Page 43 of While the Sun Shines

Drew waits for Penny to groan, but she just stares past Cooper’s head.

“How wonderful is this?” Cooper leans back against Whit’s chest. “You’re all welcome, don’t trip over yourselves thanking me for this idea.”

“Next time, bring a cooler of beers,” Penny says, tipping her face up to the sun where it streams through the leaves, dappling sunshine on her cheeks.

“Oh, and sandwiches,” Cooper says.

Whit smacks him lightly on the stomach. “Do you ever think of anything except food?”

“Yes. Like perfect evening swimming plans.”

“You guys have the best life,” Abelardo says.

You have Penny, Drew thinks.

And what Drew has is a broken baler. And hay sitting out in the field, exposed to tonight’s dew. Tomorrow, he thinks dully, rubbing wet fingers over his forehead. He can go to the co-op to get new bolts, haul the welder out, and hopefully fix what he broke inside the baler. The hay will be fine if they bale it tomorrow. It’ll just set back the rest of his list for the week.

Like tonight already is, hanging out here instead of chipping away at everything he has waiting for him. I gotta go, he should say, hauling himself out of the water. So what if it leaves Penny with the three of them—the thing she overheard Drew say ripe for discussing? It’ll happen at some point; Drew’s made sure of that.

Never tell her, he’d promised himself. And fucking look at him now.

“Oh shit,” Cooper says.

Yeah. Oh shit. A one-eighty of the cautious balance Drew had strung out for so long. He and Penny won’t go back to their casual, easy friendship now. Driving the farm truck together as it lurches beneath Penny’s hesitant shifting, sharing bottles of beer, arguing over types of pie—no, that’ll all be replaced by this awful hesitancy. A carefulness around each other, and a wariness that will never return to what was once so natural, until they just drift away from each other, a chasm of awkwardness between them widening into a gulf they can’t bridge.

“Drew,” Cooper says.

“I’m okay,” he mutters.

He was probably sighing again. Or hell, even something more obvious written on his face, staring maudlinly at Penny despite his efforts to keep his eyes on the swirl of the water around his freckly knees.

“Drew, don’t turn around,” Cooper says.

“What? Why?”

A snort from behind him. Drew spins to look back and fuck. A sheep stares at him from between the branches of a beech tree, all dark eyes and white wooly coat on top of slim legs and delicate hooves.

“Shit,” he says, trying to straighten from how he’s wedged against the rush of the current.

The movement only pushes him closer to Penny. Close enough she shifts back an inch and he freezes. But his arm still drifts against her, the pull of the water dragging them together. The touch lights up his skin, warmth spreading to his fingers, up his neck, across his body.

“Sorry,” he says and jerks his arm back.

The sheep stamps its leg, huffing.

“Goddamn it,” Cooper says and a second sheep lets out a soft bleat.

The sheep are out. It registers dully, too slowly. They’re out of their field, and they’re right here. Far from their pasture and even farther from the safety of the barn. They’re loose, in the woods. With acres around them and no idea where home is, not when they’re so newly arrived to the farm.

Whit stands slowly. “Careful, now,” he says.

The ewe takes a step back.

“Easy,” Cooper whispers.

Something touches Drew’s shoulder. That same arm, still tingling with brushing against Penny—it’s her elbow. She’s turned, looking at the herd too, and his arm is pressed to hers.

Quickly, he yanks it back.