Page 39 of Unlikely You

Something like thatI sent.

You should go to sleep. Get your rest so you can conquer the world tomorrow.

Fuck. Those simple words made me feel like I could bust through a wall. Like I could do anything.

Goodnight Honey.

Goodnight Bren.

I did not punchthrough a wall the next day. Not even close. Things went wrong from the start when I’d somehow burned my eggs. Then I saw the fabric that had been on back order that I’d been waiting for had a printing mistake in the pattern and there was no way I could use it. Then I got a nasty customer review for something that wasn’t even my fault and had to waste many precious minutes dealing with that.

I’d decided to order lunch from the fancy salad place that was way too expensive, but seriously delicious. They swapped my order with someone else’s, so by the time I got the right order, I was ravenous and would have eaten the cardboard container the salad came in.

The queen bee says hello.The message was accompanied by a video of Honey holding up a clear plastic clip that had a large bee in it. I’d take her word for it that that was the queen bee.It was wild that Honey would just handle bees with her bare hands.

Have you ever been stung?

Oh yeah, lots of times. I’m not allergic. Ellie says hello too.There was another video of the youngest girl, Ellie, waving.

HelloI responded because it would have been rude not to.

Okay, now I have to get the rest of this hive into this box. They’ve been living in an upturned baby pool.

I didn’t know why she’d reached out to me in the first place. I guess it was cool what she did. And I had watched a bunch of her other videos.

I went back to work and about an hour later she sent me a picture of a white beehive in the back of a truck and a hand flashing a thumbs up sign.

For a moment, I considered telling her that she didn’t have to give me constant updates. That I didn’t care what she was doing. That I was literally going to see her tomorrow, but I didn’t.

In their new home.

Another picture of rows of beehives from the farm.

Feeling weird and squirmy, I took a picture of my piles of fabric that I was pinning together with the foam for the ereader sleeves.

How long does it take you to make one?

I’d done some process videos on my social media and considered sending those to Honey, but I didn’t.

So I told her. I put my work aside and took pictures and even just sent her a video of me narrating because I didn’t want to type everything out.

Honey asked insightful questions and before I knew it, we’d been talking for a long time and I didn’t know how it had even happened.

I was helpless to defend myself against her, even when she wasn’t here with me. She’d crawled her way into my brain and had made herself cozy in the nooks and crannies and made it impossible to not think about her. I should be angrier about this kind of infection, but I wasn’t.

It was…nice. Having someone to talk to wasn’t horrible. She made me laugh and she was interested in what I said, and she was paying attention to what I said. She listened.

A little flame flickered in my chest as we kept talking and she sent me videos from the farm.

“These guys go bonkers for frozen peas. Watch.” She filmed a video of her cute ducks as she gave them bowls of frozen peas in water and they did seem very excited, making lots of noise and gobbling at the peas while Honey laughed.

Fuck, I wanted to pour that sound into my ears every single day. I wanted to absorb it into my skin. I wanted to drink it and breathe it into my lungs.

What was she doing to me?!

Chapter Fourteen

Honey

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