Sophia didn't know what time Shane was coming over so she got ready first thing in the morning. Tempted as she was to dress nicely, they were doing farm work and she resigned to the fact that she'd be better off in old jeans. After throwing them on she hung around the kitchen, peering out her window every few minutes and sharing anxious looks with Amber. Though often struck by random cravings, for the first time in weeks she seriously considered racing to Pierre's to buy a pack of cigarettes – she felt as nervous as Shane always looked.

He'd made such an easy stranger, too. It was almost a shame to get to know him.

She ran to the bathroom, pulling down her ponytail and arranging her hair in an over-the-shoulder braid instead. Leaning close to the mirror she spent several minutes carefully pulling free the wispy strands of hair that framed her face, but then Amber started barking at some unheard noise and Sophia rushed to the window.

Well that's just not fair.

He was in jeans and a white t-shirt, his dark hair still damp from the shower. That look. The quintessential "I'm just here to work on your farm, ma'am" look, that in the movies always ended with the shirt coming off and a bare, sweaty back glistening in sunlight.

Okay, so maybe that fantasy wasn't entirely in touch with the slightly out-of-shape, socially awkward man approaching her house, but to Sophia that white t-shirt was a cruel, cruel trick.

Not wanting to seem overeager by opening before he knocked, she hung back and waited. And waited. And waited. How had he not reached her house by now? When she couldn't take it any longer, she got up and with a rapid fluttering in her stomach opened the door. Shane stood on the stoop, his fist frozen in place to knock. At seeing her he lowered it uneasily.

"Hi," she said breathlessly.

"Hey."

"Do – do you wanna come in?" she asked, realizing with a panic she hadn't thought this far ahead.

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked around. "I, er, thought I'd just get started out here."

"Right. Of course." She patted her leg. "Come, Amber."

The curious dog trotted over, circling Shane with her tail wagging and sniffing his jeans. He held out his hand, and after Amber nuzzled her nose into it approvingly began to scratch behind her ears.

"She likes you," said Sophia, giving him a nervous smile.

She led them off the porch, down her property and past the tilled rows of soil where her crops grew, pointing out what the different mounds of dirt would grow into: tomatoes, blueberry bushes, seven varieties of hot pepper. While Shane wasn't quite as tense or jittery as usual, he did walk several paces behind her with his shoulders rounded, his hands in his pockets.

When they passed the rows of peppers he spoke for the first time since they left the porch. "You into spicy food?"

"I love it," she said, pleased he was taking an interest. "You?"

"Yeah. Hate the mild stuff, has to be really spicy."

She smiled. "Hey, me too."

She continued to babble about her vegetables as they walked, grateful to have something to steer the conversation with, but she couldn't stop thinking about their last encounter outside of Pierre's and wondered if Shane was thinking about it too. She also wondered if they'd ever be able to meet in the middle – somewhere between this stilted, overly-polite small talk and reaming one another out on the sidewalk.

"Well, here we are." Sophia stopped, placing her hands on her hips and looking around.

They stood before a large pond, its bank wildly overgrown and the surrounding grass littered with boulders and fallen trees. "I need to clear this area out so I can get an irrigation system running from here. There's a well by the house but it's all dried up, and this is closer to the fields anyway." She nodded to a dilapidated building about twenty yards ahead. "That's the shed. Tools are in there."

Working with Shane, she soon realized, was very quiet work.

He was willing enough for the tasks, chopping logs into lumber and filling the wheelbarrow, helping her heave boulders out of the way, clearing the tall grass and digging where she wanted a trench. There was no sign of his usual abrasiveness, and when asked if he was doing all right he merely gave a nod.

Sophia grew to like it. It was soothing to work side by side in the gentle summer sunlight, the air humming with the sounds of frogs and flies. The silence between them had been awkward when she thought she was supposed to fill it, but once she stopped trying it filled itself.

