“You’re telling me you don’t have the hots for that boy?” Crystal smirked, popping her gum. “Okay, you just keep telling yourself that, girlfriend.” Blue eye shadow had gone out in the last decade, but Crystal had missed the memo.
“I don’t think of him like that. He’s like a brother to me,” I protested, a little louder than I meant to. I glanced up to find Rory watching us, a stack of dirty plates balanced on his arm. He had a strange expression on his face, and when our eyes met he looked away quickly. I had a sinking feeling he’d heard me. “Truly.” I lowered my voice, cheeks flaming. “We’re just friends.”
“Uh-huh,” Crystal gave me a knowing look. “Whatever you say. By the way, you’re red as a tomato.”
I fled to the kitchen, mortified, and managed to avoid Rory and Crystal for the rest of the night. Of course, I had been lying to Crystal. Even if I wouldn’t admit it, Rory filled my thoughts during the day and more than once I’d awakened in the night with an ache spooling low in my belly, flushed with longing from a heated Technicolor dream about him, about us.
On nights like tonight when he brought over my tip, I suspected Rory might be flirting with me. Sometimes I glanced up to find his eyes fixed on me from across the room, but really I had no idea if he felt the same way about me as I felt about him. And that was absolutely terrifying because as much as I denied it, I was hopelessly, completely, utterly falling head over heels for Rory Shaw.
15
After my singleday at Toast and subsequent early-morning conversation with Aunt Gert, I lasted approximately two-thirds of the workday at the Eatery before I texted Eve.
Something’s happened. Can I come over?
She replied immediately.
I’ve got gin.
I pled a headache with Dad and Aunt Gert and left work early. The headache was convenient, but it wasn’t a lie. I still felt hungover from the late pub night in Brighton the night before. I swallowed two aspirin with a tall glass of water and headed out the door. Daphne was coming in to help with the dinner rush, so they would be fine without me for a few hours.
I hopped into Florence, my battered old Volvo station wagon, a relicI’d inherited from my parents when I turned eighteen. I was unreasonably fond of her despite the fact that the passenger door was jammed shut, the electrical components were finicky, and she was an unfortunate color best described as banana pudding. I battled through rush hour traffic and waited in line for the ferry. Soon Florence and I were gliding across Puget Sound, away from the high-octane buzz of the tech city, toward the peaceful remoteness of Vashon Island. I needed to clear my head, and Eve’s little farm was the best place I could think of to do it.
A scant few miles from Seattle, Vashon Island always seemed a world apart. Gray whales and seals cruised the calm waters, the beaches were almost empty and achingly picturesque, and the island had no less than ten farm stands selling everything from homemade strawberry jam to lettuce on the old-fashioned honor system. Vashon was both rurally charming and decidedly hippie, a Mayberry for the Woodstock crowd. No wonder Eve had found her place there.
I drove the ten minutes from the ferry dock to Eve’s farm through rolling wooded hills, pushing the speed limit and racing past the few other cars on the road. My brain felt like a hive of bees, throbbing with the high-pitched buzzing of alarm or excitement, I couldn’t quite tell which. I had to talk to Eve.
I found her in the tidy red barn, milking the goats and listening to the Eurythmics turned up loud. She was an ardent lover of eighties synth-pop dance-rock bands. Dressed in a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, Carhartt jeans, and her old pair of green Hunter rain boots, she had a bandanna tied over her pink hair and was coaxing a goat toward a pair of wooden milking stands.
“Oh, good, you’re just in time. Here, you milk Daisy,” Eve said by way of greeting. “I’ll handle Dot.” Holding the goat firmly between her knees, she whipped out her iPhone and turned down the music to aconversational level, then led the brown-and-white animal over next to me and secured her in the milking stand. She fastened her own goat into the other milking stand, shooed me toward my milk crate and pail, and got to work.
I didn’t really want to milk goats at the moment, not in the midst of an existential crisis when my most fundamental life choices had been thrown into question, but I obediently sat down on the upturned plastic milk crate and patted Daisy’s side. She was chewing the contents of a tray of grain and didn’t seem to mind. I was not really dressed for farm work. My pleated gray tartan wool skirt and sunny yellow fitted sweater were ill-suited for a milking stool. I’d been in such a hurry to get here I hadn’t bothered to change. Oh well. I tucked my skirt under my knees and got to work.
