10. Mae: Honoring the Pig

Mae – Honoring the Pig

Chapter ten

Today, as usual, Dean and Dylan drive up early in the evening, and we decide which one of us will cook for the night. I've started to cherish my time with the Cornel boys. Dean especially. He's so easy to talk to, and our conversations seem to effortlessly flow. Last night was like talking with an old friend…or lover.

No. I shake my head, forcing the thought from my brain. I cannot go there. I don't exactly have the best track record with relationships. Dean might be perfect, but I am not.

As I prep all the ingredients for dinner, I tell Dean about an excellent deal I got on some pork chops at the butcher. It feels so domestic and perfect that I kind of want to throw up from nerves, or….. kiss him again.

See? I tell myself. Not a good combo.

"What sides are you making?" Dean asks, leaning over my shoulder to look at the vegetables I'm chopping. This close, I can smell his woodsy cologne, and my body reacts, pressing closer to him before I can stop it. "Green beans and potatoes. And maybe even a potato roll," I say, joking, "if you're good."

Dylan and Mina come rushing into our—no, my, kitchen—and Dean finally moves away from me.

"What is it? What's wrong?" I overreact, as normal. My mind always goes to the worst case.

"There are geese!" Mina shouts.

"Oh?" I ask. We've seen geese before in the park.

"Where?" Dean asks.

"We'll show you," Dylan says, grabbing my hand. He and Mina pull me from the house, Dean following behind.

Grandpa Bob is out watering his garden, and he yells after us, "Did I hear you say geese? Those are some mean suckers. Be careful!"

We all pretend like we didn't hear him. If we did, he'd only regale us with another one of his thirty-minute stories about ‘when I was a kid."

"Look! They're right there," Mina announces.

There, in the pond, is a mama goose with her goslings.

"Oh, they're so cute!" I say, charmed despite myself. "Look at the little fuzzy ones."

"Yeah, but your grandpa's right," Dean says, pulling the three of us back before we can get too close. "Especially with the mom. She might be overprotective. We should leave."

"Fine." I think the goose and I would make a strong connection, you know, as mothers, but we listen to him anyway.

Once we get closer to the barn again, Mina says that a baby kitten needs help being bottle-fed and asks Dylan to come with her.

"Wait, what?" I ask. This is the first time I've heard of a baby kitten.

"What?" Mina turns around to face me.

"How do you know how to bottle feed a baby kitten?" I ask.

"Kitten Lady. She has a YouTube channel and posts a ton of videos about how to care for tiny kittens."

"I'm so proud of how independent and self-assured you've become since we arrived, Mina, but still, do you think we should get a vet to check it just to make sure everything's okay?"

"Sure, if you want." Mina shrugs. "But I know I'm taking really good care of her."

"I'm not doubting that, sweetie," I say. "But a professional can make sure she's getting everything she needs, since she's so tiny.

"Ugh, fine," Mina says, brushing me off. She grabs Dylan's hand and pulls him to the barn. So, I guess that conversation is over.

I roll my eyes. One minute, Mina is my sweet, caring daughter, and the next, she's a snarky teenager who wants to be treated like the adult that she isn't, quite yet.

"So, about these pork chops…" Dean brushes a stray hair out of my eyes and tucks it behind my ear. "Come inside and check them out."

"Don't mind if I do," Dean says, settling his hand on my lower back as he leads me back into the house. Even after he removes it to open the front door for me, I can still feel the heat linger through my clothes.

Once we get back to the kitchen, I get the pork chops out of the fridge and present them to him.

"Oh, man. They're huge!" he says.

"I know. I have no idea why he gave me such a good deal on them," I reply.

Dean gives me a funny look.

"What?" I ask.

"You can't be serious?" he asks.

His raised eyebrows are making me worried. What if these aren't pork chops? What if they're pork spleen, liver, or some other part of the pig that no one else usually wants?

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"He obviously thinks you're a knockout," Dean says, a teasing smile on his face that makes me want to hit him and kiss him in equal parts.

"Yeah, right," I say, and roll my eyes. I'm a single mother whose current exercise routine is working on a farm. My wardrobe is now 95% jeans and farm-appropriate T-shirts.

"Did you see any other women getting special treatment?" Dean asks.

"Well, no," I admit, washing my hands so I can get back to prepping the vegetables. "But I wasn't paying much attention, either."

"I guarantee old Wallace has a crush on you." Dean leans against the counter, watching me as I cut off the ends of the green beans.

"Pfft. Whatever." I slap his hand when he reaches out to steal one of the cut beans.

"Watch. Next time you go there, I bet you'll get another exclusive deal."

"Wanna bet on it?" I ask, hands on hips, staring up into his mischievous gray eyes.

"Sure," Dean says, squaring off against me, folding his arms, and gazing down at my face with a mocking expression. "Fifty dollars?"

