One of the Guys (9 page)

           
Hoping her idea would work, she ran
back out into the yard. To her dismay, it was starting to drizzle again.

           
Chris had gotten Lunch to the gate,
but the pig didn’t want to seem to enter the yard. Kate tossed him the head of
lettuce, which he quickly started to unwrap. With her hands full of food, she
burst through the palmettos, feeling her arms getting scratched by the fronds. She
hurried to the clearing where Breakfast was snuffling around in the dirt and
tore open the bag of bread. “Hey, Breakfast!” she called, approaching the pig
calmly. “Check this out!” she tossed a slice of bread so that it landed on the
ground just to the right of the pig’s snout.

           
Breakfast sniffed the piece of bread
and gobbled it up, then quickly lifted her head to see if Kate had any more. Kate
ripped a piece of bread in half and tossed it in front of Breakfast. The pig
turned and started making her way towards Kate. Slowly walking backwards, Kate
kept tossing a trail of bread pieces and Breakfast followed her, gobbling them
up.

           
As she reached the gate, Chris
jogged up to her, his face and t-shirt smeared with dirt. “Lunch headed right
for the garden,” he said, gasping for breath.

           
Kate whirled around. “What?”

           
Chris threw his hands up helplessly.
“It was like as soon as she saw it, she took off.”

           
Kate stuffed the bread into Chris’s
hands and ran into the yard.
“Lunch!
 
Piggy!
 
No!”
 
She hurried to the garden,
just in time to see the pig pull a ripe, juicy tomato off of a plant and squish
it in her mouth, juice and seeds dripping down her chin. Kate groaned. There
wasn’t anything she could do about it. The only way they could keep the pigs
from roaming around would be to keep them in the yard, which meant… they’d demolish
the garden.

           
She turned and marched back towards
Chris and Breakfast. She squeezed through the gate past them and realized that
the woods seemed pretty quiet. She hoped that Dinner was still lying in his
pile of mud. She stopped short. She couldn’t hear anything except for a distant
roll of thunder. She took off running past the chicken coop, past the tool
shed, and through the palmettos to where Dinner had been resting.

           
As soon as her bare foot hit the
slick, black mud, Kate’s feet flew out from underneath her. The celery and the bunch
of bananas she’d been holding went flying. She landed hard on her tailbone alongside
Dinner. The back of her head smacked into the mud puddle. When she lifted it,
her head felt heavy from all the muck instantly caked in her hair. The dirty,
mud-crusted pig lifted his head and stretched, just able to reach the bananas. He
started munching on them, peels and all, and in seconds, they were gone. Then
he gave his head a shake, sending droplets of mud and dirty water flying. He
let his head droop so that his chin was resting across Kate’s shins and looked
at her almost smugly.

           
Kate didn’t know whether to laugh or
cry. The electric fence was messed up, the pigs had almost gotten away, they
were going to ruin her parents’ garden, she had fallen on her butt and
it hurt
, and now she was covered in mud.
This was not what she’d imagined she’d be doing this weekend.

           
“Kate?”

           
“Over here,” she replied, sitting up
on her elbows. It was hard to move in the mud; it was like she was stuck to a
giant suction cup.

           
“Holy shit!”
Chris cried, getting down on his knees and tossing aside what was left of the
loaf of bread. “What the hell
happened
 
Are
you okay?”

           
“I slipped,” she said. “And I’m
stuck.”

           
Chris got behind her and cupped her
underneath her armpits. “One, two, three!” he said, pulling her straight up. Her
feet slipped in the mud as she tried to stand upright, but Chris held her
steady as he, too, got to his feet. “You okay?
 
Are you hurt?”

           
Kate shook her head, her pride
probably hurting the worst. “Let’s just get him in the yard,” she said, picking
up the bread bag. She shook out the remaining two pieces and handed them to
Chris.
“Dinner!
 
Look what I got,” she said, pulling the celery out of the mud. The pig
lifted his head, and then slowly got to his feet, the mud making suction-y,
slurpy
sounds as he stood up.

           
Kate and Chris called the pig and
teased him with the pieces of bread and celery as they led him towards the yard.
“Come on, Dinner, come get some bread!” Chris said, holding the slice out in
front of him. Tired of being teased, Dinner lunged forward and swiped the piece
of bread out of Chris’s hand. Chris jumped back in surprise.

           
“I told you, he bites!” Kate warned,
dangling her celery out and then hiding it behind her back. “Hurry up and get
the gate.”

           
Chris rushed past her and opened the
gate. Dinner followed Kate through and once Chris slammed the gate shut, she
tossed the celery into the grass. Dinner trotted after it and Kate turned and trudged
towards the house. She couldn’t bear to watch the pigs destroying her parents’
garden.

           
In the mudroom, she started the
washing machine, dumped in detergent, and began stripping off her clothes. Her
skin already felt stiff where the mud had caked up and dried and her head felt
heavy with her mud-soaked chunks of hair. She looked and felt gross. She held her
jeans up and looked at them. They were completely covered in mud. She wasn’t
even sure if they’d be salvageable, but she plunged them into the washing
machine anyway.

           
The door opened and Chris stood on
the top step, looking over his shoulder at the three pigs working their way
through every row in the garden. Kate could see that the sky had grown darker and
it was starting to rain harder. “I don’t know anything about electricity or
wiring to even try to fix that fence,” he said, pulling the door shut behind
him. He turned and caught sight of Kate at last, holding her dirty t-shirt in
front of her. “And it’s starting to rain again,” he said. There was a loud boom
of thunder.

