more desperately than romantically

He lifts a box of blueberries, a familiar twinge in his low back that he’ll take care of later with the baggie of pills in his car. 

It’s just for a few more weeks, he told himself when he took them from the hospital last night. Until the end of the summer. They need the extra money, and Frank’s sister was doing him a favor letting him work Saturday mornings for her wife’s family farm. Then he would stop taking the pills and try to wean off again, for real this time. 

When he sets the box down, he sees a blonde with glasses carefully squeezing a peach, the others in line eyeing her in frustration. 

“Hey!” Frank calls, walking to face her on the other side of the table. “Looking for anything in particular?” 

Brown eyes snap up at him, cheeks pink from the morning sun. Her head whips between him and the ever-growing crowd behind her. 

“Oh my gosh!” she exclaims. “I’m so sorry! I’ve been holding up the line!” 

“No problem,” Frank replies even though it very much is a problem. “Just wanted to make sure you’re finding everything okay.” 

“Not really,” she says honestly, speaking quickly. “I just moved to Pittsburgh, and I had my first appointment with my new primary care doctor, and she said that I really should be eating more fruits and vegetables, but my worry is that I don’t really like a lot of them because the textures are too weird, and sometimes one is sweet, but the next is sour, but I’m a doctor as well so I really should be making more of an effort if I’m expected to tell my patients the same thing.” 

Frank blinks at her. He’s not sure if he’d ever heard someone say that much in that little time, and his jaw hangs loose as he processes it all. The man just behind her clears his throat, and Frank snaps back to reality. 

“Here,” he says, moving the table a little bit to allow her to slip through, “come with me.” 

He leads the girl back to the truck, Charlie raising an eyebrow as he carries a box of peaches past him. 

“Do you have a favorite fruit?” Frank asks her. “That could be a good place to start if you’re trying to eat more.” 

“I like apples,” she says, almost like she’s embarrassed given the rich array of summer produce in front of her. “I’ll also eat bananas sometimes if they’re not too ripe.” 

Frank clicks his tongue. “Not in stock right now unfortunately. Anything else?” 

Her eyes scan the back of the truck, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.

“Oh!” she exclaims, pointing to a stack of rich, dark berries in the corner. “Blackberries! Blackberry jam is my favorite, but they’re sometimes too tart when they’re fresh.” 

“That’s not an issue,” Frank assures her, taking a big step onto the truck bed. “These are some of the sweetest berries the farm’s ever had.” 

He grabs a whole pallet, hundreds of berries spread out in the box, along with an empty pint carton and brings them back over to where she’s standing. Frank looks down into the box and pulls out a berry the size of his thumb. 

“What’s your name?” he asks. 

“Mel,” she answers. 

“Well, Mel, I’ll promise you that if this isn’t the best blackberry of your life, I’ll give you this whole pallet for free to make as much jam as you want.” 

He offers her the berry, and with a shy grin, allows him to place it in her palm. She inspects it for a moment before biting it in half. Frank watches dark juice run down the corner of her mouth and feels his face get hot. 

“Oh wow,” she breathes out. “That’s delicious.” 

“Told you.” He extends out the container. “There’s more like that, so this is yours to fill up.” 

She takes it, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “Wait really?” 

“Have at it,” he insists. “Take the best of the best.” 

Her face breaks out into a wide smile that Frank can’t help but match. His chest feels warm, and he doesn’t think it’s because he just earned the farm a customer for life. This girl — Mel — interests him, a new weekly puzzle for him to crack. 

It takes her almost ten minutes, carefully judging each berry before putting it into her container, but Mel fills her pint with some of the biggest blackberries Frank’s ever seen. He walks her back out to the front of the stand, the line now much more manageable. 

“That’ll be three dollars,” he tells Mel, and she narrows her eyes, pointing to the sign pinned up on the table. 

“It says seven per pint.” 

“Call it a new customer discount.” He winks, and the look on her face makes him not want to think about the gold band on his finger that’s rapidly collecting sweat underneath. 

Mel passes him three bills from her wallet and starts to walk away. 

“See you next week?” he calls after her, and she turns. “We’re going to have some cherries that I think you might be interested in.” 

"There's like five of these," Princess says. "Mel does the-"

"Cool,” he cuts her off, annoyed. "So we're laughing at the King sisters, then."

"Not like that," Santos starts, rolling her eyes. “And not Becca, anyway.” 

Javadi, to her credit, slips her phone in her back pocket, appearing appropriately chastened. 

"She's not even here today,” he snaps, because that was where his bad mood began, when he rolled in at six-thirty and remembered Mel wasn’t scheduled this weekend. "She's off, and you're all wasting time laughing at her." None of them are looking him in the eyes. He gives up. "Whatever. Santos, your guy in North 3 started throwing up again."

He’s been practicing distancing himself from unnecessary stressors, so. He walks. 

Frank lives alone now, and there isn’t all that much to do, which is why he downloads TikTok as soon as he gets home. She’s easy to find - the app has somehow gone into his contacts and pulled the profiles of what seems like everyone he’s ever met. 

Becca has 76 followers and forty-two videos. In most of them, she’s either alone or with a man Frank assumes is Adam. Only a handful feature Mel, and he finds those quickly. He watches the one from earlier, just to see it better, just so that maybe he’ll understand what was so fucking funny. Then he watches the next one. It’s the same sort of thing, Becca dancing in front, Mel behind. They both know all the words, and they both look like they’re having fun.

There are two more like that, but then there's one where the sisters accidentally bump into each other and Mel laughs with her head all the way back. Her shoulders shake. He can’t see her face but he knows how it’s lit up. He can’t hear her laugh, but he knows what it sounds like. 

“I like yours better, for the record,” he mumbles against her, licking at a mole behind her ear. Mel’s bedroom has enraptured him — her patchwork quilt and stuffed animals, the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling. His very first glimpse of it months ago had made him hard. 

“…I think this is fun too.” Mel flushes prettily.

She’s propped herself up on the pillows, looking bashful even as she spreads her legs for him. Frank feels heat pool in his stomach, devouring the sight of her pigtail braids and panties with ladybugs printed on them. He leans down, pushing into her space, his nose brushing against hers as he speaks. 

“You want it right here, baby? Want me to fuck you in my bed?” 

“Mhmm,” she nods, hands twisting in the sheets. “Yes, please.” 

Frank tugs at one of her braids. They’ve got the house until tomorrow. Abby and the kids are at her parents' for the weekend. He wonders how many different rooms he can fuck her in before he has to take her home. 

“Be a good girl and turn around, honey.”