Honey

Chapter 2

That following Sunday Joel comes over to repair your porch swing as agreed. It is a strange, almost surreal experience for him to be standing at your cottage once again, only this time in the daylight and with the purpose of offering a service. Your cottage looks even more dilapidated in the light of day with its peeling paint work and broken window shutters. Just how long have you lived here in these conditions?

The small garden in your yard, however, is as splendid as he imagined it would be; an array of different flowers of various colours flourish in two separate plant beds, their presence a pleasing visual reprieve from the otherwise barren environment around them. Although Joel knows very little about gardening, he can see that it would take a considerable amount of love and effort to cultivate such a display of blooms. Did you do this all yourself?

Joel stands outside your front door for a minute, willing the nerves buzzing throughout his limbs to subside. His hand flexes around the handle of his tool box, the handle feeling sticky against the rough skin of his palm. He's not quite sure why, but he's nervous to see you again. It's not like you're some muckety muck figurehead of the community or something - you're just a random woman that needs help with a piece of furniture. A totally innocent scenario with a seemingly unremarkable, normal woman.

He swallows the lump in his throat and summons the courage to rap the back of his knuckles against the wood of your door. When you open it to greet him, Joel is momentarily stunned by your appearance. He is able to absorb more details of your face now, like the small scar on your bottom lip and the long one above your left eyebrow, aswell as the striking colour of your eyes. Your hair hangs over your shoulder in a loose pony tail, showcasing the elegant slope of your neck. The two top buttons of your shirt are undone, allowing him to spy the swell of your cleavage hidden behind the material.

You aren't just a random, normal woman. You are a gorgeous, sensual creature that stands before him like a kind of sultry apparitation. Joel tries his damnest not to stare at you, to instead divert his gaze to his feet, but it is near impossible to when the honeyed enunciation of his name slips out from the pout of your lips. It makes his cock twitch in his jeans.

Get it together. You're here for a job, that's all.

He nods and greets you good morning. There is an air of awkwardness between you, the kind of pleasant yet reserved way people interact when they are not friends yet not exactly strangers. You offer Joel a polite smile but don't try to engage him in small talk, for which he is thankful. He feels self conscious around you, as though he will say or do something that will make himself look ridiculous.

He sighs with relief when you excuse yourself and disappear inside your house and leave him alone to focus on the job. There's no way in hell he would be able to concentrate on what he came to do with you lingering about. He sets his tool box on the porch and gets straight to work on the swing. He spends the next hour or so measuring the broken slats and going to the lumber yard to retrieve suitable wood for their replacement.

When Joel returns he saws them to the correct size and hammers the pieces to the frame of the swing. He's methodical in the way he carries out each task, the pedantic need to execute things perfectly carried over from his days as a contractor. He savours the times when he's immersed in an assignment, whether it be on patrol or working on construction projects around the commune; the preoccupation dulls the ever present gnawing grief that plagues his battered heart, and helps inspire him to endure and survive.

Some time during the afternoon, when Joel is nailing one of the slats back onto the bench, you potter out to the porch and check in with him. You ask if he needs anything to eat or drink, but Joel politely refuses. Even though his stomach rumbles and his throat is dry, Joel is too bashful to accept your offer and prefers to dedicate himself to finishing the job before doing anything else.