Page 107 of The Goat Next Door

My phone buzzes against the wood.

Emmy: I finally got the goat cheese right. Come over and eat this before I lose my mind and dump the whole thing in the yard.

I stare at the screen.

I should text back that I’m busy.

I actually open the message box.

Busy. Later.

I stare at the words for a solid ten seconds before deleting them.

Because the truth is, if Ember asks me to come over, I’m going.

That’s it. That’s the whole situation.

It doesn’t matter if I’m buried in reports or halfway through calibrating air tanks or actively putting out a fire.

The woman says my name in that sharp little voice and suddenly my priorities start rearranging themselves like furniture in a storm.

It’s embarrassing.

Honestly, deeply embarrassing.

⋆ ✦ ⋆

Ember is standing by the sink, her back to me. She’s got her hair done up in a loose knot with a yellow pencil shoved through the middle to keep it off her neck.

She spins around, and the look on her face is a masterpiece of frantic impatience. She’s got a tiny smudge of white curd right at the base of her throat.

She holds up a thin-bladed knife like she’s threatening the appliance.

“Okay, listen,” she says. “I’ve been up since four. I’ve been talking to goats like they’re professional critics. If you take one bite and give me that neutral ‘Chief’ face—that face where you’re trying not to be mean but you clearly want to be anywhere else—I am going to have a full-blown existential crisis. Do you understand? I am holding my life together with, like, two bobby pins and this batch of cheese.”

She throws both hands into the air. “If this cheese is terrible, I’m selling the goats, changing my name, and moving to a convent. I’ll spend the rest of my life making candles and pretending dairy never happened.”

I lean against the doorframe, crossing my arms over my chest. I can’t help the grin that pulls at my mouth. She’s so dramatic.

“You’re going to move to a convent because of goat cheese?”

“Yes,” she says immediately.

“You’d get kicked out in forty-eight hours.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

“Because you flirt too much.”

“I do not flirt too much.”

I just stare at her.

She points the knife at me again. “Okay, rude. Also inaccurate.”

“Ember.”

“What?”