Breathless Behaviour

11

Heath

Just when I think I have one less problem, one less thing to worry about, to cross off my list, ten more appear out of thin air or in this case, they appear in the form of a golden haired girl with a sunflower in hand.

Stopping just beyond sight, there she sits, golden strands framing her face, cheeks flushed red, lips wide, laughing at whatever Elliot just said. There she sits with her red shoes and jean clad legs, calm and relaxed, without a line of worry or tiredness lining her soft and warm features.

There she is and I hate it.

She sits as if she's the most innocent and unproblematic girl on the planet. As if she's done nothing and could do nothing of trouble, not even set a building on fire. She sits and smiles, an act, nothing but trouble wrapped in gold, with clear blue eyes and a smile that blinds.

For the past three days, she's gone back to cleaning the stables, not because it's all the work I can give her- I could make her feed the animals, milk the cows, fix the fences, tend to the gardens, work the pastures, so much work to have her exhausted by the end of the day, rethinking her entire life decisions- but making her do that would involve me having to watch her and I can't do that all day.

I have work to do too, more each day, from paperwork to tending the ranch. I have so much work that babysitting her falls at the last line on my list and one thing I can't do all the time. If I did, if I took her with me to all the places I had to go to, I'd never finish and end up with a headache each day.

She's too fucking much, running in my head even when she's not around.

Rubbing my jaw, I flick my gaze from her to Elliot, to the boy who most likely gave her the bright yellow flower- how or where he found it, I didn't know and I should because this was my land and I was supposed to know every inch- seeing him leaning towards her as if he was the flower and she were the sun, hypnotized by her and her plum lips.

In the more than five years I've known him, that he has worked for me, I've never seen him look at someone the way he's looking at her now.

Girls flirted with him, they talked about him, asked about him too yet out of all the girls who had made their interest be known in this awful town, all he has been was polite and kind, respectful. He hadn't dated- that I knew of- he didn't have friends- at least not close ones- and I had started to think he tipped the other way but it seemed his taste ran... familiar.

Shaking my head, it didn't matter, what I was seeing wouldn't happen.

It couldn't.

Looking down to nudge Aldo forward, I barely see him as he runs towards her the moment he hears her carefree laugh, knowing her. He eats up the space between them, moving effortlessly as if he hadn't just spent the last few hours running across uneven land, jumping on her knees just as he gets closer to her.

I hear a loud oomph the moment he lands on her, making her drop the sunflower to catch him, fingers digging into his sides as he licks her face, saying something I can't hear or read on her lips but seeing her bring him closer to her, smiling so widely before her head lifts enough, head twisting, eyes searching, a snap, finding me easily as if she knows where I stand.

She looks at me too much, stares too much to the point that it's no longer a small trickle but something bigger.

Like water coloured eyes, they shine under the last rays of the golden sun, her hands moving to rub Aldo but it's like second thought- I've studied people too long to know that her mind is somewhere else like her eyes that are on me, she's thinking of something but I don't know and I don't care.