“How long have they been working towards this?” Chloe whispered to me, and I shrugged, a bit embarrassed that I couldn’t answer.
“All this work should help increase heterogeneity?—”
“Ew,” Chloe whispered, making Morgan cough-laugh into her fist?—
“—and allow this land to contribute to the local ecosystem. Now, everyone go to your stations you’ve been assigned, and if you’re not sure where you’re meant to be, come see me.”
The four of us wandered over to her, queueing behind a few other lost souls.
“Dibs on a chainsaw,” Morgan said when we got to Mum, but she shook her head without looking down at her clipboard.
“Only the people who brought the chainsaws get to use them,” she said. “I can’t be held liable if one of you chops your fingers off. No, Morgan, you and Fatima are on planting duty. You can go see Desi by the truck.” She pointed at another person armed with an identical-looking clipboard, and Fatima linked her arm in Morgan’s as they walked off.
“I’ve got a special job for each of you,” Mum said, smiling, and I couldn’t help but smile too. It was fun seeing her in her element. “Chloe, how do you feel about bees?”
I watched as Chloe’s caffeine-deprived face pulled up in excitement. “You know damn well how I feel about them, Patricia!”
Mum laughed. “Well, you get to help put in the bee boxes. You can go see Jess at the horse box.”
Chloe skipped off, leaving just me. I was bummed I wouldn’t be with any of them, but I was actually getting quite excited about the day, despite the fact that it was already hot enough for sweat to prick at my brow.
“And me?” I asked, trying to lean over and see what was on Mum’s clipboard.
“You remember what your favourite job was when we were building that barn at Uncle John’s a few years ago?”
I gasped. “The digger?”
Mum nodded. “The digger.”
I clapped my hands together. I loved using the digger– it made me feel so powerful. And the best part was that the digger I could see on the other end of the lineup was a nice enclosed one, meaning it would most likely have air conditioning.
Mum rode in it with me out to the pond site, and I spent most of her orientation trying to get the cold air going. By the time I did, she’d given me the brief for the pond: no real shape requirements, no more than thirty centimetres deep, gentle slopes. Then she hopped out to walk back to the group, where the trucks were beginning to disperse with the saplings.
I spent the next hour happily digging, starting with the centre so I could get the depth right before sloping outward, even pulling up a true crime podcast on my phone to listen to. I could barely hear it over the engine, even at full volume, but it added a nice escape from my thoughts, which were mostly focused on what to get Chris and Niamh as a wedding gift since I wouldn’t be at the wedding itself. Phil had told me not to get them anything, but I liked the idea of using a gift as a subtle jab. Maybe something that said Mr & Mrs Arden on it, despite the fact that I knew Niamh wouldn’t be changing her name? Though my feminist principles wouldn’t quite let me go there.
The podcast was also a necessary distraction because I knew how easy it was to start thinking about Phil when my mind was unoccupied, and given that I didn’t have construction timelines to distract me or tarot cards to tell me what to think, I felt that topic was better left unexplored for the day.
I was about a quarter way around the pond when the digger’s air con gave out. I had my water bottle with me, and Mum came to check on me and bring me a refill after an hour or so, but by lunchtime, I was so delirious that not even real-life murder could hold my attention. Instead, my thoughts drifted first to Ethel, wondering what crystals I should source next from the website I used. I was almost sure I’d become their biggest customer over the past couple of months. And she needed a boost; this week they’d given her a hydrocortisone injection in her back, because apparently she’d started showing symptoms of arthritis there.
But of course, it wasn’t a very big leap at all from thinking about Ethel to thinking about Phil. He’d seemed more anxious than usual this week. I figured it was probably because of the festival coming up; yes, there were the costumes to finish, but I also knew he didn’t love leaving Ethel overnight, especially with her back hurting.
Or maybe he was stressed about the trip for the same reason I was: the sleeping arrangements.
I’d had Fatima send me the listing for the house they’d hired just a short walk from the festival, and I’d pored over it trying to figure out what the sleeping arrangements were. There were two king beds and two superkings, and both the superkings could be unzipped to be two beds each. I had already packed a bag with single fitted sheets so we could discreetly take the bed apart, but I didn’t even know for sure if we’d be in the one remaining superking after Fatima and Grey split one. Surely Chloe would be in a king on her own, which should have meant there was a fifty/fifty chance we’d get the one that zipped apart, but I also knew Phil had planned to be alone when they’d booked it, so did that mean we’d have a smaller bed? Not that a kingsize was small, but that extra width made a huge difference when I thought about spending two entire nights next to Phil.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share a bed with him. No, the problem was that, on a deep, physical level, I very muchdidwant to. It was nearly all I could think about, and when I did… well, let’s just say imagining that had kept me busy more than one night in the last week, and I’d made good use of the memory of him kneeling down to take my measurements.
But I was almost certain Phil didn’t feel the same. Not only had he proven five years ago that he didn’t feel the same way then, there had been plenty of opportunities this summer for him to make a move if he’d wanted to. And every time our performative PDA escalated, I felt him clam up like it made him uncomfortable, like last weekend at the arcade with Chloe and Lauren.
But still, I wasn’t imagining the chemistry we had, was I? I hadn’t dated many people, but I’d been with enough to know what good chemistry felt like, and I’d never had it with anyone as strongly as I had it with Phil. Every time we were around one another, it was like we were magnetised. Like we couldn’t possibly not brush against one another, or stand that little bit closer. Even before this summer, when we’d yelled at each other about stupid things or gotten overly competitive at a family barbecue, there had always been an electricity between us; an undercurrent that I couldn’t have ignored even if I’d wanted to.
And honestly, I didn’t want to anymore, especially as I got to see new sides of him. He’d always been Jack’s funny best friend to me, and though I’d known on some level that he was a nice guy, I’d seen firsthand all summer that he was the most selfless person I’d ever met. He put the people he cared about first, and he worked tirelessly to take care of them. I’d seen his practical side right alongside his goofy side. For the first time, I felt like I knew him as an entire person. And unfortunately for me, I liked that entire person more than ever.
And yeah, okay, he was hotter than ever with that goddamned beard. He’d been growing his hair out for the festival, too, giving him an unkempt look that was unfortunately really doing it for me.
So if we happened to be sharing a bed at the festival, would that be the worst thing? Would it be horrible if his hands found me in between the sheets, or mine him, and if our bodies drew together in the darkness? I could almost feel his breath on my skin, his weight on top of me, his?—
I snapped myself out of my heat-fuelled delirium when I realised I’d been digging in the same spot for a good few minutes, creating a hole nearly a metre deep. I switched off the digger– the rumble of the engine wasn’t exactly helping me calm down. Jesus, I needed to get laid– by Phil or someone else– stat. Clearly I was a liability. The digger needed a warning: DO NOT OPERATE WHEN HORNY.
