‘There’s nothing left to talk about.’ She smiles tightly, a much less open smile than she’d previously given the bartender. ‘Tell me about your illustrious career in New Haven or something. Anything. I just can’t stand to hear you rehash crap that’s been exhausted in my head foryears.Nothing to talk about.’
Whoa.
I’m quiet for a minute. I fill the silence with a sip of my Bud Light. And once that’s done its job, I fill the silence with something so much worse than talking about high school.
‘I mean, if there’s nothing to talk about, there’s gotta be something to dance about.’
May blinks. She sets her glass down. ‘Towhatabout?’
‘You know, dance. You used to throw down at these things.’ I gesture to the crowd laughing as they step along to the twangy music the DJ is spinning. ‘You knew every single dance forward and backward. Even those ridiculous ones where you used two walls or whatever they call it.’
Something flickers in her eyes, even if it’s just for a moment. That soft side to her that I haven’t seen yet, it’s hiding; I can see it. But it doesn’t come out. ‘You’re going to ask me todanceafter all of that? Who—’
‘I’m not here to talk about myself.’ Now I feel my guard go up. It’s easy for everyone else to say that whatever I’ve done up in New England has been “illustrious”. I don’t love the topic. ‘I’m here to spend time with you, May, and if you want to putthe past behind us, that’s fine. If you think what was going on between us ended a long time ago, I’ll take it, but man, we’re friends first and foremost, aren’t we? Aren’t I allowed to give a shit about you?’
Friends. The word should come out more mangled than it does. We had a complex connection from the very beginning. Maybe from an outsider’s perspective, it made sense to call it a friendship, but neither of us ever had.
May sighs, a sigh that I watch make its way through her entire body, wearing her out. ‘When you put it that way, I’d be a craptastic person to say no, you know that?’
‘Why else do you think I put it that way?’ I give her an impish grin that she returns with a roll of her eyes, but she hops off her barstool.
‘Let’s get it over with.’ She hums, but I can tell she’s itching for a dance. In Eagle Rock, where she’s lived as long as I’ve known her, there’s a tiny, cosy downtown, and that’s it. Your feed supply store, your farms, maybe a few scattered places just outside of Main Street. It was a shock the first time I saw it. Small-town kids run out of stuff to do pretty fast, and unless you’re a fan of cleaning the pen or kicking it on a four-wheeler for longer than an hour at a time, you’re probably going to end up at the dance hall.
The tune that starts up as we join the floor is one that’s familiar to almost anyone from down here: the bagpipe intro to ‘Copperhead Road’ by Steve Earle.
‘Oh, light work,’ I chuckle, and a little smile darts across May’s face.Finally. It’s just a fraction of what I know her face is capable of, but it’s more than enough for me.
‘Of course.’ She hooks a hand in her jeans pocket and swaysas the music picks up, and we arrange ourselves behind the nearest dancers. Her dark hair swishes with her. I still remember when it was so short she couldn’t put it in a ponytail. Now, it falls all the way to her waist, the same waist my dumbass can’t keep my eyes off when the first step hits, and we kick with our right leg, then our left. She’ll tell you she’s not a dancer, but when she’s on the floor, her feet tell a different story. Her butterfly-embroidered boot-tips tap the wood floor with sharp clicks that follow the music perfectly.
‘You still remember it?’ she shouts over the bass. ‘City Boy?’
‘Who told you I didn’t?’ I shoot back with a wink.
‘Copperhead Road’ is the dance you grow up doing before you can walk. An easy sixteen steps that are heavily debated from region to region, it’d probably be a sin if I’d forgotten how to do it. New England didn’t screw me up completely.
I match May’s step tap for tap, my unmarked Tecovas boots in sync with her well-worn ones, careful not to kick so hard I aggravate my knee. She grins when she sees me peeking at her shoes. ‘You gotta scuff those up, you know!’
We dance the entire thing by each other’s side till the song comes to an end. We’re hunched over and laughing as the crowd cheers, raising their drinks as the DJ, a teenage guy controlling the AUX, yells that he’s looking for requests for the next dance. May beams as she holds out her hands. ‘Nice goin’, New Haven.’
It’s an unexpected show of amnesty from her, but I accept it happily, knowing how sparing these moments have been. I give her double high-fives, and for a brief moment, our fingers lock, our eyes meet, and something, some unsaid piece of the spark that I knowwas there in high school returns, an effortless warmth passing between us.
May quickly unlinks her fingers from mine with a sharp clear of her throat. ‘I think I’ll have a drink,’ she says brusquely. She beelines straight towards the bar, and honestly, she leaves me mystified. What thehelljust happened … and what the hell am I gonna do about it?
Chapter Eight
American Treasuress
May
The big yellow high-school bus thunders down the dirt road past the ranch, the chattering of teenagers just distantly audible. PROSPERITY HS, the boxy black lettering on its side reads.
The bus, affectionately called Old Yeller, has shuttled all the small-town kids into Prosperity for the past decade. Similarly to the bar we’d been at a week back, it is a relic of Eagle Rock and speaks volumes about just how isolated this place is.
Once Old Yeller is out of earshot, the ranch is silent save for the sounds of the animals behind me, cattle lowing and horses huffing. People know our Veracruz Ranch as some sort of oasis in the middle of the endless Oklahoma plains, an untouched space where we live off the land and ride our horses to get to the feed store or something, but I like to think it’s not muchdifferent from any other way of life. We’ve got our chores, our friends, our family dinners, and our community. All that’s changed is the context.
At least, that’s the way I’ll run things when the responsibility of the ranch eventually falls to me. It’s part of the reason I chose to study meteorology. The work will keep me at home, where I can have an eye on the ranch at all times.
I finish putting the feed out for the cows. Later, my dad will graze them – our cattle are pretty spoiled, to be honest – but for now, my job is done. I grab my backpack, toss it into my truck, and head to campus for my first class of the day. I wish I could take it all lightly, like it’s any other day of my college career, but I can’t. My hands are shaking when I clutch the steering wheel of my Ram. It’s the morning of my last college lacrosse season opener, and I’m not sure quite how to feel. After Coach had us doing Colt’s goal clinics for a week, honing the very skills I’d struggled with last year, I should probably be feeling more confident. But I can’t decide if this is an end, a beginning, or both.
