12. Ned

" L et him go," Violet said sternly as I stomped around, trying to figure out how I could catch up with him. "I told you, you should have talked to him before just turning up here. Then you could have actually enjoyed the trip to town and going to grab pizzas and all those things without having to hide in the car like the fool you are, just in case he saw you. This is what you deserve, silly boy. Get your arse in gear and get these girls milked. Then you can run off and explain yourself later when he's not snowed under with work."

I agreed with every word coming out of her wise mouth, and the second massive lorry of the morning was just backing down the road, its bleating signal making my headache worse. I knew he'd be busy. We were busy here too, with a few workers down just in time for Christmas. It wasn't ideal. Nothing was ideal.

I was still not over the jet lag. I was staying up far too late at night, and Swedish coffee was not what I was used to, the thick, black caffeinated stuff shooting trembles through my veins with every mouthful. I hadn't drunk coffee at eighteen. Now I understood why, as I tried to focus on the task in hand. Work. Make myself useful. Learn from the ground up. Stop overdosing on caffeine.

It would all get better. Everything did eventually, even though some nights I wondered what planet I'd been on, going through with this madness. Or maybe I had been unusually sane .

My boss back in Phoenix had emailed me and apologised, asked me to at least consider working remotely on a freelance basis, desperation seeping from the words on my screen. I'd just upped and left my team adrift, adding guilt and weirdness to the caffeine tremors.

I felt like just deleting that email, pretending I'd never seen it. I still hadn't replied. I didn't feel I was ready to open that can of worms. It felt like going back when I was supposed to head forward. New beginnings. New future. All that.

Everything was making me nauseous with doubt that I'd made the right decision. The constant tiredness wasn't helping, but the concept of ‘back home', which wasn't home anymore, was making my head spin. My belongings were in a shipping container and on their way across the ocean, but I didn't know what I was going to do when they got here. There was no space for anything in this small farmhouse. Violet had furniture. A huge desk with a computer ample for her needs took up most of her living room.

Violet's farm may have sounded like a picturesque fairy-tale setting, but it was four huge grey metal sheds adorned with heavy-duty spotlights, all placed strategically around a massive yard. Then there were the equipment sheds and the garages and the milk tanks and the massive grazing fields, and in front of it all this small wooden farmhouse that wouldn't have looked out of place in a fantasy movie—if you completely ignored that it was flanked by an industrial estate of a cattle station. And it was loud. Deafeningly so, even with the falling snow muffling the usual noise to a more comfortable level.

A crew of fourteen was currently down to ten, including myself, because cattle weren't on the top of anyone's dream job lists, least of all mine. This life had once seemed idyllic, but with the snow shooting horizontally across my face with the oncoming wind, the flakes felt like razorblades on my exposed skin. Everyone else was wearing balaclava-type hoods. I had one too but had felt too much of a fool to put it on properly, which made me look even more of a schmuck standing here now, trying to cover myself up, my hat falling out of my grip as I struggled with the unfamiliar clothing .

I'd felt like an idiot so far with every interaction I'd had with these workers. Trying to translate Y'all have a nice day now into my very own brand of rusty Swenglish had resulted in some strange looks. I didn't fit in. I once had, though, and I would have to figure out how to be more…like everyone else.

Swedes were straightforward in every respect. No unnecessary words. Just ask for what you need and tap that card. Grunt politely. Get another grunt in return. Move on. Don't smile too much. Don't smile too little. Hold your hand up in greeting, and goddammit, Ned, pretend you're actually half alive.

It wasn't easy when I was so frazzled, as one of my fellow cow herders got to witness firsthand when I yelled at a heifer in frustration when she slapped me around the chops with her tail. I was a few minutes late, but I was here, ready to work, pretending to be all enthusiastic when all I wanted to do was run off and bury myself in the ever-falling snow.

What the fuck was I doing here?

"Calm down," he said in perfect English. Most of the workers spoke the same heavily accented Swedish I did, and this guy was good but had swapped languages the minute I'd opened my mouth and he realised where my level was at. He was also totally calm as he gestured for me to breathe. Take a step back. Breathe again.

"These girls can scent your fear, dude. You have to work with them. They want to get milked as much as you want them to go where they need to be. So just chill."

He let out some weird clicking sound, and like magic, the heifers moved. How hard could it be?

Plenty, as it turned out, but I got on with it, lining the cows up in rows for the milking robot while dodging their tails and hooves and trying not to inhale the now-familiar stink of cattle and manure. Indoor cow living was not exactly Instagram-worthy—not even on the account I'd set up to show off my new life to my handful of friends. Needless to say, it still sat empty.

Teddy didn't do social media, I'd checked, so I had no idea what his little outburst earlier had been about. I followed Flora, though. Maybe I could DM her and ask ?

