darted in and kissed Daryl on his smiling cheek, yanking back before he knew what had happened. As Daryl's laughter tapered off, Rowan stared down the path that her mother had taken as she hurried back to the party, wondering what in the world had gotten into the normally calm and collected woman. The part about her father was true, her mother always said his presence tossed her off balance. But Rowan wondered if it might be more than that this time.
Lola could hear them giggling as she hurried away. Her daughter's musical laughter mingled in with Daryl's lower and more reserved rumble. She wiped the tears that were spilling from her eyes. Her visions were never wrong, but sometimes her interpretation of them was. She now understood that she had taken her last one far too literally. Rowan had not disappeared into the woods or been snatched away by some strange man she met at the market. Instead one of Lola's worst fears was coming true.
Rowan had always been wild. Even as a child she had strayed too far away, climbed too high, swam out too deep. Rowan had an adventurous spirit and Lola had always been afraid that her only child might someday look for a life that was bigger than the small closed community she had been born into.
She might have only just met him, but Rowan was in love. Lola had seen it in her eyes. Many men had looked at Rowan with so much more than lust on their minds. It had been happening since she was a teenager. But Rowan had never looked back at them in the same way, until today. What scared Lola was that the man Rowan loved was not one of them. He was from the outside. And that's where he would want to take Rowan. Away with him. That what the vision had been about, Rowan leaving was Lola's worst fear. The one she kept buried deep down inside her belly and never spoke of aloud to anyone. She was afraid that Rowan would fall in love with a man that wasn't one of them. And leave. Of course Lola had always assumed it would be someone from Rowan's father's indian reservation, not a random man Rowan met at the farmer's market.
Lola had been hoping and wishing for years that Rowan would find someone within their community that she could love. Someone to ground her and keep her from flying away. Lola knew it was a selfish wish, but she just didn't want to lose her daughter.