I pretendedIdidn’t care, even to myself, but of courseIdid.Ireplayed over and over the conversation we’d had, trying to figure out whatI’dsaid that was so triggering, butIcame up empty.Shewas clearly determined to be as opaque as possible.
At lunch,Igrabbed my sandwich– courtesy ofPhil, who’d started making me packed lunches for my days on the farm– and went out to the far corner of the farm, where the orchard met a scrim of brambles and old, tangled barbed wire.Thelast of the trees– pear,Iwas pretty sure– had a perfect crook at the base of its trunk, andIlet myself settle into it.Theground was damp, butIdidn’t care.Iwas already dirty from my impromptu weeding.Myboots were caked in half the county’s mud.Morganhad taken one look at them last week and declared them officially mine, which was fine, since they’d broken in nicely.
The sandwich was impeccable, of course– brie and homemade chilli jam melted together in my mouth, the seeded bread soft and pillowy.I’dalso brought some crisps, and, onceI’dhad a biteIcould actually review toPhil,Idid what he would have considered sacrilege and pressed a pile of sweet chilli crisps into the rest of my sandwich, crunching away at it.
AfterI’dfinished my lunch and licked some errant jam from my thumb,Ipulled out my journal– a battered thing now, with all my clever and aesthetic stickers peeling off, the spiral binding uncoiling at the top, the front page curling at the corners– and just started writing.Ibegan with a single word–Teddy– then another.Or, well, a series of question marks.Prettysoon,Iwas writing full-on letters to her thatIknewIwould never deliver:
Why does it bother me so much when you shut me out?Ididn’t even know you until weeks ago, except for one ill-timed moment thousands of miles from here.Areyou like this because you don’t care about anyone else at all, or amIuniquely detestable to you?
Do you hate me because you see me and loathe whoIam, or because you don’t want to know me, unsure what you’d see if you looked close enough?Andwhy theFUCKcan’tIbe normal about this???
Why doIcare so much????????
I filled four pages without stopping, barely evenpunctuating.Iwrote about the look on her face when she found the bee with the broken wing: the way she whispered to it, and the careful, practical mercy of her hands.Iwrote about how she was atFatima’sonThursdaynights; how she had a laugh that started out sharp and then caught itself, embarrassed to have escaped.
I wrote about how she moved around the farm like every step mattered; like she was following a perfectly charted course that only she could see.HowIwas just trying to keep up with the way she worked; the way she thought; the feelings she drew out of me so easily.
I wrote about how she made me feel small, but not in the wayIwas used to.Likeshe was using a measuring stickIdidn’t realise was there untilIfell short.Iwrote about wanting to impress her, to prove her wrong about me, even thoughItold myselfIdidn’t care.
When my hand cramped,Ilet the pen fall into the middle of the notebook and closed my eyes, my head tipping back against the bark.Iheard the sheep bleating in the field on the next farm over, the groan of the old fence in the wind, andWillow’sdistant yelp as she chased something down the hedge line.
I thought about the last time someone’s approval had mattered this much to me.Notsince my mother, probably, and that was a disasterI’dspent most of my life pretending was a bad joke.Mymum had been the sort of person who never apologised; who said “Ilove you” only in the form of elaborate critiques, because she cared, of course.She’dtold me once thatIwas a “force of nature.”Itsounded like praise, untilIrealised she’d meant it the way you’d describe a cyclone: unpredictable, inconvenient, and destructive.
For a while,I’dtried to outdo her with my indifference.Tocare less; to be impossible to hurt.ThenI’dstopped trying altogether and just let myself be blown around instead by whatever weather happened to come along.
ButTeddywas different.Shedidn’t seem to demand anything in particular from me– she just refused to pretend.Sheheld me to account whenItried to alleviate a situation with charm.Shewas the first person in years who’d made me want to try harder, because it felt like the only way to get her to look at me with anything but indifference.Herapproval was hard to earn, and she made me work for it every single time.
I wiped my nose on my sleeve.Iwasn’t going to cry about it, but my eyes stung anyway, maybe from the wind or something.Ilooked down at my boots, at the dirt caked in the creases of my knuckles, at the stains on my knees that no doubt matched new ones on my bum.Thisjob was the most consequential thingI’dever done.Notjust for myself, but for them–Gwenynenhad all its eggs in my basket, and ifIfailed, what did that mean for them?Nevermind for me.Ihad a jobIcould go back to, even ifIhated it.Butthe fate of the farm was in my hands, too.
Okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic.Butit made me appreciate whyTeddywas so hard on me.Whenevery little thing is make-or-break, it makes you extra wary of things that threaten breakage.
I was snapped out of my thought spiral by a text message:
JACK
Morgan’s got the day offFridaynext week.Kayaking?
I rolled my eyes asIreplied:
CHLOE
You wantMEto go kayaking?
JACK
No,IwantTEDDYto go kayaking.Infact, she said she wants to go.Butyou’re howIget toTeddy.
CHLOE
So you don’t actually want to hang out with me.
You just want me for my grumpy boss.
JACK
Glad you understand.
Also, my girlfriend wants you to come so she doesn’t have to sit on the bank by herself whilst we kayak.