I did come with baggage and issues. I knew that. Like the fact that I couldn't even be straight with myself. That Violet had me more figured out than I realised, and yes, I'd been hiding here for the past couple of days because I still hadn't mustered up the balls to go down there and speak to Teddy.

What was I supposed to say? " Did you wait? Or is there some handsome dude from Farmer Hook-up-Central I need to fistfight for your honour?"

Wait for me. I hadn't even understood what I'd meant by that when I'd written it. I'd been overwhelmed by a fantasy, wanting it so badly back then, and now, when it was potentially within my reach, I'd fucked it up before even saying Hello, I'm back. Fancy a fuck?

And the goddamn snow. It hadn't even let me settle in before dumping the motherload on our heads, so here I was, destroying what was left of my body shovelling white stuff into piles so our free-roaming cattle could actually get through the doors to the sheds and back out to the fields, and Violet had texted me an appointment to redo my snow driving certificate. Even when you walked inside, the snow followed you, leaving everything covered in grit and mud and puddles.

But also…the snow! It made the world beautiful, and for a short while, I was actually back in that frame of mind where I believed anything was possible. Any minute now, Teddy would skip into my arms…

Wishful thinking, but it got me through the day. By the time we were done, every muscle in my body was screaming with exhaustion. The extreme amount of money I'd shelled out on my work gear? Worth it. I was comfortably warm, suitably dry and probably reeked of sweat and nerves. My feet ached in the new work boots, despite having worn them flat out for two days to try to break them in. All I wanted was to fill Violet's bathtub with the hottest water I could stand and soak in it for hours.

I couldn't, though. My brain wouldn't let me.

"Car?" I grunted at Violet, who was still ticking off tasks on her tablet, standing like a conductor of her little orchestra, right there in the yard .

"I need it back in the morning," she said and threw me the keys. "And I need you in the shed at seven. Don't make me wait, Ned Anderson."

I nodded. I had no illusions of…sleepovers. Just the thought of sleeping in that rickety old single bed in Teddy's bedroom gave me visions of broken bones and never being able to use my back again.

Besides, his bed didn't need to destroy me. I had a good idea Teddy would do that all by himself if I didn't sharpen up and start behaving like a decent human being.

Hence I drove down the hill, in the dark, trying to remember where the road went alongside picking up on the orange high-vis poles and the way the hedges curved in the headlights.

And at last, there it was, his sprawling estate spreading out beneath me as I hit the top of the hill, the spotlights on the college buildings guiding me down towards the main house.

It was similar to Violet's, painted in the same red, a traditional home. Apart from where Violet always had the fire going in her stove, Teddy's home was lacking both the smoke from the chimney and light. It looked like he wasn't even there, but I knew he would be.

A bunch of people in safety gear were still milling around as I parked in front of the house—I was quite proud of myself, remembering to pull up my hood and don my gloves before I'd gotten out of the car. The temperature wasn't too bad, but the wind made it seem a hundred times worse, biting my cheeks as I made my way toward voices and light.

I didn't get that far because he came hurtling around the corner. Even dressed up in more clothes than me and with a helmet in the crook of his arm, I knew him. I'd spot him in a crowd anywhere, like instinct.

And Teddy being Teddy, he just stood there, letting the wind tear through him as he stared at me in the sheen from the lights. He grimaced and tugged the hood of his jacket tighter around his face.

I stood there too, and it was such a massive relief, just to stand there and let myself compose, relax, feel every muscle in my body slowly find its rightful place. I'd been so tense the whole day, but seeing him again instantly soothed my tortured soul.

I expected him to shout at me. Hurl some well-deserved abuse. Tell me off for all the things I was. Instead, he leaned down and gathered snow between his thick-gloved hands, shaping it and patting it as he straightened up. Then he looked at me, and for a second I froze…before he hurled the snowball right at my face.

He missed! Well, he didn't. He was on target, but come on! I'd grown up in the States and ducked like a pro. The snowball whistled past, and I bent, ignoring my screaming back muscles as I gathered an armful of snow. Another ball hit my shoulder, the next found its target n my back before I finally had a half-decent snowball in my hand. I hurled it his way…and missed!

I missed. Stateside high school or not, I still had zero aim, but I got him good with the next one, and he yelled at me, all the while pelting me with perfectly formed snowballs.

I took cover behind the car for a second to gather ammo, not realising for a while that he'd gone awfully quiet, only for him to appear behind me, pull my hood down and shove a load of snow down my back.

Like we were…children.

"Oh, fuck you!" I shrieked. Overpriced high-end gear or not, I was now cold and wet, and he was laughing that brilliant laugh of his.

"Come on," he shouted over the noise of a passing tractor. "Come in and get warm."

So I did, once again putting my trust in what he told me as he opened his front door, switched on the lights and let me follow him inside.