by Amira Rain
However, I wasn’t in the mood to have anything impressed upon me. In fact, I wanted Jim to just leave me the hell alone.
Breaking eye contact with him, I folded my arms across my chest. “You can just go. I was woken up at three in the morning, and I think I’d like to unpack, and then finally try to get some more sleep.”
Going around me, Jim took a few more steps into the living room and set my duffel bag beside the couch. “That’s fine.”
“And, in fact, I’ll probably be resting and unpacking the whole day tomorrow, so I’d appreciate it if I didn’t see you at all.”
“That’s fine.”
“You can just leave me alone for the whole day tomorrow.”
“Great.”
Jim had green eyes. When he’d been in the small, dimly-lit foyer, I’d thought of them as a dark, jewel green, but now, as he moved from the living room back to the foyer, they seemed to change shade, becoming more of a mossy green, or a hunter green. A green with just the faintest hint of gold.
“I’ll be sure not to disturb you in your setting up of your easel tomorrow.”
With my blood instantly boiling, though I didn’t even know exactly why, I just sputtered for a couple of seconds. “You damn well better not. And if you do—if you even dare—I’ll kick you out of this cabin so fast your—”
“You’ll kick me out of this cabin I built?”
Like earlier, Jim’s mouth was now twitching with amusement. And despite my anger, I couldn’t help but notice what a perfect mouth he had, what a sensuous mouth. With a bottom lip about twice as full as the upper, it was a perfectly proportioned mouth, one that seemed to beg for a kiss, I realized with a strange mix of shock and something that felt like shame.
“Yes. Yes, I’ll kick you the hell out of this cabin that you built. Because it’s my cabin now. And you are...” Struggling mightily, I lifted my gaze from his lips to his eyes. “You are so not welcome here.”
After lifting his broad shoulders in a shrug, Jim opened the front door. “Fair enough. This is your cabin now.”
“You’re damned right it is.”
“But just so you know, if you need anything, I’m just two cabins away. My cabin is the last to the north.”
This conciliatory comment kind of slowed me in my angry tracks a little, so I said nothing.
Heading out the door, Jim gave me a last look over his shoulder. “Goodnight, Avery. Or good morning. Whatever way you want to see things.”
And then he was gone, closing the door behind him.
With my anger and irritation already cooling, I just stood in the living room, hugging my ribs. I knew I’d been rude. I knew I’d sounded like a complete brat. However, I really hadn’t liked being told that I was going to participate in training exercises with the rest of the Timberliners. As far as I was concerned, me doing so would be pointless. Since I was never going to actually fight the Angels, it seemed like I may as well just stay out of everyone’s way while they practiced.
After a few moments spent just kind of huffing, trying to muster my previous level of anger and indignation but not quite able to do it, I grabbed my duffel bag and went off to find the bedroom; which wasn’t that hard, being that the cabin was fairly small. It was just a short walk down a hallway that led from the living room. Across from the sparsely-furnished bedroom was a laundry room with washer, dryer, and wire-rack shelving unit, and next to the laundry room was a bathroom with beautiful cabinetry made from the same light, honey-colored wood as all the flooring in the cabin. The wood-planked walls throughout the cabin were a little darker, a warm shade close to amber.
After unpacking my big duffel bag, I went out to explore the kitchen, which, along with the living room and foyer, was part of an open floor plan. The only thing separating the kitchen from the living room was an unusual ledge-slash-bookcase, with a few potted ferns on top and at least a hundred books lining the shelves. Anchored to the wall, it provided a nice divider for the living and eating spaces, not to mention that it was just pretty to look at. Like everything else about the rustic, cozy cabin, I loved it.
A quick look in the fridge and pantry revealed them both to be fairly well-stocked, and, realizing I was a bit hungry, I had thoughts about making something for breakfast. However, looking out one of a couple of windows in the kitchen and seeing that the dark sky was giving way to pale, pre-dawn light, I ultimately decided against it. Not surprisingly, considering the stress and upheaval I’d been through, and how early I’d been awoken, I was exhausted, and I felt like I should try to catch an extra hour or two of sleep while I could. I had no way of knowing when the movers would be arriving with all my possessions later that day, and I didn’t want to be zonked out when they did.