           
Kate nodded, feeling awkward being
stuck with Chris in the tiny mudroom.
Wearing just her
underwear.
He looked her up and down and a smile came across his lips. He
reached out and tweaked a crusty tendril of her hair. They both chuckled. Chris
pulled his t-shirt off and tossed it in the washer.

           
Kate was tired, chilly, and dirty. Her
lower back hurt, but the sight of Chris’s naked torso perked her up a bit. She
smiled as he reached for the t-shirt she was holding in front of her, gently
tugged it out of her fingers, and dropped it into the wash.

           
She sucked in a deep breath,
wondering how in the world she was going to pull off some kind of sexy seduction
move while covered in mud and grime. She put her hands on her hips and looked
down at her dirt-streaked body. When she looked back up at Chris, he was moving
closer.

           
Reaching his hand out to her…

           
She swallowed nervously as Chris
took a step closer…

           
Then he bent down and pulled a bath
towel out of the laundry basket at their feet. “Here,” he said, draping it
around her shoulders. “Get into the bathroom, get undressed,
drop
your stuff outside the door. I’ll get it into the washing machine.”
 
He took her by the shoulders and guided her
towards the bathroom, gently pushing her in and shutting the door behind her.

           
She let the towel drop to the floor
and scratched her crusty head. Puzzled, she checked herself out in the mirror
over the sink. Of course she looked a mess – but she didn’t look… bad. She had
a decent body. She’d never been ashamed to get naked in front of anybody and
wasn’t plagued by body issues the way other women seemed to be. But Chris
didn’t seem interested.
Weird.

           
She stripped off her undergarments
and dropped them outside the door just as Chris had ordered. Then she stepped
into the shower, cranking up the hot water. She stood under the spray, watching
it send dark, gray water swirling down the drain. She scrubbed and scrubbed at
her skin, picked at her fingernails, and finally turned her attention to her
hair. After what felt like forever, her hair finally seemed dirt-free.

           
Kate dried herself off and then
wrapped herself in her mom’s bathrobe which had been hanging on a hook on the
back of the door. She found a comb and ran it through her hair, spending a long
time picking through all the knots. She looked at herself in the mirror again. She
looked much better, but now she was also exhausted.

           
When she left the bathroom, steam
billowed out around her and she stood for a moment, listening. The house was
completely quiet. The washing machine had stopped. The TV wasn’t on. But she
could hear…

           
Snoring?

           
Kate lightly pushed open the door to
the guest bedroom. Chris had obviously taken a shower, too. His hair was wet
and slicked down across his forehead. He was wearing a clean t-shirt and a pair
of gym shorts. He was also out cold.

           
Yawning, Kate pulled the quilt up
from the bottom of the bed to cover him. He stretched a little in his slumber,
grasped the blanket, and tugged it up to his chin. She turned off the lamp and
left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

           
In the kitchen, she made herself a
cup of tea. She pulled the clothes out of the washing machine, amazed to see
that they didn’t look all that bad. She tossed them into the dryer, and then
sat at the table to try to figure out what to tell her parents about their
garden.

*

“So,
how was your weekend?”
  
Lucy asked,
stretching out on the couch and plopping the papers she had been grading on the
coffee table.

“It
was… good,” Kate said, sitting down on the edge of the couch.

Lucy
raised an eyebrow. “Did you and Chris…?”

Kate
shook her head sadly. She wasn’t sure, but it appeared that Lucy looked
relieved. “I don’t know… We kissed and made out. It seemed like everything was
going fine…”
 
She paused for a moment,
remembering how they’d stood together, half-undressed in the laundry room.

“And…?”

Just
then, Kate’s cell phone rang. “Oh, God, that’s probably my mom!”
 
She fished around in her purse and pulled her
cell phone out. “Hello?
 
Mom?”

“The
garden!
 
Kate, what the hell?”

“Mom,
I can explain!”

“What
in the world happened to our garden?
 
Why.
Are.
The.
Pigs.
In. The.
Yard?”

“Something
happened with the electric fence. We had a storm, and I guess the fence shorted
out. I don’t know. The pigs got out and were running all over the place and the
only way we could keep them locked up was to put them in the yard,” Kate
explained. “I’m sorry.”

Lucy
sat up and leaned forward, listening as Kate explained the situation to her
mother.

“And
I tried and tried calling you guys, but neither one of you answered your cell
phone. Honestly, Mom, what’s the point in having a cell phone if you don’t ever
answer it?”

“I’m
sorry, honey,” Mrs. Thompson said. “And I’m sorry for flipping out, I just
couldn’t believe it when we walked out the back door and saw the pigs all lying
at the bottom of the steps. And the garden… it’s completely ruined.”

“Is
it bad?” Kate asked.

“There’s
nothing left. Your father is so upset.
All that hard work.”

“We
didn’t know what else to do, Mom. I’m sorry.”

“We?
 
Who
is
we?”

“Me…
and… Chris.”

Her
mother drew in a sharp breath. “And who is Chris?
 
A boyfriend?”

“I
guess you could say that,” Kate said, twisting a strand of hair around her
finger. “He came up there and spent the night with me. I hope that’s okay. He
was the one who realized the fence was messed up. He helped me get the pigs
back in the yard. We didn’t know what else to do.”