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Books don’t harvest crops or milk cows.
I fight the urge to run to her. To scoop her up and carry her away. But my angel never disappoints.
Seconds after her so-called best friend left her standing alone, she’s heading for the front of the field where I already know the old truck I re-built for her is parked. It may look rusty and run down, but it’s more reliable than any new car on the market, I made sure of it.
I tug my phone out of the front pocket of my overalls, flip it open and stare at the dark gray screen. I hate cell phones and computers. I don’t understand them or humanity’s need for constant input. The world has enough experiences to last a lifetime, just watch an Indiana sunset across a corn field after the rain.
Beauty is everywhere. But instead of enjoying it, everyone is turning into zombies looking at their phones, watching everyone else live instead of going out and doing it themselves.
Stupid.
I relented on cell phones when I gave Ruby the truck. No way was I risking her possibly being out of my sight and not having a way to call on me. So, outside of electricity at the house, an old console TV with rabbit ears that picks up the few local stations left broadcasting, these phones are the closest I come to technology.
My phone is silent in my hand. Ruby is the only number I have. The only number I need.
I pray for her calls. I need to be the one she comes to with everything. But after a minute of waiting, the lights of the truck pull out and down the dirt road toward town. All my senses are on high alert. She’s almost out of my sight.
I don’t bother trying to hide anymore. I barrel out of the woods toward my truck parked at the edge of the others. My boots hit the soft ground at a fevered pace as girls scream and the crowd shrinks back from the monster emerging from the dark trees.
I bear them no mind. No one on this earth exists for me except Ruby.
Thanks to the light drizzle, the hood of my truck is slick as I slide across, reaching for the handle on the driver’s door and swinging it open, heaving myself behind the wheel and roaring the engine to life, Following the dots of her red taillights down the pitch-black dirt road.
With my dick as hard as stone.
CHAPTER 3
Ruby
“Why am I so passive?” I hold the steering wheel at 10 and 2, just like Eli taught me as I lean into the curve in the road that goes passed old man Betre’s place.
I hold my breath for the next quarter mile because he’s just spread manure on his fields and for as many years as I’ve lived here, I can’t make myself inhale all those cow poop molecules floating in the air.
Do people know that’s what creates smells? It’s the molecules of whatever it is wafting around you to breathe in.
Rose petal scent molecules? No problem!
Eli’s famous apple pie baking in the oven molecules? Yum!
Cow turd molecules embedded in my lungs and passing over my tongue? I’m holding my breath.
At least as long as I can.
I nearly lose it around the hairpin turn but drag the truck back into the center of the dirt road, windows down, my hair flying around in front of my eyes as I see the first stop light that leads into town.
There’s only two on Main Street. One as you come into town, and one as you go out. Two blocks of the hustle and bustle of Mumford for me to explore while I wait for Marcy and David to do whatever they are going to do.
Why I agreed to let them run off and leave me there alone I’m not sure. I’m a sucker for love I guess.
Although…what marcy and David have I’m not so sure is love. More like riding the dopamine waves between break ups and make up sex. Whatever. I don’t judge.
The clock in the town square reads nine-thirty so I have to kill an hour before heading back to pick her up. I only hope her parents don’t wander through town and see me sitting alone in Mario’s Diner, and start wondering why she and I are not at the big ten-screen theater in Brashford, the next town over where my father and his family owned their farm.
That’s also where David is from. He got expelled from his high school for threatening his algebra teacher with bodily harm for giving him an F on his mid-term freshman year, and his parents had no choice but to enroll him at Mumford High.
That’s not the man of my dreams, at least. Mine is sitting at home watching Blue Bloods on a staticky 1980’s television while drinking horrible Folgers coffee and baking bread.
