Millie pulled out the ripe red radish and waved in the direction of her grandmother tending the new pea shoots. Grams was going strong at one hundred and fifty. Not unusual in this day and age where the only food you could get was macrobiotic and home-grown. Millie reflected sadly on the organically challenged decades which had preceded hers. How awful to have been forced fed genetically modified foods out of boxes flavoured with chemicals. Millie shuddered. She shook her head clearing it of the damaged past. The world was healing.
“Herbal tea, Grams?” she called.
“Peppermint would be lovely.”
Millie wiped her hands on her hemp pants, lent over, picked some leaves then went inside.
As she finished pouring the desalinised water into the pot Mille heard a knock. Her heart began to beat faster and a wide grin split her sun kissed face. It could only be Solar Sam. He visited once a month to ensure the sun powered plumbing he’d installed was fully functional. Grams teased Sam came for other reasons. Secretly Millie hoped this was true. He had eyes the colour of unpolluted skies, muscles of a man who worked the land and hands so strong they could easily hold two large Watermelons which he was doing when she opened the door. Millie imagined those hands on her body and internally quivered.
“Quite a pair you have there” Millie greeted him.
“Thanks Millie. I didn’t think you’d noticed” Sam teased.
Millie blushed.
“Would you like some peppermint tea?” Millie offered.
Millie tried to hide her shock when he agreed. She asked every time. He never stayed.
He placed the melons on the table as she poured.
“For your summer salvage party.” Sam waved at the melons.
Each summer Millie and her friends gathered unwanted items and turned them into something useful. Everything was salvageable.
“You can come if you like?”
It was an unintentional spoken thought. Mille held her breath.
“That’s your friend time. It wouldn’t be right to intrude”
Millie didn’t want him to see her cry. She had to get him out of the house.
“The plumbing’s fine.”
She gathered the cup he had barely finished. He didn’t move.
“Just go” Millie’s mind urged.
“Millie, what are you doing right now?”
“Trying not to cry” Millie wanted to say. Instead, “Back to gardening.”
“I was hoping we could go somewhere; just you and me.”
His eyes held passion. This was new or had she been too afraid to see for fear of dashed dreams.
“My party, you didn’t want to come.”
“It was for friends. I want to be so much more” he rasped.
A cough startled her. Millie turned. There was Grams giving her a knowing look.
“You two go. I can finish in the garden” Grams assured her ushering them out the door.
Millie raised an eyebrow, “Standing there long?”
Grams didn’t reply but thought, “There goes a match, not made in heaven, but on green land.”
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