Chapter 9
After three more trips back to the creek to fill up our buckets, we arrived back at the ranch with sore arms and frozen fingers. Well, I had frozen fingers. At least one gallon full of chunky ice and water from the river had splashed all over my hands and lap.
“Sorry!” Dusty yelled over his shoulder, as another splash of water tumbled over the side and onto my lap. “I’m going as slow as I can, but I can’t see when the dips are coming.”
“You’re the dip,” I said, teeth chattering. It wasn’t my best comeback, but it did the job.
“I can’t decide if you’re more or less funny when you”re mad.”
“I’m going to tell Grandma to put something special in your chocolate pie.”
“What’s this Grandma stuff? You’re the one making my pie.”
“I’m praying the electricity never comes on.”
“Now, let me understand this…I get to spend the night on the couch with you if the electricity stays off, right? Is that what your grandma said at lunch?”
A smile found its way across my face. “If the power stays off. And it’s the opposite couch from mine. Or you could snuggle up with my grandparents in their bed. They’re the only two places in the house with a fireplace.”
“If I choose your grandparents, do you think I could call dibs on the middle?”
I laughed outright, even though my hands and legs were stinging from the wet cold. When we neared the barn, Dusty passed it in favor of dropping me off right by the front porch.
“Get inside and warm up. I’ll take care of everything out here. Dang it. Looks like Bob’s outside now.”
Me and my frozen limbs climbed awkwardly off the snowmobile. I glanced over to where Dusty was looking and sure enough, saw my grandpa, decked out in at least four layers of worn-out coats and coveralls pitching hay into the manger. Too cold to argue or even get mad at Grandpa for being out in the weather when we didn’t want him to be, I waddled up the front steps.
“Hey, Lucy.”
I turned at the sound of Dusty’s voice. He hadn’t moved the snowmobile and was watching me, definitely up to something. “What?”
“I’m praying the electricity stays off too.”
”I think you”ll be nice and comfortable snuggled in with my grandma and grandpa.”
I waved off a laughing Dusty while a burst of heated anticipation raced up my veins.
Moments later, I stood by the fire, tempted to fling my whole body onto the flames to thaw out. What I wouldn’t give for a bubble bath or some hot chocolate. Grandma wrapped me in a large blanket and helped me to pull the loveseat closer to the fire for us to sit.
I should have known she would have been itching to get me alone. And what a cozy setting for baring my soul. Who doesn’t overshare while watching flickering flames and hearing a fire snap? She had me and she knew it.
Grandma cheerfully settled in next to me and dove right in. “So, what’s going on with you and Dusty?”
I opened my mouth to deny everything when she added, “And don’t you lie to me, Lou. I may be old, but my eyesight is still 20/20.”
“Really? 20/20? That’s amazing. Why don’t you sit right there and tell me all your secrets?”
Grandma’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not 20/20, but it’s good. You’ve been acting strange and wonderful and happy since he got here. Spill.”
The fire crackled. The house was beginning to darken. When I thawed out sufficiently, I would need to run downstairs to grab the lanterns from the basement.
“It’s been fun reconnecting. He’s an old friend, if you recall.”
“Pish. You are both burning this place down with your looks and your jumping on his back and talking about kissing. Might as well just strip his shirt off and have your way with the man.”
“Grandma!” I dropped my head in my hands, laughing and mortified all at once. “What’s your hearing level at?”
“Lucyyyy.”
I put the quilt over my head. “I don’t know what’s going on, okay? I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m so flirty with him. He is with me, but it’s like I can’t turn it off. When I think I need to, he says something that gives me a great opening, and I realize I don’t want to turn anything off. I like who I am when I’m with him. It’s so different from any guy I’ve ever been with. It’s scary. I just…I don’t know. It’s probably nothing.”
Grandma patted my leg. Then we sat there in silence for a few long moments until she said, “Want to know a secret, dear? About finding the right one? Something I’m very glad someone told me when I was dating your grandpa.”
