Page 48 of Harrison Hyde and the Runaway Bride

The place looked empty other than her. “Did they abandon us?”

“Left us a four-wheeler,” she said. “But we’d best hurry. They’re like vultures at breakfast.”

“I bet.” He came up to her in the doorway, seeing a steaming mug on the table as he passed and picking it up. “This for me?”

“Sure is. Bubba made it before he headed back.” She shrugged. “I think they’re tryin’ to give us some alone time.”

“Considerate of them.” He sidled up beside her.

“Presumptive of them,” she said. “I ought to line ’em up and smack ’em upside their heads.”

“Oh,” he said, and he heard his own tone. Confused, surprised maybe.

She left the bunkhouse, coffee mug in hand, and started walking toward the main house, ignoring the perfectly good four-wheeler sitting a few yards away, so he fell into step beside her.

After a few slow steps, without looking up at him, she said, “I been thinkin’ about it all night.”

“About… what?” He thought he knew.

“Us. This.” She indicated the two of them with her hand.

“Oh,” he said. “Me, too.”

“My feelings are… well, I don’t want to scare you, but they feel kind of…” She paused, tilted her head. “Different from past experience.”

“Different, how?” He didn’t mean to ask the question, but he’d been thinking something similar, and he wanted to know. Not that there had been many past experiences for him. But none of them had been like this. He didn’t know what this was.

She sipped her coffee and kept on walking. Her steps were slow and easy, her jeans brushing through purple clover blossoms. They walked along a fence line, with horses grazing in the sprawling, wildflower-strewn pasture to the left of it.

“I don’t know, exactly,” she said. “Bigger maybe. No, that’s not quite right. Deeper. That’s closer.”

“Deeper,” he repeated, nodding, considering it.

“And I ain’t fixin’ to get my heart broke.”

He hesitated to reply again. Words came into his mind, but he played them to himself first, then revised, and played them again.

“It’s not that I don’twantto… you know. I’m no blushin’ virgin.”

Her eyes and long pause told him a reply was required at this juncture, so he blurted, “Neither am I.”

She grinned. “The way you talk about your life being all work, I gotta admit, I wondered if I was gonna be your first.”

And then he was even more confused. “I thought you just said we’re not going to… you know.”

“Well, notyet,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he repeated. He had no idea what she was talking about. She might as well have lapsed into Aramaic.

“It might not even be real,” she said at length. “I did just ditch my own weddin’ on Saturday. This could be some kind of… rebound reaction.”

He nodded. “Did he break your heart?”

She snort-laughed, shaking her head. Some of her coffee sloshed over the rim of her mug. “I was disappointed about that beautiful weddin’ goin’ to waste, and not havin’ the reception, and havin’ to return all the gifts— which my mom and aunts have already taken care of for me.” She ran her open palm over the fluffy tops of the tallest grasses alongside the well-worn path from bunkhouse to main. “I have a great family.”

“Can’t argue with you, there.”

“I was disappointed about not marryin’, I suppose. But not marryin’ Billy Bob specifically? Not so much. When I could take stock, it felt more like relief. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to call it off until I called it off, you know?”

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