12. Max
CHAPTER 12
Max
Charlie was right. I never should have eaten the soup. I made poor choices, and here I am, paying the price. I don’t want to get out of bed.
Because if I sit up, I’m going to puke.
I glance at the clock. It’s 5:30 a.m. Hopefully, if I run to the bathroom and get sick, Charlie will sleep through it, and I won’t have to live with the embarrassment of getting food poisoning.
I barely make it into the bathroom in time, and I’m reminded how much I hate puking.
The only time I overdrank, I puked. It was my 21st birthday. I hated it and never made that mistake again. I’m now a two-drink-maximum guy.
I’m not sure how long I’m kneeling next to the toilet, but somewhere in the haze of wishing I could just die instead of suffering through this, I hear a tentative knock on the door.
“Max? Can I get you anything?” Charlie calls softly.
“I’m fine,” I croak. And now my embarrassment is complete.
“You didn’t sound fine when you were calling dinosaurs a minute ago. It woke me up.” Her tone is pitying rather than angry, and somehow that makes it worse.
“I’m going to work.” I stand slowly, holding onto the counter as I shuffle toward the door.
I pull it open and stare down at Charlie. She grimaces as she looks at my face. “Food poisoning?”
I nod slowly.
She shakes her head. “You can’t go to work.”
“Cows gotta eat,” I whisper as I stare past her at the front door. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’m going to make it up into the hay loft. My entire body is aching. Maybe I can lie on the hay elevator, and it can roll me up there.
“Max,” Charlie says slowly. “You need to go lie down. You look…ill.”
I lean against the doorframe. I wish it was a casual look, but the way Charlie is staring at me, I know I look like I’m on the verge of falling into a heap on the ground. “I don’t know if I can make it out there. Maybe if I drive the truck to the barn.”
Charlie shakes her head. “Go get in bed. I’ll feed the cattle.”
Those words snap through my haze. “No—you don’t?—”
“I can handle feeding a few cows and calves. Is it only the ones in the main barn?”
She’s serious. She’s going to go feed for me this morning. I could kiss her I’m so grateful. I grab the door frame to keep from sinking to the ground. “You don’t have to do this. This isn’t what you signed up for when you came here. There’s too much. It’s the main barn and the other two on the far side of the hill.”
“Please. I can find the barns. I’m not that directionally challenged.” She shrugs as she walks away. “This doesn’t mean I like you. I just don’t think I could drag your passed-out body back from the barn, and I don’t have good cell service down there.” She cackles—actually cackles—as she walks away. I close my eyes and rest my cheek against the cold door frame.
Luckily, I fed the big bales out in the pastures yesterday, so those ones will be fine for a couple of days. If Charlie actually feeds the cows, then I’ll be able to check on them this evening when I’m feeling better.
“Is the milk replacer in the mud room?” she yells as I do a slow shuffle back toward my room.
She even remembers the bummer calf.
I turn around to find her standing at the end of the hallway with the calf bottle, her socks pulled high over her yoga pants, and her big puffy coat on.
“One to two ratio. Really, you don’t have to do this.” I’ll crawl down to the barn. I can’t expect her to know how much to feed everyone.
“You don’t have to worry. I used to help my grandpa on his ranch. Believe it or not, I’ve thrown some alfalfa bales and fed a calf or two,” she explains with a smile. “This makes me a little homesick for their ranch.”
“I—” I clear my throat. “You didn’t say anything before.”
Charlie shrugs. “It wasn’t important.”
“But now it is?”
“I can practically see the panic rolling off of you.”
I sigh. “You don’t have to do this.”
“St. James?”
“Yes?”
“Go back to bed.”
With that, she spins on her heel and marches toward the mudroom. It still has a strong skunk smell in it. It’ll probably last another month with how stinky those dogs were.
But she doesn’t seem fazed by it. I move my aching body back toward the bedroom and sink down on the bed, and I hope I never have to move again.
Someone is knocking on my door. I crack open my eyes. My body is drenched in sweat. It’s so annoying to have food poisoning and a fever.
“Come in,” I croak.
The door swings open a few inches, and I can see Charlie’s concerned face. “Are you doing okay?”
I nod slowly.
“Well, that’s good, because I just talked to Sharon at the Shaky Pine Cafe. I tried to ask in a roundabout way about the soup and explain that you might have gotten food poisoning from their cooking. But it turns out, there is a flu bug going around. Apparently, their usual staff was out this week. The soup tasted weird because they accidentally added vinegar. But the person who made the soup went home sick that afternoon.”
“That explains the fever,” I mumble.“I don’t know how you’ve escaped it though.”
Charlie takes a small step back, closing the door a little bit. “Listen, I don’t mind throwing alfalfa bales, but I draw the line at taking care of someone with the plague.”
I try to smile, but my stomach starts to roil. With a burst of strength, I leap out of bed and sprint toward the bathroom.
Charlie runs down the hall ahead of me, keeping a good distance between us. I run into the bathroom and lose the little bit of water I managed to drink.
As I hover there for a moment and try to get up the courage to walk back to the bedroom, I feel someone pat my back slowly.
I close my eyes. Charlie is comforting me. Even though she doesn’t want to get sick, she’s patting my back. I don’t know if I’m the most embarrassed I’ve ever been in my life—or the most comforted.
“There, there.” Pat, pat, pat . “It’s going to be okay.”
It probably won’t. I’m going to dissolve into a puddle of mortification right here on the bathroom floor.
Her nails poke my back, and I glance over my shoulder.
What I see has me laughing for the first time in twenty-four hours.
Charlie is standing in the doorway of the bathroom, holding the handle of a broom as she pats my back with it.
I rock back on my heels and chuckle.
She grins back at me. “I didn’t want you to be alone, but I definitely don’t want what you’ve got.”
She raises the broom and pats my back again.
“Careful, these germs might crawl up the broom handle and get you.” The broom drops away from my shoulder.
“What I’d originally come to tell you was that everybody is fed and happy, and I’m going to work on the house.” She sets a small scrap of paper on the bathroom counter. “Call me if you decide to die.”
“You’ll bring the shovel?”
She grins. “Something like that.”
She turns to leave.
“Thank you.”
She stops and turns around to look at me. I know I’m a horrendous sight. I’m sitting on a bathroom floor, leaning against a wall. I’m probably flushed and dripping sweat.
“You’re welcome,” she says. There’s no censure or sarcasm in her tone. And it lets me know I’ve been unfair to her ever since she showed up here.
I nod as she walks away.
She’s not bad. And when I climb back into bed, I don’t wake up until the next morning when I find a Gatorade, a water bottle, and a can of Sprite on my nightstand. So much for her claims of keeping distance.