Love Like A Tomato
By Kathryn S. Gardiner

He rolled the foil gum wrapper into a ball and flicked it at the nearest trashcan where it bounced off the rim, landed in the grass, and Abby wondered: Could I truly love a litterer?

“Haven’t talked to my dad in, like … man, I don’t even remember the last time I saw him.” Kyle rubbed at the edge of his mouth with his thumb, the gum bright green against his white teeth. “I was a kid. Think he came by for my fifth or sixth birthday. My mom threatened to hit him with a frying pan. I remember that part.”

Abby watched him as he spoke, eyed the way his jaw worked over words and gum and she wondered: Would they get married and then some day, 50 years from now, would he do that same simple gesture, that reckless toss of trash, and would she just snap?

Kyle huffed out a laugh and she smiled. “My family’s crazy,” he said softly, his cheeks tinged red.

“Everyone’s is, in their own way,” she replied. She watched her feet shuffle over the pavement, pink tennis shoes across chaotic lines and cracks. She imagined a back yard with birthday streamers strung between trees, balloons taped to a wooden picnic table, a homemade cake with shaky lettering and five or six drippy blue-spiral candles.

But when he was a kid his back yard didn’t look anything like that; she’d seen pictures; and he’d said before that they had birthday pies in his family, not cakes. She imagined herself holding a frying pan and wondered if she could ever get mad enough to hit someone with it.

“Yeah? How’s yours crazy?” he asked. He kicked a rock and sent it clattering across the sidewalk.

“Oh … well.” Abby shrugged. She felt his eyes on her. Her shoulders hunched and stayed there. “My dad’s kinda—whatever—he wasn’t around a whole lot.” Working, she thought; not off gallivanting about town, not ignoring them, not getting in frying-pan fights with her mother; just working long hours and coming home tired.

“Yeah,” Kyle said, like he understood. Like they understood one another, and his eyes drifted over her face, caught on her hair. His footsteps lead them beneath the arching entrance of a gazebo and she expected at any moment that he would say something about her being beautiful in the moonlight, even if she wasn’t. He toyed with something in his jeans pocket and her stomach knotted.

Let it grow, her friend had said, and treat love like a tomato. Sow the seeds, tend the soil, prune the leaves and keep out toxins. Give time and attention and enjoy the fruit.

Three months, she thought. Was three months enough time?

Streetlights cast patterns on the wooden benches, shined through stained glass and made rainbow patterns around them. It was beautiful, she noted; it was perfectly romantic, so she forced herself to meet his eyes.

“This is kinda pretty in here,” he said, too casual, and wiped some dirt off the nearest bench before sitting down.

“Mm-hmm.” Her gaze dropped to the stained-glass markings across one of her shoes; pale green and purple crossing pink.

“Abby, get over here,” he said with a laugh and she complied, sat dutifully beside him. It was just chilly enough that the cold could explain away her raised shoulders, her hands closed between her knees. His fingertips stroked the back of her neck, pushed her long hair out of the way. “Hey,” he whispered, and she looked at him.

Pretty green eyes and a handsome face. A good-looking man with an easy laugh and a lot to say. He opened doors for her and paid for dinner. He complimented her shoes and told her she smelled like flowers.

So she looked at him and prayed to feel something—anything—that she could grab hold of and build on. Her eyes skittered away and she pulled them right back to him because she needed this to work; this was what she was supposed to be doing. Because it would be so much easier to just be done; paired off and settled; to fit neatly into the salt-and-pepper, bread-and-butter world; to work with easy, even numbers and never attend another party as number 9, or 11 or 13. It would just be easier to get the final ingredient, so people would stop asking why she wasn’t done yet.

But she only felt a knot in her gut, and the real prayer that sprang to her mind was “Please, please, don’t.”

This is dating, she reminded herself, this is relationship, this is marriage; it’s stumbling through, gradually growing closer to a stranger who seems like he might be a decent, good, maybe even the guy when it’s a few months in, maybe even a few years in. Like planting tomatoes and knowing, by the end of the season, she might have some robust, red fruit.

Only, Abby had seen her friend gardening, the one who grew tomatoes. Her friend hummed with her hands in the soil, and smiled as she clipped away the leaves. She tended with care and affection because she liked tomatoes, because she loved the plant.

Abby didn’t love tomatoes. She wasn’t sure she ever would.

“You cold?” Kyle asked, his voice low, and she knew so many women would want to be her right now. His breath stirred against her cheek and his hand moved sweetly against the nape of her neck.

Abby wanted to run.

Other people do it all the time, she thought; they shack up with people they barely know—people who seem like good choices—and they let the years burn and forge them into something that looks like love. After years, they look at each other over the debris and blood of a battlefield and see someone who looks familiar, even if it’s because that person was the enemy. Comrades in arms, soldiers in the trenches, and who could ever understand them but each other? Love like her parents had, who bickered all the time, couldn’t stand each other and were still together after 27 years because even irritation can be comforting when it’s reliable. Maybe that was the only real kind of love out there; maybe anyone who hummed while they pruned was just faking.

Kyle was a good tomato and she had no reason to believe she’d ever find a better one. Three months was enough to know that he was a tomato worth having.

She felt no hum in her heart, and the idea of pruning only made her feel tired. She didn’t want to dig her hands into the soil and carefully tend to the plant. She knew there was a ring in his pocket and he was going to ask her to wear it. Sitting beside her was a robust red fruit—and Abby didn’t want it.

But when he kissed her, she kissed him back, and thought, at least it’s settled.