"Deal."

When we shake hands, a pulse of electricity shoots up my arm.

I look for evidence that he's experiencing the same thing, but I can't see any dead giveaways. What am I thinking? Dean Cornel is not crushing on me. No way.

"Anyway," I wipe my hands on my apron, "would you mind peeling the potatoes?"

"Uh, yeah, sure," Dean agrees. "Where's the peeler?" He's looking around the kitchen like he's expecting it to jump out at him.

"It should be in that drawer." I point to the one under the microwave.

"Ah! Got it."

"And can you cut them into cubes, too?"

"Sure," Dean agrees.

I pull a knife out of our block and hand it to him. "You know how to use this, right?"

He laughs. "Shut up."

"I was just making sure," I raise my hands in defense. "I'm still a lawyer, you know. I don't want to have to eviscerate you in court because you accidentally cut yourself at my home."

"I've got everything covered." Dean gently pushes me back to my side of the kitchen. "Just focus on those pig loins there."

"Ugh! Don't remind me it comes from an animal. I won't want to eat it."

He stops what he's doing and turns around. "You do know you live on a farm, right?"

"What?" His serious tone catches me off guard. Now it's my turn for my cheeks to flush with embarrassment, and I'm sure it doesn't look nearly as charming as when Dean does it.

"A lot of farms around here slaughter animals for a living. And a lot of people think that that kind of ignorance is disrespectful to the animal, especially according to some Native American cultures. You're supposed to thank the animal for dying and giving you the gift of being fed through consumption of its body."

"Whoa." Still, it's hard for me to look at the pork chops sitting on my counter and imagine that they once belonged to a pig.

"Yeah. So, if you want to take a page out of their book, you want to revere the animal for sacrificing its life for you."

"You're right," I agree. Just because it makes me uncomfortable doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do.

Dean nods and resumes chopping the potatoes.

"So, is that, like, something you're into?" I ask, trying to lighten the mood.

"What?"

"Native American culture?"

"Um, I guess a little bit," Dean says. He pauses his chopping to give me an intense look. And I have no idea what it means. Probably that he thinks I'm some airhead, city girl. "I had a good friend in college who was a member of the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, and he did me the honor of bringing me to the Death Valley Indian Community where his family lived. It was there that I painted one of my favorite pieces."

"Can I see it?" I ask, before I can stop myself.

"Nah, it isn't that good—"

"Can I please be the judge of that? Ever since you mentioned your art, I've been dying to see some of it." I know I'm probably overstepping the boundaries of our friendship, but I can't help asking

"Well." Dean looks nervously at the ground. I've never seen him nervous before. I notice that he's worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. What the heck, woman? I think to myself. Get a grip!

"I promise I won't judge," I say after I get my thoughts back under control. "I can't draw a stick person, so, if it's better than that, I'll be impressed." I'm not lying. I've never been very artistic. "Please," I plead again.

"Okay," Dean agrees. "I might have a picture of it on my phone."

I wait for him to find it, and he hands it to me.

"Oh my gosh. That's absolutely beautiful." I zoom in and see the extravagant detail. "Wow." It's beautiful, with firm strokes and a melancholy color.

"It's just a little hobby," Dean says, after putting his phone back into his back pocket.

"Well, it wasn't always a hobby if you considered it a career at one point," I argued. You can take a lawyer out of a courtroom, but you can never take the argument out of the lawyer.

"I considered it," Dean says, and I can tell he's downplaying his love for his art. "The rest of the world…did not."

"What efforts did you make?"

"I had a few shows," he admits.

"Okay?" I ask, as I grab a pot from one of the hooks above the sink, fill it with water, and set it on the stove to boil. "And what was the reaction to those?"

"A few people showed up." I have a feeling that more than a few people showed up to Dean's shows.

"Did you sell any pieces?"

"A couple."

"Okay, I'm sorry, all I'm hearing is that you were a successful artist."

"It wasn't enough to make our rent payment or anything." Dean dumps the chopped potatoes into the boiling water without me even having to ask.

"So? Do you know how many people live and die on the belief in their talent, but they can't get anyone to buy any of their work? That's not you, Dean. You made it." I grab the cast iron pan and set it on the stove to heat up.

"I guess," he concedes.

"Exactly. I think you should get back out there. I mean, you don't have to quit your job or anything. Only crazy people do that." I can't help but laugh at the irony.

He raises his eyebrows.

"You know what? I just thought about something." I quickly oil up the hot cast iron and gently lay the seasoned pork chops down so I don't get splattered.

"What?" Dean asks, watching me with his intense silver eyes.

"Hold on." I dart out of the kitchen and into my room, grabbing the easel I'd found in the crawl space. "Here," I say after handing it to him.

"Where—where'd you find this?" His eyes are wide and disbelieving.

"In the crawl space," I say. "It's yours."

