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CHAPTER 13
Thaddius
We’re still standing at the door, sopping wet. The chickens are walking around. There are five of them in here now, and they seem just as comfy and happy as if they were outside or in their coop. They’ll make themselves at home. I just hope the rain lets up before the real crapping fest begins. I don’t mind cleaning up a few poos, but five chickens? They can create a real mess.
The cat, Butterscotch, is a wet mop. Don’t ask me why he’s named such because he’s not creamy or toffee-colored. He’s a midnight black long-haired cat, but he came with the place, and he also came with the name because the guy who owned the farm before I took over seemed to name the animals willy-nilly as he saw fit. Anyway, he looks just like us…like we were caught in a torrential downpour. Because, yeah, we were.
And then there’s Nina.
My heart picks up speed just looking at her. She’s so beautiful, but her true beauty is that she can laugh at things like this. Her long hair is plastered around her face and shoulders, and that wretched clown on her shirt is now a drowned clown, but it’s still smiling that horrible clown smile. Her skirt is pressed up against the curve of her hips and every inch of her long, lithe legs while her boots appear drowned out. She throws her head back, leans against the wall with her butt, and laughs. She’s pure joy. It’s so tempting to have that, to hold it near me, to partake in it, and want it for myself. Even if I know I can’t have it, it’s impossible not to be affected by it.
What’s happening to me that I find all these farty sunshine rainbows not so annoying now?
I laugh too. I laugh until my shoulders shake, my stomach hurts, and water starts beading off me in unusual spots because my muscles are workingthathard.
“I spent almost my entire life trying to attain some level of perfection.” I don’t know why I said that. It just popped out. I haven’t told anyone how I really feel about the money I now have. “Even when I was little, I was always so competitive. It wasn’t just about winning. It was about doing my best. I was really only racing against myself, trying to beat myself and come out on top of what I’d already done. No one pushed me. I just pushed myself. I was like that all through elementary school and then high school and college. I don’t know what I thought I had to prove, but whatever it was, I guess I did it. There always had to be something more, something better, something to achieve. When I sold that software and made all that money, I kept thinking to myself, what now? And the only answer I kept coming up with was that I needed a break.”
Nina’s face is sympathetic. “I think I know what you mean. I might do that a little bit too. Maybe. I don’t know. I think we’re all trying to outrun ourselves and the expectations ground into us by our families, our friends…the world. It’s funny that you ended up here. Funny in a good way,” she clarifies. She takes a few steps away from the door. “Do you have a towel?”
She’s clearly trying to spare me the awkwardness of this conversation, but since I put everything out there without even meaning to, it feels like an abrupt shut-off. She must read the hurt that I try very hard not to show because her smile becomes extra soft. Like I’m safe with her, and I should know that by now.
“Right. Anyway, it’s hot enough in here that we’ll probably be dry in about seven point eight minutes flat. No towels needed,” I tell her.
She crosses her arms, which at least hides half the clown’s scary face, but not the creepy, painted-on smile. Now it’s even worse, pulling upwards and to the side. “Tell me why you’re so against love.”
I don’t want to talk about Janet. I don’t want to talk about how she’d been cheating on me, or rather, in reality, cheating isn’t even the right word for the kind of scheme she and her real boyfriend engineered. I always thought if I told anyone about how my money put a target on my back, they’d nod and do thepoor little rich boysaying in their head.
“I think people hate love or any kind of feeling because they think it makes them weak. I don’t think that at all, but it does make a person vulnerable. I think most people get the two confused. No one wants to be vulnerable, even if it’s sometimes the best thing to be, because being vulnerable also often shows us where our true power is,” Nina says.
“Are you sure you’re not a philosophy major?” I ask.
“Nope. English. Very much English.”
“That actually does explain a lot. But I don’t agree. Vulnerability means the opposite of powerful. Despite how many stories or morals of stories there might be that could prove the opposite, I’m not buying it.”
