Page 68 of The Goat Next Door

My skin feels hot, wired.

I’ve fought complex structure fires that made more logical sense than this woman.

I’ve spent the last five years building a life that runs on strict discipline, predictable routines, and absolute responsibility.

I don’t do impulsive.

I don’t do reckless.

Then Ember kisses me once, and suddenly every good decision I’ve made in the last decade is hanging by a single, fragile thread.

A dangerous thread that keeps whispering all the things I’m supposed to be remembering right now: She’s your neighbor. She’s younger. You’re supposed to have common sense.

I stare back out at the dark farmhouse. A single porch light flickers once behind the curtain of rain.

And for one entirely reckless second, I picture her on the other side of that door.

Probably leaning her back against the wood, catching her breath. Probably smiling to herself in the dark, knowing exactly what she just did to me, completely aware that she just tore my peace of mind to shreds.

The thought nearly breaks my resolve right then and there.

A humorless laugh escapes my chest, sounding entirely too loud in the quiet truck. “You’re trouble, Emmy.”

The porch stays dark. The rain keeps drumming against the roof of the cab. And somehow, putting the truck in reverse and not going after her becomes the hardest thing I’ve had to do all week.

17

Ember

“I’m not saying you should kiss him.

I’m just saying you’d be happier if you did.”

— Amy

The heavy-duty tub I dragged out of the barn is currently leaking a steady, rust-colored stream into the clover, and the eight-dollar bottle of organic, apple-scented shampoo I bought at the pharmacy is completely failing to neutralize the smell of wet goat.

“Kevin, if you don’t stabilize your rear chassis right now, I am going to look up the market value of goat meat on the lower east side,” I mutter, wiping a thick glob of white suds from my forehead.

Kevin doesn’t care about the threat. He lets out a flat, vibrating bleat, his horizontal pupils locking onto my yellow rubber boots before he executes a sudden, wet shake.

A miniature monsoon of freezing, apple-scented water hits me square in the chest, plastering my white tank top to my ribs and soaking the legs of my rolled-up canvas trousers.

“Oh, fantastic.”

The goats had discovered a patch of thick, black swamp mud down by the lower creek line yesterday afternoon, and they had returned to the house looking like four-legged gargoyles. So my mission is to wash them.

Mildred, the smaller brown goat, is currently taking advantage of my temporary blindness by attempting to consume the plastic wrapper of the soap bottle.

“Drop it!” I lunge, my boots skidding in the slick clover.

I snatch the slippery plastic out of his jaws just as Gertrude, the matriarch of this tiny, chaotic herd, plants her front hooves directly onto the rim of the galvanized tub.

The metal groans, and because she’s a sixty-pound animal putting all her weight on one edge, the tub tilts, and forty gallons of muddy, sudsy water cascades over the porch steps, completely soaking the only dry pair of sneakers I own.

I drop my forehead against the cool stone wall of the well house, letting out a long, dramatic sigh.

I am covered in mud, smelling faintly of orchard fruit and livestock, and I am ninety percent sure I am losing the battle of the Gilded Goat.