A few hours later, I’m chugging coffee on the tailgate of my truck and waiting for Jonas when my ears perk at a car rattling over the cattle guard. I tip forward to see who it is, and Betty takes that as a sign that I’m handing over my snack. Her teeth delicately graze my knuckles as she engulfs my peanut butter oatmeal bar, along with half of my hand.
“Hey! You jerk,” I scoff, tossing the tiny chunk still pinched between my fingers.
Betty’s snuffling around in the rocks when I slide my ass off the end of my truck and start toward the big house. With any luck, the girls will have something I can eat to give me enough energy to survive until lunch.
Testing her luck, Betty follows, nipping at my heels the closer I get to the house. She fucking loves it here, thanks to Jackson and Kate Wells’s kids constantly leaving food unattended. Sure enough, she ditches me the second she sees their six-year-old, Odessa, playing in the flower beds.
“Be good,” I call after the dog. And I guess the kid, too. Betty’s bark is noncommittal.
I knock the dust from my boots on the slow climb up the front steps and swing open the screen door, letting it fall closed behind me with a slam. Cheerful voices and country music carry through the home, stretching down the long hallway and pulling me in. My stomach rumbles at the scent of freshly baked bread, and my strides lengthen. Here’s hoping I can snag a warm slice with some butter.
“Hey,” I announce my presence, sneaking up behind where one of the ranch owners, Austin, is snacking on sliced cheese.
When his hand slides away from the plate, I grab a piece of Swiss for myself. Austin gives me a look, shaking his head, and I continue surveying the goods spread over the counter.
“Are y’all having a party I didn’t know about?” I grab a handful of crackers and slices of cheese, tossing a piece of cheddar into my mouth as I carry on down the island.
Austin’s fiancée, Cecily, hands me a plate. “Our wedding…”
Drumming my fingers on the edge of the counter, I say, “Oh,right.”
Not sure how my mind temporarily spaced on that when Austin and Cecily’s wedding is all the women have been talking about around here for weeks.
I take a place at the extra-long table—big enough to seatthe Wells family and then some—and eat enough cheese and crackers to feed an entire preschool. When Jonas saunters into the kitchen a few minutes later, Kate hands him a plate and nudges him toward me.
For a kid who seemingly keeps coming back here by choice, he sure doesn’t appear thrilled. His expression reminds me a little too much of the look his mom gave me when I showed up there to pick him up last week. Whit cut me down with a single glance, and damn it if I didn’t love it.
“What are we doing today?” Jonas scopes out the goodies on his plate.
“Better eat your Wheaties.” I present my own stack of layered Monterey Jack and crackers. “Those tiny bean poles you call arms are gonna need all the help they can get.”
Austin tilts his head, slowly raising his coffee mug to his mouth.
“Tarping silage,” I explain, earning a knowing nod from him as he sips.
“Here, kiddo.” Kate sets a brown paper bag on the table next to Jonas’s plate. “Packed you extra snacks. Bring lots of water, too. It’s a hot one today.”
Not long after, the two of us are traipsing out of the house, each carrying two brown paper bags chock-full of sandwiches, granola bars, fruit, and spare water bottles. The sun has sweat prickling my back in an instant, and I tilt my cowboy hat to shield my eyes. In silence, we head along the gravel driveway, past the barn and cabins and bunkhouses.
Jonas reminds me a lot of my younger brother, Beau, as a kid; he’s quiet and reserved and hard on himself for even the smallest mistakes. The other day Jonas slammed a fist into the barn wall—hurting nothing but his pride—after Denny scolded him for not closing the paddock gate properly. But he sure learned his lesson, and he triple-checked every gate he closed for the rest of the day.
“So what exactly are we doing?” Jonas asks, tossing a stickfor Betty as we approach the massive, gently sloped pile of silage—chopped-up hay that’ll be left to ferment for cattle feed. Already covered in overlapping white tarps, it’s just waiting for us to place rows upon rows of tires to weigh it down and help keep both oxygen and moisture from getting in to ruin the fermentation process.
We drop our lunch bags on a shaded patch of grass and I point to the stacks of old vehicle tires piled high. “You’re covering the tarp in those.”
He blinks at me, and a small smile crops up on his lips. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you? That’s not a real thing.”
“Sure is. We put plastic over the cut hay so it can fermentfor a few weeks to feed the cattle through winter. Gotta place all those tires on there to hold the tarp down in the wind.”
He still doesn’t seem to believe I’m not fucking with him, so I start up the gradual embankment, grabbing a tire under each arm and setting them down along the top of the pile.
With black streaks already evident on my hands from the warm rubber of the tires, I position them on either side of my mouth to bellow at the kid. “Come on. Don’t want this to take all day and night, do ya?”
Awkwardly cradling a tire in both arms and looking through the hole in the center, he walks toward me, huffing and panting the entire way. With an exasperated, dramatic yelp, he lets go once he’s reached the top. The tire hits the tarp with a hollowthunk,teetering on its edge for a split second before rolling halfway back down. When it finally catches a small lip in the plastic sheeting and tips over, it swirls around for a moment, sounding like the dull bounce of a half-deflated basketball on a gym floor. Taunting Jonas.
I pull the collar of my shirt over my nose to silently laugh. I definitely don’t need to correct him on this one; he knows exactly where he went wrong.
Jonas throws his hands up. “Oh, what the fuck—fridge.”
