“We want to be there. With you. Not behind you or near you. With you.”
“That’s a bad idea. Actually, that’s several bad ideas stacked in a trench coat pretending to be one really bad idea,” I say.
“All our best ideas are bad. Remember the barn? The creek? That thing with the?—”
“I remember.” Boy, do I remember. My thighs remember. Parts of me I didn’t know existed remember.
“Then you remember we’re good at bad ideas.”
“This is different. This is public. This is permanent. This is your family and mine and thirty years of exploding history.”
“Exactly why we should be there.”
There’s noise in the background. Jesse’s voice. “Tell her about the pact.”
“What pact?” I ask, suspicious. “Please tell me you didn’t do something involving blood or tattoos.”
“We made a pact,” Wyatt says, sounding embarrassed. “If you make any move toward us, publicly, we stand with you. No more hiding. No more sneaking. No more pretending we don’t want this.”
“Want what, exactly?”
“You. Us. Whatever this thing is.”
“You don’t even know what this is.”
“Neither do you.”
He’s got me there. I don’t know what you call three cowboys and a Thompson girl other than a bad joke walking into a bar.
“Your father will disown you.”
“Maybe. Probably. Definitely if we’re being realistic. That’s our problem,” he says.
“The town will talk.”
“They’re already talking. Did you know there’s a betting pool?”
“On what?”
“Everything. Who you’ll choose, when the next fight will be, what Rita will eat next.”
“Madison will make your lives hell.”
“She’s already trying. Did you see her latest post? She photoshopped herself into Jesse’s rodeo photos. It’sdisturbing. She gave herself his trophy.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. So really, public acknowledgment can’t be worse than that.”
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
There’s a pause. I hear muffled discussion, possibly an argument, definitely Boone saying something about goats.
Then Jesse’s on the phone. “Because the feud is fake but what we had was real.”
“Was it though? Or were we all just horny and rebellious?”
“You tell me. Was it fake when you came four times in one night? Was it fake when you fixed my coffee without asking because you noticed I was tired? Was it fake when you sang to Rita and didn’t know I was listening?”
