“Okay. But if I freeze, you owe me a horse.”
“I’ll buy you two.”
We dressed on the dock, which involved a lot of damp denim and some creative problem-solving with my bra, which had blown off the dock and was floating near the kayak rack with the calm inevitability of a thing that was never coming back on its own.
Wade fished it out with a stick while I stood there in my jeans and my unbuttoned blouse, laughing so hard I had to sit down. He presented it to me with both hands, dripping, and a solemn expression that belonged at a diplomatic ceremony.
“Ma’am,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and wrung it out and shoved it in my camera bag because putting on a wet bra was a punishment I had not earned.
We walked back toward the ranch as the day cooled. His hand found mine on the path. The live oaks threw long shadows and the air had finally eased from blazing to merely hot and the crickets were starting up in the grass. My hair was drying in a shape that would require negotiation, and my boots were dusty, and my blouse was buttoned wrong by one hole, and none of it mattered.
Tonight I would stand on a stage with a guitar and sing in front of strangers. The fear was still there. It lived in my chest the way it always had, familiar as a heartbeat.
But Wade Bishop was walking beside me with his hat in his hand, and the evening light was catching the ridge, and I was done letting the fear have the whole room.
It could have a corner. I was taking back the rest.
