At the staging area, while everyone’s loading horses and pretending they didn’t just witness a day of Thompson-McCoy awkwardness, Jesse makes one last attempt. He corners Callie at her trailer while she’s loading her mare. Boone and I hang back but stay close enough to hear, because we’re supportive that way. Not to mention nosy.
“One date,” Jesse says without preamble. “One public date. Dinner at the steakhouse. No sneaking around. Let everyone see. If it sucks, we’re done.”
“Jesse—”
“We’ll handle your dad. Mine too. Whatever needs handling, we’ll handle it.”
“You can’t handle thirty years of grudges,” she says.
“Watch us,” Boone adds, joining them. “We’re excellent handlers. We handle things professionally.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“Could be.”
Callie almost smiles, then catches herself. She pulls something from her pocket, a folded piece of paper, aged and soft.
“This was my mom’s,” she says, pressing it into Jesse’shand. “Her apple pie recipe. The real one, not the church version everyone has.”
Jesse unfolds it carefully. “Brown butter?”
“And cardamom. Just a pinch.” She’s looking at the paper, not at us. “She used to say the secret ingredient was not holding grudges while you baked. That anger curdled the filling.”
“Callie—”
“I can’t keep doing this. I won’t be the reason our families escalate. I won’t be the town entertainment. I won’t pretend that great sex is enough to build something on.”
Boone tries one more time. “What about Rita? Joint custody? We’ll take weekends?”
Nobody laughs. The joke falls flat because we know what’s happening.
“Keep the recipe,” Callie tells Jesse. “Maybe someday things will be different. Maybe in ten years we can laugh about this over coffee. That time we thought sex could overcome sociology.”
She turns to leave, then looks back. “You’re good guys. You really are. But good guys with the wrong last name are still wrong.”
Callie climbsinto her father’s truck without even a glance back. Mr. Thompson says something that makes her nod, but she’s staring straight ahead with the determination of someone who’s made a decision and is going to stick with it. Regardless of cost.
They drive away, leaving dust and finality and threeMcCoys standing around with our dicks in our hands, figuratively speaking.
“We should go after her,” Jesse says, because Jesse’s never met a lost cause he didn’t want to pursue.
“No,” I tell him. “We respect her choice.”
“Her choice is ill-advised.”
“Still hers to make.”
Jesse yanks off his hat and throws it at our trailer. It bounces off and lands in horse manure, which feels appropriate. “This sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re just giving up? After everything?”
“What everything?” I ask, Callie’s words echoing. “The sneaking around? The hiding? The constant drama? The death threats from our fathers?”
“The connection,” Jesse insists. “The way she laughs. The way she fits with us.”
“The way she fits with us in bed,” Boone corrects quietly. “We never really tried to fit anywhere else.”
