Belle 15: I Hate You, Love Miranda

I was working out in the barn on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I was the only one able to do it, so I did. My dad was up state for an agriculture convention and my mom was sick from working in the rain yesterday. It was okay. It was the only thing keeping me from thinking about Brody.

The barn door suddenly closed. I turned quickly to see who or what made it shut.

“Hello?”

I could feel a presence in the barn, “Who’s there?”

I heard foot-steps, but a horse moved so I figured it was nothing short of a coincidence. I finished up feeding the horses and cows, then went inside.

The next day I got up early to milk the cows. When I opened up the barn, all over the rolled hay was on the ground like it exploded. I looked in the hay to see what caused this and I found pieces of glitter and sequence in the hay as I attempted to re-roll it myself, or at least clear it up a little bit. Once I swept up what I could of the hay, I figured it was going up on the second level anyway, so I stabbed a pitch-fork in the front, because I had to milk the cows now.

When I got to the last cow, Annie, there was a frilly pink note on the gate to her stall.

Here’s some work. Now you can stay away from my man. You’re welcome. I hate you. Love Miranda.

I had a feeling it was Miranda with the glitter and sequence in the hay. There wasn’t really a whole lot I wanted to do about it. I wanted her to think it was just part of my job here. But it kind of scared me that she knew he and I were still hanging out. At least making me work wasn’t the worst she could do.

After milking the cows, I let out the cows and horses into the fenced in field in front of the house, put some slop in the pigs’ trough, and fed the chickens before going back to start throwing hay up on the second level before church.

My mom and I went to church at the town Methodist church by the schools. It was an intersection where the middle school was on the left entering town, the high school was on the right, the elementary school was on the other side of the street on the left and the church was on the right corner where pre-school would averagely took place.

I’ve only been in town a few times a year, so town fascinated me, but didn’t interest me once I got there and remembered there were rules in town.

School and church were about as far in as I went in town. Anything else was a very special occasion.

After church, I went right back to work on cleaning up the hay. It took a couple hours just to get half of it up there. I went out front to hose off the sweat on my face.

“Hey.”

I looked up shaking the water out of my face. Brody.

“Hey.”

“Listen, Miranda told me what she did,” he looked ashamed, “I’m sorry. It was my fault. It really shouldn’t have gotten to that point.”

“It’s okay. It’s just work.”

“Well, would you like some help?”

Truthfully that sounded great, “Sure. Thank you.”

We worked through the afternoon to get everything back to normal in the barn and close it up. We hosed each other off after working so hard and started running around the front yard drying ourselves off in with the fireflies dancing around us.

Brody grabbed my hand and spun me under his arm whipping me around. I always felt so a live with him; like I was free to be energized and happy. He made me happy enough to laugh without true reason.

I kicked off my shoes and flannel work shirt and started dancing with the fireflies. Brody suddenly grabbed my waist holding me up above him, spinning around.

I felt so free with him. I had so much energy like love was an energy source. It was the most incredible feeling I’ve ever felt.

I did a back-walk-over out of his arms and another one after that. I have no idea how I learned how to do all this tricks, but I could do more than the cheerleaders at our school.

He high-fived me. That moment of us calming down made me realize we shouldn’t be doing this. Miranda would kill me, literally. I shouldn’t be teasing myself with this. I knew he wasn’t mine to savior moments with.

“We should go,” I stated feeling a heart-attack coming as it melted into a cold pool of gas about to take a flame. It killed me that I was this in love with him and he wasn’t mine to enjoy it with. I shouldn’t be enjoying him like this at all. It wasn’t right. I don’t care if I didn’t like Miranda, I was taught to do the right thing and this was wrong. I could be a friend, but I could play this game anymore in my mind thinking he’d soon choose me. He won’t. Miranda is a beautiful blonde and I was a red-headed southern belle unworthy of his tender love and care as much as I wanted to be. And even though Miranda probably wasn’t either, he had the choice in who was worthy enough to receive his love. And it wasn’t me. So I had to end it before anything happened.

He realized it too, “Yeah,” I suddenly felt his lips on my forehead. Too late. Something did just happen.

“I’ll see ya tomorrow morning.”

He acted like he did nothing wrong. I wasn’t sure if he knew how bad of a move that was. It was a lead-on. I wanted to enjoy it, but I couldn’t because it made me feel so guilty.