But now, with the truck breaking down, it’s like there’s this huge variable—a giant, ugly X—that just dropped from the sky straight onto my head, and I don’t know how to fix it. I haven’t come up with a solution. All I’ve done is given myself an almost sleepless night and stress-filled morning. I wish my thoughts would unknot themselves and move in a dang straight line.
“Becki?”
“Argh!” I nearly drop the shovel as I jump clean up in the air. I pivot around to find Finn behind me. Dang him and his silent footsteps. Who can walk so quietly in big chunky boots like his anyway?
“I just wanted to let you know I put the parts in and started her up, and she’s running fine. Everything’s good.”
Well, until it’s not. Until the next thing happens, and the next thing. And the next. I don’t know how to deal with any of that.
“Becki?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I release my grip on the shovel, which I’m practically brandishing like a medieval version of a comfort blanket.
Finn rubs his grease-stained hands on his jeans. “Now that the truck is taken care of, what would you like me to do? I can weed, cut grass, weed whack, and clean whatever you’d like. I never did get to pet Tulip yesterday, so I could do that. Because I’ve been thinking about it, and you’re right. I need to get over my fears. I mean, just because chicken feet are scaly and they have these strange looking peckers, I mean beaks, doesn’t mean they’re that scary, right?”
“Yeah,” I rasp.
Oh dear freaking chickens. My eyes are starting to prickle, and my nose feels like it’s going to explode. It feels like someone jammed a bunch of dirt or pepper up at the top that I need to sneeze out. My lips are wobbling, and no amount of biting the inside of my cheek or biting down on them is going to stop. The prickling gets worse, and it’s like hay fever in full swing, minus the hay and the fever.
I’m going to cry, the kind of tears that threaten to come straight down like a torrential downpour—the drowning, ugly, unstoppable, and wretched kind of crying that a person should only ever do in private.
“Shoveling would be great.” I toss Finn the shovel so fast that he barely gets his hand out to catch it in time. I rush past him, rubbing at my eyes and trying to stop the flow until I’m in the house and can get to the shower and get the spray going hard enough to pretend it’s not happening. Or at least wash away the evidence.
I run blindly out of the barn as fast as I can with my huge boots on. It’s more of a walk-run that involves a lot of scrape, scrape, scrape of the toes, thwomp, thwomp, thwomp of the chunky heels, and sniffle, sniffle, sniffle, although I can’t blame that part on my footwear.
I burst inside, shed my boots at the entrance onto the poor rug that was long ago sacrificed for my gross-ass footwear, and head straight down the hall. I’m blinded by the tears that are already coming, but I could find the bathroom blindfolded. I shut the door roughly, make sure it’s locked, shed my clothes, and hurtle straight into the shower.
The warm spray washes away absolutely none of the crap that’s been tumbling over and over in my head all day, but it does feel good. At least it washes away the dirt and grime of the morning, if not the dirt and grime of my mind. I know it’s just a truck, and we got it taken care of, or rather, Finn did, but Finn isn’t going to be here forever. Next time I’m going to be majorly pooched when it comes to trying to fix something on my own.
Finn won’t be here forever.
That thought rebounds through my head and hits me smack dab in the brain. I feel like one of those people in the videos that are always online, with all the mess up and screw-ups and stunts and crap that went wrong. I feel like I just hurled a ball at a brick wall with the intention of catching it in some fancy manner for the camera, and instead, it hit me straight in the nose.
Except this ball hit me right in the chest. Right in the feels, if you want to get real cheesy about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I’m pathetic. Not only am I crying about legit worries, but I’m also crying because my lady bits want more action, and I’ve cut them off. It’s more complicated than that, but you know.
I end the shower when the water starts getting cold, which in this place is about fifteen minutes. It makes me wonder about the water heater, which brings me back on the disastrous thoughts track yet again, which gets the tears flowing all over.