They went inside. He turned on the ruby-glass lamp while Bea grabbed her e-reader and plopped down on the small couch. He plopped down on the armchair, putting his feet up on the small coffee table and, with his hands over his stomach, nodded that he was ready. And he was, more ready than he thought he would be, to talk to Clay in the morning. If only Clay would forgive him, then Austin would do his best to become more than the half-man that he was.
28
Clay
The drive to Chugwater, no matter that he drove as fast as he could, spitting up dirt, fishtailing on the curves, did him no good at all. Neither did the single beer he grabbed at the Stampede Saloon, which he downed while eyeing the clientele, wondering whether the space between the saloon and the railroad tracks was dark enough for a special meet-and-greet between him and whoever caught his eye.
He’d been on the verge of a relationship so sweet he could hardly believe it was happening to him. Austin had been all the things Clay had never thought he’d want. A tall, red-haired, clean living, recently divorced nerdy accountant. Not to mentionstraight,with a nine-year-old daughter.
He’d thought his days of fucking in back alleys were over for good. That he’d found love. Found someone who was easy and fun to be with, and who looked at him like he was something special, more than cute and blond and dimpled, like he was someone whom Austin could count on. Could trust.
And Clay had been those things—wasthose things, all of them. He’d been willing to wait until Austin felt comfortable being in bed with him. He’d even been willing to forgosex, an impossible thing to imagine only a month ago, willing to just mess around and make out like a teenager and be with Austin until they were both ready. Until Austin wanted more.
Except, it seemed, Austin wanted a different kind of life altogether. One that didn’t include any of the things Clay found important. Austin wanted big city life, like the wife on that oldGreen Acresprogram, and all Clay had to offer him was blue jeans, horse shit, and fresh air. Which was not enough, it seemed, for Austin, which meant Clay wasn’t enough for him either.
Oh, Clay’d been enough when it was hand-holding time, something Austin wasn’t afraid to do. Hadn’t seemed afraid to try other things as well, had responded to Clay’s suggestion of fooling around to see what would happen like it was a good idea.
Now that Austin had Bea with him, all of that had changed.
“Get you another’n, young man?” asked the bartender, wiping the bar down with a damp cloth that smelled like old beer and Pine Sol.
Clay paused as he sucked off the last of his beer. It was cheap beer. It was Budweiser. The dregs were bitter on his tongue. The tap needed cleaning.
All of this felt more familiar than he wanted to admit. Familiar enough to slip into like an old trap he’d built himself out of one-night-stand encounters, a pocket full of condoms, and a belief, way down deep in his heart, that that was the way to find true love.
Only to find out, in the end, that true love could be found beneath the overhang of a Motel 6 in a downpour. Could be found in a cheap, small-town motel with only one bed. In a drive to see a vista view while he walked off to give the other fellow his space. In a painting of him, slipped beneath his door in the wee hours of the morning. In a red-haired, green-eyed accountant who’d survived a divorce so miserable, his shoulders were in a perpetually locked position.
None of which involved lube or pulling his dick out of his briefs or bending over so some guy, some stranger, could get his rocks off. All of this was like night and day. Like city to country.
Was it so wrong to ask Austin to pick Clay and the ranch over his old life?
He lowered his glass, looked at the suds settling and drying along the inside of it.
“Well?” asked the bartender. When Clay didn’t say anything, the bartender kept moving in the direction he’d been going, wiping down the bar, gathering up used coasters, putting everything to rights.
Which was what Clay needed to do, put everything in his life to rights. He only needed to be brave enough to do it. Only he didn’t knowwhatto do.
“No, thank you,” said Clay, but it was to the air, as the bar was too loud and the bartender was too far away to hear him.
He laid a five-dollar bill on the counter and sauntered out to his truck. Ladybelle waited by the railroad tracks beneath the single light over the back parking lot.
He got in, cranked her engine, and drove slowly home. Along the way, one elbow resting on the windowsill, driving with one hand, he looked up at the stars, not hardly looking at the road at all, which was fine. Ladybelle knew the way as well as he did.
It was late when he parked behind the barn, next to the supply shed, the last spot in a neat row of trucks that got used for what trucks were meant for. Hauling hay bales, barbed wire, boots, and shovels. Sometimes, though, a truck bed could carry two men, and blankets for pillows so they could look up at the stars together.
It was a night he’d remember for a good long time, in spite of everything.
As he stepped out of the shadows of the roofline of the supply shed, the auto-light sprang on when the sensors detected him. He saw Leland waiting by the barn, leaning against an old, dark-ribbed cottonwood tree, whose branches spread in a wide circle and covered Leland with shadows, whose spicy scent filled the night air.
“You’re back late,” said Leland, casually, pushing himself up off the tree and into the light. “And you scooted out early, which isn’t like you.”
“Sorry, boss,” said Clay. He’d left his hat behind so he didn’t even have that to take off and resettle on his head to give him something to do while he rustled up an explanation. Sunday nights were busy, and he knew that. “Just needed some thinking time.”
“About anything in particular?” asked Leland, falling into step beside Clay, like they were headed to Leland’s office in the barn. “Or aboutanyonein particular?”
The auto-light at the corner of the barn snapped on, bathing them both in electric white, cutting the darkness around them in a hard-edged circle. Clay had known the lights were a good idea when Leland had them installed at the beginning of the prior season, but at a moment like this, when he needed silence and darkness before he confessed his sins, he rather hated them.
“I’m not blind, Clay.”
