Keep My Heart Warm

Chapter Four

"I'm sorry."

Savannah widened her eyes. She had been waiting for those words, but she never thought they would come that easily. "Excuse me?" She asked.

Romeo sighed and shrugged. "I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have yelled at you. But that doesn't mean you're innocent here. You haven't behaved very well yesterday either." He pointed out.

The redhead was surprised. Romeo, apologizing without her needing to ask him to. Maybe he wasn't as bad as she thought he was. And he was right, she didn't act her best the last day. She wasn't proud of herself. "You're right. I pushed you too hard, and I apologize for that." It hurt her pride to apologize to a city boy like that, but she had to keep in mind the promise she made herself after dinner.

The blonde smiled. It was a toothpaste commercial kind of smile: pearly white, perfectly lined teeth. "Cool! Then I guess we can start fresh?" He asked, offering her a hand to shake. "I'm Romeo Russel, nice to meet you."

Savannah honestly had no idea what was going on with that boy. She didn't understand the sudden change. Was he high on something? Or did he just have a very good dream? Either way, a fresh start didn't sound that bad. First, because she would get nowhere by acting all sulky and mean; second, because if she had to spend her summer with that boy, she'd rather do it on good terms.

The redhead smiled a little and shook his hand. Her smile wasn't as big and confident; it was small and shy. It didn't even show her teeth. "I'm Savannah Jones. Nice to meet you too."

She looked at Romeo's eyes and noticed that by this time of the day they looked crystal blue. They felt as piercing as they did on the day they met. They stared at each other for a few seconds, still shaking each other hands, before Savannah felt it was getting awkward and finally withdrew her hand from his.

"Let's get to work, shall we?" She asked, taking her hands to her hips. This whole apology thing was taking too much of their time, and they had a lot of work to do.

"Yes, of course. But first, I also need a fresh start with someone else." Romeo said with another smile. Savannah raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side a little, having no idea who he could be talking about. He never saw him arguing with her father, and there was no one else in the house. Then, she saw Romeo kneeing down and giggled a little, understanding what he was saying. "I'm sorry I called you Soul Eater, but you scared the hell out of me, waking me up like that! If you never do that again, I believe we can become good pals. I actually don't dislike dogs, you know?" Romeo felt kind of silly talking to a dog like that, but he knew Savannah appreciated it, so he did it anyways.

Romeo stood up after patting the dog's head gently, and they both left the house to start work for the day.

This time, Savannah was a lot nicer to Romeo. She didn't make him feel stupid, she didn't pull pranks on him and she didn't laugh at everything he did wrong. She was the one to collect the eggs and let Romeo feed the chickens instead, and taught him how to work with the milking machine. Of course, it wasn't as if they were friends. He could easily notice she felt she could get things done quicker if she was alone and he knew she'd rather have no company at all, but it was a step forward.

"So, yesterday, after you got all whiney and sulky, you missed the best part of our morning." Savannah said as they approached the stables. Romeo rolled his eyes at her side comment about him being whiney and sulky, since he could say exactly the same about her, but chose to keep that to himself.