Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117740 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 589(@200wpm)___ 471(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
There was nothing quite like a cultural debate over the name of a bit of baked dough to wake you up on a morning.
Or just haunt you and make you regret all your life choices when, three weeks later, said cultural debate was still ongoing and causing the occasional chaos.
Was I talking about myself? Who knew. It was a mystery.
“Good afternoon, Waffles, Pancake, kids,” I said, looking at the allotment’s most famous chicken family.
Why were they famous?
Easy.
The internet loved a good chicken.
I really had started The Polyamorous Adventures of Waffles as a joke, but there was a surprisingly large group of followers who were anxiously awaiting the moment Pancake found out Waffles had a whole harem of chickens he was servicing on a regular basis.
And no, before anyone asked, I’d never seen him ride another one of his girls while she was nearby.
Yes, it was weird.
No, I didn’t care.
Weird was my middle name. It’d taken me a long time, but now at my ripe old age of twenty-nine years, four months, three weeks, and two days, I had fully come to embrace my weirdness and roll with it.
It made the whole dating part of my life a bit on the tough side, but eh. If a man couldn’t handle me at my weirdest, then he didn’t deserve my normal.
Because there was no normal.
There was only weird.
“I’m starting to think that chicken has a fetish where you’re concerned,” Isa said, staring at Waffles as he hopped up into my lap and settled down.
I smoothed my hand across his back. “He’s my little baby. It would be my pleasure to be his fetish.”
“Some of the things that come out of your mouth scare me.” She sighed, perching on the edge of one of my vegetable beds. “I know you hatched him, but aren’t you too attached?”
“I didn’t hatch him. He was the only one that made it out alive from that stupid school project,” I said. “I rescued him and raised him.”
“And then lobbied the late duke for permission to keep chickens at the allotment.”
“Lobbied is a strong word.”
“Rose. You made banners that said, ‘Justice for Waffles,’ and superglued them on his gates in the middle of the night. If that isn’t lobbying, I don’t know what is.”
I cleared my throat and looked away. “I prefer to think of it as convincing.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t convincing. It didn’t work.”
“That’s why I hung up those lost posters all over town.”
Isa stared at me. “Ah, yes. The campaign to find the late duke’s lost humanity. What was the reward again? A dozen fresh eggs?”
“Hey, have you seen the price of eggs? That was a solid reward.”
“Yes, but you only had Waffles at that point, and Waffles doesn’t lay eggs.”
“I didn’t know he was a boy back then. He could have laid eggs for all I knew.” I held up my hands. “But did the posters work?”
“Given that Waffles is now the allotment’s resident six-timing heathen and a father several times over, yes.”
She made him sound like such a slut.
All right.
Maybe he was a little.
“And I got the primary school to stop doing their spring hatch project unless a farmer was involved from start to finish, so it was a double win in my eyes.” I reached up into the vegetable bed and used my nail to break off a spinach leaf that I offered to Pancake.
She plucked it from my fingers and turned, immediately dropping it on the ground and making a weird little clucking noise that was almost turkey-esque. The bread babies immediately scurried back to her and started pecking at the spinach leaf, so I broke off another couple of them and added to their collection.
I didn’t want my precious breadcrumbs to fight.
“Well, I have to agree with you there,” Isa said. “We get calls at the office so often from people who don’t know what to do with chicks. People don’t realise how much heat they need.”
Barmcake shuffled under Pancake’s wing as if to emphasise Isa’s point about warmth.
“Just like that.” She laughed. “Anyway, I tried to call Jake earlier to confirm the collection of Bongo’s balls, but he didn’t pick up. Are you seeing him later?”
Yeah.
That sounded about right.
My brother was useless at picking up the phone. It wouldn’t surprise me if he showed up at the vet’s office to get his kitten’s balls chopped off at six a.m. on a Sunday morning.
I nodded. “Yeah, just text me the details and I’ll make him call you tomorrow.”
“Thanks.” Isa checked her watch. “I have to go. I’ll leave the cake in your shed.”
“Did you come all the way here just to ask me about Jake?”
“No, Mum wanted me to check on her strawberries. The birds keep getting to them before she can despite her coverings, and she’s losing her marbles. She wants to see if the painted pebbles have worked.” She got to her feet and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Don’t stay here too long. You’ll get sunburnt, and people are really going to think we’re dating if anyone else sees me rubbing after-sun all over your back again.”