“There’s a secret for that? Yes, please.”
She bumped my shoulder, pulling the quilt off my head. “Not everyone figures it out.”
“I’m waiting.”
“The secret is that when you’re with the right person—the person who helps you be the best version of yourself—the relationship will feel very different than all the rest. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.”
“It hasn’t even been 24 hours since he got here, Grandma. I shouldn’t even be thinking like this. Plus, he lives in a whole different state.”
“Well, I’m not telling you to run off and marry him tonight, sweet pea! I’m just saying, don’t be afraid to let in something good if it’s there.”
Grandma sat sweetly rubbing my arm, in a spot not even close to where it was half-frozen a few inches lower. Her sweet floral perfume was close to overpowering the log fire, but her simple words wrapped around me like a fuzzy blanket.
“Is that how it felt for you and Grandpa?”
She burst out laughing. “A dancer from Chicago who got swept off her feet and married a handsome, stubborn rancher from Wyoming? Yes. It felt very different.”
I fingered the blanket, smiling. I had heard the story of their meeting my whole life. How they met at college and he kept dropping his pencil in class so she would have to pick it up and hand it to him. From old pictures, he had clearly been a looker. Even from a granddaughter’s perspective, I understood how it felt making my grandpa burst into laughter. A hard-earned belly laugh, rich and genuine, didn’t come by often or easily and it took only once or twice to get a craving for it. Once you heard the burst of his raspy laugh, loud and reckless from a joke you told—you were a goner. You’d gladly spend the rest of your days trying to do it again. He had that spark about life. Oh, he was crotchety in his older years, but he was a man with a teasing glint in his eye if you looked close enough, and laughter was never far away.
“What happened? How did he get you? I mean, I know the story of you two at college, but I guess I never asked how your thought process went. How did you go from a dancer from Chicago to…” I motioned around the farmhouse, “this?”
“Honestly, it wasn’t hard. That’s what I mean when I say it will feel different. All of my other relationships before Bob were never easy. It was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole, as they say. They were good times, good people, most treated me nicely, but I was never truly comfortable in the relationship. I was always worried about what I said or didn’t say. How I looked. I was more conscious about how I presented myself. With your grandpa…” She paused, somewhere far away, giving me the impression she was back at college, picking up yet another dropped pencil by the rascally cowboy who sat behind her.
“Now, I know it’s going to sound cheesy, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it. It was like our souls knew each other. He loved to tease me and could drive me completely batty, but there was this overall feeling that I could completely be myself around him and he would love me for it. It was refreshing and easy to want to be with him. He was a safe place for me to land. Not to say there weren’t difficult things that came up here and there or some bumps to smooth over. Every relationship has them, but he was a breath of fresh air to me. And I told him so and do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Great. Because I know a place full of fresh air you’d love.”
I smiled. “Wyoming?”
She sighed. “Wyoming.”
“How did he get you to move out here?”
“He wore tight jeans, a cowboy hat, and a teasing grin. We didn’t have too many of those in Chicago and it turns out, I was a big fan.”
Grandma’s face lit up before bursting into giggles–high-pitched cackles that only came out on special occasions. Cackles that never failed to make me laugh along with her. She put her hand over her mouth and blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl. As her painted, wrinkly white face dissolved into fits of laughter, she seemed years younger to me and my heart burst in a thousand pieces with love for her. There would be many memories to look back on regarding this week-long visit to my grandparents, but I knew without a doubt that sharing a loveseat with Grandma before the fire, giggling like a bunch of school girls, would be one of my favorites.
She wiped at her tears and turned to me, putting her arm around me like a child. I leaned into her embrace.
“The boys will be in any minute, so I’ll say this one last thing. I know you hardly know Dusty. It’s been a long time since you’ve both been under this roof. But sometimes fate has a nice way of showing up just when we need it. If it seems too easy between you, don’t fight it. Maybe you’ll just rekindle a friendship or maybe it will become something more. But don’t be afraid of what might come out of it. Either way, you come out a winner.”
