Sneak Peek of:
Jacqueline and the Giant Peen Stalk
I'd always imagined that the life of an "influencer" would be glamorous, but honestly most days, one way or another, I'm just shoveling shit. That probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not actually the influencer here. Porshetta, the pain-in-the-ass pig I inherited when my parents' apple orchard passed to me, is the one getting all the likes and follows. I'm just "her people."
Saturday mornings are our "live from the farm" updates, so I check my makeup and hair one more time before I hit the button that allows me to go live on "Porshetta's Friends" account. Porshetta's ability to attract fans with her 300lb of porcine saltiness, is honestly the only thing keeping this place afloat, so I try to keep to a strict posting schedule. She has several hundred thousand fans on a few different platforms.
“Good morning Porshetta fans! It's Jacqueline, live again from our crazy chaotic farm. I hope you're all doing well. I was just about to check on Porshetta and bring her breakfast–”
Three loud bangs on the front door echo through the house, making me jump. We’re live so I have to keep rolling. I smile and pretend to be excited, but already I have a sinking feeling about who's on the other side and why. “Hold on friends, let me see who's at the door.”
Standing in front of the storm door is my neighbor, Lugh. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans that look like they were dug out of the bottom of a basket of laundry, but even in wrinkled clothes he's insanely hot. I'm way too sensitive to other people's moods, and right now the annoyance rolling off of his giant frame is like a solid wall of ick. A scowl is plastered to his face and a deep crease sits between his brows.
Immediately, the comments start rolling in.
Ooooo special guest hottie.
I need a big boy!
I want a lumberjack.
He can cut wood for me anyday.
Is he single?
I sigh.
“Good morning Lugh!” I say brightly, grinning exceptionally wide and pointing to the phone out of my viewers’ eyesight.
“Are you filming?” he grunts. He’s “smiling” but it’s completely through his teeth.
“Why yes. We are filming for all of Porshetta’s friends.”
“I'll come back later.” he grunts and starts to turn away.
I reach out a hand without thinking. His bicep is thick and muscular and makes my hand look tiny in comparison. It stretches his shirt and I can see the tattoo sleeve he started when he was in the Army peeking out from underneath. He looks down at my hand gripping his arm, then back at me. “But they love you.” I mouth to him. He rolls his eyes and walks away, letting the door slam behind him. But the live feed is filling up with more and more women wanting to catch a glimpse of my hot grumpy neighbor.
Undeterred, I follow him out the door and down the front path. His back is turned to me as he stalks toward the golf cart he parked at the end of my drive. The view of his ass in the tight jeans sends the comment section into full-on frenzy. I catch up to him and he turns to face me.
“Are you filming my ass?” he mouths.
“The ladies are very complimentary of your ass.” I whisper back.
He rolls his eyes. “Porshetta’s been in my plants again.”
I groan. The last time Porshetta was in Lugh’s plants it ended up costing me two hundred dollars I didn’t have to replace everything she’d eaten.
I flip the camera around. “Sorry, friends, we’ll have to end things here. It seems Porshetta’s been dining in the wrong garden yet again. I’ll post later!”
Can we get some more shots of Lugh?
Lugh’s ass 4 ever!
I want me some Lugh.
Lugh can destroy my garden any time he likes.
I keep the thirsty comments to myself–somehow I don’t think Lugh would appreciate them—and hit the LIVE! button again, ending the live feed with a sigh.
I go around to the passenger side of the golf cart and put my hand on the outside frame, taking a deep breath and releasing it before I ease into the passenger side with a sigh. “Show me what she’s done this time.”
***
Luckily, even at full speed, golf carts are slow enough that my heart attempting to pound its way out of my chest is the only reaction my treacherous body has to the forward movement of the cart. My heart sounds so loud in my ears I’m certain Lugh can hear it. But he doesn’t look at me at all. He stares straight ahead, hands white-knuckled around the steering wheel, his jaw set tight.
Lugh’s a giant in every sense of the word, but I feel it even more so when he’s sitting next to me. He’s nearly seven foot tall and wider than most men playing professional football. He takes up much of the space on the front seat. I scoot as far away from him as I can, but it’s impossible for our shoulders not to touch. Thankfully, none of the usual things I feel these days when getting into a vehicle–pain in my chest, tears I can’t control, the inability to breathe–comes over me on the short trip through my orchard and to the greenhouses that line the outskirts of his property.
We haven't even gotten past the last of the apple trees when I see the problem—a beautiful wooden archway on its side. Vines twist this way and that over its surface. A few small sad purple blooms are still attached, but most of them lie scattered around in bits and pieces.
"What the heck?" I step out to inspect the damage. Thankfully, the most expensive part—the archway–looks fine. What doesn't look fine are the plants carefully graphed to it. I pick up a flower and hold it in my hand. It looks like a stick figure of a man. "Is this Orchis Italica? The naked-man orchid?"
Lugh's face softens slightly as he comes up behind me and picks up another flower, "Yeah. It's for a wedding. The customers wanted them wrapped around this archway."
"They wanted naked man flowers all over their wedding archway?"
He shrugs. "It's a paying job. I don't judge."
I nod. "So what happened? How do you know it was Porshetta?"
Lugh squints into the distance. "I came out here this morning and found some deer munching on the archway. I went to shoo them away. Porshetta pops up and the deer scatter. She chases after one and knocks the archway to the ground, then comes back to munch on some flowers."
I stand and sigh. "How much?"
"I don't have any more orchids for the archway so I'll have to rush order from out of state to make the wedding date. We're probably looking at fifteen hundred, two grand easily."
My stomach drops. "Two grand just for flowers?"
He leans against a nearby shed and begins talking about the price of shipping flowers. The shed is new—at least I haven't seen it before, but it looks like a group of kids put it together. It's one of those prefab kits you get and put together yourself. I spent many summers growing up helping my dad build those for other people. This one is tall—probably one of those with an attic space at the top, if I had to guess.
Lugh rattles on about how difficult the orchids are to grow and how not many growers will even attempt to grow them, but for once I find it hard to concentrate on him. There's something about the shed that is really bugging me. If only I could put my finger on it.
"Jacqueline? Are you listening?"
My eyes dart back to his face as my brain mulls for a second longer on the shed. Lugh straightens, his body weight no longer leaning against the shed's side, and I realize the problem immediately. His crappy shed isn't leaning away from him, but towards him. It doesn't make any sense. Why would it lean towards him? Suddenly, the boards of the shed begin to creak.
"Lugh move!" I yell and without thinking, lunge at him. What happens next is so painfully embarrassing that it will haunt me each night as I try to fall asleep for the rest of my life.
One minute I'm flying through the air at this giant of a man. The next, he's trying to catch me, of all things. Catch me! I land against his chest with a thud and instead of just falling back, he wraps his arms around me, grabbing my butt and holding me up to his chest like a child. I wrap my legs around his midsection and we crash to the ground. My forehead hits him square in the nose and blood begins to pour down his face. The shed collapses beside us, boards crashing to the ground. Stunned, neither one of us says anything as the dust kicked up by the shed settles around us. He leans over to look at where he'd been standing seconds ago and then looks back at me.
"Thanks...for that."
Still stunned, I just nod. I'm straddling him, my ass resting on his hips, legs on either side of his body.
"Could you uh, move? So I can get up please?" he asks.
I close my eyes, feeling my face go hot. "I could, but that’d require you to let go of my ass first."
