Page 4 of Road to a Cowboy

“They should not exist on this planet,” Austin muttered into his beer.

“Do you know there are more than twenty species of cicada found in Wyoming?”

Austin’s jaw dropped. “Why would I need to know that, Cal? Why?”

Cal’s lips quirked. “Knowledge is power?”

“Asshole,” Austin said without heat. “And you overheard my parents taking a bath together too once. Remember? It was shortly after you moved in with us.”

“Sure. But I didn’t tell twenty other people about it.”

Austin probably shouldn’t have either. But it had been the first thing he’d thought of when he’d pulled the slip of paper out of the hat.

“It really wasn’t as traumatizing as you made it out to be,” Cal added.

“Lies.”

“You see, Austin, when two people love each other?—”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Cal’s laughter bounced off the sides of the car, settling itself in Austin’s bones like an old friend. Austin clinked his beer against Cal’s again and grinned out into the night.

Chapter Two

For as long as Cal had known Austin, his best friend’s favorite time of day had been when dusk bled into night and the sky erupted with stars.

Cal, by contrast, preferred early mornings, when a day dawned fresh and clean. Where anything could happen and the hours ahead of him provided opportunities to get shit done.

What he didn’t love was when his mother called on his day off before he’d even had his morning coffee.

“I need eggs.”

He set down the journal article he’d been reading about sustainable agriculture while the coffee brewed and the bread toasted and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Fuck. He shouldn’t have answered.

Annoyance slithered silky like a snake through his veins, oily and thick. Resentment wasn’t far behind, gripping his chest in a fist so tight he struggled to draw breath.

“Two dozen,” his mom continued, her voice as scratchy as it has always been, owing to genetics or an adolescence smoking or something else. Cal didn’t know. “Two boxes of the cereal with the raisins—you know the one. OJ with extra pulp, frozen chicken fingers, blueberries, and cookies. The ones with the jelly in the middle. But not the raspberry jelly—the strawberry. Make sure you deliver everything by two. I need the eggs for later.”

She hung up without another word.

Setting the phone down on the table, Cal blew out a deliberately long breath. Cracked his neck from side to side. Rolled his shoulders back to relieve the tension that a twenty-second one-sided conversation had spawned.

He would not—would not—let his mother’s call derail his day or sour his mood. Grabbing the annoyance and resentment, he squished them into a ball and hid them behind layers and layers of old emotions, locking them down tight. He could—and would—ignore the fact that she hadn’t bothered with pleasantries. That was nothing new. Or asked how he was doing. That was nothing new too. Or signed off with an I love you.

Cal couldn’t remember the last time she’d said those words to him, if ever. In his house, whether he’d lived with his mom or his dad, if he wasn’t contributing in some fashion, he wasn’t worth the cost of the mattress he slept on.

He was old enough to legally work? He was expected to get a part-time job and contribute financially.

He was old enough to drive? He better pass his driver’s test so he could run errands farther than his bicycle could take him.

He had a Saturday off? He was expected to do yard work and meal prep for the week.

Cal couldn’t remember having much downtime as a kid. In fact, up until the MacIsaacs—Austin’s parents—had taken him in the summer before their senior year of high school, he hadn’t known that he could sit still for five minutes without someone demanding something from him. They’d taught him what family was supposed to mean, whereas his mom had shipped him off to his dad’s in nearby Idaho when she’d gotten fed up with raising him, and his dad had mostly ignored him.

If Austin hadn’t begged his parents to take him in, Cal wasn’t sure where he would’ve ended up as an adult. Not as the foreman of a prosperous cattle ranch, that was for damn sure.

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