I quickly got ready to sleep, changing into pajamas and brushing my teeth for the second time that night. Except that this time, it was actually morning, technically. The first time I’d went to bed was beginning to feel like days earlier, though it had only been about seven hours.
My bed, which had a headboard made from the same polished, rough-hewn timber as the coffee table in the living room, was incredibly comfortable; not two minutes after I’d pulled the thick comforter over myself, I was out like a light.
A few hours later, I was awoken by the sound of a loud boom coming from somewhere in the cabin. Or, at least, I thought it had been a boom, but coming out of some hazy dream, I couldn’t really be sure. Maybe the sound I’d heard had been part of the dream.
With my eyes open a crack, I saw that it was somewhere around eight or nine, probably, judging by the bright sunshine streaming in through cracks in the sage green curtains. Opening my eyes fully, I slowly sat up. Almost instantaneously, I heard another boom from somewhere in the cabin, though this was a quieter boom. Just a little boom. But now I could tell that someone was definitely in my cabin, a thought that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Being that I was pretty sure that Jim would have the decency to knock, I had no idea who the intruder could be. It seemed like the movers would have the decency to knock, too.
After silently rolling out of bed, I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, then crept over to my bedroom door, which was half-ajar. There, I hesitated, wondering if I should dial 911. On one hand, this was my knee-jerk reaction upon hearing an intruder in what was now my home, and it seemed like a wise action. But on the other hand, I wondered if Timberline was outside of regular Ridgewood law enforcement’s jurisdiction. Also, it seemed like it probably might be quicker and easier to just summon help from the former sheriff of Ridgewood, who was just two cabins away. I didn’t have his phone number, though.
Several long seconds ticked by while I debated. Ultimately, I decided to just call out through my bedroom door and listen for a response. If someone answered and I didn’t like the sound of it, for whatever reason, or if I heard nothing, indicating the intruder probably meant me harm and was trying to stay hidden, I supposed I could just escape the cabin through a bedroom window, hopefully before the intruder reached me.
A quick peek beyond the door frame told me that the intruder wasn’t in the living room, or at least they probably weren’t, because I had a view of most of it, and I couldn’t see anyone. The intruder had to be in the kitchen. Just after my peek, more noise, the sound of footfalls I was pretty sure, confirmed my thinking.
I knew calling out probably wasn’t the most cautious thing to do, but I was just going to do it, unable to bear the thought of escaping out a window to run to Jim’s, only to have the both of us discover that the intruder in my cabin was just a mover.
More noise from the kitchen spurred me into action, and finally, with my heartbeat racing a bit, I took a deep breath, cupped my hands around my mouth, and called out to the intruder.
“Who’s out there?”
Almost immediately, I received a response, and it wasn’t quite what I’d been expecting.
*
Although I had really thought that a criminal intruder in my
cabin was a possibility, in my gut I just hadn’t felt like a criminal could be lurking around Timberline without Jim knowing about it. So, when I’d called out, I’d really been expecting to hear a male voice, the voice of one of the movers who was supposed to be bringing my stuff. But the voice I’d just heard replying to me with a cheerful hello and a good morning definitely hadn’t sounded like a mover’s, and it wasn’t a male voice at all. It was the voice of a female, and a very young one, from what it had sounded like, maybe even a young girl; at the oldest, a teenaged girl. And now, before I could respond to her hello and good morning, this mystery young female called out again.
“It’s just the breakfast patrol out here! Good morning!”
Jim hadn’t mentioned anything about a “breakfast patrol.” I wasn’t even sure exactly what a “breakfast patrol” was. While I wracked my brain, trying to think if Jim had said anything about breakfast at all, maybe something I hadn’t really been paying attention to at the time, the member of the “breakfast patrol” called out to me again.
“All sorts of good breakfast things going on out here! Just come on out and see! Doesn’t even matter if you’re still in your pajamas, I’m still in mine. Just come on out here and see what the breakfast patrol has got cookin’!”
