Maybe that’s what Avalon was seeing. A guy who was downright petrified. Like a Jurassic tree.
He took another hit of beer.
“Well, kudos,” Gabe said. “You really are quite the farmer these days, Mac. And maybe even an artist—that goat brie you made is the bomb. And here I thought kids gave you the heebie-jeebies.”
“They do,” he said mildly, mostly because he knew it was expected of him. “It’s just that it was...” He took a sip of his beer then put it down on the table, and lowered his voice. “...it was fun. I had fun.”
Gabe put the beer bottle down hard. “SHUT the front door.”
“Fun in the way thoseAmerican Ninja Warriorobstacle courses on TV look fun. Really dangerous and kind of slapstick and exhilarating if you make it to the end. And don’t dislocate something or knock out your front teeth or have a nervous breakdown. Fun requiring ingenuity and on-the-spot thinking. Like a freaking military exercise.”
He was, of course, exaggerating for effect.
“Yeah, kids are great,” Gabe said mildly, with typical understatement, though he was clearly wildly amused. He was a freaking elementary school principal, after all. He’d also been a navy SEAL, which, as far as Mac was concerned, should be a prerequisite for any kind of job in a school system.
“Okay,” Mac allowed carefully. “If you say so. But do they have toscreamtheir enthusiasm?”
“Yes. Yes, they do. You didn’t have any sisters, huh?”
“I have seven goats. A half dozen chickens. Thinking of getting a donkey.”
“Why the hell would you get a donkey?”
Mac glared at him with defiant incredulity. “Because... they’re...cute.”
It occurred to him he might be a little drunker than he’d originally thought.
“Especially the baby ones,” Gabe agreed benignly. “Hey, did you see that video of the baby donkey in the hammock?”
“Cute,” Mac confirmed triumphantly. And they tapped their beer bottles together.
Seemed Gabe was on his way to getting a little drunk, too.
Mac definitely had the head start, though. He was thinking about that poor damn dog Avalon had adopted, old and alone until she went in and picked it out.
He had begun to wonder if Avalon had seen something wounded in him, too, that needed rescuing way back then.
Too late, Avalon, he thought.
She literally thought he didn’t care about a damn thing. It still threw him.
It was so profoundly the opposite of how he’d always viewed her that he’d known a moment of vertigo when she’d said those words.
They were quiet while Mikey McShane tuned his guitar up on stage.
“Might get a horse, too,” Mac said suddenly. “A sad deaf horse that needs some love, maybe. And maybe an eagle that can’t fly because it hurt its wing. And a dog and an owl who are best friends.”
Gabe took this in, staring at Mac, his brow furrowed deeply. And then his expression cleared.
“Are you by any chance having woman problems?”
Mac thunked his beer down a little more adamantly than he might have otherwise. “Why else would I be drinking like a fool and spouting nonsense if I didn’t have woman problems? You’ve known me long enough. I don’t get careless. About anything.”
“No. You sure don’t.”
They watched the kid on stage. He sported dyed jet-black hair and a little loop through his nose.
Avalon had been like a... window. His life had been so rigid and prescribed for all its excesses, and being with her had opened up this other dimension. Not because kissing her was a freaking erotic miracle for a teenager like him. The way she saw things. Animals, for instance. Once upon a time he’d seen squirrels as just scenery, everywhere, all the same, not as distinct little beings with their own little cultures and ways of relating. It was like the invention of a new color. He’d been as pulled toward her romantic view of the world as he was suspicious, even disdainful of it.
