Page 30 of Resilience

He hadn’t wanted a narc at the party, but now he just felt like an asshole for making Mason stay home. “Yeah, I know. I feel pretty shitty about it now. I’ll talk to him.”

“Good.” Mom took the basket while Sam opened the gate.

Four dozen chickens hurried over, clucking happily. They got the good treats at egg-collecting time—overripe strawberries and other random rejects from the gardens. Reggie, the Welsummer rooster who lorded over this huge harem, stood haughtily at the top of the coop ramp like he didn’t care about strawberries.

Sam pulled the metal bucket from the egg basket and dumped the goodies in a big circle. The chickens cackled with glee and hurried over, running across his boots as they looked for the perfect place to feast. Sam crouched and petted a few ladies. Their flock was mixed, and he loved all the different kinds of hens they had, but his favorites were the Orpingtons. Orpies were the Golden Retrievers of the chicken world.

With the hens sufficiently distracted, he and his mother went to the coop to gather up the eggs. With such a big flock, they collected twice a day and got a few dozen eggs every day. Those they didn’t eat themselves got sold at their produce stand or the IGA in town.

Every one of these chickens had a name; Sam had named most of them himself. He’d been involved in raising them as well. Though they kept the flock for their eggs, not their meat, occasionally a hen stopped producing, or was badly injured in some kind of chicken-on-chicken altercation. At that point, they slaughtered that hen and ate a chicken they’d known.

It was definitely not Sam’s favorite part of farm life. But Mom had named the chickens and treated them like pets long before he’d been around, and she’d taught him what he still believed: a gentle death after a gentle life wasn’t a cruelty. These days, though he cried every time, he did most of the slaughtering. He’d gather up the doomed hen, cuddle her and talk to her for a while, and when she was comfortable and cozy, and he had her far from the flock, he gave a sharp, fast twist and broke her neck.

Mom did the plucking and dressing. That was more than he could bear.

“What happened with Lark?” Mom asked as she set a few eggs in the basket.

“Same thing that always happens.” He sighed. He’d barely thought of Lark since he’d found Athena making pancakes for the entire population of Oklahoma. “It’s fine. I’m not that broken up about it. Just ... you know. Kinda ruined the party.”

“When you say the same thing that always happens, you mean ...”

Sam looked over at his mom. She should know what he meant—it was his fourth breakup of an actual relationship, not counting several girls who’d noped out immediately upon meeting Athena, and they’d all ended for the same reason. It had always driven him batshit that girls were so threatened by a completely platonic relationship, but very recently he’d begun to wonder if they all weren’t a whole lot smarter than he was.

“You know what I mean,” he said to his mom.

“Athena.”

“Yeah. Basically.”

“Hmmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just ... hmm. It’s interesting.”

He stopped with the eggs and gave his mother his full attention. “Interesting? What the fuck, Mom?”

She set the basket in an empty roost and leaned back against the berth. “I guess I sound cold, and I don’t mean to. I’m sorry. But ... I mean this with deep love, Sam. You know I am always here for you, and I want you to live your life in the way that makes you happy. But I have to ask this: if every single girl you try to be serious with feels threatened by Athena, and you can’t do enough to show them there’s no threat, do you think there will be a point where it’s time to consider if there is a threat?”

It took him a second to unpack all that, but it shouldn’t have. It was what he’d been thinking for more than a day now, trapped alone and scared in his own head.

He couldn’t talk to Athena about this, obviously, especially not now, but probably not ever. Could he talk to his mom? She’d been all creepy when they were younger, like Athena’s mom, and all their aunts as well, calling them ‘such a cute little couple,’ when they were just kids. One particular instance that neither Sam nor Athena remembered, but there was photographic evidence: when they were four, their folks had gotten together and dressed them as bride and groom for Halloween.

The focus on them being a couple had always grossed him and Athena completely out. Hell, for all he knew, that creep factor might have been the reason they’d never considered each other as anything but a friend.

But Mom hadn’t thrown attitude around when he’d started dating girls he hadn’t grown up with from the crib. She’d rolled with it fine. They all had, actually, as if all the ‘cute little couple’ stuff had been nothing more than a family joke.

Could Mom be unbiased now? Could he trust that?

He dipped his toe into that water. “Lark said I’m in love with her. Athena, I mean. It was different this time—she didn’t just yell that at me and throw a tantrum. She laid out a whole case like a lawyer.”

Mom put the last of the eggs in the basket and gestured toward the door. They went out of the coop and then the yard. In about an hour, they’d close up the chickens for the night.

“And what do you think about that?” Mom asked as she latched the gate.

“I think I am completely fucked sideways if I’m in love with my best friend.”

Mom stopped and looked directly at him, frowning. “Why?”

---