22. Lyla
Lyla
The rain hasn’t stopped for the last three days. It continues to pour down, one of the worst rain storms the area has seen in decades.
Weather systems normally blow through quickly, releasing a lot of rain and wind all at once, but the sun always comes out shortly after. There’s always hope at the end of it all.
Not this week. This week, the weight of everything settles heavily on my shoulders.
I’ve tried to do yoga to clear my head, to move through the murky feelings that are making themselves at home within me, but the house doesn’t exactly have the kind of floor space I need, and every pose I attempt ends up with my whacking myself on the furniture.
I tried calling Sutton, because if there’s anything that helps me it’s talking. I’m a verbal processor, and I learn a lot about myself and what I need by saying it out loud. Unfortunately, with the rain and the flooding, she’s been tied up helping farmers in the surrounding area with their animals.
That leaves Skye, and I don’t particularly want to have a conversation with Skye and explain that the reason for my funk is because of how good Beck’s tongue felt in my mouth.
So, with no one to talk to, I’ve been spiralling inward.
The weather does nothing to help my melancholy mood, and I’ve resorted to hunkering down in the guest house, busying myself so I can’t dwell on the events of the last month.
Getting fired, running back to my hometown with my tail between my legs, the rollercoaster that has been my relationship–or whatever you can call it at this point–with Beck…
Ever since the kiss, he’s gone back to being standoff-ish, distant, avoidant.
The day after it happened, I stuck to my usual routine of getting up and heading over to the house for coffee and breakfast before I got to work in the office.
Beck was there, sitting at the kitchen table drinking his coffee.
He offered me a grumbled “morning” when I strode in, trying to hide whatever was cracking behind my smile.
When I sat down at the table across from him, he abruptly stood, dumped out what looked like half a mug's worth of coffee and said he had to leave for work. I decided to move my work space into the guest house after that.
So here I am, invoices and ledgers and receipts strewn all over the small pedestal table where I’ve been working for the last two days. At least, I’ve been trying to work.
My focus has been scattered, bouncing from one thing to the other, like my brain has a million tabs open. Except they all have something to do with that kiss.
It’s the only thing my attention span wants to land on for any length of time, and it’s been torturous.
I can’t wrap my head around how he’s ignoring it.
Pretending like it never happened. I keep replaying it in my mind, turning that moment over and over so I can examine it from all angles, figure out what made Beck retreat like that.
Tonight, a better use of my energy is to look for alternate employment, so I bring my laptop from the table over to the couch, where I sit with a glass of wine and open up the job boards.
My enthusiasm wanes as I scroll through the postings.
Somehow, despite all of my reservations about working here, I’ve started to feel like this might be where I can thrive.
There’s not much point in advocating for the things I believe in if I work where people already feel the same way I do. I won’t ever be someone who loves the idea of ranching, but I do love the idea of making it better than it has been in the past. It seemed like Beck was–is–on the same page.
He listened, really listened, to my suggestions. The ideas I had about planting more native plants around the property, of reserving parts of the land to stay wild instead of razing them down and turning it into pasture.
There’s an e-mail in my inbox telling me as much. He took my suggestion to sell off more of the cows, and even though it pains me to think about that, I can admit it’s what the ranch needs right now. Money in the bank and a smaller herd to manage.
I minimize my browser and open the e-mail again. It’s the only real contact and communication I’ve had with him.
From: [email protected]
He really needs to stop using that e-mail address before he accidentally e-mails someone with it for real.
Subject: (no subject)
I roll my eyes, a soft smile tugging at my lips despite myself. I thought we’d talked about using subject lines. I read the rest of the e-mail, already knowing what it says, but it still makes my heart throb the same way it did when I first opened it.
He curtly explains that he found a buyer for some cows, and he wouldn’t be getting much for them, not as much as he would if he’d sold them to a feedlot, but it would be enough to pay for the fence repair.
Barely enough, because he’d sold some to a family wanting a hobby farm. They’ll be well-cared for, have a large pasture, and the family doesn’t intend on selling them or using them for meat.
It’s proof that he cares, somewhere deep down. Not in the way most people only say they do. How most people nod and give me a restrained smile when I talk about the things I’m passionate about, and answer with a “that’s nice.” They may as well tack a sweetie on there too.
Beck cares about how I feel in the way that he backs up with action. He could have sold those cows quickly, easily and for more money had he taken them to a meat buyer. He could have done more than fix the fences with those earnings. But he didn’t.
He took the time to find people who will care for them. I know he won’t be able to do it every the time, but it makes my heart swell that this time he has.
I get the feeling that Beck is a bit like an iceberg.
You only see the very tip, and the rest of it he hides beneath a choppy, dark, and stormy sea.
But he doesn’t let you forget how he feels about the people he cares about.
In small ways, he continues to show up and to prioritize the things that matter.
When I think about it, the small ways are usually the ones that count the most.
It’s about putting in the work when you don’t want to–especially when you don’t want to–and choosing to put one foot in front of the other for your family, even though it’s hard. Even though it seems like the universe is conspiring against you.
It’s about making up a guest house so your best friend’s little sister has a comfortable place to stay, despite the way she gets on your nerves.
That’s just it, though, that’s who I’ve always been to him.
Our kiss was a moment of weakness, an impulse he regretted the second it happened.
I’d moaned Beck’s name into the night, my body responding to the way his mouth worked against mine.
Then he came to his senses and pulled away, and I had to fight back the burn of tears.
I didn’t want him to see how much it bothered me when he stopped, because it was the moment I realized how badly I’d wanted him to kiss me in the first place.
I can’t do this, he said, and I knew I was at the tipping point, when my emotions would bubble over and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.
Beck probably saw my emotions and decided I was too much for him after all. That the reasons he didn’t like me in the first place still held true.
The possibility has me closing the email window and opening a new internet browser.
I don’t know what keywords to use, but as soon as I type the words office and meltdown and the name of my old firm into the search bar, I see a video pop up with a woman who looks like me but from a different lifetime, screaming at her boss.
I can only watch for a few seconds before pausing it. Hot, sour humiliation creeps up my throat, before shame makes me want to crawl into my bed, ball myself up under the covers and never come out, not even when my oxygen starts to run out.
It’s shameful. It’s childish behaviour. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and do the work that I was assigned.
I had to let everyone in the office know the company I was assigned to was morally and ethically corrupt, and I had to tell my boss that he was morally and ethically corrupt for signing them as a client.
Still, I can’t say with any amount of certainty I wouldn’t do the same thing again. It doesn’t change the fact that what they were doing was wrong, and I wasn’t willing to put my name on any of those files.
But the video shows me how it looked to anyone watching, including any prospective employers. My actions paint me as someone who is emotionally unstable, a loose cannon. Not someone who can be trusted, or reliable.
I slam my laptop shut and put it down on the coffee table.
The storm has really picked up now, wind buffeting the side of the little rancher, the shutters rattling outside the living room window.
Lightning flashes and thunder claps loudly overhead.
Maybe it’s the storm, or maybe it’s because I’ve been sitting here moping and chastising myself, but I don’t want to be alone anymore.
I also have no desire to be around people. People are too… people-y.
So, I get up from the couch, throw on my rain jacket and boots, and head out into the blustery night toward the barn.