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“Are you for real? Sheep cheese? Do people really eat that? I’m going to look it up.” Right, I left my phone in the car. How is this all going from really bad to seriously worse?
A sudden burst of pink above Thaddius’ sculpted jawline shocks me. What was he thinking that just made him blush? Maybe it’s his knee-jerk reaction to telling lies. I don’t like thinking it somehow softens him and makes him almost adorable. I don’t like the twinge in my lady bits, either. My hoo-ha is noticing things she shouldn’t be.
“They eat it,” he says. “Sheep’s milk is way richer than cow’s milk, so it’s not often sold in stores. It’s great for digestion and easy to make into the most delicious cheeses.”
“Ahh, I see.” This is all about playing super extra nice until I get my way, and darn it, I’m going to get it if it’s the last thing I do. Though it would be really nice if it weren’t, and I got to live a long, fulfilled life after coming all the way out here.
Thaddius notices my perky, happy attitude. I can tell he does because his jaw locks up and ticks. “Nothing gets you down, does it? I’m going to start calling you Miss Farting Rainbows.”
“Ha, what an excellent name. So creative. Technically, you’re engaged to Miss Farting Rainbows. You should write that on the lawyer form. They’d probably get a kick out of it, but we’d also have to specify my real name just to avoid confusion.”
His eyes narrow. “So, would you like to try some? Some delicious homemade sheep cheese?”
The way he says it, it sounds more like the kind of thing that would give a person some serious troubles in the bathroom later, to the tune of explosive this or that. I’m not even sure if he’s serious or just trying to scare me off. Well, challenge accepted, Mr. Hottie Rubber Boots Pants. Challenge freaking accepted.
“I’d love to try it. In the house that you said I couldn’t set foot in? Or are you going to bring it out here, and we can have a nice picnic to end the day?” I glance around. The yard is absolutely perfect for it. I don’t know how he found this place, and I’m not going to ask, but it’s like a little piece of heaven. I don’t know when to stop, so I keep on going by adding, “The grass is so lush and nice. What kind of water are you using here?”
“Fertilizer. I compost.”
“Are you serious?”
“Not on the grass. Mostly just in the garden. I grow all my vegetables in some sort of composted dung. That’s the secret to a long, healthy life. A good dose of shite.”
If he thinks he can get the better of me by playing off my city girliness and what he probably thinks is a phobia of poo and getting dirt under my nails, he’s wrong. “Ha. Well, I do love me a good poo emoji. Glad it works for you.”
I spin a slow three-sixty around on the deck, taking in everything in the area. I finally point out a huge maple that has probably been at the edge of the yard for centuries, just past all the fencing that keeps the animals in. I don’t know much about trees, but I think some of them can live to be three or four hundred years old. I did a report on maple trees when I was in elementary school. I still remember some of it. I’m pretty sure that one is a bigleaf maple. It’s massive. I know after around fifty or sixty years, or something like that, the height of that kind of tree doesn’t change very much, so I’m not really sure how a person could tell how old it is.
“Do you know anything about that tree?” I asked.
Thaddius’ brows go up and down, and I resist the urge to laugh. He wasn’t trying to be funny, playing caterpillar games with them. “I don’t know. It was here when I bought the place.”
Obviously. Ha. He’s funny. Dry funny. I kind of like it. “It would be fun if it was ancient. If it had seen a lot of history.”
That earns me a straight-up scowl. “I don’t know that a lot of history is worth seeing.”
“I’d like to tell you that you’re wrong.”
“You’ve known me for a hot minute, and you might be able to invent all sorts of happy stories in your head for the tree to tell, but that’s fake history. That’s not real history. Real history is messy, bloody, and sad. That’s what real life is. I don’t think you’ve lived enough of it, unsheltered at any rate, to be able to honesty understand that.”
“You’re right.” I grasp the railing in front of me. “You’re absolutely right.” I can tell that’s a surprise. He expected me to be offended. “But I’d still like to think that if that tree could talk, it would tell us about some of the better moments because it remembers those instead.”
“Sounds like a series of children’s books,” Thaddius grumbles.
He looks over his shoulder, and I watch as they rise and fall with a heavy sigh. I don’t know if he wishes he could unwind the past few hours and never have met me or if he wishes I didn’t exist at all. I know he wishes I hadn’t come. But I’m here. I’m here, and that’s that. He’s not getting rid of me.
“That would be fun. What a great idea!”
“For god’s sake.” He rubs his chin. “I’m going to get the cheese. And a blanket. We’ll eat it under the tree like you want.”
“We could also eat in the house if you want. It’s not always about what I want.”
“Those children’s books would no doubt be instant bestsellers for their unique moral message of never-ending happiness that the world so desperately needs to hear right now.”
Sounds a little bit gag-worthy, but maybe not. Maybe it would be just fine. Books about trees are always the best. “No doubt. Plus, I’m going to have an English degree soon. I think that would make them extra marketable because it would ensure I at least have the qualifications to know what I’m talking about.”
He puts up a hand and grinds his teeth again. “Stay right here. I’ll be back. No, I don’t need help, and no, don’t move from that spot. I don’t want to have to untangle you from a fence, rescue you from the donkey, or have the dog start humping your leg because he’s attracted to strange rainbow smells. I don’t want any mishaps happening, period. I want it to be like you aren’t even here.”
“So if I weren’t, you’d have a sheep cheese picnic by yourself under the tree?”