Thoroughly mystified, but not knowing what else to do, I followed the voice’s instructions and made my way out to the kitchen. There, to my surprise, I found the little redheaded girl I’d seen in Ridgewood before. Now at a much shorter distance, I could see that she wasn’t exactly a little girl; her face made me think she was somewhere in her middle teen years. She was definitely little, though, standing only an inch or two over five feet tall, if that, and she couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds soaking wet.
Standing at a small, butcher-block island in the middle of the kitchen, she looked up from a carton of eggs with a smile. “Good morning! Do you like scrambled eggs?”
It looked like she had scrambled eggs all over the front of her pale pink pajama top, though they were uncooked. It looked like at least a half-dozen eggs had been pelted at her, or she’d smashed them all over herself, though I couldn’t understand why she might have done that. I couldn’t quite understand why this girl was in my kitchen, either.
Seeming to notice my gaze on her top, the girl pulled it out to inspect it herself. “I guess I could just about take my top off and swirl it around in the pan to make eggs! See, I was carrying the carton under my arm when I was climbing through the window, but I also had a ton of other junk I was carrying, and it messed up my coordination skills. When I came through the window, I kind of came through headfirst, and my body landed on the eggs. There’s still two left, though, that didn’t get smashed, and there’s still some egg mixture left that didn’t ooze out of the carton. I figure we can still make a little pan full of eggs. We’ve still got some blueberry muffins that I brought, too. Even though those got a little bit smashed, too, but they’re still fine.”
Not sure how to respond to my chatty little visitor, I just looked at her for a long moment. “Why did you say you broke in here, again?”
“Oh, remember? I’m the breakfast patrol!” She paused to tighten the crooked ponytail near the top of her head. “I heard a new neighbor moved in here last night, so I came in here to make you breakfast, for a surprise.”
“And you didn’t want to knock?”
“Nope. More fun this way. More of a surprise.”
Again, I just briefly looked at the petite redhead standing at the island, deciding that I really liked her. “So, you say there’s still two eggs left?”
With bright sunlight bathing her right cheek in a golden glow, she broke into a grin. “Yup. We still got two eggs. I brought a little bag of ham cubes and a little bag of cheese so we can make ‘loaded’ scrambled eggs, too.” Still grinning, she began taking various plastic bags out of a paper bag next to the carton of eggs. “Here we’ve got our muffins, and here we’ve got our cheese—oh, and here’s some little baby tangerines I brought for us, too. I forgot about those.” After setting the bag of tangerines in the island, she rummaged around in the paper bag some more, frowning. “I’m not sure where our little bag of ham went. Maybe it fell out when it was climbing through the window, and if it did, I bet Marbles got it.”
“Who’s Marbles?”
“Oh, that’s my dog. But, actually, he’s not really a dog at all. He’s actually a real, live angel from heaven wrapped up in a golden retriever’s body. I was gonna bring him in here, too, but your windows are kind of high, and once I got in, I shut the window and the screen again so he wouldn’t be tempted to try to jump in after me, because I was afraid he’d hurt himself. He’s ten or something, so he’s not exactly the same leaper he used to be when he was a super young guy. He still has a big appetite, though. He still has a big, slobbering appetite for ham in particular. And I bet he’s having himself a really nice breakfast of ham right now.” The girl left the island and went over to the window behind the dining area table, sidestepping a large puddle of raw scrambled eggs on the floor to look outside. “Yup. He is. Got the bag open and figured out how to just stick his little snout right inside to gobble up the ham. He’s a smart guy, that’s for sure.”
Returning to the island, the girl said we should just go ahead and start making our breakfast, and I said okay, but to just let me make a trip to use the restroom and brush my teeth.
When I returned to the kitchen, the girl was busy cracking eggs into a pan on the stove. She’d already set the table, and I walked over to it to examine a little clear glass bud vase she’d set in the center. It was filled with water and what appeared to be grass clippings. Though maybe all of the grass hadn’t been exactly clipped; some of it still had dirt clinging to the roots, as if it had been pulled right out of the ground.
