5. Isla
ISLA
Brad Pitt is in a mood today. He’s been strutting back and forth along the fence line for the past twenty minutes, puffing out his chest and making a sound that’s somewhere between a crow and a car alarm.
I don’t know what set him off. Maybe it’s the wind.
Maybe it’s the neighbor’s cat, who’s been sitting on top of the fence post across the yard, staring at him with a kind of disrespect that would send any man into a spiral.
Maybe Brad just woke up and chose chaos.
It’s not like it would be the first time.
“You’re embarrassing yourself,” I tell him as I scatter feed across the yard.
Cardigan comes running first, as always.
She’s my most food-motivated girl, which is saying something, because chickens as a species are basically stomachs with feathers.
Marjorie follows at a more dignified pace.
Betty and Tennessee show up together, the way they always do.
Starlight takes her time, picking her way across the yard as if she’s walking a runway.
This is my favorite part of the day. When I first get home, before anything’s happened yet, before I’ve started my homework. Just me and my girls and a rooster who thinks he’s God’s gift to poultry. It’s the only time my brain actually shuts up.
Which is, of course, when the back door opens, and Grandma steps out in her house slippers and announces, “Isla, honey, you have a visitor.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“A visitor.” It’s her smile that puts me on edge. The smile she uses when she knows something I don’t and is enjoying it way too much. “Very tall. Very handsome, too. I was kind of disappointed when I found out he wasn’t here for me.”
There goes my stomach, dropping to my feet. “Who...”
She doesn’t have to answer. Everett answers for her when he walks through the back door wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. Grandma looks thrilled to death, so yeah, I guess we could say I’m having seriously mixed feelings right now. “Hi,” he offers.
While here I am, holding a bag of chicken feed. There are probably feathers in my hair. I’m wearing the sweatpants with the hole in the knee that I would never wear outside the house, except in the backyard, because who’s going to see me in my own backyard?
Turns out, Everett will.
“How did you...?” I also can’t form full sentences right now, I guess.
That’s okay, because he seems to understand.
“I drove you home, remember?” He’s not looking at me.
He’s sizing up the yard, studying the coop, watching the chickens going about their business with absolutely not a single care that we now have a visitor.
I’ve never so much wished I could think the way a chicken does.
Grandma, meanwhile, is loving this. Why would she want to go back inside when there’s so much entertainment out here?
She leans against the porch railing with her arms crossed while her smile gets wider by the second.
“Looks like my granddaughter’s been holding out on me.
I didn’t know she had a good-looking boyfriend. ”
Kill me now, God. I’m ready. “He’s not my—”
“Where have you been hiding this hunk, honey?” She always leans on alliteration when she’s feeling sassy. “If I had a boyfriend who looked like him, I would have him over every night.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Grandma.”
“Does he know that?” She tilts her head at him. “Did you know that, honey?”
His gaze bounces back and forth between us. “News to me,” he replies while I do my best to dissolve into the earth and never come back.
“See?” She gestures at him with one hand before shaking her head at me. “He didn’t get the memo. You should fix that.”
“There’s no memo because there’s nothing to fix because he’s not—” This is ridiculous. “Grandma, can you please go inside?”
“Why? This is fun. It’s not every day I get to meet one of your friends, since you never bring anybody home. Are you staying for dinner?” she asks him, because she is absolutely determined to humiliate me today. “I can’t cook, but I’ll order something.”
“He’s not staying for dinner.”
“Let the man speak for himself, Isla. You know, I was young once, too. I remember what it was like when a handsome man showed up at the door. Of course, that was before your grandfather swept me off my feet. George was something else.” She presses a hand to her chest and bats her eyelashes.
“Six foot four and could dance like nobody’s business. ”
When she tips her head at Everett again, I know he’s in trouble. “You know, you remind me of him. Big. Quiet. The quiet ones are always trouble.”
I have to give him credit. He’s handling this well. “So I’ve been told,” he murmurs, while his mouth twitches in a way that tells me he’s trying not to laugh.
“I bet you have.” She gives him a wink, then laughs. “Well, I need my beauty sleep before my date tonight, so I’ll leave you two alone. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
She pauses in the doorway and looks over her shoulder. “Of course, that doesn’t narrow it down too much.”
“You don’t look like you need much beauty sleep,” Everett offers, because the universe hates me.
“I like this one,” she tells me, jerking a thumb at him before she finally, blessedly disappears. The back door swings shut with a bang, leaving me standing in my backyard in my holey sweatpants.
She was right. I don’t bring friends home, mostly because I don’t really have friends. That means I don’t have a clue how to act now. “She’s...” I start.
“She’s great,” he tells me with a grin.
“I was going to say insane.”
“Both things can be true.” Cardigan has now wandered over and gives the toe of his boot an experimental peck. He shoves his hands into his pockets and watches her. “So. These are the chickens.”
Thank God for the change in subject. This, I can handle. “Yes, these are my babies.” I set the feed bag down and wipe my hands on my pants, which doesn’t help since they’re already covered in feed and feathers. “This is Cardigan. She’s the friendliest. If you let her, she’ll eat out of your hand.”
He stares down at her. She glances up at him before pecking his toe again. The size difference is kind of hilarious. This guy could punt her into the stratosphere without even trying.
That’s a funny thought for me to have. What’s even funnier is how I don’t make any move to separate them, because instinctively, I know he wouldn’t do that. Not to an animal.
But maybe to a person.
