“All’s fair in love and—” Boone starts.
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Wyatt warns.
“I was going to say pie auctions.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
Callie kisses each of my brothers goodbye too, quick pecks that still manage to feel significant. Then she heads toward her house, Rita beside her, the pie tin catching the last of the light.
“Think this can work?” Boone asks quietly once she’s out of earshot.
“Define work,” Wyatt says.
“Last more than a month. Not end in complete disaster. Maybe turn into something real.”
“It’s already real,” I say, watching Callie’s silhouette disappear into her house.
“Real complicated,” Wyatt mutters.
“Best things usually are,” I tell him.
We stand there for a while, the three of us watching the Thompson house like idiots, probably looking about as pathetic as we feel.
“We should go,” Wyatt says.
“Probably,” I agree.
“Definitely,” Boone adds.
None of us moves.
“We’ve got it bad,” Boone observes.
“Shut up,” Wyatt and I say in unison.
But he’s right. We’ve got it bad. All three of us, completely gone for a girl who gives her goat creek baths and can’t make pie without googling recipes and kisses us at property lines despite everything that says she shouldn’t.
“Worth it though,” I say.
“Yeah,” Wyatt says. “Worth it.”
We head back to our place as darkness falls. The house feels too quiet without her laughter, too empty without Rita trying to eat something she shouldn’t.
“Think she knows?” Boone asks.
“Knows what?”
“How far gone we are. How much she matters.”
“She knows,” Wyatt says with certainty.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because kissed us in front of the whole town. You don’t do that unless you know. Unless you feel it too.”
It’s strange to hear Wyatt so optimistic about anything. But I have to say that today. for the first time since this whole thing started, I’m thinking something could come of it, too. The odds are against us but hell, I’ve never walked away from a challenge. That’s not how the McCoys handle their shit.
