“Why didn’t I just stay in Austin after graduation?” I mumbled to myself.
Eight years ago, I had the opportunity to work for a marketing conglomerate. Amazing pay, condo in Austin, the ultimate in single living. Instead, I moved back to Hunt and started working for my parents’ business. The Mercantile.
The Mercantile was my mother and father’s dream. A general store in my hometown of Hunt, Texas. To my folks, it was more than simply a store. It was where families went on Sunday after church for some of my momma’s homemade fudge. Or to grab a chocolate milkshake from the fountain bar Daddy had put in a year after they opened. I’d grown up in that store. I couldn’t remember a time before I was running around that place. My parents kept a vintage vibe to the interior. It had the whole 1950s feel to it but with a splash of modern mixed in. I worked there in high school and during the summers when I was home from college. It had quickly become not only my folks’ dream, but mine as well.
I loved it and knew it would always be a part of my life. It was home.
“Charlie! Charlie, no! Rowdy, you stop chasing that goose!”
With a heavy sigh, I threw the blankets off and walked to the front door. After moving back in with my parents after college, it didn’t take me long to realize I needed a place of my own. My folks owned a hundred acres of land along the Guadalupe River. The small house I had taken over used to belong to the foreman my granddaddy had hired to take care of the cattle. Although we no longer had cattle on the ranch, we did have an impressive barn filled with expensive horses: a hobby my daddy had inherited from his daddy and then passed down to me. The only time I felt free from life’s problems was when I was on a horse.
I swung open my front door and walked out on my porch. My mother stood near the natural pond that was on this part of my family’s property. She was at the edge, shouting. Rowdy, my Plymouth Rocks rooster that my best friend Heather had given me two years ago for my birthday, chased after the geese.
“Do not take the bread straight from my hands, Charlie!”
“Momma!”
She turned and smiled. Rowdy came running toward me, on a mission to get me to the hen house. “Kynslee, sweetheart! You’re awake! Happy birthday!”
“Yes. It’s hard to sleep when you’re out here yelling at the damn geese!”
“Language, Kynslee Marie! And you’ve slept nearly the entire morning away. It’s your birthday and your father and I want to take you out to eat.”
I rolled my eyes. If I knew my momma, it was most likely around nine in the morning, if it was even that late.
“And don’t roll your eyes at your momma!”
My mouth fell. “You can’t even see me from that far away. How do you know I rolled my eyes?”
With a wave of her hand, she headed back toward the main house. “I’m a mother. I know it all,” she tossed over her shoulder, adding, “See you in a few! And do me a favor, dress in something pretty. I have a feeling today is your lucky day. Lucky thirty and all.”
A wrenching sense of doubt hit me. Or was that dread? Adulthood was staring me squarely in the eye and saying “tick-tock, tick-tock.”
Thirty. I was thirty. Still single and still trying to figure out the meaning of life. Okay, no need to get all serious and reflective just because I was officially out of my twenties.
“My lucky day? What do you mean?” I called out. She just laughed out loud, ignored me, and kept on walking.
I shut the door and dragged my hungover ass to the bathroom. I needed to wake up. After a hot shower, I stood in front of my closet and stared at my clothes. Any other day I would grab jeans and a T-shirt, then add my favorite cowboy boots and be set.
“Lucky day, my ass. I’m going to end up old and single with a bunch of cats,” I mumbled, peeking in the mirror at Whiskey, my orange tabby. He was my life. My main man. The guy I would most likely be spending my nights with since I was now thirty and not married. I had adopted Whiskey last year on my twenty-ninth birthday. When Miles had called me that night, like he did every year on my birthday, he helped me pick the name. The funny thing was, I hated whiskey—the drink, not the cat. This damn cat I loved more than anything.
As if on cue, Whiskey made his way over. He was normally very loving in the mornings, when he wanted food, that is. Then he spent the rest of his day attempting to catch the birds through the window. It might have been slightly mean to hang a birdfeeder right outside, but it gave us both some much-needed entertainment.