I haven’t ever really done anything like this, but as I look down the fence line at the hundreds of yards she’s already finished… I find I can understand that.
“Do you think you’ll work here forever? Take the farm over from your mom?” I ask.
“God, I hope not. I was serious the other day about wanting to get out of here someday. I can’t live in Wyatt forever, and if you haven’t picked up on it, my mom and I don’t exactly… mesh,” she says as she squeezes the trigger on the staple gun with a loud click.
“Yeah… I kinda did. You can tell me about it if you want, but you don’t have to.”
“Pull that tighter,” she says, and I pull on my tool until the fence straightens out. “There’s not a whole lot to tell. I justdon’t think she was ever really meant to be a mom.” She stops to look at me. “I don’t think it’s in her blood, to be able to care about someone the way a mom probably should.”
“So why stay? Now that you’re done with school? I mean, if you really want out of here.”
Huh. There’s a question I can’t even answer about myself…
She stops and looks at me, squinting like she’s trying to figure me out or something. “You ask a lot of questions.”
I shrug. “Just trying to get to know you. Have you never had a friend before?”
She shakes her head, a smile playing on her lips. “Well, if I leave Wyatt, who are you going to have around to come bother?”
“Hey, I’m helping!” I yell back, dropping my tool slightly to try to shove her in the shoulder, but she dodges me.
“And you’re doingsucha good job.” She points back at my post. “Get over thereand keep that tight!”
I like this. Talking to her feels so… freeing. No history to bog us down. No underhanded comments or pressure to do something I might not be ready for. No overthinking what I’m saying in case it might not be right.
“So whydidyou go vegan? If not to hashtag ‘freethecows’?”
She looks over at me and her eyescompletelylight up.
“Oh my God. Okay. Youhaveto watch this documentary I found. It’s all about the meat industry and its effect on the environment, and how…”
She goes on and on, her voice practically buzzing as she tells me all about it for the next twenty or so minutes while we make our way down the fence line.
“Did you know that giving up meat is the number one thing you can do to help protect the environment?” she says before finally pausing dramatically.
“I did not know that,” I reply with a smile.
“Well, it is.Oneburger uses up over six hundred gallons of water.Six hundred gallons!”
“That’s a lot of water,” I reply.
“That isa lotof water, Stevie. Anyway, I could literally go on forever about this, but I just… I just wanted to do something good,” she says as she kneels down on the other side of the fence from me.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone speak so passionately about anything before. It’s honestly kinda… cute? I don’t know. My heart feels happy listening to her, like I could do it forever.
“Why not just go vegetarian, though?” I ask, reaching out to help her connect the chain, my left hand slightly overlapping her right.
“I’m sort of an all-or-nothing type of person.” She picks her head up, inches from mine, and looks right into my eyes in a way that makes me feel guilty, like I should look away. But I don’t. “When I’m in… I’m all in,” she finishes.
I’m not sure if it’s just the weight of the chain or if she’s actually pressing her hand down into mine, but I can’t seem to look away from her face to check.
Her eyes flick down to my mouth as a lump forms in my throat. I try to slow my breathing so the rising and falling of my chest isn’t as apparent, but it’s just not possible.
This feeling is… well, I don’t know what it is, but it feels familiar. It takes a few seconds to place it but finally I do.
It’s what I expected to feel when Ryan wanted to kiss me. Thatthingthat I’ve never felt. The feeling that I was starting to think didn’t actually exist.
And I’m feeling it right now.
