Page 77 of Sexting the Cowboy
“Technically.”
She studies my face, runs a thumb under her lower lid like she can swipe a better picture. “I heard a screaming match and saw Reno stumble out of your door. He nearly kissed the ground. You okay?”
“I’ve been better.”
She tips her chin toward the lot. “You want me to go after him?”
“You have a car.”
“What do you need?”
“I need him not to drive drunk. I need him not to die just to tell me he hates me. I need a lot of things I’m not getting.”
She snorts. “Oh, that?” She leans back against the door and crosses her arms. “I snatched his keys and chucked them in the bushes by the fence line before I doubled back to check on you. He’ll be looking for them for hours.”
My body does something ridiculous that might be laughter. Or crying. “Blaze.”
“I know my brothers,” she says, serious under the grin. “And I like them alive.”
“He might find them,” I say, which is both anxious and insulting.
She reaches into her back pocket with a flourish and holds up Reno’s key ring. “He’ll have to find me first.”
Relief hits so hard my legs forget they’re supposed to be the stubborn part of me. I step forward and haul her into a hug before my brain clears the move with the part of us that doesn’t do that much. She’s solid and warm and small in a way I only notice when I’m not looking. She goes still for a second, surprised, and then she thumps my back twice, careful at the shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” she asks, softer now.
I stand back, embarrassed and grateful in the same skin. “He knows,” I say. “About me and Annie. He walked in pissed anddrunk and decided it was a betrayal. Told me I’m too old for her. Too old for riding. Too old for all of it.”
She does a face like she smelled something that used to be milk. “It’s his pride talking. Once he figures that out, he’ll probably go back to being a good guy. But until then, he’ll be a dick, so don’t let him get to you.”
“When did you get to be so smart?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? I’ve always been this smart.”
I can’t help it. I chuckle, even now. “Yeah. You have.”
We stand in the small quiet of the trailer for a minute, the kind of quiet that exists only between two people who know they’re supposed to be talking and are deciding not to.
Been a long time since we had a heart-to-heart, and until now, it’s always been her coming to me with a problem. Time the shoe was on the other foot, I guess.
“Be straight with me. You think I’m making a fool of myself?”
“With Annie?”
“Yes.”
She leans a hip on the counter and thinks about it for a beat. “It’s a big gap. Not gonna lie.”
“I know.”
“But people have made bigger gaps work.”
“Me and your mom were the same age,” I say, because my mouth is attached to the part of me that likes memory the way gamblers like noise. “It made communication easy. We?—”
“Dad,” she says, not unkind. “You were childhood sweethearts. You can’t replicate that with someone else. Whatever you have with Annie, you can’t compare the two.”
“I know that,” I say again, because I do. It just doesn’t stop me from using the old map when the new roads don’t make sense.