He’s standing there, staring down, not moving a muscle. Like he’s not sure what to do. “Marjorie is over by the coop,” I explain. “She’s the smart one. Betty and Tennessee are pretty much inseparable—that’s them by the fence,” I add, pointing their way.
“Where’s the other one?” he asks, scanning the area.
“She’s a shy girl. She’s under the lavender bush.”
He finds Brad Pitt watching him from the top of the coop. “Okay. Now I get the joke,” Everett mutters with a smirk. “He’s not a handsome guy.”
“No. He’s really not.”
“He’s staring at me.”
“He stares at everybody. I guess that comes with being a rooster.” I bend down and scoop up Marjorie, who clucks once in protest but settles into my arms the way she always does. “Here. Hold her.”
“What?” I swear, you would think I just asked him to hold a bomb.
“Hold her. She’s calm. She won’t freak out,” I promise.
Before he can argue, I step forward and transfer the chicken into his arms. For a second, this two-hundred-and-forty-pound mass of muscle stands frozen in my backyard, holding a chicken like he’s afraid she will literally explode in his arms.
Animals have good instincts, and that includes chickens. After a second or two, she settles against his chest and blinks up at him. He looks down at her, frowning, like he’s not sure what to think.
“She likes you,” I tell him.
“And how would you know that?”
“Has she pecked you bloody?”
He snickers. “Okay. Good point.” Something in his shoulders loosens. He shifts her weight slightly, and she makes a low, contented sound. His eyebrows shoot up like he’s surprised.
When he tentatively strokes her feathers, I notice his knuckles. The first two are bruised. A little swollen, too. “What happened to your hand?”
He glances down at it. “Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing. That’s—”
“I hit the heavy bag too hard. It happens sometimes.” Obviously, he’s finished with the conversation and with Marjorie, since he shifts her back toward me.
I take her and don’t ask any more questions because there’s something in his voice telling me I’m not getting any more answers, at least not right now.
Marjorie waddles back toward the coop once I set her down.
Brad Pitt watches Everett’s every move but leaves it at that.
“I think you’ve been accepted,” I decide.
That shouldn’t make me as happy as it does.
I want to trust this guy. Maybe I need to, even.
Knowing they accept him gives me a feeling of relief.
Like maybe my instincts about him are right.
“You want something to drink?” I offer, because isn’t that what people say when they have a guest? Standing here is going to get weird fast. “We have water and juice. Probably some of Grandma’s wine, but it’s the kind that comes in a box. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Water is fine.”
I lead him inside through the back door.
At least the kitchen is clean, but that’s only because I’m the one who cleans it.
I pull two glasses from the cabinet and fill them from the pitcher in the fridge.
I hand him a glass, which he takes with a grunt and empties in a few deep gulps. Great. What now?
“Did you think about it?” I ask, because curiosity is basically killing me at this point. I think I’ve waited more than long enough to ask.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s not a no.”
I’m about to try a different angle, maybe bring up Christine’s email from yesterday... when Grandma sweeps into the room.
She’s wearing her robe. Normally, that would be fine, except right now it’s hanging open over a silk nightgown that’s sheer enough to be practically see-through and cut lower than anyone her age—or any age—should be wearing in front of company. Or behind company. Or near company at all.
“Don’t mind me,” she chirps as she reaches past Everett for the box of wine on the counter. That means giving him a full and unrestricted view of things I refuse to think about. “I’m just grabbing a little something to help me relax.”
I don’t think about it. I don’t plan it.
My grandmother’s robe is open, and her boobs are about to plop out on the counter like she’s serving them for dinner, and Everett is standing three feet from her, and my survival instincts kick in before my brain catches up.
I grab his hand and pull him out of the kitchen, down the short hallway, and into my bedroom before shoving the door closed behind us.
And now I realize what I just did.
I’m alone. In my bedroom. With Everett Stone.
My very small bedroom, for that matter. My small bedroom, where the bed is still unmade because I didn’t expect a linebacker to show up at my house while I was feeding chickens.
There are textbooks on the floor. A Taylor Swift poster on the wall, which I am suddenly very aware of.
My desk is covered in sticky notes and highlighters and a half-empty bag of gummy bears I’ve been stress-eating my way through for the past few days.
He looks around the room the way he looked around the yard. Processing everything. His gaze lands on the poster, then the gummy bears, and lastly the bed.
Then he turns to me.
The way he’s looking at me... Nobody has ever looked at me that way in my whole life. Like he’s trying to figure something out, and the look in his dark eyes is something I can’t identify. It’s something I can absolutely feel, though, from the top of my head down to the soles of my feet.
It’s the kind of look that makes my breath do something stupid.
“I...” I start. My voice sounds wrong. Too high. “I panicked.”
“I noticed.”
“Her robe was open.”
His lips twitch. “I noticed that, too.”
“I’m sorry. I just... she does that sometimes. She doesn’t think about it. She just doesn’t have a filter. I didn’t want you to be subjected to...” I gesture vaguely at the closed door. “That.”
“It’s fine.” He hasn’t moved. He barely even moves his lips when he speaks. Like most of his concentration is being used up by staring at me. Studying me. Making me feel the way I’m guessing Goldilocks felt when the Big Bad Wolf crossed her path and looked down at her like she was his next meal.
Only right now, we aren’t in the middle of the woods. We are very much in my bedroom.
And I don’t have the first clue what I’m supposed to do next.