“Are you ever going to introduce us to this girl?” my mom asks.
“No, because you all are delusional and I’m not seeing anyone.” I stand up from my chair and push it back under the table,
“We know you’re full of shit. Or is it a different girl each week? We know you like to play the field,” Ava says, no longer on my team, apparently.
“Keep that up and you’re going to have to find someone else to gang up on Maverick with.” I point to her and shake my head.
“No, you do it so well,” she whines.
“That’s what I thought. Now, have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, looking toward Mav.
“Have fun with your mystery date,” he says as I walk to the door.
I don’t grace any of them with a response. If my mother wasn’t sitting there, I’d flip off the whole table.
They have no clue how wrong they are. I haven’t gone on a date in years. Finding someone new absolutely fires no interest in me.
I hop in my truck and drive with the windows down through town. Afternoon is my favorite time of day; things slow down, it’s not toohot, and you get a chance just to breathe. I need to do more of that. Relax. It’s been hard to do that since taking over, and even harder since I decided to renovate the cabins and restructure the backend of the business.
I have a hard time asking the boys for any more help because they already work from sunup to sundown for me. I can’t ask them for more if I can’t give them more. Someday, hopefully, I can give bonuses. But for now, Maverick is footing the bill on the remodels. It’ll work out, I know it in my gut. I just have to remind my overactive head of that every so often.
I pull into the same driveway that I do every Thursday at three and walk up the back porch steps. I haven’t knocked to enter this house since I was twelve. I thought that would change when his granddaughter and I broke up, but it didn’t. He still welcomed me into his home as he always had.
I walk into the kitchen and see that he already has the cards set out and ready, a good sign that he has rigged his hand to beat me, but I don’t care. Time with him isn’t about that. At first, it was because being around him made me miss Willow a little less. Being in this house let me pretend for a while that she wasn’t gone and that she still loved me. But then it turned into me not wanting him to be lonely. Genuinely, I enjoy his company. The man is wiser than his years, which is saying something, because he’s getting up there.
“Good afternoon, son. How was ranch work today?” He sets down a steaming cup of coffee.
“It was a good day. We actually didn’t have a whole lot to do, and today seemed like a good day to give everyone a little bit of a break before the next shit show pops up,” I say.
“You shouldn’t have said that out loud, you just set yourself up for a shit show tomorrow.” He shakes his finger at me.
He would know, too. He worked for us for years as a ferrier. He was the best damn one we’ve ever had. No one took greater pride in their work than he did. It’s no wonder Willow is the way she is; she learned work ethic and accountability from the best.
“How’s our girl doing?” he asks, catching me by surprise.
When I raise my eyebrows, he gives me a look.
“You think I haven’t been able to tell you’ve still got it bad for her all these years? You ask about her every time, hanging on to every word that has anything to do with her.”
I want to deny it, but it’s no use. He’s right. To me, she will always be mine. “She’s doing really well. She’s too hard on herself. She blew through the back end of the work in a couple of weeks, all while arranging contractors. She’s got it in her mind that she’s behind.”
“Sounds like her. Must say, it’s easier to sleep at night knowing she’s back around these neck of the woods. Part of me hopes she won’t go back.”
“That makes two of us.” Maybe then we could try again, as these grown-up versions of ourselves.
“Well, enough with being all sappy. Let’s play cards. I hope you don’t mind, I dealt the first hand.”
“You try and deal every hand,” I level with him.
“Well, if you could shuffle worth a shit, I’d let you do it, but half the cards end up on the floor. We’d spend half of the hour I get with you picking them back up and trying again.” He scoots his chair in closer, not caring that he just roasted the shit out of me.
“Thanks for that, Vern, you really know how to build a man’s confidence.” I shake my head as I grin.
“You’ve got plenty of that to go around. Someone needs to keep you humble. When Willow decides she still loves you, I’ll let her take over.”
“You really think she still loves me?” I ask, taking us out of the lighthearted moment.
“I have no doubt in my mind.”
