Page 20 of The Rancher’s One and Only

“I have a feeling that I’m not as original as I think I am a lot.”

“That’s okay. I don’t think very many people are truly original. And most people think that they are deeply unique. It’s a mark of good insight that you realize you’re not as original as all that.”

He looked at her. “I think you might be an original person.”

She frowned, trying to sit with that information, to figure out what it meant. “I think maybe that’s true. Though I don’t want to sound egotistical. I also think it probably causes more problems than it solves.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, people don’t tend to want truly original. They want things to be new, but the same. It’s why genre exists in storytelling. And it’s why we have so many sequels and reboots, honestly. Even I like familiarity. I like to watch the same shows over and over again because I feel like I know the characters. Particularly when life feels unpredictable, something like that feels comforting.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being original,” he said. “Because you’re not a sitcom. And believe me, I’ve never met anybody quite like you.”

“To be fair,” she said. “Relentless Jurassic Park references aside, I’ve never really met anyone quite like you either.”

“I feel honored by that.”

“It’s probably a testament to the fact that I’ve spent most of my life in deeply academic science spaces.”

He laughed. “Are you telling me that I’m not smart?”

“No. I would never say that. I’m not telling you that you’re not smart. All I’m doing is telling you that you’re different than the usual person I’m around. Academics are not necessarily smarter. They just have an incredibly narrow focus of study and they spend all their time thinking about it. They’re also not any nicer than other people. Trust me.”

“I do,” he said.

She thought about her parents. Who were not academics, but were quite boring. Jax wasn’t boring. Not remotely.

“I think what you do is very interesting. Because you’re quite physical.”

“Am I now?”

“Well, that’s my take. You do physical labor. And I think that’s very interesting.”

“What is digging in the hot sun if not physical labor?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I never really thought of it that way before. I suppose the physical aspect of it is a necessary evil.”

“Same goes for me. I want this place, and I want all the freedom that it is going to give me. The connection that it’s going to give me. To the land, to my own life, my own hopes and dreams. And it’s a lot of work to get there. Doesn’t mean that it’s fun or easy. Doesn’t mean the work always feels like something I want to do. But in order to have the fruits of your labor you have to…labor.”

“I don’t know that hunkering down and chiseling away at rocks is physical labor on that level. And anyway, usually I’m thinking. About what I’m going to find. About what it’s going to look like. The digging is only part of the work.”

“Again, same goes. Leveling out the ground, building things, that’s only part of the work. We had to conceptualize a business. Put it all together. There’s a lot of dreaming and scheming and hoping behind the scenes.”

“Interesting.” He wasn’t argumentative, but he did seem determined to introduce a new perspective to her, and usually that was her function in a conversation. He was more original than he was giving himself credit for. She was about to tell him so, but then the farmhouse came into view, and she noticed that there was an extra car. “Oh, I hope we have enough pizza.”

“I’m sure we do. That’s Jessica. She’s Rowdy’s best friend. Well, one of them. Obviously there’s us. But the two of them met in the rodeo, and they’re thick as thieves.”

“How interesting. How does a rodeo work exactly?”

“I only know a little bit. You’ll have to ask Rowdy and Jess.” He parked the truck in front of the house, and got out to grab the pizzas, and Ernestine followed behind. They walked up the front steps and into the house, and Rowdy, Dakota and a woman she knew was Jessica, thanks to context clues, were all sitting there laughing. Chatting.

She looked at Jessica, and she felt a strange tightening in her stomach. She’d experienced that a few times before. Envy. She didn’t like it. She didn’t feel it when she dealt with Dr. Haley Boesch, who only knew how to steal things from her. Who was close enough to her, while being far away, that Ernestine could logically evaluate that she didn’t want to be anything like her.

But Jessica had an easy beauty to her. A little bit of makeup, a wide smile, her hair falling prettily around her shoulders. She was athletic, and her body seemed relaxed. There was something effortless about her, and Ernestine had never known a moment of effortlessness in situations like these.

She had gotten more and more comfortable with herself, with the reality that she was always going to be an outlier, regardless of how much she wished that weren’t true. And she had grown to have a sort of acceptance with that, but that only gave her a reprieve from her feelings of awkwardness via acceptance. It didn’t make it not there.

“We brought pizza,” Jax said.