Teddy

SPRING IN MINNESOTA IS ITS OWN FORM of torture. Having suffered through them for over three decades now, I'm well acquainted with the fickle nature of the season. This fact doesn't stop me from grumbling my way across the soggy ground late Friday afternoon, leaving muddy footprints in the patches of slushy snow still dotting the ground in areas, even though it's late April.

Whereas April in other parts of the northern hemisphere is a colorful world of rebirth, in Minnesota April is a brown palette of death with sprigs of green poking through the ground and tiny buds of life forming on the bare tree branches. The slow trickle of green in April will eventually lend itself to an explosion of neon green in May. Unless, of course, we're gifted with a late season blizzard, which is not unheard of.

"Time to give up the good fight, winter!" I hiss under my breath.

I kick at the brown snow with my work boots, my sour mood unwilling to be deterred, as I make my way toward the parking lot at Anderson Farm. I stop short when I notice a man leaning over the hood of my car, fussing with something on my windshield. 

I pause a moment to rake my eyes up the body, taking an extended pitstop to appreciate the way the jeans hug his ass and then force my eyes up.

"Uh," I stammer, making my presence known to my best friend, "what are you doing, J?"

Jensen slowly turns his head to face me, still leaning over the side of the hood. "What's it look like?" He returns to his task. "When was the last time you got new wiper blades, Teddy? These things are shot."

"They're not that bad." I walk to the opposite side of the car to inspect the other wiper blade.

"Teddy," he says, pointing his signature grumpy look at me—eyebrows up, forehead crinkled, lips frowning. "Last week we almost got in an accident because your wipers smeared the rain across your windshield instead of actually clearing the water away."

"Oh, shut up, you asshole," I say with a laugh, pushing away from the car. "It was a downpour. People were pulled over. No one's wipers were performing well."

"It's supposed to rain tomorrow. You can't drive around with shitty wipers," he says, returning to the task of replacing the old windshield wiper blades with new ones.

"So you saw the forecast and decided to replace my wipers?"

He doesn't even bother responding to my question. To him, the answer is obvious. And, I guess, it is obvious. This is typical Jensen. He's always doing thoughtful things...with a heavy dose of grumpiness.

He side-eyes me. "You ready to go?"

"Not yet. Just came to grab a coat from my car." I open the backseat door and reach into the warm interior to retrieve a light jacket. After putting it on, I start walking backwards the way I came. "Give me 15 minutes, ok? Twenty tops."

Before I can get far, Jensen pauses his task to stride toward me. He stops my backward movements by fisting a hand on my jacket. "Wait, Teddy," he says gruffly. 

I watch as his big hands work the small metal zipper, and once it has made its trek all the way to the top, our eyes meet, the deep blue of his peering into mine.

"I'm not a toddler, J. I can zip my own jacket." My voice is just barely above a whisper. I unzip it a little to allow airflow around my neck.

He runs a hand up my exposed throat and around my collar, freeing my braid that was trapped under the jacket. I tense under his touch, demanding my body to not react, trying to suppress the goosebumps that have prickled up along my neck and down my arms. I shiver with the effort. Thankfully, he mistakes this for the chilly temperature and zips my jacket all the way back up.

"Fifteen minutes," he says before walking back to my car.

I pivot on my feet, hastily walking away from whatever the hell that was. Shaking my head to clear it of the familiar confusing thought swirling my brain, I make my way to the barns designated for the small petting zoo I'm responsible for on the farm.

I mumble under my breath as I perform my nightly tasks of feeding the animals. Thankfully the chores are routine by now and don't require much thought because I'm replaying the scene in my mind over and over, dissecting it the way I always do. Then try to convince myself I'm being ridiculous.

My best friend confuses the hell out of me. He's always been overly attentive toward me, but it's been different lately.

We spent a lot of years rebuilding our friendship after an awkward and very confusing incident in our first year of college; and although I'm not sure we've ever quite recovered, we cobbled together enough pieces to create something new. Strong, yet sometimes tentative.

It isn't always easy to read Jensen. A stranger might accuse him of being aloof or ambivalent, but those closest to him know the softness that lies under the moodiness. You just need to read his actions, not so much what he's saying or how he's saying it.

I shake my head, visibly trying to rid my head of the thoughts cycling through my brain. I'm sick of them.

"Yeah, yeah," I holler as I come closer to the farthest barn about ten minutes later, finishing up my chores. Cranky bleats can be heard from inside. "I swear you goats get hangrier than me!"

A peal of laughter cuts me off at the barn's entrance. "Yeah right, woman. No one gets hangrier than you."

I stop abruptly, squeaking out a startled breath. "J!" I screech at the man in front of me, now leaning against the doorframe, amusement lighting a smirk across his face.

My eyes travel up the man, starting at his dirty and well-worn work boots, up the tight, faded denim on his legs, pausing only momentarily at how snugly they cling to the middle zones of his body that I long ago decided was a strict NO GO ZONE for me.

As in: Teddy, don't you dare check out your childhood best friend's goods.

It's never a good thing when you realize your very male friend is also an attractive member of the opposite sex. Believe me, I've been trying to erase that fact from my brain for years. Many years. Several decades, in fact.

