Page 78 of Sunshine
“Love you, too.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Tessa
The sound of a text notification wakes me, and I groggily reach for my phone, eyes still shut. Peeling one open, the first thing I notice is the time. Six-forty am —What?I bolt upright, forgetting the text even as another one comes through, looking for Jake. He’s nowhere to be found. I smile, flopping back on the bed, throwing my arms up in a languid, cat-like stretch. It takes a long time to fall asleep lately. Finding out, Ca—the biker,is a cad, keeps me awake well into the night so the extra hour and forty minutes feels good. Damn good. I must have slept through the cock-clock. I have a momentary blip of concern over Jake but shove it aside as my phone bleeps again.
“Leave me alone!” I groan, pulling the pillow over my head. It’s probably Paige gushing about my book and reneging on her promise not to push me to publish.
By the time I’m up and moving, I’m in the mood for something stronger than tea, but it’s far too early for Gran’s whiskey, so I start the coffee machine. As the smell of the brew permeates the air in the kitchen, I notice Jake still hasn’t made an appearance. And when I look outside, I notice the coop is still closed.
Jake’s been good for my writing routine. Starting around five in the morning lets me get most of my work done before the cacophony of construction noise begins, which is earlier now. The man Case left in charge of the site when he left wasn’t afraid of me and my shenanigans, I guess. And since he’s been back, they’ve kept the same start time.
Now I get up and moving earlier and ignore it all, pretending both the noise and the biker don’t exist, which isn’t easy since I’m so damn angry and hurt.
I slip my feet into flip-flops, deciding to meet Jay at the barn and bring the milk and eggs back myself. Then, I think I’ll make myself some pancakes. Celebratory pancakes for finishing my book. I’m still in my matching silk robe and pajamas, but I don’t care about being seen. Jay sees me in my robe all the time and has only screamed once. I chuckle at my own joke and grab a little container of scrap vegetables and apple chunks from the counter for Jake and the hens, and head outside. Setting the scrap bucket on the porch steps to give it to them when I get back, I make my way across the dewy grass.
The cool air hits me, and I tug my robe tighter. The unseasonably warm fall is nothing but a distant memory now. Was it only three weeks ago I spent the day on the beach with Paige? I shiver but breathe in the earthy smell of autumn. Unlatching the chicken coop door, I squint across the field looking for Jay. The other animals aren’t out either. Looking down at my watch, I frown. Jay is never this late.
Pulling out my phone, I see a voicemail. My gut twists as I key in my code and put the phone up to my ear. Panic rises as I listen. There’s a second message but I hang up right away and call Jay.
“What do you mean you’re not coming today?” I suck in a breath. “Jay.” I say his name as if I can reason with him.
“It’s going to be okay, Ms. Harlow. I overslept, and it’s exam week. Calculus this morning, so I can’t be late. But I’m going to tell you what to do. You’ve got this.” His voice is soothing as if he’s talking to a hysterical toddler. Which admittedly, is exactly how I feel.
“Okay? No, not okay! Definitely not okay, Jay!” The edge of panic in my voice escalates when Jay repeats that he’s not coming.
“Ms. Harlow, it’s going to be easy. Just the basics. I’ll do the rest after my exam.”
I’m freaking out, but I purposely steady my voice. “Do I have a choice?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ve got a sixty-eight in this class and if I miss this exam I’ll have to repeat the semester.”
Taking a deep breath, I say, “Okay, we can’t have that. Tell me what to do.” Jay’s seventeen, if he can do it, so can I, right? Yeah, a seventeen-year-old built like a linebacker who’d grown up on a huge farm. I rub my palm over my face, hoping it can swipe away the negative thoughts. I’m starting fresh, right? I’m an accomplished author with numerous accolades. I’m always writing about things I’ve never done before, and convincingly. And I’ve gotten used to Jake and his hens now. How hard can it be?
I nod, feeling more capable than thirty seconds ago, as Jay lists off what I need to do. It seems simple enough, thank goodness, so I straighten my shoulders, drop my phone into my pocket and fully open the coop door. The smell of damp straw and chicken shit hit me like a brick wall. And the sunshine beaming in through the windows shows me the air is thick with dust.
I grimace, hold my breath and grab the egg basket. The hens dart around to avoid me, making anxious cooing sounds as I collect their eggs. Popping my head out of the coop now and thenfor a breath of fresher air, I manage to collect all the eggs before good ol’ Jake crows and I almost drop the basket.
Jake follows me the whole time, watching me with what appears to be suspicion. As if I’m solely responsible for his late release. His beaky face and beady dark eyes seem to say,“You’ve never been in here before. What are you up to? And how dare you arrive so late! Do you have any of those apple slices, raspberries or celery? Mm, spaghetti noodles perhaps? I’d forgive you for noodles.”
“Relax Jake. Just a minor setback. You can go back to waking me up at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow.” I grab a scoop of layer’s feed — that’s what Jay calls it, and toss it around the ground.
Jake does a little head cock, making a chirpy sound as if agreeing with me and goes to peck the ground with the others.
With seven brown eggs, six light blue eggs—from the hens Jay calls Easter eggers, which I couldn’t distinguish from any other chicken if my life depended on it, but the eggs are pretty— and ten white ones, I have more eggs than I can eat, especially when there are four dozen in the fridge already.
Gran used to put a sign up and people would stop in to buy them, but I can’t imagine strangers arriving all day long and disrupting me.
Setting the basket of eggs by the fence post, I head for the barns, deciding that maybe I’m not so bad at this farmer stuff after all. The chickens took no time at all.
“Easy-peasy,” I say dusting my hands together.
Scratch that. Yes, I am bad at this stuff. So, so bad.
First, wearing flip-flops to a barn is stupid, like monumentally stupid. The ducks aren’t afraid of me like the chickens. And I have a bruise starting on my big toe to prove it. Who would have thought that toes look like fat little worms? And as if that wasn’t enough, the hose pops out of the watering trough, turning the already muddy ground into something resembling too-thick, pudding. And when I step through the mud after filling the trough, there’s an ungodly squelching noise as my flip-flops are sucked off with the force of a black hole and yanked into another dimension or maybe another universe because no matter how much I dig, finding them is impossible.
Okay, I didn’t dig at all — I mean flip-flops are a dollar a pair at the bargain store, whereas manicures to fix the damage of the great flip-flop expedition are a lot costlier. I basically stared in horror and yanked, with great force I might add, to get my feet out of the mud, heading straight for higher, and dryer, ground. Livestock be damned.
