❝ To a Scorpio,
jealously is just love and hate
at the same time ❞
SOFT LIGHT TRICKLED through the curtains and gently coaxed me to open my eyes. When I did, I found that Cade was studying my face.
"She finally wakes," he said as he lay beside me and I was surprised to see him up. Usually I'd be the one to wake him up for work.
"What time is it?" I stretched my arms.
"Ten. But it's Sunday so we can stay in bed as long as we want," he pulled me back into his arms and I giggled.
"Sounds good to me."
The day was ours to claim. The sun was unblocked by the clouds so it was a perfect day to take a swim in the lake and soak in the rays. Or we could lounge on the grass and bask in the lush scenery. Or we could stay in each other's arms here in our bedroom, not saying anything because we were perfectly comfortable just being near one another.
The room was everything I could've hoped for. I couldn't believe we got lucky enough to live in our own apartment. It was a peaceful and intimate space where no one could invade our privacy.
Cade and I were finally in a place where we could just be ourselves. No hiding, no sneaking around, no constantly looking over our shoulders.
We had all the time in the world—
A splintering screech jolted me from my dream and I immediately hit my head on the low ceiling. I swore loudly, which made Cade flutter his eyes though he didn't wake, surprisingly.
It was all a dream.
In reality, it was six in the morning on a Tuesday and we had to be down by the fields for work in an hour.
I slipped back into bed and desperately tried to go back to sleep so I could live in my dreams forever.
Our new place was very. . . tiny.
If you counted the space taken up by the bed and windows, the room was thirty by thirty square feet. Basically the size of my bathroom. Which brought up another issue; there was only one bathroom and we had to share with a bunch of other people. So if we had to take a shower or a long poop (no judgement, it happened), we had to wait our turn unless we wanted to give them a show.
We couldn't afford any real furniture so we just threw our sleeping bags on the floor and hung a canopy on the slanted ceiling. Our room had an extremely low ceiling as you got closer to the window, which I forgot about so much that the top of my head was already bruised. It felt like we were living in someone's attic.
Both of us were too lazy to unpack so there was a pile of our bags behind the door. The only thing we took out was a lamp, some shoes, Cade's easel and art stuff, and my bow and quiver. Though we rarely had any free time for ourselves.
We spent most of our time outside working on the farm wherever Thom needed help. The trade off was that we'd do whatever he asked and in exchange, he'd let us live in one of his rooms for free. Sometimes he fed us food, too. It sounded like a good deal but he worked us like dogs; he expected us to work laboriously twelve hours a day for six days a week. It didn't take long for callouses to form on my hands and blisters to grow on my feet.
That piercing screech came again and my heart jumped. One of Thom's workers was probably feeding the animals. It was too early to get up, the sun had barely risen off the horizon, but I couldn't fall back asleep anymore.
Instead, I spent a few minutes staring at Cade's sleeping face. Okay, it may have been a little creepy since he didn't know I was doing it, but maybe he shouldn't leave his face so wide open like that. And how could I not not enjoy the view?
There were a few things I'd learned about Cade. One was that, like me, he was not a morning person. I came close to throwing cold water on his face just to get him to open his eyes, but I settled for throwing a cold towel on his face. Second, he was just as messy as me, though he claims it as "cozy". What I didn't understand was that he somehow remembered where he put every single item in his bags.
Thinking he'd overslept for long enough, I grabbed a paintbrush from his art drawer and swept the bristles under his nose. He sneezed immediately but didn't wake up.
My Gods, he was such a heavy sleeper.
Amping up my game, I put the brush in his left ear and twirled it around for a few seconds until he swatted at it and rolled away from me.
He blinked and when he saw that it was just me, he threw his pillow in my face.
"I thought there was a spider in my ear and it was going to eat my brains."
I laughed, "Nope, just me."
"What time is it?" He rubbed his eyes and looked out the small square window.
"We have half an hour."
He plopped back onto his sleeping bag and tried to pull the blankets to his face. But I grabbed them and threw them out of his reach.
"Come on, we have to get up."
"I bet no one would even notice if we didn't show up."
"At least open your eyes and sit up."
Slowly but surely, he listened but could barely keep his eyes open.