"Teddy," Jensen says when I finally bring my eyes up to his smiling face. I notice his sandy blonde hair is longer on top than normal, some of the natural curl brushing his forehead and curving over his ears. Faint lines edge his deep blue eyes as he stares at me, a subtle reminder that we are no longer carefree kids anymore. "Hurry and feed those damn things so we can get the hell out of here already. I'm about to get hangry."

I sideswipe him on my way into the barn, purposely clipping my shoulder into his arm, suddenly annoyed at his appearance disrupting my thoughts. My thoughts about him. He's knocked off balance enough he's forced to right himself. He follows me in.

"You know," I say as I get to work. "You could always help, Boss. It is your damn farm, after all."

The Anderson Farm started as a small hobby farm run by Jensen's grandpa. He and his dad had slowly turned it into more of an establishment, a seasonal destination spot really.

Now with Jensen at the reins, the farm continues to grow and flourish; and it's a favorite place for surrounding communities to come for any of the various things it offers. There's something for every season and holiday and any other day you can think of. Christmas tree farm, ice rink, and snow tubing in the cold, winter months. U-Pick berries and flowers and wood fire pizza nights once winter finally surrenders to spring and summer. Apple orchard, pumpkin patch, and haunted corn mazes in the fall.

The Anderson Farm employs a chunk of the residents living in or near Lake Hope. And me, of course. I went to college for business management but came home to work with animals on my best friend's farm, never using the degree a day in my life.

Why, you might ask? Because he asked me to. Or, rather, he offered me a job. Without any other prospects, I figured I could work for Jensen while looking for a job in my field. One month turned to two, two months turned to six, and finally I quit scouring the job ads and settled into a comfortable life.

I've worn many hats over the years at the farm, and still fill in wherever I'm needed, before settling on the animals for the small petting zoo, a popular attraction for anyone stopping by the farm to pick berries or sprawl on a blanket for the woodfire pizza nights or any other various options the farm has to offer.

"Nah, I'm good here, Chipmunk." I glare at his use of the childhood nickname, but he ignores me. Instead, he replaces the doorframe for a nearby wall as his leaning post and he watches me from a comfortable distance. "You know those jackoffs hate me."

I bark out a laugh because it's true. They do hate him. Jensen has never been comfortable around animals. They sense that from a mile away. "Well, these jackoffs are a good judge of character. Obviously."

I glance over my shoulder to catch him staring at my ass. Looking away quickly, not wanting to alert him to the fact that I caught him checking me out, I clear my throat. He's been doing that lately and it makes me feel funny, adding to the pile of things confusing me lately.

My best friend ogling me is most definitely not the norm. It's the very definition of not predictable. Unpredictable. Whatever. I'm rattled. He rattles me now. That's a new thing too. I don't like it.

"Are you, like, doing something different lately, Teddy?" He changes the topic without warning.

Not tracking the change in conversation, I turn toward him. Before I can ask him to clarify, I notice he's looking at me funny. This makes me more uncomfortable. I fidget with the bucket of goat food. "Huh? I mean, what? What do you mean? Different? You're acting weird, J, and it's freaking me out. Maybe it's you doing something different."

He runs a hand through his hair, then tilts his head slightly to the left, as if studying me from a different perspective. "No, it's you. Definitely you." He pushes off the wall and walks toward me. "Something's different. Your pants maybe? Are they new?"

I look down at my jeans. Unlike the ones sold for a pretty penny in stores, my holey knees are compliments of years of wearing them out in the natural way. I'm fairly certain my jeans are older than some of the new kids he recently hired. "Um, nope. These are older than dirt, J. Pretty sure you've seen me in these approximately 300 million times. Just yesterday, in fact. You know I wear my jeans multiple times before I wash them. Especially my work jeans. These goats here don't care. They like the smell."

This seems to remind Jensen of his original train of thought because he abandons the topic. "Food, woman! Remember, you're supposed to be hurrying so we can eat. Kelly texted like 15 minutes ago. He's there already."

Kelly is Jensen's best friend. Well, his best guy friend. He pre-dates me and he never lets me forget he came first. As if Jensen's friendship is a prize we fight for.

Jensen's big dysfunctional family is part of his package, and if the Anderson family comes equipped with Jensen's friendship, so does Kelly. He has from the start. Luckily, Kelly and I have always got along. The two of them welcomed me into their fold that year my family moved to the cul-de-sac. I kind of became one of the guys on accident and it took me years to realize my mistake. By then, it was too late. The damage had been done.

You see, if I was one of the guys, then I couldn't also be seen as a girl. Not to the other girls in my school, and certainly not to the boy that seemed to have always mattered most.

"Did you tell him to order for us, too?" I'm hurrying through my chores now, my motivation renewed. "You know that dickhead never waits to order. Then when we get there, we're forced to watch him stuff his stupid face with food."

"Yeah, Teddy. I'm not stupid. Thought we already covered a Hangry Teddy is not a fun Teddy." He's wearing that amused smile again. The one he wears only for me. As if I'm the most amusing person he's ever met.

Because isn't it fun to amuse the one person you've been secretly trying to get to see you differently since the first time you realized he was a boy, and you were a girl, and maybe that was starting to mean something?

Fun fact: it isn't. It isn't fun. Not even a little bit.