He hasn’t.
Now I’m wondering why I haven’t asked.
Wesley tells me a story about his preteen self, about his slew of brothers and parents, an apple-pie family on a farm. He says that even in a picture-perfect family like his, where the parents did everything right, he still didn’t feel like he belonged. He tells me he butted heads with them about his “vegetarian phase,” which “wasn’t realistic for farm life.” They raised cows, and the first calf he helped deliver was one he named Ruby when he was seven years old. He got attached to Ruby, raising her himself, feeding her colostrum out of a bottle. She had to join the dairy herd when she was two, but she loved Wesley and came to him when called, like a dog. He was her human.
When he was twelve, his parents told him it was time for Ruby to leave. She wasn’t producing as much milk anymore, so they wanted to cull her. He loved Ruby to bits and pieces; she washiscow. He cried hard, begging them to let him keep her, so upset that he got a nosebleed. His mom gave in and said he could keep Ruby. But then a week later, Ruby was gone.
“I kind of lost it,” he tells me, “but Mom explained that they’d found a better home for Ruby on a farm upstate.”
I wince.
“Yeah. She felt bad, but farming is a business and dairy cows that don’t produce milk are money pits. Anyway, I found out later what ‘a farm upstate’ really meant, and... now I want to be that farm upstate.”
My heart has been torn out of my chest.
“Wesley,” I say calmly. It requires all of my restraint not to wrap him in a bear hug, even though enough time has passed since this happened to him that he can speak on it unemotionally.
“Yes?”
“I am going to get you a thousand elderly roosters. I’m going to raid farms and steal their Rubys.” I spread my arms. “All of this will be cows.”
Wesley bursts out laughing. “That might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me?” He returns my phone. “I take it you’re feeling better. I told your friend you’d call her back tomorrow.”
That’s not happening. “Thanks. She isn’t my friend, though.”
I sense he wants to ask questions but is too polite to. “No more running off, okay? There’s no escaping me anyway.”
“Sorry.” A new kind of embarrassment is creeping in. Fantastic. “I don’t know what happened.”
“I do.” He sits up, studying me closely. “I think you had a panic attack.”
Apanic attack. I blink. Wow. “Is that what that was? I’ve never had one before. I don’t think I like them.”
The corner of his mouth hitches somewhat. “I get panic attacks all the time.”
“Really? I’ve never seen you have one.”
“Oh, you definitely have. Some are invisible. Some, I try to mask by...” He throws his head back, thinking. “By being argumentative, I guess you’d say. One of the reasons I’ve liked passing notes back and forth is because it’s easier to say what I mean to say without defaulting to arguing. Because of nerves.”
“You’re grouchy to hide panic attacks and nerves?”
“Don’t give me too much credit. Sometimes I’m grouchy because I’m part cactus.” His eyes are warm. “You handled it really well.”
I’d laugh if I had the energy. “Liar.”
The other corner of his mouth joins in, a full smile takingshape. He reaches slowly, looking a little nervous, to brush the hair out of my eyes. Then he leaves his palm on my forehead. I close my eyes again, shuddering an exhale. “That’s nice.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s like a weight, so that I don’t fall into the sky.”
“We can’t be having that. The hand stays.”
I smile. Just a tiny bit. When I steal a peek at last, all of Wesley’s amusement is gone, worry clear in his eyes.
Listening to him talk in his low, rhythmic tenor has calmed me. “Thank you,” I say. “I feel normal again. Or almost normal.” I’ll never take almost-normal for granted again. I’mexhausted.
“Now I’m going to ask you something difficult,” he ventures.
