Page 160 of Dove
You don’t justcutthe hay. No, there’s tedding and raking and baling and...
Basically, it’s alot,and that’snot including the animals that still need taken care of. Especially when there was only two of us to spread the work between. It meant there was barely any free time to do anything that wasn’t related to the farm.
We were deep in the thick of it, close to the end but not quite there yet, when my phone pinged with an incoming text from Rev.
You alive, bitch? You better not be trapped under a mountain of hay.
A legitimate concern in this line of work, but it still had me chuckling as I read her text. Reverie would always deflect concern in favor of humor, if she could. Sometimes just down right ignoring it altogether. But when it counted most, Rev was there for me, and she knew this summer had been an eventful one. Filled with good and bad. Loss and gain.
I knew she was worried about me.
Her next text came a moment later, vibrating in my hand.
I can’t tolerate Haven without you.
A pang of regret spread through my chest. Since her return home, I hadn’t been there much for her. I knew she understood, considering I’d been wrapped up in the grief of losing my mom, and starting...whatever we were calling this, with Josh. But she was also going through her own stuff. Being back home was rough for her, even if she hated acknowledging it. She always used to tell me she felt too big for Haven, like the town was too small to fit her. While she hadn’t said it, I knew the hardest part of leaving hadn’t been saying goodbye to where she grew up, or even me, but to Zeke. As much as this town wasn’t a fit for her, her heart had found it’s perfect match with the gentle giant.
And I knew how much that had scared her.
How much it still did.
It was why she’d left abruptly. Telling pretty much no one but me that she’d booked a one-way flight to California the day after graduation.
Knowing she was back in Haven temporarily, and that she started something back up with the first and only man to tell her he loved her...
She needed me now more than ever, even if she would never explicitlysay it.
Her reaching out was enough.
The minute we were done with this whole thing, I was taking time to spend with her. I also desperately needed a haircut, but that wasn’t anything new.
My thumbs flew across the screen as I messaged her back pretty much that exact thought.
“Rev?”
Josh’s voice beside me didn’t startle me, not when we’d been glued together for over a week straight. Where he was, I was, and if we weren’t together, we soon would be. That’s how our days went lately. Pretty much had since he’d been back, if I were honest.
I couldn’t find it in myself to mind, not one bit. Not when all I’d yearned for every year since he’d left was this very thing.
“Yeah,” I answered, slipping my phone into my back pocket. “Just checking in, making sure I didn’t become a farm casualty statistic.”
A chuckle left him distractedly as he swiped at a stray drip of sweat snaking down the side of his face. Then he took his hat off altogether, running his hands through his damp hair to get it off his forehead before settling it back on his head backward. I had to look away, because for some reason, that simple gesture had my stomach fluttering in the familiar way it seemed to whenever he did something as simple as move or breathe.
I had to stay focused on the task at hand.
We’d finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel, but we weren’t done yet. Likely another day or two of work, if we were lucky.
Right now, we were back at the farm, unloading a full wagon of baled hay. The squares were heavy, though not unmanageable, but after a few hours I could already feel the telltale signs of soreness in my lower back and arms from heaving them off the wagon and into the barn for storage.
We unloaded them into the back, away from the elements so they kept nice and dry. The process didn’t have more finesse than lift and toss, but we could organize later. Right now, our main concern was getting back out to the fields to collect more. We were so close to being done we could both taste it, a lingering desperation on our tongues that had us pushing through.
When the last bale was loaded off the wagon, Josh hopped down, beelining it straight for his water bottle. He guzzled half of it down before capping it and tossing the rest up to me. I'd finished mine a while back.
“Oh, thanks.” I scoffed sarcastically as I caught it. “I get your backwash.”
“And I get your back sass,” he quipped, but there was a smile playing on his sweaty, handsome face. “What I get for sharing, I guess.”
The corner of my lips curled up as I drank, enjoying our back and forth.