Now wearing a red-and-white checked apron over the egg mess on her pajama top, the girl turned from the stove and saw me looking at the grass-stuffed bud vase. “Do you like it?”
I nodded. “I do. It’s really interesting.”
I really did like it, and it really was really interesting.
The girl beamed. “Thanks. See, I was gonna put a flower in the little vase, but then when I left my cabin, I realized that it’s still way too early in the spring for the wildflowers yet. But then, I thought that I didn’t want to set a vase on the table with just water in it, so...”
Somehow tickled by her logic, I smiled. “So, you picked some grass.”
She smiled in return. “Yup. I mean... grass is still a growing, living thing, right? It’s still beautiful to look at, right?”
Smiling, I agreed that it was, and I really meant it.
Just then, there was a knock at the front door.
Frowning, the girl looked from the living room to me. “If that’s someone else here to make you breakfast, tell them that it’s already being done, and to just go away. I’m gonna be your first friend in town. Okay?”
“Well, don’t worry about that. No matter who’s at the door, and no matter what they want, you’re already my first friend in town.”
Knitting her gingery brows, the girl fixed me with a skeptical sort of look. “Do you really mean that?”
I did, and I nodded, giving her what I hoped was a comforting little smile. “Yes. I really mean that. You’re my first friend in town.”
Considering the way we’d left things hours earlier, I didn’t exactly see Jim as my friend.
In response to what I’d said, the girl grinned. “This is awesome. See, no one else in town really likes to be friends with me. Well, Jim is my friend, but he’s busy a lot. But I really mean that none of the other girls like to be friends with me. And I don’t mean that they’re mean to me because most of them aren’t, but some of them are friendly to me, but in a way that people are friendly and nice to little kids, but without really being their friend, if you get what I mean.”
“I think I do.”
“They basically just let me hang around someti
mes, but they never really want to do anything with me, like hang out, or go get ice cream in Ridgewood just like real friends or anything. No one else even likes me to come on in through their windows to surprise them by making breakfast or anything. No one else really even likes the breakfast patrol even a little bit.”
With my liking of the girl growing, I smiled. “Well, I’ll go get ice cream with you sometime. And as far as the ‘breakfast patrol’ well, it’s already made my morning very interesting and fun.”
The girl grinned. “And surprising, right? You were way surprised.”
I smiled. “I definitely was.” I was really glad I hadn’t dialed 911 or escaped the cabin in search of Jim.
I’d just opened my mouth to ask the girl exactly how old she was, and how old the other “girls” that didn’t really want to be her friends were, when a knock sounded on the front door again. I’d really forgotten all about the first one. Moving from the kitchen to the living room, I told the girl I’d be right back.
“Okay, but just remember that you’re not accepting anyone else to make you breakfast right now.”
“Okay.”
When I opened the door, I found a tallish, slim brunette with dark brown eyes standing on the front porch. With her arms folded across her chest, she unclenched her jaw just long enough to speak.
“Hello. By any chance, is there a little redhead causing some sort of mess or destruction in your cabin right now?”
Wondering why exactly this young woman seemed to be so angry, I glanced over my shoulder to the kitchen. “Well there’s a member of the ‘breakfast patrol’ fitting the description of ‘little redhead’ in my kitchen right now.”
The brunette closed her eyes briefly, jaw tightly clenched. “I apologize. She is very difficult to contain, and I made the mistake of turning my back on her for about five seconds. If you’ll let me come in, I’ll have her out of your hair right away.”
Without waiting for a response from me, the brunette breezed right by me and into the cabin, making a beeline for the kitchen, where my little breakfast-maker was turned away from the stove, frowning and holding a fork dripping with egg yolk. It almost looked like she was brandishing it like some sort of a weapon, like she thought she might need one. After shutting the door, I followed the brunette into the kitchen, beginning to say something about how I was glad to be having breakfast made for me, but she cut me off, addressing the little redhead, hands on hips.