"Are you sure?" He sounds like he's never received a gift before.

"Remember what I said about the stick figures. It runs in the family." I use my head to point to Mina and Grandpa in the barn.

"I can't accept this," Dean says, shaking his head.

"Yes, of course you can." I push it further into his arms. "Look! You just did."

"But I might not even use it," he argues.

"Well, then it'll serve as motivation. Think of it as the cost of acceptance."

"Thank you." Dean's gray eyes gaze into mine. If I were the main character of a romance novel, I might call them longing.

"You're welcome," I say, trying to fight the blush rising to my cheeks. "If you want, I can go to the art supplies store with you. I need a few things myself."

"But you just said you can't draw."

"I can't. But that doesn't mean I'm not a master with a hook." I brandish an imaginary hook at him.

He furrows his eyebrows.

"I crochet." I gesture to the blanket that Mina left on one of the kitchen chairs.

"Is that so?" Dean asks, a smirk on his lips.

"Yep. In middle school, I took a class during recess to get out of playing kickball." I dump the green beans, now seasoned, onto a baking tray and put them in the toaster oven.

"What?" I almost squeak. "Kickball's the best."

"Not for someone without a single athletic bone in her body like me."

"Hmph. Hold on." He grabs his phone from his pocket and types in a number. "One second." He says and leaves to talk to the person on the other end of the phone call.

"What was that?" I ask after he comes back in.

"Nothing. Business." The way he says it is too casual, and I narrow my eyes.

"Me talking about kickball reminded you that you needed to make a work call?"

He smiles. "Something like that."

Yeah, I'm not buying it. Something weird is going on here.

When the food's done, I call Grandpa and the kids inside. After everyone washes up, I load their plates with pork, potatoes, and green beans.

Dean and I argued briefly about milk vs. sour cream in the potatoes. In the end, we went with my choice, sour cream. From Dean's wide eyes when he takes his first bite, I know I've won.

After eating, the kids do the dishes, playfully blowing suds at each other as they work. It's cute. And I find myself wondering if Mina wouldn't be happier with a sibling. Of course, I'd need a husband first before I got around to solving that problem.

As they finish, Dean announces that there's something we need to see outside. We follow him and I'm shocked to see a bunch of young men standing outside. They're wearing exercise clothes, and one is holding a ball.

"What is this?" I ask.

"We're going to play a proper game of kickball. These are some of Dylan's friends from his school."

"Really?" I shoot Dean an exasperated look. I knew there was something up with that phone call. "Hi, boys," I wave to them.

"Hello!" they shout back,

"Okay, Mae and I are captains!" Dean shouts out to the group, taking charge.

Grandpa goes to sit on his porch chair with a glass of lemonade in hand. He has a soft smile on his face and looks more relaxed and happier than he has in years.

Dean smirks at me, "Go ahead, Princess, pick your first player!"

***

Shocking just about everyone, my team ends up winning. Whether or not Dean rigged the game for that to happen, I'm not sure. I like to think it's because of Mina, though. I don't think I've seen her so focused and determined to win anything. It makes me think that I should enroll her on a team.

After showering, she and I sit down to enjoy a glass of lemonade around the fire pit.

"What if those goslings are like the little kitten I'm taking care of and aren't getting enough food from their mom?" Mina asks me.

This immediately pulls at my heartstrings, and we concoct a plan to feed the geese just in case they need it. Even momma goose might appreciate some extra food. I know from first-hand experience that raising a kid yourself is harder than it is easy.

I already have birdseed to fill the feeders around the property, and after a quick Google search, I learn that it's safe to give to geese. So, we fill two baggies and head over to give the feed to them.

"Here you go, Mama," I say, tossing the food into the pond.

She takes it happily until we get too close, at which point she starts hissing and chasing after us. Of course, Mina and I both start screaming and try to run away, but she's much faster than I think either of us anticipated.

We must have been loud, because it doesn't take long before Dean and Dylan take notice as they're packing their car for the night.

"Angry goose!" I yell, running past them.

At first, they don't seem to see what I'm talking about, but their eyes widen when they see the angry Mamma bird flapping her wings at us. In their panic, they start running alongside, away from the goose. When I turn to see if she's given up, I trip on my own foot, managing to take Dean down with me.

Thankfully, it seems like the momma did abandon her chase, because I'm sure she would have pounced on us in a heartbeat if she was still around.

There's a moment's pause as his heavy body lies on mine, clutching me in his arms.

"Um…" he says. "Sorry about that."

"It wasn't your fault," I say, my entire face feeling like it's on fire. "It was mine."

We stare into each other's eyes for a moment, his silver eyes growing darker and darker by the second. His body feels nice on top of me. Warm and safe. Dean leans closer to me, reaching up with one hand to run his fingers through my hair. We're only a breath apart now. If I leaned up, I could…