That made me laugh. “Ow, oh hellfire. Don’t make me laugh.” I felt around beside me and lo and behold, my fingers found a small trash can by my hip. My head was going to explode. “Why is this goat serving as my pillow?”
“You insisted.” He nudged me with the water glass. “Sit up and drink some of this. You threw up a lot.” Getting into a seated position was tough. Bitsy wiggled to the edge of the bed. Acosta handed me the glass and then picked up his goat and got her strapped into her cart while I sipped on some damn good water. I looked down to see my bare chest. Oh. Oh my. “She was tired, so I let her lay there for an hour or so.” He looked over from adjusting Bitsy’s leather straps. “Your clothes are drying on the rack by the stove. I’m not sure your suit will ever be the same.”
“Well damn.” I sighed into my water. My eyes were gummy, my mouth gross, and I could smell the lingering scent of upchuck on myself. “I’m a terrible drinker. And guest. Your parents must be appalled.”
“Not really. They know you drank in excess to hide the pain of your family ignoring you on Christmas.” He patted Bitsy on the head. She raced off to the barn, nosing the door open. The cat and duck entered. Acosta got up, placed his llama book on the bed, walked over to close the door, and then made a quick trip to the kitchen. I sat there, my gaze on my chest, sad and sick, wishing I’d been tossed into that mucky poop spreader and flung out over the hayfields. “Take some of these.”
He passed me a bottle of aspirin. I couldn’t line up the arrows on the cap and bottle.
“Should say drunk proof cap as well,” I mumbled while he opened the bottle and dumped two caplets into my hand. “Thank you. You’re being quite kind to me, considering you think that I’m the devil’s handmaiden.”
He sat down on the bed beside me, his hip barely brushing my thigh. I could feel my briefs, so he’d only peeled off the badly soiled clothes and washed them. How kind he was being all of a sudden.
Anyone would take pity on a man as low as you are right now.
“I never said I thought you were the devil’s handmaiden. Though I might have thought it a few hundred times.” I snorted, then grimaced. “I think…well, I’m not sure what to think about you to be honest. You work for a company that’s been trying to get onto my land for years. A company that wants to set up some massive drilling platform on the farm that Cassie passed down to me. A company that has sent at least a dozen people here over the past couple of years to try every trick in the book to get me to sign over my mineral rights. Do you know how hard it’s been keeping this place afloat without Cassie?! How many nights I tried to revamp the website or agonized over the books? Cassie took care of all those things. She was the brains of our farm. Brimming over with good ideas for how to draw funds and people. I’ve always just been the strong back and animal guru. She was the extrovert and I…I was the introvert. I couldn’t deal with people like she did. The more things fell off, the more the rescue struggled, the deeper my depression became. But do you care about all of that? No, because you don’t care. About me or this farm.”
“But Idocare about you and the farm.” He drew in a deep breath through his nose, his nostrils flattening, then widening as he exhaled. “I do. I love Bitsy and Millicent, and Wilma and Betty. Rufus and Ralph are the coolest buddies ever! And the bees are…well, they’re insects, but I bet they’re super neat too. I reallydocare about you and this farm. And that’s why I’m trying to get you to see that signing over those rights will make your life so much easier. Also,” I leaned in a little closer, not much because I had breath that would rival Smaug’s, but close enough to drive home the notion that I was passing along something of vital importance, “with the royalties coming in you could expand on the rescue, redo the facilities, build a bigger barn and apiary, maybe even hire some help. All those things would be a fine homage to your sister and her dreams for this place.”
He stared right into my soul. Hopefully, he could see the truth in my eyes. Perhaps when I had come here a few days ago I’d been spouting well-crafted company copy ad, but now…well, now I meant it. Heartily. I did care about the animals here—and him. Crazy as that was given how short a time we’d known each other, I was developing some real feelings for him.
“You know just what to say. Did they teach you that at your ivy league college?” He wasn’t being snarky this time, just genuinely curious. I could do no less.
