Lunchtime is over on the Shipley farm, and now we’re standing outside again under the hot summer sun. I’ve been working here for a few weeks, so I know the routine. First thing in the morning I help my friend Dylan milk the cows and the goats. Then we eat breakfast before spending the rest of the morning on hard labor.
My legs and back are already tired from digging fence post holes. I’m a city boy at heart, so the last few weeks have been a challenge.
“You’ve done this before, right?” Dylan hands me a wire basket with a wooden handle. “Put the eggs in here.”
“Sure thing.” Although I haven’t collected eggs before. It sounds easier than hauling fifty-pound bags of feed around.
He also hands me a plastic milk jug, with the top cut off and a braided rope looped around the handle. “This is for picking blueberries. You hang it around your neck, so you can use both hands to pick.”
“Cool, cool. Because I’m really good with my hands.” I lift my gaze to Dylan’s twin sister, Daphne. And sure enough, I find her watching me with curious brown eyes that sharpen immediately when I catch her staring. Again.
Flirting with Daphne is the second-best thing about working on this farm. The first best thing is the food. Honestly, I’d happily swap the order of those favorites, except the flirting hasn’t gotten me where I need to go. Yet.
But it’s only a matter of time. Daphne knows what she wants. It’s the same thing that I want. I can’t say why she’s so skittish, but I’ve given her the time and the space to overcome her hesitation. And yet she’s still keeping her distance, shooting me looks every time she thinks I’m not paying attention.
Spoiler alert: I’m always paying attention.
“Okay kids,” Dylan says with a chuckle. “I’ll be back in time to fence in the chickens and do the second milking. Go easy on him, Daph,” he tells his sister.
“Why?” she demands. “Everyone has to do his share. Even the new guy.”
“Yeah, I know. But that isn’t what I meant.” His eyes twinkle. “Be nice.”
“Hey, it’s all good,” I insist. “I like your sister. A lot.”
Her lips tighten.
Dylan smiles. Then he gives us a wave and lopes off toward his truck, where his girlfriend is waiting to accompany him to town to do errands.
As soon as he’s gone, I turn to Daphne. “This is good. We need to talk.” This is pretty much the first time we’ve been alone together since I arrived here. Daphne always watches me with hungry eyes. But she doesn’t talk to me. When I walk into a room, she walks out.
She’s afraid to let me in. I just need to figure out why.
“We’re not here to talk,” she says. “The berries won’t pick themselves.”
“Fine—should we pick berries first, then? Or collect the eggs?”
“Divide and conquer. I’ll take the berries.” She takes the milk jug right out of my grasp. “You get the eggs.”
“But—” This arrangement doesn’t work for me at all. “Why not together? We can have a nice little chat about why you’re avoiding me. Besides—the chickens don’t like me. Don’t send me in there alone.”
She halts midstride. “Wait. Are you afraid of the chickens?” Her brown eyes light up as if I’ve just handed her a precious gift.
“No way. Did I say that?” I scoff. I’m not actually afraid of the chickens. We eat chicken a couple of nights a week, so I’m pretty confident about who should be afraid of whom.
Their eyes are a little creepy, the way they look at you first with one side of their pointy heads before switching to the other.
But never mind. She’s already looping the berry jug around her smooth neck. Daphne Shipley is all long limbs and honeyed summer skin. She has soft-looking brown hair and expressive brown eyes that can go from angry to laughing with dizzying speed.
And I have it so bad for her.
“Get the eggs. Don’t miss any,” she calls over her shoulder. “There should be thirteen or fourteen today.” That’s all she has to say before she disappears into the blueberry patch—a dozen or so shrubs arranged in three rows.
The berry bushes aren’t as tall as me, but Daphne bends over and disappears, leaving me alone here on the grass, with a wire basket and too many questions and my sexual frustration.
Just another day in my messed-up life. I’m kinda used to it already.
I turn toward the coop and contemplate my strategy.