Strawberry Wine ✓

Chapter 6

I wake up to a rooster's crow in the distance, blinking away the sleep from my eyes. I'm sore between my legs and satisfied. I pull Jimmy's watch from the bedside table. It's quarter past 5. "Shit! I've been gone all night!" I shout, causing Jimmy to wake up with a start. "I'm so sorry. But if I don't go now, my hide will be tanned if I'm not in my room when the maid comes to get me up." I say, rolling my eyes before getting out of his bed and throwing my clothes on, kissing him on the lips before I ran out.

I shimmied back up the tree and onto the roof of the house, making sure to be extra quiet as to not wake up Mother and Daddy as I passed by their window. I slip back in through my window and throw myself into bed, covering up my clothes with my blankets. "Miss Rhodes it's time to get up. Your daddy says there's a horse for you to start seeing to."

"Thank you Martha. I can get myself ready this morning." I say sweetly before she rolls her eyes and leaves. I throw the blankets back off of me and get out of bed, making it as neatly as another taught me to do.

I clean myself up before joining my parents for breakfast. "You must have slept like the dead. When I went past your room last night I didn't hear you inside." Mother says as she takes a small sip of coffee.

"Well the party just took it all out of me." I say before turning to Daddy. "Martha said you wanted start helping me with work with the yearling?" I ask.

"Yes, after breakfast."

"Of course Daddy." I say before eating the food that had been placed in front of me. We ate the rest of the meal in silence.

...

"You gotta be stricter with her if you want her to listen!" Daddy yells from outside the ring.

"I know what I'm doin'!" I yell back. I click my teeth and spin the rope a little, keeping her moving. She tries to change directions. "Ah!" I say and get her moving back in the direction I want her to be going in. I watch in her ears as she moves from being defiant, to curious, to complacent. I then turn around, facing away from her, and feel her come up behind me, nudging my shoulder with her nose.

"I guess you do know what you're doing." Daddy says as he joins us in the ring. I smile under his praise. "So I didn't want to say anything in front of your mother but I just hope you know what you're doing." He says softly. I watch Jimmy enter the arena stable and I smile at him. "See that's what I mean."

"Daddy, please. I'm a grown woman. I'm 19 for crying out loud. I can make my own decisions on who I want to spend my time with."

"Just be careful."

"I will Daddy." I say before he gives me one last look and goes inside. Jimmy waits until he is completely out of earshot to come over to me.

"I wish you hadn't had to run this morning." He says quietly as there's still other hands in the barn.

"Me too. But you saw how my mother is. I didn't want to unleash that on you two days in a row." I say as I pet my horse.

"Have you given her a name yet?" He asks. I take her in. She's all black, save for two pure white stockings on her back legs and a white star on her forehead.

"Not yet. I'm trying to think of something sensational." I answer. "Serendipity's Starlight."

"Bless you." Jimmy jokes. "Why that name?"

"Her father is Galileo's Comet and she has a star on her forehead. And she came to me for the purpose by nothing but a happy chance."

"I like it." He says, smiling at me.

"Thank you. You up for a ride later? We could race again and I could hand your ass back to you."

"Well after that comment, it's on!"

"See you later then, Lightning." I joke as I lead Starlight out of the ring to go brush her down and turn her out with the other yearlings.