That's when I spotted something on the floor and picked it up. It was the fake ID we got from Thom, which we kept in our pillow cases. We hid our real ones under the floor.
"Don't forget your ID again." Before I threw it to him, I flipped it over to study it again, "Wow, I still can't get over how real Thom made these look. He has a real gift." The stamp was duplicated down to the last centimeter and even the corners were slightly bent to appear used.
"Yeah, I'm happy we found him."
"Does it feel weird not hearing your real name?"
"Not really. I go by my nickname so it's not that much different." He shrugged.
"Cade is just a nickname? What's your real name?"
"Cascade."
I didn't say anything and he shook his head.
"It's okay, you can laugh. That's why I go by Cade."
"Your full name is Cascade? Like cascading waterfalls or cascading rain?" I stifled a laugh.
"It's not as weird as other names, right, Charlize?" He shot back and I hated to admit it, but he wasn't wrong.
"Hey, I was named after my great-great-grandmother or something! What's your excuse?"
"I'm ninety-nine percent sure that my mom made up my name."
That's what I loved about him. We could talk for hours and there'd still be things I'd be learning for the first time.
"Ugh, we should get up. We have to meet Thom soon and there will probably be a line for the bathroom," I yawned again and tried to stand up but Cade grabbed my arm.
"Just stay a little longer,"
"Cade, as much as I'd love to sleep in, we have to get up." I was physically exhausted and my arms still hurt from the manual labor Thom subjected us to but it was a small price to pay. Free rent and the occasional free food was hard to come by.
"You're right. I just wish we had some time to ourselves."
"Me, too. Maybe once we save enough up we can ask for less work."
"I can't wait until that day."
We washed up and put on our clothes fairly quickly. After we made a quick bathroom trip outside, we made our way down to the fields where we always reported first thing in the morning.
It was another dreary day with clouds blocking the sun and fog concealing the sky. The complete opposite of a good day.
"Did you make any friends yet?" I asked him as we walked down the hill.
"Not even one." He said in his sleepy voice. He was definitely still half asleep.
"Yeah, they don't seem very talkative,"
We finally met up with the rest of the workers, where Thom split his workers up by experience; a more knowledgeable worker was always paired with a newbie. Which meant Cade and I were always apart. Ironic, wasn't it?
"Jaymie, you'll be chopping wood. Soleil, you'll be in the quarry."
Crap. Cade was so lucky, the lumber camp was only a mile away across the bridge while the cold, dark pit I had to report to was five miles away.
"I'll see you at lunch," I told Cade as we parted ways for the day.
"Have fun,"
I journeyed over to the quarry and met up with one of the older workers. The first thing I noticed about him was that there was no hint as to what sign he was. Nothing jumped out. He was just a guy with brown hair streaked with gray at the roots and sunglasses that covered his eyes.
"We'll start with digging today." He started walking at a pretty fast pace.
"I'm Ch-Soleil." Crap, I already messed up.
"Shasoleil?"
"Just Soleil. Sorry, I thought I was going to sneeze there. What's your name?"
He raised an eyebrow, "I'm Gary." Right off the bat I could tell he wasn't a very talkative person. So I guessed I had to carry this conversation on my own then.
"So how long have you worked here?"
"A couple months."
"And do you like it so far?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
It went like that for the whole way there. Everytime I asked a question he'd give me the blandest answer with nothing to go off of. Eventually, I got fed up and tried to ask him more daring questions just to see a reaction.
"So are you and Thom related? Best friends? Lovers?"
He snorted, "Not even close. He's just somebody I work for."
When we reached the quarry, we grabbed the shovels by the entrance and got to work. Digging holes into the ground was extraneous and boring I found out very quickly.
Maybe he was a Capricorn. Veronica and Bennett acted this way with me all the time. They just took a little longer to open up with. They also hated small talk, which was exactly what I needed to do before going into the deeper stuff.
"How'd you end up here anyways?"
"Dumb luck."
What did he mean by that? "Care to elaborate?"
"Look, let's just focus on the work at hand."
I had a feeling it was going to be hard making friends here. Probably just as hard as keeping our covers.
➷
Name one thing y'all are doing in quarantine. I'll start; I've been doing home workouts and I'm currently doing Chloe Ting's ab workouts which are a K I L L E R