He also seemed to enjoy the work, and watching him at it wasn't half bad either. While not toned he was strong: he probably worked the stock room at JojaMart, she reasoned, where the workers spent hours unloading shipments and lifting heavy boxes. Despite the occasional grunt or labored breathing there was a calm look on his face, one she hadn't seen before. And after thirty minutes of chopping wood, Sophia's arms felt ready to break while Shane was still going strong: he swung the axe down on a thick log, cracking through most of it in one go, then gave a hard kick where it was still connected and split it in two.

"Damn," she said, jokingly impressed. Half jokingly. Her heart beat faster when he returned a small smile.

"Got a chainsaw in there by chance?" he nodded toward the shed.

"Sorry. What about Marnie?"

"Nah." He stood, putting his hands on his lower back and stretching, then rolling his neck side to side. Sophia caught sight of his watch.

"Hey, what time is it?"

He checked. "Quarter after twelve."

She laughed. "We've been out here four hours! Don't you want a break? Maybe some lunch?"

"I'm good."

"Well, I want a break. I'll get us something to drink, at least. Be right back."

As she filled two glasses with ice Sophia looked out her front window. Though the pond was rather far out, the land was flat and she could see everything – including the tiny figure pushing a wheelbarrow of chopped lumber toward the shed, then stacking its contents one by one on top of the growing woodpile.

He looked good, and she wasn't thinking of the sweaty, fantasy t-shirt men anymore. She was thinking about the fact that the man in her yard was the same man who sat hunched and hopeless in the bar each night. He really did look good out there. Healthy.

You know it doesn't work that way, whispered a small voice in her head. You know it isn't that easy.

She suspected he'd drank that morning. Maybe not a lot – it wasn't at all obvious – but there was a certain ease to his manner that made her suspect, an ease that she'd only seen once before, the night at the dock.

"Shut up," she hissed at the voice.

She arrived back at the shed with the water in her hands and a canvas grocery bag over her shoulder. Shane continued wheeling wood back and forth.

"Hey," she said, nudging her head toward the pond. "Come take a break."

She led him to a clear section of bank where they had room to stretch their legs in front of the water. They sat down and Sophia unloaded the snacks - two apples and a bag of potato chips.

"Not exactly a full meal, but you can't work so long without eating."

"Thanks," he muttered, accepting a glass of water and sounding like the old Shane again. He fixated on a spot in the pond as he drank. The work had given them both something to focus on, something to quell their nerves – side by side and away from the work there was a sudden void to fill.

"Hey," she said, then "hey!" again when he didn't look up the first time. "This—" she indicated all around, then motioned between the two of them, "—this is pretty okay, isn't it?"

Shane played with his water glass, the ice clinking against the sides as he turned it in his hand. "Yeah, it's pretty okay," he said at last. But then he caught Sophia's eye and gave her a small, nervous smile, one that put a dimple in his stubble. Her stomach somersaulted: it was the cutest damn thing she'd ever seen.

They ate in silence for several minutes, Sophia basking in Shane's quiet company and the perfect weather. She loved early summer on the farm: all the crispness of spring, all the warmth of actual summer, the way verdant green grass mingled with the deep green plants in her fields. The noon sun shone overhead against a royal blue gradient, one that looked like the wallpapers on her old work computer. Only this one she could feel; with this one she could close her eyes and tilt her head back, burning the inside of her eyelids with blinding gold sun.

Marnie said Shane came from the city. She wondered how he felt about the countryside. Was he soaking it in now, like Sophia? Or was his mind far away? All those hours at the bar, those walks to and from work, even right now as he sat beside her – what did he think about? She knew so little about him, and there was only one way to change that.

"So where'd you move from?" she asked, breaking the silence.

He took a chip, and for a few uncomfortable seconds she thought he might not answer. But then he said, "Zuzu City."

"No shit?" She smiled. "Same here."

"You ever go to a Tunneler's game?"

"Nah. I never got into gridball. Or any sport, for that matter."

He stared down at his lap. "Yeah, don't know why I just asked that. Doesn't seem like your thing."

"Is it yours?"

A pause. "Used to be." She thought he looked sad for a moment, but he quickly changed the subject. "Where'd you live?"

"Sapperton. You?"

