Page 15 of Unlikely You

She didn’t answer right away, so I just stared at my phone as I lay on my stomach in bed. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall asleep like this.

Hmmm, probably buy a house. Pay off my loans. All that practical shit.I frowned as I read her message.

And after you did all that, what would you buy? Not something you need, something youwant.

Biblio was a practical person, I knew, but there had to be something frivolous that she’d been aching to own.

Okay fine. I’d buy an old church that was falling apart and I’d fix it up and renovate it into a house. I’ve seen other people do things like that online and I think it would be amazing to do a project like that.

Wow. That was a completely unexpected answer. I liked it a lot.

I know it’s not super fancy like that, but there’s this set of ceramic spice jars that are shaped like little houses and they come as a set and I’ve always coveted them. Wanted to have them in my own kitchen.I did have a tiny kitchen in my apartment, but most of my cooking was done in the main house. Someday I might have my own big kitchen where I got to decide where everything went, and the space would be all mine. I could make pie crust with no one bothering me or stealing the fruit or asking me to stop and do something else.

I like your idea better, thoughI added.

Her idea was definitely better than mine.

Yours is much more attainable. I don’t think I’ll ever have that much money at my disposal.Nor would I, but I liked thinking about things like that.

Dropping the conversation with Biblio there, I called my aunt.

“It’s about damn time you called me, Honey Bunny.” She’d always called me that.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. How are you?”

She sighed. “Oh, I’m as good as can be expected. You don’t need to hear the laundry list of problems. I’m guessing since you finally got your act together to call me, something is on your mind.” Nothing got past Aunt Eileen.

Now it was my turn to sigh. “Just…life. Everything.” I told her how the farm was doing and how my siblings were and how my parents were, and she eventually interrupted me.

“That’s all well and good, but what aboutyou, my girl? What about you?”

Aunt Eileen had two kids, my cousins Jeremy and Brent, who were both at least five years older than me. They’d both gone away to college and lived in different states, Jeremy in Chicago with his partner and Brent all the way in Seattle. Since I still lived so close, she spent her extra attention on me.

“I have a crush on two people,” I blurted out.

“Hold on, this sounds like I’m going to need something.” I heard her rustling around and then the clink and swish as if she was pouring liquid into a glass.

“Okay, I’ve got my scotch.”

“Aunt Eileen! Are you allowed to have scotch?”

“You hush. I get enough scolding from my husband, leave me alone and tell me what’s going on.”

This woman was something else.

She listened as I told her about my crushes on Biblio and Bren. Aunt Eileen already knew about Biblio (just not the crush part) because I’d talked about her often enough. I hadn’t told her about Bren yet.

“Ohh, my girl, you’re in the thick of it, aren’t you?”

I laughed a little. “Yeah, I am.”

“Firstly, you don’t actually know if this Bren doesn’t like you. You’ve just decided that. And looks can be deceiving. You’ve only seen her when she’s at work.” That was true.

“If you saw me when I was working, you would have thought I was a raging bitch.” She paused for a moment. “You would have been right, but that’s not the point.” She cackled at her own joke and I snorted.

“You need to see her in a different environment. And maybe with someone else who can get the temperature of the interaction. That’s my advice. And if she really doesn’t like you? Then fuck her, she’s not worth your time and she has terrible taste. You are a damn angel, Honey. Anyone who can’t see that has something wrong with them.”

I choked on a breath, unable to think of anything to say to that for a few moments.

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