Page 3 of Butter You Up
The batteries can’t wait any longer. I hope I can find a job in this small town.
CHAPTER2
ALEX
It’sfour-thirty in the morning, I haven’t had any coffee yet, and my best friend is standing in my kitchen in his underwear, scratching his nuts.
“Pants,” I tell him. I didn’t think I had to have a pants-wearing rule in my house, but here we are.
Kit stops scratching his nuts, but it’s just to stretch and give a great big yawn. “Dude, being a dairy farmer sucks ass,” he says.
Kit is not a dairy farmer. He’s my unemployed best friend who has crashed with me for the foreseeable future after quitting his desk job in Albany.
I’m the dairy farmer, and since the four-thirty wake-up call comes every day, I’m used to it. I don’t own this farm, but my bosses, the Schumans, trust me with it. There are animals to milk and my crew to manage, and today, that also means managing this one, who’s working for me in exchange for food and rent until he figures out what the fuck to do with his life.
Kit’s hand wanders back toward his boxers, and I roll my eyes. “Pants.”
“It’s early,” he whines, clearly disillusioned with the job even before his first day has started.
I smack his hand before it reaches its target. “Pants,” I growl. My dog, Trixie, a miniature Australian shepherd, lifts her head from her food bowl and whines at my tone.
There’s a sharp, indignant noise from him as he shoves my shoulder, and it isso on.
A few moments later, I’ve got him pinned on the floor, facedown, with a hand behind his back as he cries uncle. Kit never wins when he does this with me. Trixie hops around us, barking and bowing, wanting to be let in on playtime.
My brothers and I—and occasionally Colleen, my sister—wrestled a lot. I’m sure it was fun when we were young, but most of my memories of wrestling with my siblings involve my older brother Ethan, and they aren’t happy ones.
So, when Kit tried to wrestle me for the first time during our freshman year of college, it ended with him hanging off of me like a monkey, and I was completely bewildered.
Eventually, I met Kit’s family and saw how physical affection radiates from them, and it started to make sense.
And then, it was bashed into my head after repeatedly watching Kit wrestle with his siblings over the decade that I’ve known them.
Now, though, I hold a smidge longer and bring my mouth right up to Kit’s ear. “Pants.”
“Oh baby, talk dirty to me more.” He grins.
I roll off him, and he teases me with a “bummer.” Kit flirts with everyone: my gran, his neighbors, my cows…even once when he was drunk in college, a mannequin.
When he gets up, thankfully, Kit trots back toward my guest bedroom. By the time he emerges wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, I’ve poured coffee into two Yetis and appropriately doctored them (black for me, sickly sweet for Kit).
We throw on our coats and head out the door four minutes later than usual for me. Two trucks are next to Kit’s Altima, and my three key employees stand behind them, chatting in the crisp morning air. It’s mid-May, and while it’ll be comfortable during the day for outdoor work, the mornings are still chilly, especially this early. The sun is about half an hour from rising, casting a grayish hue with a touch of amber at the horizon. From here, we have a panoramic view of the farm I manage, Udderly Creamy. The house and the barn sit at the top of a hill, and the pasture extends down the rolling hills and out to the west.
Trixie peels off to do her business while Kit and I approach the group. Perry and Jesús are my two full-time farm hands, and Anna, Jesús’s wife, works part-time for me. I have a handful of other part-timers, too, who do evening chores.
“Buenos dias,” Anna greets me. She’s a petite woman in her forties with graying dark hair and tanned skin. Anna comes every morning to prepare food for us. She and Jesús are originally from Mexico and have come here via the valley in Texas, so our meals are Tex-Mex cuisine you can’t find in restaurants in upstate New York. Working on the farm burns a ton of calories and requires a lot of time in the morning, so we need someone else to run the kitchen for us. In a few hours, after Jesús runs the cows and goats through the robot, the four of us will be back inside for breakfast, and Anna will make lunch for later.
“Morning. How’s Luis?” Their high school senior got his wisdom teeth removed yesterday.
“Tired and cranky. But he went through just fine, gracias a dios. Now besame.”
She taps her cheek, and I buss a kiss on it. Jesús does the same, and Perry, the last of my full-time farmhands, starts walking toward the barn.
“But who is this?” Anna cries, spotting Kit.
“Christopher David Hutchinson, but you can call me Kit. May I?”
Anna’s already in his arms, giggling as he plants a noisy air kiss on one side of her. She swats him away, laughing.
