Chapter 10 #2
take me hours to fall asleep.
I hated that I couldn’t stop.
I’d tried not to follow her, but five minutes after she’d leave, I would find myself rushing out the door to catch up to her and make sure she was okay.
I was obsessed.
Which is why I remind myself that I could never be with a girl who was made for the light when I so clearly belong in the
shadows.
“This is the new gravel lane the guys just finished that gives direct access to our center from the main road below,” Trista
continues with the tour, explaining how the business sits on fifteen acres of land, most of it fenced-in pasture with room
to grow if needed.
“The road turned out perfect,” Everly says excitedly. “And the parking lot for visitors too.”
“Visitors we don’t have yet.” Trista sighs.
“Don’t worry, I have a plan.” Everly wiggles her brows.
“Good.” Trista smiles back at Stevie. “I’m so sick of planning.”
We round a bend, and Trista sings out, “Here we are!”
The center comes into full view, and my brows lift at the grandness of it. I pictured an old, run-down barn with some animals
scattered here and there.
This is a proper facility.
The building is a large metal structure, nestled cozily amongst large pine trees. The siding is light gray metal with green
trim and a massive sliding bay door down the middle with big black block letters that read Mount Millie above it.
“This was all built with recycled steel and locally sourced timber,” Trista says, glancing back at me. “That’s Wyatt’s brainchild,
but I love it now too. We’re the only fully sustainable rescue center in all of Colorado.”
“I’m going to work on getting that put up on your signage out by the road,” Everly says, pulling out yet another notebook
and scribbling some notes down.
“Good idea,” Trista agrees.
I shift awkwardly in my seat, wondering if I should be taking notes as well. I was a decent student—you have to be to get
into Trinity—but I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life, other than rugby. The law path has been pretty much
drilled into my head by my parents since I was young. They see a career in law as the ultimate success story they never achieved,
and I guess I just accepted that idea until rugby became more of an option.
Now, I’m stuck in this limbo sort of place where I’m not really playing professionally yet, but I’m also not really doing
a job fitting of a bloke with a degree from a prestigious Dublin university. And I only have myself to blame.
“The barn is south-facing, so the windows give us good sunlight and heat in the winter, and the green roof keeps it cool in
the summer. The solar panels on the roof and that wind turbine in the back pasture provide nearly all the center’s energy
needs. It heats our water troughs and runs our electric fencing around the paddocks. There’s even a composting toilet system
in the barn, along the zero-waste recycling station.
“Oh, and of course, we have a rainwater collection system that feeds all our troughs and waters our vegetable and herb garden
that’s maintained by volunteers. We use all that produce to feed the animals and the staff. I really love that part.”
“Me too,” Everly says, her eyes marveling at everything. “I’m aroused.”
I blink back my shock over Everly’s choice of words, and Trista replies, “Girl, same.”
“What’s aroused?” Stevie asks from beside me.
“Nothing, baby girl,” Trista replies absentmindedly, not the least bit embarrassed for talking that way in front of a child.
I’m gathering this is where Everly gets her bold honesty from. Her family doesn’t hold back at all.
“That’s my bike rack.” Stevie points to the tiny little row of old horseshoes up by the barn.
“We’ll get your bike out and show them in a bit, Stevie.” Trista drives past the center to loop around the various outdoor
areas. “The pasture fencing is all built from reclaimed wood, and the couple shelters we have out there for the animals to
use during inclement weather were all donated by a farmer down the road.”
“Epic,” Everly says with a smile as she pushes her hair off to one side. The morning sun glitters through her light hair,
and I have to force myself to look away.
“That covered paddock area by the center was recently reinforced with rubber flooring built out of recycled tires. It helps
prevent the animals from having to walk in mud for too long and get hoof rot. That was Hilow’s suggestion.”
“Oh, really?” Everly’s head spins around to look at her.
“Yeah, he got the tires donated from Tire Depot in Boulder and everything.”
“How nice,” she replies, and I stare at her curiously to see what she means behind those words. Is it a . . . that’s-nice-because-charity-is-nice?
Or is it a . . . that’s-nice-because-I-want-to-fuck-my-ex-boyfriend-again nice?
A sharp poke on my leg distracts me, and I turn to see Stevie jabbing my thigh tattoo with her little pointy claw again.
“Quit that,” I grumble, and she just giggles. Weird fucking kid.
