Page 25 of My Brother’s Best Friend

7

JORDAN

Cam’s fingers grazed my cheek, and again, something electric crackled through me.

I sucked in a sharp breath of air, trying not to sway. Cam’s eyes, blue as the azure evening sky, went wide. I looked down. Could he tell how badly I wanted him?

He’d just finished explaining how nervous people made him, and the last thing I wanted to do was add myself to the list of people he felt uncomfortable around. So letting him know he could have me on my knees in a heartbeat was probably not the best course of action.

“Sorry,” he whispered, his fingers withdrawing.

My cheek burned. I flicked my eyes back up and saw his nostrils flare. Great, I hadn’t just freaked him out, I’d annoyed him too.

“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly. “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

Silence hung between us. I studied Cam, trying to make sense of him. He was so solid and unshakeable, but he held himself like he was trying to disappear. He glanced down at his beer—mostly empty now—and frowned.

“I should probably—”

“So, come on, tell me,” I interrupted, refusing to let him finish that sentence.

I knew where it was going, and as awkward as I’d just made things, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Tonight might be my only chance to hang out with him. If I left things feeling this weird, it definitely would be. I couldn’t let it end like this.

“Tell you what?” he said, his eyes suddenly wary. What did he think I was going to say?

Tell me you’re just the tiniest bit curious if I could make you feel as good as whatever woman stood you up tonight.

“About melons,” I said with a laugh. “I’m dying to know.”

Cam snorted. “You’re lying, is what you are.”

“I am not! I mean it, I wanna know.”

“Maybe right now. But you’re gonna regret that pretty quickly once I get started.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

“You sure?” He arched an eyebrow.

“Dude, why are you so hesitant to tell me? Are you using dead bodies as fertilizer? Should you be on a watchlist?”

Cam sighed. “No, I just—nevermind. If you really mean it, I can tell you.”

“I do. Lay your melons on me.”

“Well, it’s not just melons, for one thing. There are also squashes, and watermelons.”

I frowned. “Watermelons aren’t melons?”

“Well, honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon, and squashes all belong to the Cucurbitaceae family. But within that family, watermelons are part of the Citrullus genus, while honeydew and cantaloupe are part of the Cucumis genus.”

“Okay. So that’s what you’re writing about?”

“Not exactly. The thing is, the Cucurbitaceae family generally grows in tropical or temperate climates, so it thrives here on Summersea, even the genera that originated in Africa or Asia. But all the agricultural histories of the island focus on the cash crops that were grown using enslaved labor—indigo, rice, and cotton. I mean, the amount of writing on Sea Island cotton alone is staggering. People romanticize the wealth it created and this lost way of life, but it was a way of life only made possible through slavery. And in addition to being brutal and exploitative and immoral, plantations were some of the earliest examples of monoculture farming, which still dominates the United States today, and yet the writing on them is practically hagiographic. I just think it’s worth looking at other aspects of that history, you know? The Sea Islands were inhabited by Indigenous peoples long before European colonization, and subsistence farming continued through the colonial and antebellum eras, right up to the present day. So that’s more or less what I’m writing about, and part of that includes trying to recreate the farming practices people would have engaged in at different times. Hence the fertilizer. I’m trying to see which types of fertilizer different crops respond to best. Including melons.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open, when he finished.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I told you, it’s not actually that interesting.”