“Sorry, girl.” I took hold of the long, tear-shaped teat and pulled rhythmically. A second later there was the satisfying hiss and ping of milk hitting the metal bucket. I was not a newcomer to the world of milking goats. I had spent enough time on this farm to consider myself goat-competent. Although I didn’t plan on taking up goat farming anytime soon, I loved the atmosphere of the farm and found the rhythms of life here soothing, especially the slower human pace. I also loved the soothing greens and blues of nature in the Pacific Northwest, the spicy scent of rain-washed evergreens, the bracing chill of salt-laced sea breezes.
“So what’s up?” Eve asked me. She bent down and murmured sweet nothings to Dot as she milked her, then glanced up again. “Rough day?” In the background Annie Lennox wailed quietly about love being a stranger.
I took a deep breath, sniffing sweet hay and the dusty, earthy funk of the goats. “Something really weird happened to me.” And then I told her all about the lemon drops and Aunt Gert and Toast and Brighton.I relayed all the details I could remember, every little thing, even Colin and the tartar sauce at the pub and my painful conversation with Daphne, even waking up with sour ale breath this morning.
When I was done, I darted a cautious look at Eve. She had stopped milking Dot and was sitting on her milk crate, arms on her knees, hands hanging loose, looking dumbfounded. “It was a dream, right? You dreamed you were in England?”
I shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. I don’t think so. It felt so real. I think somehow I was really there. I think I actually lived a day of the life I could have had.”
Eve gave me an assessing look, as though she were taking an internal step back and trying to determine the state of my mental health. She chewed her lip and said nothing. Slowly, she took her phone from her pocket and paused Annie Lennox belting out “Here Comes the Rain Again.”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. But I do think dear Aunt Gert gave you acid-trip candy for your birthday.” She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what’s in those candies—LSD, some extra-potent cannabis, magic ’shrooms. Whatever it was, it’s obviously strong stuff.” She released Dot from the milking stand. The goat jumped friskily away to join the others in the barn.
I shook my head. “It wasn’t an acid trip. It was too normal, just a normal day running Toast. No floating purple elephants or trippy stuff. Just normal me, in uncomfortable shoes, running a restaurant in England.”
Eve opened her mouth, then shut it again. She seemed at a loss for words, a rarity for her. One of the goats, Susan B. Anthony I think it was, wandered over and nipped the cuff of her flannel shirt. She brushed the goat away and slipped off the shirt, revealing a blackribbed tank top underneath. It put the flower garden climbing up her arm and spreading across her shoulder on full display.
She’d gotten the tattoos one at a time, one or two a year, ever since her meltdown. Each one stood for something specific in the language of flowers. A white chrysanthemum bloomed on the inside of her wrist for truth. A fern frond arched across her inner arm for sincerity. Delicate yellow sprigs of rue traced their way up her bicep for grace and clarity. A pink rose for happiness peeked from her shoulder blade. Together they symbolized a woman who was discovering her true path in life, uncovering her authentic self on the journey. I was the one who had first introduced her to the language of flowers, the knowledge passed down from my mother to me. But Eve had made the language her own, a testament to finding her way.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said quietly. “And I can’t explain what happened, not exactly. But after my day in England, I’ve realized something. I thought about it all the way over on the ferry. Aunt Gert asked me if I would choose Toast, England, that life if I could. And the answer is no. After seeing what it would really be like, what I would have to give up, I wouldn’t change my life now to have that other version of it, not Toast and Brighton, not that distance from my family. And that’s important to know. Disappointing, but important.” I released Daisy from the wooden contraption that held her in place, and she daintily pranced off, little black hooves kicking up bits of straw. We were silent for a few minutes. I waited nervously. Eve was my best friend. What if she didn’t believe me? What if she dismissed me as crazy? I wouldn’t blame her a bit.
“Noisa good answer. Sometimes it’s better than a yes.” Eve moved toward the spacious pen taking up one half of the barn, shooing Daisy and Dot in front of her. “A basic principle of physics: if you’re moving in the right direction, you’ll reach your destination eventually. Thisrealization about Toast is a first step.” She opened the gate and herded the goats inside, then latched the gate and tossed a few flakes of alfalfa hay into the feed trough. She often managed to combine her interests in physics and philosophy into pithy little nuggets of wisdom aimed at getting me to improve my life. So far I think she’d been disappointed with the results.
