Page 3 of Growing Into Love

Hey, how is Daphne doing?

Daphne is one of our alpacas. She got some sort of stomach bug and Jaz had to give her a dose of tetracycline the other day.

Much better,I reply.Her poo is looking normal now.

Glad to hear!

I wish I didn’t have to talk about poo with him. Not that Jaz cares. Or myself really—when you grow up on a farm, you learn to deal with a lot of shit. Still, I wonder what it would be like if he texted me just to check in. See how I was doing. Not because an alpaca has diarrhea or because my brother is out of town.

How’re things with you?I ask.

Mrs. Pritz brought Godiva in—she looks just about to give birth.

Mrs. Pritz is a nice old lady and Hart’s Crossing’s resident matchmaker. Godiva is the golden retriever she adopted last fall but clearly no one told her the sweet girl hadn’t been spayed.

Any guesses on who the proud papa is?I ask.

Suppose we’ll find out when we see the pups.

I stare at my phone for a moment, trying to come up with something charming or witty to say.

“Sex-y text, sex-y text,” Zara chants.

“What are you on about?” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t think I couldn’t tell who that was. Here’s what I think you should say—Jaz, I want to wrap my ridiculously long legs around you and feel your—”

“Do not say hot throbbing cock again,” I say, blushing.

Zara grins. “Tumescent member?”

“Ugh that’s worse,” I say, and we both laugh.

“At least you’ll know one way or the other. And then you can either move forward in happy, romantic, Jaz-filled bliss, or you can move on. Find someone new.”

It’s not like I’ve never been with anyone—just never anything serious. I’ve never felt the sparkle that I do when Jaz is around. That wriggly-tummy, throat-clenching, heart-fluttering need for another person.

“You say that like it’s easy,” I point out. “I tell him how I feel, he says he doesn’t feel the same—”

“Why are you so sure he’ll say that?”

“If he had feelings for me, why does he keep going back to Theresa?”

“He doesn’t go back to her,” Zara points out. “She traps him in her grasp and then buggers off. If he knew there was another, sexier, kinder, hotter, more amazing option on the table…” She gives me a significant look.

“Don’t you think if he saw me that way, he would have said something by now?”

Zara puts down the baby’s breath she’d been arranging with the roses. “You’ve had feelings for him for years and never said anything.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just is.”

I don’t want to admit that sometimes, I feel like I’m cursed. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. Like I broke our family and I’m not deserving of love.

Because I’m the reason Mum died.

---