He didn’t need Clay’s approval, but he wanted it just the same. Only Clay would be different than Mona, or at least Austin hoped so. Maybe Clay would give Austin the thumbs up and sayNice joband that would be it. Or maybe he would suggest a different type of shirt, and that the hat was all wrong—and why was Austin so worked up about what Clay might think?
Because he was, and that was the truth of it.
He put his regular clothes and his laptop in his room, leaving the straw hat on the dresser, and hustled down the steps to the dining hall. It was different walking in cowboy boots, as the stacked heel seemed to lift him up in one long, straight line. Getting used to them would take practice, as would the fit of the jeans, which, as they had five buttons instead of a button and a zipper, seemed to tuck awfully close around his hips. But as he walked along the path between the trees and joined the throng in front of the steps of the main lodge, nobody seemed to pay him any particular attention. Except then, he heard a long low whistle and turned.
It was Clay. He’d obviously stopped to wash up, as moisture glinted in his hair, and there were water stains around the neckline of his cotton shirt.
“Whoo-wee, sweet daddy!” said Clay, clapping his hands to his face as though astonished by the sight of Austin. “Justlookat you.”
“Is it too much?” asked Austin, overwhelmed at this response.
“Oh, no,” said Clay, shaking his head, tipping his head to the side like he wanted to take in the view and not miss a thing. “It’s perfect. Don’t change a thing. You’re going to start a new trend with those—” Clay pointed at the shiny row of buttons marching up the front of Austin’s jeans. “Buttons.”
The innuendo was there, as plain as daylight, but the smile Clay gave him told Austin there was no malice there, nor any actual push for something sexual. Rather it was playful and fun and the idea of it, this kind of gentle teasing, rose inside of Austin, and he wanted to keep this feeling forever.
“Thank you,” he said, then pointed to his shirt. “It’s just a color, just pale blue, not the plaid that everyone’s wearing, but they didn’t have one in my size. I put in an order for one, though.”
“Brings out the color of your eyes, I’d say,” said Clay. “Besides, you stand out better this way. Anybody claps eyes on you, they’ll sayThere goes the accountant.” Clay smiled and patted Austin’s shoulder and didn’t move away as they mounted the wooden steps of the main lodge to stand in line. “We’ll get you something to rough up the soles of those new boots so they’re not so slippery.”
“Thank you,” said Austin, flustered and flushed by Clay’s compliments. Also, he’d not thought of how his boots tended to slip around like he was walking on glass. “Did the wagon train leave okay?”
“Wagon train?” Clay laughed as he helped himself to chili and cornbread. “It’s a cattle drive, but yeah, they left late, around eleven thirty. I told Leland how I felt, by the way.”
“How did it go?” Austin grabbed probably more chili than any one man needed to eat and with a contented sigh, followed Clay to the table beneath the window. They settled in, sitting side by side, facing the dining hall rather than the view out of the window because, as Clay had pointed out, there were great views everywhere and it might be fun to people watch.
“It went good. He said he hadn’t realized how much I loved it and promised to put me on the roster for the next drive.”
“Excellent,” said Austin, more pleased about it than could be accounted for.
Last week, he’d not realized a place like this existed, still reeling from all the papers he’d had to sign, the way it felt to hand over the keys to the Mercedes to Mona. Now, though, it was a different story. A different world. And eating with Clay was becoming, quite quickly, his favorite part of the day.
Clay never remarked that Austin shouldn’t have two helpings, didn’t chastise him for getting an extra Fudgsicle from the white freezer. Didn’t say a word about it, but just got one for himself and joined Austin and the general gathering on the front porch as everyone chatted and ate their Otter Pops and Drumsticks and other icy delights that evidently Levi kept well-stocked in the freezer.
Austin spotted Jasper and Ellis at the edge of the small crowd, but though the two didn’t come over, they waved.
“There’s Ellis and Jasper,” said Austin, waving back, licking the side of his thumb where the Fudgsicle was quickly melting.
“He’s in our ex-con program,” said Clay, apropos of nothing. “Just so you know. He had a tough time in prison, which is why he doesn’t have a lot to say, except to Jasper. I mean, he can talk, but just to Jasper mostly.”
“Ex-con?” asked Austin, remembering what Leland had told him, but wanting to hear what Clay had to say about it. “Why do you have an ex-con program?”
“We needed the money,” said Clay, quite blunt. “It got us some tax dollars or something, and it worked well with Ellis, as he fit in right away.” Clay waved the air in front of him as if dismissing Austin’s concerns. “He was selling and dealing in drugs, which, okay, is bad, but his mom was dying of cancer, I think, and so he was trying to raise money.”
“Oh.” Austin didn’t quite know what to say to that, but at least now he better understood why Ellis hadn’t spoken to him.
“I heard Bill say he wants to do another one, but Leland thinks there’s a lot of what he calls unknown risks, so—well, they’ll figure it out between them and the rest of us will adapt.”
With a nod, Clay finished his Fudgsicle and licked the wooden stick before grabbing his and Austin’s trash to throw away. When he came back, he was smiling.
“Jasper is not one to be soft, you know?” said Clay. “But Ellis has him eating out of his hand.”
“So—they’re together?” Austin looked over at the two men, who were standing quite close in a little bubble all their own. While that wouldn’t have meant anything to him in his old life, now, in his new life, maybe it did.
“That they are,” said Clay. Then he laughed, a small bark of amusement. “Leland used to have this pretty stringent anti-fraternization rule, you know? But then along came Jamie, and that rule went right down the shitter.”
“The shitter?” asked Austin with a laugh, looking at Clay, open-mouthed, wondering when was the last time he’d laughed so much.
“Yeah.” Clay shook his head, snickering under his breath. “He had these two rules, right? No drifters and no fraternizing. But then Jamie, who was a drifter, by the way, showed up without an appointment? Leland took one look at that cute face an’ that was all she wrote.”
