Keelie swatted Gary away from her hair, as always, and he took a step back. “Gary?” she asked, feeling like a goddamn fool.
“Yes, my sweetness?”
“To be clear, you are Gary the donkey, and you are talking to me right now?”
He moved in to tenderly lip the shoulder of her shirt. “The very one, my love, and my soul is filled with poetry for you.”
Keelie gently moved his nose aside; if he was suddenly sentient, she felt the need to be slightly more polite, even though he had never, ever been polite. She held up three fingers. “How many?”
Gary wrapped his donkey lips around her fingers. “Three. Three perfect, delectable fingers.”
Keelie yanked her slobber-covered hand away.
“What the hell is happening? Am I hallucinating? Why are you talking? And if you’re talking, why aren’t Marigold and Peach Pit talking? And why do you have an accent?”
Gary looked from the mare to the dog, his lips curling back. “Marigold is a haughty virago, and Peach Pit keeps her secrets, but I, I shall always answer when you call. I will guard your gates and eat your dandelions and stomp any coyotes that dare trespass upon your domain, my love. I will—”
“Lord, and I thought you were loud when it was just a bunch of hee-haws.”
“It was never just hee-haws to me, darling.”
Keelie squeezed the water out of her hair and squelched over to Marigold, who looked at her distrustfully, as if all of this was Keelie’s fault. It was true that the mare was haughty andheadstrong, but they got along well enough. After cinching her saddle and checking her bridle, Keelie put her helmet back on and swung up into the saddle.
“Can we head home now?” she asked. “Anybody else got anything to say?”
Marigold switched her tail, and Peach Pit gave a joyous bark that suggested she was ready to bound down the trail, chasing twitchy rodents into the brush.
Gary looked up at Keelie adoringly. “Thither thou go, shall I go, too,” he said.
Keelie shook her head and nudged Marigold toward the path. “For somebody who just started talking, you sure have a lot to say.”
Gary trotted along at her side, looking up at her with glowing eyes. “When you love deeply, you can only speak from the heart.”
“God, you’re hot to trot. Didn’t I have you castrated?”
For a long time, Gary was silent. And then, in a tiny, prissy voice, he said, “I forgive you.”
The trail ride home took an hour, and although Gary didn’t attempt to assault her boot again, he certainly wasn’t quiet. Keelie was accustomed to hearing him honk and bray, watching him charge into the brush and gallop after Peach Pit, but now he stayed chivalrously by her side and attempted to make polite conversation like a Victorian beau. She was fairly certain she didn’t have a concussion, which meant she was probably losing her goddamn mind. That didn’t change the fact that she had to be at work at five for the dinner shift at MacGillicuddy’s. Her boss, Farrah, was fair but firm, and “My donkey is in love with me and won’t shut up” was not a valid excuse for tardiness.
Once they were back home on the farm and she’d brushed Marigold and put her back to pasture, Gary casually attempted to follow Keelie into the house.
“Absolutely not,” she said, blocking the doorway. “I don’t care if you can talk. Donkeys stay outside.”
“But—”
“Can you control your plops?”
After a moment of embarrassed silence, Gary turned and ambled back toward the barn, head hanging.
Without a working phone, Keelie had no way to call her sister, Cash, and ask her if they had a family history of being bugnuts crazy. As she showered and got ready for work, her mind ran a mile a minute. Lately, most of her thinking time was dedicated to two things: wondering if Noelle Halloran would ever text her again after their breakup and hoping for some way to get Mark Ranger and his wife, Samantha, to leave town, or at least to embarrass them so much that they’d lie low and stop taunting Cash. Six years ago, Sam and Cash had been best friends and Cash and Mark had been high school sweethearts, and then Mark cheated with Sam. When she found out, Cash left town, and Keelie had missed her big sister every single second that she was gone. Now Keelie, sweet Keelie, innocent Keelie, wanted to punish the people who had decided to make Cash’s life hell ever since she’d come back home.
Today, of course, all she could think about was the fact that her horny rescue donkey was reciting love poems in a British accent from just outside her bathroom window while she put a Band-Aid on her scraped elbow. He kept rhyming “friend” with “end,” which made her wince.
When she got to work, she found her sister already at the bar and uncharacteristically happy. Cash was like that every time shespent the afternoon with her new boyfriend, Riley. Keelie knew that if she told Cash what was happening with Gary, her big sister would stop smiling and start worrying, so instead, she sought out the woman who’d stepped in as a mother figure over the past three years: her boss, Farrah.
Farrah MacGillicuddy was the toughest woman Keelie knew and also the most bedazzled. She loved rhinestones, sequins, electric blue glitter eyeshadow, clanky jewelry, and making sure nobody messed with her servers. She also loved her truck, which Keelie had unfortunately backed into a few months ago, but that was in the past now.
“Farrah, can I talk to you?” Keelie said.