"Not even close – Singer."

"Singer? You're a south side boy?" she teased.

He made a face. "Not proud of it."

"Aren't there lots of gangs in that area? My parents never let me go past 88th."

"Eh, some of it was rough. The streets around us were shit, but my neighborhood wasn't too bad. Just took the bus to school and avoided the really bad blocks." He shrugged. "What about you?"

She shook her head. "Your basic idyllic childhood. Grew up in an apartment downtown with my parents and sister. I mean, I was jealous of my friends in the suburbs because they got to have a lawn and trampoline and all that…but I don't think suburban envy really counts as roughing it."

"You have a sister? She prefer the city or something?"

"Had," said Sophia, quieter. "Had a sister."

"Sorry."

She waved to brush it off, but he caught her eye, looked at her hard and said, "No, seriously. I'm really sorry. I've lost someone too. Fucking sucks."

"Jas's parents," she said, without thinking.

Shane looked shook, and Sophia kicked herself.

"I'm sorry...Marnie, when she was showing me around the ranch – she told me. I thought Jas was related to her, so…"

He dug in the dirt for a moment, finding a rock and then chucking it into the pond. For a moment she worried he was mad, but then he grunted, "Yeah. My best friend and his fiancé." He searched for another rock, this time throwing it side-arm so that it skipped across the pond. "Just weird, you know? One day they're there, the next, bam, dead."

"Yeah," said Sophia softly, "I know." She looked for her own rock to skip, and they took turns skipping them for several minutes. "How did it happen?"

"Drunk driver." He paused, then gave a derisive snort. "I know, right?"

She drew her knees to her chest and rested her head on them, watching him from the side.

"Look, I know what people here think about me. They're not fucking wrong, but I never drive drunk. Not before it happened, not after. Makes me sick."

Sophia watched his face; Shane watched hers back. Something about the current atmosphere made it very easy to look one another in the eye. The sun, the quietude, the weight of the conversation – there was a haze over just them.

"Your sister?" he asked.

She hugged her knees tighter, rocking slightly. "Suicide."

"Well shit."

Sophia couldn't think of two words to sum it up better.

Shane finished his water in silence, looking out over the pond, Sophia sat rocking and thinking, and at long last they both stood up and went back to work. As gradually as the mood had fallen it lifted again, as they worked their way into the same comfortable silence as before. From time to time Sophia joked with him, even squeezing out another rare smile, and at four in the afternoon, sweaty and exhausted, they called it a day.

"One sec," she said when they were back on her porch, running inside to grab her wallet and coming back out counting twenties.

"Don't bother," he said, looking embarrassed.

"I said I'd pay you," she insisted. "So I'm going to pay you."

"And I said forget it."

"But I want –"

"You invited me as a friend, right?"

"Right," she agreed. "But I don't work my friends to death for nothing."

"Well joke's on you, I'm still alive. Keep your money."

She glared playfully. "What about next time? You going into free labor?"

An odd expression came over his face. "Next time?"

Sophia felt very shy again – it was a rollercoaster around him, these constant fluctuations of being bold and being bashful. "Yeah. Only if you want to, of course, on weekends you're free…"

Shane shifted on his feet, hands in his pockets. "Next Saturday again?"

"Next Saturday is good," she said, copying his stance.

"Well, okay."

"Okay."

"Okay." A pause. "Listen, that thing with your sister…what I said at the lake that day…"

She shrugged. "You didn't know."

"Still."

"It's okay, I swear." She gave a timid smile. "Thanks for today. I mean it."

"Not a big deal."

He turned to leave, and Sophia was just about to go inside when she heard, "Hey, Sophia?" and flipped around to see him still standing on the edge of her road, looking frustrated.

"What was that the other day?" he blurted.

She was taken aback. "What was what?"

"The other day. The bathhouse," he said, the frustration on his face mingling with something else. Pleading? Like he wanted an answer badly, but it was costing him to ask.

"I – I don't know," she stammered.

But her answer wasn't enough. He turned away again, shoulders crestfallen as he walked down the dirt road that led south of the farm.