You, Me, and Her

Chapter 2: The Farmer

Blood trickled down my finger and curved around the soft skin of my palm, drawing a gasp between my clenched teeth. I slammed my knife down on the cutting board and ran for the sink, catching any falling crimson with my other hand before plunging them both under the cool running faucet.

"Haley, how fast were you slicing that bread?" Emily gasped, rushing over to the kitchen to assess the injury.

"I just lost focus, it's fine." I ripped a few paper towels off the roll and gripped the small cut tightly. It would be fine in a few minutes, nothing bad enough to worry about, but it had me seething.

I'd switched jobs twice in the past six months, having been hit by layoffs the first time, and then an inappropriate manager the second, and now was scraping by in a customer service role for a seafood company with awful hours and worse pay.

Amid the job struggles, I hadn't heard from my parents since they crossed the border into a country I hadn't even heard of before, and Emily had been progressively getting on my nerves with her loud music, weird meditation podcasts, and her large collection of rocks. There were damn rocks and crystals sitting in every window, countertop, garden plot, and even on top of the refrigerator.

My love life was dead, and Alex was busy with his grandparents most days, leaving me with few options for fun things to do after my lengthy, drool-inducing shifts at my bedroom desk.

And then, to top it all off, I'd been pricking, bumping, tripping, and now cutting myself on everything lately! My head was just not in it and every little ounce of physical pain was exemplifying the emotional and mental pain I was nearly unable to handle anymore.

"I'm not even hungry," I grunted, shoving the freshly baked loaf into the bread box and retreating to the living room. I snatched my jacket off the hook and headed for the door, no longer feeling comfortable in the stiffness of my childhood home.

"You're leaving?" Emily called from the kitchen, where she started gathering ingredients to make herself dinner since I would no longer be doing that for her.

I nodded and slipped my brown riding boots over my dark jeans. It was still too cold out for just a blouse, but thankfully warm enough for just a light jacket. Spring was abnormally late this year, with chilly winter winds persisting until late April. I was ready for the warmth of summer again. The sun would do me some good.

"I'll be back in a bit." I closed the door behind me and shook out my limbs in the breezy air. I had been finding joy in my daily walks around the valley, now that I had carved out a path that prevented me from being seen by any of my annoying neighbors. I dipped down by the river and followed it until I hit the edge of a thick woods, then pushed upwards through some abandoned farmlands until I eventually wrapped around the carpenter's house and followed the river back towards my own. I didn't mind when the carpenter was out, she was kind and intelligent and knew when to say hi or keep to herself, but she was much too grown for us to be real friends.

I had spent a lot of time hiking out in the mountains through the past autumn, and really got to enjoy the natural landscape around me, but once winter hit and snow covered pretty much everything, I hung up my hiking boots and carried on along my riverside path for my daily ounce of cardio.

I flipped a smooth, cream-colored stone over with the toe of my boot and watched how it tumbled into the running water. It was washed away in an instant, sent downstream so quickly I lost sight of it immediately. I reached the bend of the river and took a sharp turn north, where I stomped through weeds and trees until I made it to my favorite part of the trail.

There was a large clearing just along the edge of the woods where a large carved stone sat peacefully in the middle. Thin wooden roots and fluffy moss wrapped around the edges of the stone, leaving a perfectly shaped gap at the top where the initials H + L were deeply engraved into it. I could tell the letters were carved by hand, with the roughness of the unpolished linework, but it only made it appear more beautiful. The love between H and L was strong enough to last so long throughout the years, somehow persuading the foliage around it to leave it exposed where their love could shine forever.