Chapter 40
Jake
You know how in all the movies and all the books, the rooster crows as the sun comes up? Well, my guy must be broken because for whatever reason he started crowing at around three o’clock in the morning this morning and I have been up ever since.
After the first time he crowed I was able to fall back asleep thinking it was a fluke.
But then about twenty minutes later he crowed again.
This one woke me up enough to realize that he might actually be trying to defend the coop from a predator.
So, in a complete panic, I woke up, shoved my feet into my rain boots and wearing only boxer shorts walked out into the cold night air with a shotgun.
Valentine doesn’t have a huge predator problem.
The wolves usually stick to the Rockies, raccoons are usually found in the cities, but we do stumble upon the occasional fox or bear.
For the most part you can just fire a round up into the air and scare them off, leaving all animals unharmed.
In practically no clothing, I awkwardly jog to the chicken coop and swing open the door to find not a single predator in sight.
No fox, no furry little creatures, no giant bear.
Just an asshole of a rooster that crows in the middle of the night.
Once I was back inside the house, I crawled into my warm bed and attempted to sleep again with no success.
I tossed and turned, Amelia’s words swirling around in my head.
I love my sister and I know she just wants the best for me but I sort of wish she hadn’t said anything about Scarlett, or wanting kids one day.
I’ve been blindly going through life content.
Or at least not really wishing for anything.
Now that she’s brought up the question, the desire has surfaced, with no way to push it back down again.
Eventually, my mind begins to wander with the possibilities.
I have to shut them down before the ache of what will probably never be, grows any bigger.
So after another failed attempt at sleep I give up, making a full pot of coffee and drinking mug after mug while I wait for the sun to come up.
Now I’m overcaffeinated on an empty stomach with an asshole rooster that had the audacity to peck my leg this morning while giving them scratch grains.
I slam the chicken coop door and walk over to Henrietta’s pen.
“Alright Henrietta, time for milking,” I say.
I grab her collar and begin to lead her to the stanchion and her legs won’t budge an inch.
In fact, she reaches over and grabs a chunk of my favorite flannel shirt and tears a piece off and begins to eat it.
A growl of frustration escapes me and I pull on her collar again, “come on girl, we do this every day. Why does it still come as a shock to you?” This time I see Henrietta coming for my shirt and I back away, blocking her.
“Ah ha!” I say, “didn’t get me this time.
” And I stick my tongue out at her. Like a fucking twelve year old, I am having a battle with a goat and losing. Losing both the battle and my patience.
“You good over there?” I startle in surprise at the sound of Scarlett’s voice coming from the other side of the fence.
Her black hair is up on the top of her head in a bun, her glasses framing her beautiful blue-green eyes.
She’s dressed in a thick, deep green sweater underneath a pair of overalls, the buckle on her left shoulder undone.
The smile on her face is one of mischief and I wait for her to hit me with a nickname or chastise me about not being able to get Henrietta to the stanchion.
“I’m fine,” I say and my tone is regrettably rough. “I mean, I’ve been up for a while and I’m not exactly in the mood to play this game with her, even though we do this every day. I just don’t have it in me today.”
Without asking, Scarlett pops the latch on the gate, closing it behind her.
She walks over to where Henrietta stands, still munching on my hunk of flannel shirt and I swear to God the damn goat smiles at her.
I’m sure my lack of sleep is making me hallucinate that but Henrietta drops the small piece of flannel and does the same little weird lip thing as she baas in appreciation at Scarlett.
It’s the same sound Henrietta makes when she sees Cami.
“Hey there sweetheart, is this big grump giving you a hard time?” she coos.
“I am not a grump.” I mumble. Scarlett stops her cooing and gives me a look that says, you sure about that? “Alright fine, I am not always a grump. But the damn rooster…”
“Rodney?” she asks, nodding her head.
“You named my rooster?”
“Well, I mean I haven’t informed him of that by the way but yes, when he crows at night I lie in bed and say, damn it Rodney, and somehow it helps me go back to sleep. I can’t explain the science behind it.”
Somehow the absurdity of it all makes me chuckle. “You know, Rodney has a good ring to it.”
Scarlett turns her attention back to Henrietta and gasps, “did Mr. Grumpy just say he likes my name for his rooster?” Henrietta lets out a snort and Scarlett continues, “yes I think he did.” Scarlett continues scratching Henrietta’s chin while slowly moving backwards in the direction of the stanchion.
Henrietta is none the wiser when she walks up the wood planks and Scarlett closes the door gently behind her.
Scarlett then puts the stainless bucket beneath her udders and begins to milk her.
I stand in awe of her while she says, “I think she deserves a treat, what do you think?” Like an idiot I nod my head and grab a bucket full of oats for Henrietta to munch on.
“How do you keep doing that?” I ask, feeling a little foolish that Henrietta has been my goat for years and doesn’t act that way with me.
Scarlett shrugs, “It’s just a classic distraction tactic. I give her my full attention, I scratch her chin and then make her follow me to keep getting scratches. Simple really.”
“I swear I’ve tried that.”
“Well, maybe it just takes a female touch. Henrietta is a girl’s girl,” Scarlett looks at Henrietta but doesn’t miss a beat while milking, “aren’t you?”
I admit that I love the look of her on that wooden stool, hunched over in her overalls milking my goat.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Did I hit my head and suddenly form some sort of Little House on the Prairie kink?
She looks at me over her shoulder, those stunning blue-green eyes shining behind the lens of her glasses in the sun.
The smile on her face is easy, confident, and beautiful.
It hits me then that this isn’t a farming kink, it’s just her.
It’s the confidence she carries, the ease with which she handles Henrietta.
The way she just seems to know what to do.
The attraction I have for her is something I’ve been trying to avoid admitting but seeing her gaze at me with a cool smile on her face makes it unavoidable.
“Do you want to go to dinner with me?” The question comes out in a rush before I can stop myself.
“We can go out to eat in town,” I think about how there’s really only one place to eat unless you count the little pizza place that’s mainly for takeout but has two small tables inside for people who are brave enough to be the only ones eating in there, “or we can go into Beulah, there’s a sushi restaurant there,” she scrunches up her nose and I’m not sure if it’s at the idea of sushi, or the idea of a date with me, “or I could cook for us here,” I add.
She turns back to focus on Henrietta’s udders for long enough that I think I should probably walk away.
It’s clear the answer is no and she doesn’t want to go out on a date with me, just like she probably didn’t want to kiss me the other night and I am just being a fucking moron by constantly thinking I belong in this woman’s life.
At the same moment I start to turn on my heels Scarlett finally speaks, “I’d love to have dinner with you.
But I hate fish.” She scrunches her nose again and it confirms that the look was for the sushi.
I breathe a sigh of relief and smile at her. My terrible mood suddenly vanishes.
“Great, no fish then. Although, I admit that there aren’t a lot of options in town.” I shuffle my feet, a little embarrassed that I don’t have somewhere fancy to take her.
Scarlett laughs, a beautiful light and breezy sound that I wish I could bottle.
She finishes up with Henrietta and removes the bucket from underneath her and sets her free from the stanchion.
Henrietta voices her thanks and runs off to the corner of the fence, reaching through the fence to munch on the grass on the other side.
As if the oats she just ate weren’t enough.
We both watch her run over there and shake our heads at how silly she is. Scarlett stands next to me, placing her hand on my shoulder and says, “I’d love to have dinner with you here. I can bring dessert.” She gazes up at me, that easy smile back on her face.
“That sounds great,” I say, smiling back. “How about tomorrow night?”
“I’ll see you at seven?” It’s a statement but she says it like a question.
“Seven is perfect.”