I’ve been around my fair share of kids with the youth coaching I’ve done. But the kids I normally interact with come up a
lot higher than my kneecaps. And they don’t do the poking thing.
Trista parks the ATV in front of the barn, and we all climb out as she points to a large pile of shit located on the backside of the building.
“We do manure composting because that’s killer fertilizer for the garden, and any manure we don’t use, that same farmer comes and takes it out to his fields.
So that’s where you’ll be mucking the stalls out to, Wolf. ”
I nod and then notice Trista staring down at my legs. “I probably should have told you to wear jeans and boots.”
I glance down at my athletic shorts and trainers. “These are old shoes.”
“If you say so,” Trista replies, and I swear Stevie covers her mouth to snicker at me.
Stevie’s wearing a bleedin’ dress with cowboy boots, so I don’t know how that’s any better than what I’m wearing. Everly is,
of course, dressed perfectly in jeans, cowboy boots, and a flannel shirt draped over a cropped tank top. If I’d known before
coming to Colorado that flannel was such a popular dress code, I’d have done some shopping.
“Come on inside, and I’ll show you what we have going on.”
Trista pushes the giant sliding door open to reveal the inside of Mount Millie. It smells like fresh cedar chips and steel
mixed with whatever animals she has in this place. It’s clean and still very new-looking but also manages to be warm and welcoming.
Light pours in from the glass roof panels on the ceiling as our feet scrape along the concrete floor.
She guides us over to the right side. “This is the receiving end of Mount Millie. It has our feed room, which is our makeshift
office, the vet care area, and a large quarantine pen for new arrivals just outside that gate. Avery is our primary vet on
call, but I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of Hilow as well this summer.”
Everly’s eyes move to mine for a moment before snapping back to Trista.
“Every new animal has to be examined by the vet first, then we work to determine if it’s a plays-well-with-others friend or
a grumpy, need-my-own-mountain-to-function friend.”
“Like Daddy,” Stevie adds, kicking her little cowboy boots onto the gate beside her.
Everly laughs, and Trista winks at her daughter. “Currently, we have ten calves, five goats, one donkey, one big old Clydesdale
horse, two alpacas, and a rogue goose that wanders around Fletcher Mountain freely. There’s a binder of all the animals and
their backgrounds over by the pens. Wolf, that will pretty much be your bible this summer. Take the first hour today and really
look over that so you can learn about everyone’s quirks.”
“Oh, um . . . will I be . . . handling the animals a lot?” I ask, my body tense with anxiety.
“Definitely. And it’s going to be baptism by fire today because we’re receiving a new alpaca, so we’ll want to prep a fresh
pen for him. When you’re done with the binder, you can grab a couple fresh bags of cedar chips off the shelves in the back
and distribute them in that pen next to the other alpacas. Then you can start mucking out all the other pens. Stevie can show
you where the wheelbarrow and pitchfork are. Watch out for Clyde. He kicks if you spook him.”
“Are there photos in the binder? I’m not sure I know what an alpaca looks like.”
Trista blinks back at me and then bursts out laughing, clutching her belly and bending over as she fights to recover. “Good
one, Wolf. That was really funny!”
Everly joins her in the laughter and then grasps her arm to refocus Trista. “Do you have time to go over my plans? I have
all the ideas in my notebook here.”
Trista wipes tears from her eyes and nods. “Yeah, let’s go into the feed room.” She points to the space beyond the vet area.
“There’s a desk in there we can spread out at.”
And with that strange interaction, Trista and Everly turn and walk away, leaving me standing there with a confused frown on my face beside a curly-haired little kid who I think I’ve just discovered may be my boss for the summer.
Everly
The feed room looks like the command center for Mount Millie. It smells sweet and nutty, and there’s a mini fridge in the
corner with human snacks on top—Stevie-friendly foods like fruit snacks and chips. The wooden shelves on the wall sag under
the weight of feed bags that look like they were dragged here by a donkey. There’s a bucket of fresh carrots in the corner
and a bin labeled “For Goats Only.” Someone has scribbled on one pail, “Do NOT Let Stevie Near This Again,” in black Sharpie.
There’s a sense of barely controlled chaos, and it’s here that I get a sense for just how overwhelmed Trista has been the
past year. Mount Millie has only been open about six months, and it’s clearly too much for Trista to manage the business side
of the rescue and take care of the animals.
That’s where I step in.
“I worked on this plan in one of my business classes, so I got lots of great advice from my professor.”