“Your parents sent you with quite the task, didn’t they?” His face is impassive, but his tone is low and sharp.
I sigh and rub some dust out of my eyes, tired of this conversation already. I try to turn things around. “Didn’t you ever think about doing anything other than ranching?”
His gaze slides over to me, and his lips turn down. “Can’t say there was much else I was ever suited for. Ranching is all I ever knew. I don’t think I thought to want anything else.” He takes a swig of his beer, eyes shining as he looks up at the night sky like he’s looking for answers to some question he’s posed to himself. “What about you? You ever think about doing something other than running the accounting firm with your dad?”
I scoff at the question. “Not in a long time.”
“Is it because you love it or because you haven’t had it in you to dream of nothin’ else?”
I scowl into my beer bottle. His words sting for some reason. I turn over the question and the insinuation he made with it, unsure of what the answer is.
Do I love it?
I’m not sure.
Iamgood at it though, and that ought to count for something. It’s what Dad expected me to do, to follow in his footsteps, take over the company he started when he retires. He always told me I had the mind for numbers. It’s what I went to college for. But after all this time, I can’t say it’s something I love. It doesn’t bring me any significant amount of joy or make me feel alive. It’s a paycheck. One that’s a lot more stable than the income of a small-town rancher.
The silence drags on as darkness deepens and the chirping crickets join the cows’ sustained ululation. Pops whistles between his front teeth. “You’re more lost than I thought, boy.”
“I’m not lost,” I argue.
Pops smiles from his spot in the rocker and takes off the cowboy hat he’s been wearing all day, revealing gray hair that’s glued to his head with a day’s worth of sweat and dust. “Well, I hope you’re right. There’s nothin’ sadder than a boy so lost he doesn’t even know he can’t find his way home.”
My throat closes up, and I suck down the rest of my beer to clear away the gravel resting behind my Adam’s apple. Pops isn’t a man of many words. Grams always talked enough for the two of them when she was still alive. But when he does say something, you’d best listen because it’s likely important.
Pops sucks on his teeth as his eyes wander toward the herd, still making a racket in their separate pens. He stays lost in thought for a moment before he pins me with a weighted stare. “Tell you what. I’ll sell this place,”—his lips twitch as he watches my face brighten in relief—“if you stay here and help me on the ranch until Thanksgiving.”
My face drops. “Thanksgiving? That’s almost eight weeks away! I planned to be gone from the city for a week tops.”
“Take it or leave it. I’m not selling an acre of this place unless you stay.”
“You expect me to up and leave my life in the city for two whole months?”
He shrugs. “Now, that’s up to you, son. You wantmeto up and leave my lifehere? Seems only fair you get a taste of what I’m givin’ up by leavin’.”
“You’re asking a lot of me, Pops. And of Dad,” I point out.
“And y’all are askin’ a lot of me. As I said, take it or leave it, Wes. The choice is up to you. I’ll let ya sleep on it.”
Stubborn old man.
This is the only way he'll consider selling. I know it from the steady gleam in his eyes.
"Fine. I'll stay the eight weeks," I grumble.
"Ah, good. I knew you weren't an idiot."
I give him a sullen glare and head inside without another word to wash today’s grime off me and think through my options before another busy day of work tomorrow.
Stop Thinking With Your Giant Dick
Wes
My body feels like it’s been trampled by a herd of wild horses. Muscles hurt that I didn’t even know I had. I don’t remember ever being this sore after working on the ranch when I was younger. Although, I suppose it feels different at thirty-five than it did at eighteen.
I gulp down a thermos filled with iced tea, grateful that Sawyer made some for supper the other night and left it in the fridge for Pops. It’s been three days since Pops made that deal with me, and I still haven’t found the right time to call Dad to tell him about it. I was hoping I’d find a way out of this or that Pops would cave and let me go back to the city like I’ve been dying to ever since I got here.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been a lucky guy.
