“Hmm,” she murmurs. “After you kiss me, I reckon.”
Goddamn.
“Your heart’s not so slow anymore,” she whispers.
“Damn right it’s not.”
She laughs, pulling back so she can look up into my face. “You want to go for a walk, take the long way around back to the car?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Let me close our tab.”
She waits, her hand in mine, while I pay the bill. Then, I lead her out the front door. We weren’t there very long, maybe forty-five minutes, but suddenly, I don’t want to be around people who aren’t her anymore. On the street, she winds her hand through mine, and we walk down the center of the empty road.
“Does this feel like a hometown to you?” I ask.
“Not in a negative sense,” she says. “I wasn’t ever desperate to get out. I just didn’t know what to do up at the ranch.”
“So you didn’t want to leave?”
“I love the ranch,” she sighs. “Love the mountains, how quiet it is, even the employee housing. But I don’t really have a skill that translates to Ryder Ranch, so I picked a different path.”
“Do you regret it?”
For a moment, I think I delved too deep. Then, she shakes her head.
“No, but I don’t know that I want to work in the city forever.”
“It’s hard to leave behind the things that made you who you are.”
The words leave my mouth before I realize they’re not really mine. My therapist said those to me, in my early days of sitting in her office. I kept asking if I could sit on the porch and smoke, and she kept telling me not to, until one day, she let me. And it was a fucking mess. The rehab looked out over a manicured lawn, a street, and some office buildings. I sat there for a long time with the unopened pack in my fingers, thinking about how I didn’t want things to go back to the way they were, but I didn’t know anything else.
“You don’t want them to be,” she said gently.
She was right—I don’t want them to be. God, growth is so painful. I toughed it out over those next few weeks, but it wasn’tthe cigarettes or the pills I missed most. It was sitting on the porch steps, watching the goldenrod wave in the summer wind. It was how used to desperation I was, how I didn’t feel like I deserved to have enough when the desperation was over.
Meeting Janie—that makes me put a lid on that line of thinking. Because, again, I will not be fucking this up. I don’t care if I have to stay up all night wrestling my demons.
I will keep my aim steady.
We walk for a while without talking. Then, she starts telling me about being a teenager on Ryder Ranch, about all the friends she had and what they got up to. I’m glad she had all that, and it’s interesting to hear about it firsthand. Nobody I knew had a particularly happy childhood, and hers seems like something right out of a movie.
She asks a bit more about mine. I tell her about the cabinet factory but not about the mines. That part of my life is a little harder to speak out loud.
We make it back to the truck. I put her in the passenger side, circle the truck, and come to a halt by the tailgate.
I think I’m gonna kiss her when I get inside.
Taking a breath, I look up at the stars hanging heavy in the sky, the same stars I looked up at for years, on nights I couldn’t sleep because the memory of being below ground stifled me like a pillow over my face.
This is one of those moments I want to remember. I missed so fucking much of my life, but starting right here and now, I’m gonna remember.
My feet move me around the truck, and I pull open the door, sinking into the driver’s side. We’re alone, sheltered by the broad building in front. My heart is beating real fast, but I barely register it. She glances sideways, her soft hair falling around her face. Shifting my knee so I can lean over, I touch her cheek.
She freezes then leans in.
Before I lose my nerve, I bend in and kiss her mouth.
My body tingles, my brain shuts down, and my nerves are on fire. She tastes real sweet, her lips so fucking soft. We both make a softhmm, and our bodies shift together. My hand slides over her waist, pulling her until we’re up against each other in the dark truck cab. Her fingers grip my lapel.
