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“Come on, then,” she said, stifling a sigh, and walked off the porch and towards the milking sheds.
“So there’s way less milk produced in winter,” she said, figuring she’d just talk until he had a question. “We’re lucky here; there’s still plenty of grass in the fields on top of supplemental feed. So winter isn’t great for profit — keep that in mind. Once spring starts along with the calving season, that’s when we’re run off our feet trying to get all the extra milk pasteurized…”
She turned her head to look back at him, to make sure he hadn’t fallen behind, only to find him tapping away at his phone.
“Am I boring you?” she asked, feeling like a schoolteacher. An angry one. He wasn’t taking this seriously at all, was he?
Brendan looked up from his phone, thumbs still hovering above the screen. He grinned at her innocently.
“Just taking notes,” he said. “Not texting friends, don’t worry. You can check if you like?”
He held the phone out to her, and a quick glance showed that he was telling the truth. There were bullet points outlining what she’d just said.
Winter = less milk
Need grass AND feed
Calving season busy
Nicole felt her neck flush, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Brendan shrugged, but still had a sly little smile on his face at having caught her out. “No problem. Don’t worry; you have my undivided attention.”
Nicole turned back around and kept trudging towards the sheds, knowing there wasn’t really anything she could say to salvage putting her foot in it so badly. She just honestly hadn’t expected him to actuallylisten. There wasn’t going to ever be a chance of convincing him to sell her back the farm if she was constantly rude to him. She needed to think of the long game.
Brendan caught up with her to walk by her side, which didn’t take too long considering how long his legs were compared to hers.
“So I take it you’re more of a notebook-and-pen kind of notetaker than the digital kind,” he said, sounding perfectly chirpy now that he was actually fully awake.
“I’m the ‘just remember it’ sort of kind,” Nicole said, avoiding a particularly deep puddle. “Got a photographic memory, so, yeah sorry. I kind of forget other people need to write things down.”
“Really?” he asked, an interested lilt in his voice. “You can just remember everything, just like that?”
Nicole thought he might have been mocking her, but Brendan was looking down at her with rapt attention. She really did need to work on her general distrust of the human population. She didn’t know this guy; maybe he really was genuinely interested.
She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t need to have things repeated to me, never need to write anything down. It came in handy through high school. Didn’t have to study too hard when you could read the textbook once and remember every word.”
“Sounds exhausting,” said Brendan.
“Usually people are jealous,” she said, surprised.
“Forgetting can come in handy sometimes.”
“Well, this is all a little too philosophical for me this early in the morning,” she said, grateful that they had made it to the sheds, the cattle already collected and ready for their morning milking, some of them already in the stalls and the process underway. She flipped the switch for the lights, which slowly flickered on, a few of the nearer cows blinking at them placidly.
“So I suppose if I were to ask if we sit down on little stools and milk them one by one, that would get me kicked off the farm pretty much immediately?” Brendan asked with a bright smile. Nicole rolled her eyes at him, which she was sure was the reaction he’d been angling for.
If only it were that easy to get him to leave…
“No,” she said pointedly, even though he only grinned wider. It was like having a little brother hanging around again, enjoying riling her up far too much. She wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction.
“These machines,” she said, pointing to the tubes, hoses and tubs lined up by each of the open stalls, “they do all the milking. It’s all automatic.”
Brendan stopped tapping notes into his phone to dodge out of the way of a cow that was making her way to a stall. He was so wary of the animals that it was comical, as if he thought they might bite him or something.
“Automatic. Right…” he said, turning his attention back to Nicole.
“My dad invested a frankly ridiculous sum of money into these milking machines,” she explained to him, trying to keep the tang of regret out of her voice. Her dad had been convinced that the return on the spur-of-the-moment investment would be astronomical, and, well, it hadn’t been. Not by a long shot. That had been the beginning of things properly going downhill.
