The short, stocky, sixteen-year-old boy walks away, leaving the front door of his apartment wide open. "Why can't you call me by my first name like everyone else?" he says over his shoulder. He's wearing plaid pajama pants and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt.
I step into the apartment. It smells like Hot Pockets. "Because your first name is worse than your last name. Farley is the lesser of two evils. Unless you want me to shorten Eldridge to El. That I can do."
He stops in the doorway of his small room. "I like El. El Capitan."
"Farley it is."
He gives me a dirty look and sits down at his desk. His room is filthy and I don't even want to name what it smells like.
"I need your help."
"I told you last time was the last time."
"Do you want me to tell Tenley how I came to be the one to return her underwear?" I give Farley a warning look, and he shrinks.
"No," he sighs. Farley has a huge crush on Tenley, especially since he met her in town a few months ago. Before that, his crush was less innocent and a lot more perverted. He'd let himself into the house where she was staying when she first came to town, and stole her underwear. He'd put them up for sale on the internet, and didn't realize the sign visible through a window in the background of one of his pictures was recognizable to anybody who'd grown up in Sierra Grande. Farley and his mother live within a stone's throw of the Merc, and clear as day was the Merc's sign with the bright green light-up Saguaro beside the M. From there I'd asked around, listened in on some teenage conversations at the diner, and when I learned who this kid was, I posed as an interested buyer and watched him respond to me from where he sat at the diner, slurping his strawberry milkshake. He about peed himself when I walked up and tapped his shoulder. He begged me not to tell Tenley, and since then I've been milking his hacking skills.
"What do you need?" Farley asks, picking up four Skittles from the pile lying on top of his desk.
"I need to know what Sawyer Bennett's connection is to this town." I frown as I think of my dad's reaction. "And to the Circle B."
"You mean Wildflower?"
I stare at the side of Farley's head until he looks at me. "The new sign isn't up yet. How do you know it's called Wildflower?"
"I can't tell you all my secrets."
A muscle in my jaw tics and Farley relents. "Fine. You're so intense." He looks back at his computer. "I overheard Jo and Dakota talking, and I was curious so I looked it up and saw the articles of incorporation had recently been approved."
"Hmph." I walk away and stop at the door. "Tell me when you have info on Sawyer Bennett."
"Aye, aye, captain," he says sarcastically.
I keep going into the short hallway. "And stay the fuck out of Jo Shelton's business."
"You're an asshole," he yells after me.
"At least I'm not a virgin," I yell back.
He's saying something else but I don't hear it, because the front door is closing behind me.
28
Jo
"So, this is the place?"Travis peers out the windshield as we take the turnoff for Wildflower. He sounds skeptical.
I nudge him. "Give it a chance. Pretty soon those buildings will have walls, and there will be horses in the pen, and the main house will have more outward character. Right now all the charm is on the inside."
"And a sign?" He thumbs behind him. "Because that old dirty sign said Circle B."
I ruffle his hair and he tamps it back down. "The new sign comes this week."
I picked it out a couple weeks ago, from a metal workshop in the next town. It looks like plain metal, until the sun shines on it, and the whole sign lights up in color. Just like a field of wildflowers.
We pull up and get out. I almost can’t believe it’s ready. Livable. Our new home. Travis eyes the main house in front of us.
"Not bad," he says, looking around.
