Me: Those were for birds.
Jesse: Sure, Callie.
I turn my phone off before I can respond with something like the truth about how much I actually do miss them. Even their stupid faces and their stupid jokes and the stupid way they make me feel things.
The festival is in six days. The whole town will be there. All the McCoys. All the Thompsons. All the gossips and watchers and people placing bets on when the next fight will break out.
Maybe it’s time to give them something to really talk about.
Or maybe it’s time to disappear entirely.
I haven’t decided yet.
Rita’s waiting by my truck, having escaped from the yard again. She’s got something in her mouth that looks expensive.
“What did you steal now?”
She drops it at my feet. It’s a McCoy ranch tag, the kind they put on equipment. Fresh. Recent. Still warm, which means she was just there.
“Where did you get this?”
She bleats innocently, but there’s nothing innocent about Rita. She’s been visiting them. Of course she has. Goats don’t care about feuds or breakups or feelings. They just go where they want and eat what they please and live their best lives without worrying about what people think.
“You’re fraternizing with the enemy?”
She tilts her head as if to say “enemy is a strong word for people you were naked with just last week.”
She stops short of calling me a ho. But I know she’s thinking it.
“They’re not the enemy, Rita. They’re just... off limits,” I say.
Another head tilt.
“Stop judging me. You eat garbage for fun. Your opinion means nothing.”
But I pocket the tag anyway. A little piece of metal with “McCoy Ranch” stamped on it. It shouldn’t mean anything. Shouldn’t make my chest tight. Shouldn’t make me want to drive over there and return it in person.
“C’mon. We have things to do,” I tell Rita. “Productive things. Like laundry. And wallowing. Productive wallowing.”
Rita nods as if to say “we both know you’re going to eat more pie and stare at that ranch tag for an hour.”
She’s not wrong.
Six days until the festival.
Six days to figure out what I want.
Six days to decide if being miserable apart is really better than being together.
The tag feels warm in my pocket. Not radioactive or magical, just warm from Rita’s mouth, which is gross when I think about it. But I don’t take it out. Don’t throw it away. Just get on with my day carrying stolen McCoy property, pretending it’s not a metaphor for something else.
16
Jesse
I’m fixinga broken gate latch when I see Callie’s truck heading toward town, driving with the determination of someone on a mission. Not a grocery store mission. Not a feed store mission. More like an “I’m about to do something rash and illegal” mission. I recognize it because I’ve driven that way myself, usually on the way to someplace I shouldn’t be going.
“Where’s she headed?” Boone asks, appearing at my shoulder because he has a sixth sense for when I’m thinking about Callie.