“Some of it, yes. But I’m not feeding you a line. I’m serious. I want to see this place flourish. It’s important work you do here. The animals need this place. And I think the people do too. I know that you do, and I kind of suspect that I do now as well.”
He sat there studying me. I lowered my gaze and sipped my water. My stomach was gurgling either from the addition of water or hunger. Just thinking about food right now made me want to gag. Maybe after a shower and a cup of tea.
“You should get in the shower. It’s nearly time for bed. I’m going to go do the evening chores. I put some clothes in the bathroom for you. Some of my stuff. They’re not fancy threads like you wear, but they’ll do until your clothes are dry. I washed the shirt and jacket out by hand as they said dry clean only. Not sure if I ruined them or not.”
“Better some water stains than regurgitated moussaka.” He kind of smiled as he stood. “Acosta, thank you for being so good to me. You could have chased me off with a shotgun when you found out who I was.”
“I don’t own a gun.” He turned and walked out, taking only a moment to pull on his chore boots and his torn work coat. I watched as he dressed, a mariachi band playing in my head—come on aspirin—and enjoyed the pull of material across his ass. He glanced back when I made a choking sound. No other body part was working well, but Dick was chipper. “Did you ever consider that getting away from your family and the business would be good for you?”
I blinked sticky eyes at him. “But how would I prove to my father that I was just as good as my straight brother?”
“You wouldn’t. And you don’t have to. If he can’t see what a good heart you have, then fuck him.”
He left, pulling the door closed gently behind him, cutting off the moos, blats, clucks, and other barnyard sounds.
Wow!
He said I have a good heart. My eyes grew wet. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard that before from anyone who wasn’t trying to sell me something or get into my pants. A quack behind me by the stove made me chuckle. It hurt to laugh, but man did it feel good. Sort of. In my soul, not in my skull.
Since I could smell the funk on myself, I eased up and out of bed, each step a reminder that even though I might have Greek blood, the drink of my people wasn’t kind to one of her native sons. I eased into the tiny pink bath, smiling, despite my angry headache, at the flamingo joy of it all. This one small oasis of color in an otherwise drab living space lifted spirits. Why didn’t Acosta have more color in his home?
Maybe he’s been living in the gray since Cassie passed away.
“Oh, maybe,” I whispered to myself as the dryer tumbled away. More than likely, my dirty clothes were in there. Were they? Ugh, my brain ached. Another kindness shown to me by Enigma Man. Well, not such an enigma anymore. It had only been a few days, but I was starting to discover a man lost in the pain of grief. We were connecting. Outside of sex. Obviously, during sex, we connected. In a most glorious way. My dick, for once, was unresponsive when thinking about being buried inside a tight, firm ass. Perhaps a shower and some mouthwash would revive me. As embarrassing as Dick could be at times when he wasn’t at least showing a slight interest in hot man sex, I began to worry.
Peeling off my briefs, I washed them out in the sink, unsure if they’d gotten soiled when I brought up my dinner and a gallon of ouzo. I let them hang over the sink, then got into the shower. Oh. Oh, how glorious. Even though the water hitting my head hurt a bit, I tipped my head down and let the pelting continue. Manning up, as it were.
God what a miserable term that was. How many times had I heard that as a child and young adult? Man up. Buck up. Take it like a man. Stop crying for God’s sake. Boys don’t cry. What are you, a girl? Your brother never cries. Why can’t you be more like Frank Jr. for a change? Can’t you tone down all that gay? Why are you this way? Why can’t you just be normal?
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Fuck all that noise from the past. And fuck them all. All of them. Every single last Fitzgerald who ghosted me since the first time I’d shown my true colors.
“I need to hear that song now,” I coughed, water washing away the tears. I opened my eyes, sniffled, pulled back the shower curtain, and saw Ralph standing on the floor just outside the shower, clacking his yellow-orange bill at me. “Uhm, excuse me, but this is a private matter.”
His quacks were low and scratchy. I shooed him. He stood there mouthing me. Or I suppose billing me would be the better terminology.