She doesn’t sigh like I’m dense. She knows by now that she isn’t going to change my mind, or at least not without a darn good argument, and she looks like she’s enjoying herself. Like debating might be a fun thing for her. “You need to lower your defenses in order to trust. You need to make yourself vulnerable in order to find joy in sharing your life with another person. If you can’t do those things, you can never truly experience what it means to care or be in love.”
“I’m honestly just really tired of love,” I admit with a sigh. “I’d rather stand outside in a storm and get lashed by its full fury than ever take a chance on someone again. You probably know that I was betrayed. It was humiliating. I was used. Scammed. I don’t know. Maybe all feelings are a scam. Most love is just something that is contrived and sold to the masses. Like watching people go to war for it, making excuses for it, changing the world in a way that they think is fitting for it, and hearing endless stories about it, about how it’s some miracle wonder that can heal all and cure all. It’s so darned dangedexhausting.”
Nina takes one step closer, and her boots make wet farting noises. She grins, hearing it, and takes another one. Another wet farting squelch. She loses the smile when she reaches out for me, but she just lets her hand hang there. “I’m so sorry you had a bad experience. That you were hurt.”
“One doesn’t have to be hurt to say they’re tired of seeing token, mushy, nasty crap everywhere. That’s not even what love is. The whole world doesn’t know what love is.” The grump in me is coming back out. I don’t know why I started talking about this in the first place. I should have just offered her a darned towel. I should have stayed silent like I always do.
These kinds of conversations are much better served by having them with the sheep. Or with Herman Merman. He appreciates good philosophy. He’s also a bit of a grump, which is why I love him.
“You have lots of love here.” Nina uses her hand instead and waves it around, indicating the whole farm, I think. What’s wrong with me that I’m disappointed her palm didn’t land on my shoulder or arm or even brush against the back of my hand? “You created a life that’s full of it. That’s commendable. Whether or not it did or didn’t stem from hurt, this is a kind of love that’s undeniable, beautiful, and wondrous. You’re like the custodian of this land, and it has blessed you with the abundance to survive.”
“If that isn’t a bunch of nonsense straight out of a self-help book or a mushy romance novel, I don’t know what is.” I’m turning into a cactus with each passing second. She can’t honestly talk like this in her everyday life, can she? How can she keep up the pace? “You know what else is exhausting? Endless optimism, frilly happiness, andyou.” I don’t mean it. I don’t know why I just said that, and I don’t know why I’m closing myself off, retreating back into a shell of unkindness and meanness. I also don’t know why I feel the need to protect myselfagainstthis wonderful, beautiful person.
Yes, I was burned before. Yes, I thought I was even in love. Okay, yes, maybe there was a small part of me that wanted to get married to Janet just to spite my family, but I asked because I thought maybe we could be happy. That we could have a future. There was a shred of me that wanted to believe those things people talk about—all that sap and nonsense and goo—were possible and that they wereworth it.
Nina just smiles back at me. She puts a hand over her heart, exposing the whole clown on her shirt again. It leers at me as if to say that if anyone is a clown right now, it’s me. A total asshole, douchebag, and butt clown. “More high praise?” she asks with a wink. “Oh, however shall I bear it?” She says it with the ultimate sarcasm, and it almost makesmesmile, damn it. “Alright, I’ll be quiet. Being a good listener is equally as important as knowing the right thing to say. I’m shutting up now and perking up my ears. I’m ready to listen to whatever it is you have to say.”
How does shedothis? See right through all the barriers I throw up to keep her out? How does she just dodge around them with a bigoh hell no,a hair flip, and a finger raised against all conventions with a huge smile on her face the whole time, all that sunshine just shining, shining, shining all over the place? How does she make mewantthings I was so sure I’d never want again?
“I’d like to be left in peace.”
“Ahh. And so you shall be. In six days, or whenever my car is done, whichever comes faster.”
