Chapter 14
Scarlett
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been grinning ear to ear since I left Grumpy’s house.
The look on Cami’s face when her big burly uncle hit the dirt had been better than I imagined.
At first, I thought her eyes were going to bug out of her head but she recovered pretty quickly.
After throwing him to the ground I wasn’t sure how to look at him without laughing so I just sputtered something about needing to leave and got out of there.
I collapse right inside my door, my chest swelling with a mix of pride and what else is that?
Intrigue? Arousal? No, definitely not. Grumpy is an asshole, which I admit has been my type in the past. But not only is he an asshole, he is my neighbor.
My neighbor is not someone I should even think about getting involved with.
I hold my sweatshirt up to my nose and take in his smell again.
My intentions were to show Cami that she can do anything.
She can take a man twice her size and embarrass him if she needed to.
I just want her to know that she has more power than she realizes.
What I showed myself was that I enjoy the feeling of that wide man twice my size up against me. Nope, don’t need that.
By the time I finish painting the deep blue walls in the living room I am starving.
It’s amazing how much my mood lifts with just a little bit of paint on the walls.
I go into my beautifully bright yellow kitchen and throw together a quick dinner.
With some quick grilled chicken breast and some veggies I make an instagram worthy salad.
After snapping a few pictures I post the picture with the caption Second night in the new house, can’t wait until the veggies in this salad are home grown. I add a heart emoji and hit post.
After posting, I sit down at the dining room table and pick up my phone for some mindless scrolling.
Facebook doesn’t have anything interesting so I move onto Instagram, TikTok, and eventually when I can’t find what I’m looking for I open Tinder.
I haven’t opened the app in a few weeks and I find that I missed a message from a previous match.
He works in marketing and we flirted a few times back and forth but I could never pull the trigger to go on a date.
At first, I was just too busy but now I live two hours away, so I guess I need to introduce myself to the small town Valentine guys.
The first guy that pops up is the high school football coach.
While he certainly isn’t unattractive, I swipe left.
I couldn’t even give a good reason why. After that, there’s a guy who’s profile pictures are him on his bike.
No, not a motorcycle, his bicycle. And he’s wearing all the legit race gear.
Left. The next picture that comes up is a guy in a suit, standing next to a bride.
I’m really not interested in figuring out whether the bride is his bride, his sister, his best friend, it doesn’t matter.
Any wedding picture as a dating profile picture is an immediate no for me.
The next profile is of a man whose age is listed as forty-five but has to be in his seventies.
I may like men older than me but this one takes the cake.
His hair is all completely silver with the largest bushy mustache I’ve ever seen.
In one of his pictures he’s holding a fish, which I think might be a requisite on Tinder these days, and he’s smiling…
at least I think he is. There’s a twinkle in his eyes as if he’s smiling but I literally can not see his lips from his stash.
I take a screenshot of the picture and hop over into the group chat.
Me: Who wants to take a mustache ride on this one? Laughing emoji.
Andee: That is a great set of handlebars.
Mia: Bug-eyed emoji
Lydia: …Wow… What are your age limits set to?
Kenzie: I don’t get it, what’s a mustache ride?
I laugh at the speed with which the texts come through and I remember how much I truly love these girls.
We might be spread farther apart than ever before now but our bond we started in college stays strong no matter what.
I know without a doubt that if I call these girls and ask them for help, they’d drop everything.
Five more swipes to the left and a thought pops into my mind.
I wonder if Grumpy is on any dating apps.
I picture him, scowl on his face, swiping through pictures of women and listing all the things he hates about them.
Wonder what his profile would say? Farmer, grumpy, uncle.
I chuckle at the idea that he’d have such a caveman-like bio.
Why am I even thinking about this? It has to just be wandering thoughts. Curiosity, that’s all. I need to shut that down though because we all know what happened to the cat.
In order to get my mind off of what Grumpy would look like in his dating profile I opened up a new website I found.
Yesterday when I was in town getting furniture I stopped by the feed store.
I was disappointed to see that their baby chick bins were empty.
The woman in that department said that they would be getting more in soon but that if I was looking for certain breeds I should check out this website where I could order them online and have them shipped to the post office where I could pick them up and bring them home.
I had to have looked like a boomer standing there with my mouth open wide thinking, wow, you really can order anything on the internet these days.
Another thing I’m already learning is the amount of chicken breeds that exist. There are certain breeds that are better, more consistent egg layers.
Then there are breeds that are made to thrive in extreme weather conditions but don’t lay as often.
Some chickens are made for purely meat and won’t lay eggs at all.
Others are hybrid birds that can lay and be meat.
I swear I scroll for an hour and am no closer to picking what breed I want than I was when I started.
I wish I had paid more attention to what kind of chickens Grumpy had.
I sent a picture to the group chat. It's a funny looking fuzzy black chicken that has feathers sticking out everywhere. A huge group of them on the roosters head, so much so that you can’t see its eyes. And its feet are covered in feathers. I immediately want one.
Me: What do you guys think?
Andee: A very suitable cock.
Mia: That’s what she said.
Kenzie: What even is that?!
Lydia: I have never seen a fuzzy cock before.
Mia: That is also what she said.
Mia: In all seriousness, is that the breed you’re looking for?
Me: I have to admit, I have no idea what I’m looking for. Did you know there are at least 53 breeds of chickens?
Lydia: That’s a lot of different types, but I imagine they’re all pretty similar right? When you get down to it?
Me: Yeah, I suppose. I wish I had paid more attention to the neighbors when I was there earlier.
Andee: You were over at the neighbors house huh? Winky face emoji.
Mia: Side eye emoji.
Kenzie: Aaaaaaaand?!?!
Me:...
Lydia: OMG girl, spill!
I close down the chat and let my phone ding on the table with notifications.
What exactly do they think is going to happen?
I’m going to move out of Denver to a tiny little town and fall madly in love with my hot, single neighbor?
I actually don’t even know if he’s single.
For all I know he has a barefoot and pregnant wife in that house over there.
Although, I’ve been here a few days now and not even a glimpse of a wife, pregnant or otherwise.
I didn’t notice a ring on his hand either, not that I was looking.
None of this matters because I came down here for me. Not for love, not for romance, for me.