She stood up and patted my knee. “Now excuse me while I go prepare our cereal for supper.”
I smiled. “I know you meant that as a joke, but that seemed a very normal thing to me.”
“Where did I go wrong?”
“Love you, Grandma.”
“Love you too, Lou. So much.”
The firelight caught me in a trance. The light out the window was fading, casting with it long black shadows dancing from the flames. My life felt like a puzzle strewn out over a table. There were some parts connected, the picture was starting to take shape. The puzzle was a long way off from being completely finished, but it felt like I had just found a key piece.
* * *
The men camein with red noses, stomping their feet and wiping off the snowflakes attached to their coats. Their low voices talking about cattle and corn prices filtered in toward the kitchen. I looked at Dusty immediately upon his entering, unable to help myself. His dark eyes were already on me, turning my stomach into mush. I forced myself to look somewhere else. Grandpa shouldn’t have been out in the cold, but something about the brisk weather had seemed to revive the spark in his eyes and put a touch of color in his sallow cheeks. He walked into the kitchen, giving my grandma a light pat on her butt.
“Bob,” she scolded, slapping his hand away while he looked every bit the part of a rascal. “If you end up in the hospital with pneumonia it’s your own darn fault. I wash my hands of you.”
“Fresh air is the best cure-all there is. I’ve been cooped up long enough.”
We all pretended not to notice the hacking cough that overtook him for the next ten seconds. Except for the exasperated huff of my grandma, you wouldn’t have thought we heard anything at all.
Grandpa took in the lanterns strewn across the room and the boxes of Cheerios and Special K on the table. “Ohhhwee! What”s the special occasion?”
This time, she smacked his butt.
Dusty and I smiled at each other, probably not unlike the proud smile of two young parents musing together over the antics of their young children.
“Well, food’s ready,” Grandma said, much depressed at her meager offering. She had spent the past ten minutes in the kitchen slamming cupboard doors, searching desperately for something hot and delicious she could feed her charges. No electricity really puts a damper on a homemaker who thrives on the self-confidence given through providing a show-stopping meal. Though a few more options for cereal wouldn’t have been the worst thing, I wasn’t about to complain.
We spent the evening living it up with my grandparents. After our dinner of cereal and tepid water with a stale pop tart chaser, we busted out the cards. Grandma and Grandpa were a hoot and a holler playing Rummy, dropping wit and smack-talk like the best of them. We kept the fire burning hot to heat the whole first floor. It did its job warming the house, but I think the heat in my heart ran hotter. It was the coziest of nights spent laughing and teasing with the safest of people. Holed up together, outlasting the worst of nature.
Or the best of nature.
Seriously. Well done, nature. Thank you for your service. I couldn’t have imagined this week going better in my best and wildest dream.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Dusty said as he sprawled out on his sofa, blanket up to his waist, his hands clasped behind his head. It was 10 pm. My grandparents had just gone to bed, once they piled extra blankets on both of our couches and sounded off a warning to behave that only resulted in making Dusty grin and my grandpa shake a finger in his direction.
I smiled, adding another layer of socks to my feet that always seemed to be cold. I put on a pair of gloves before crawling under the pile of covers I had stacked on my couch. “What’s that?”
Is driving a tractor like riding a bike?”
“What?”
He rolled over on his side, facing me, mischief written all over his face. “It occurred to me after our...ah...lesson in the tractor this morning that I used to see you driving that thing around like a bat out of hell every summer. So I just got to wondering if you had somehow forgotten absolutely everything and therefore needed to sit on my lap while I taught you?”
A laugh gurgled out of my chest. “I could drive that thing in my sleep,” I admitted, sheepishly.
“I knew it.”
“If you knew it, then why did you offer a driving lesson?”
“I was testing you.”
“Huh?”
“I wanted you on my lap, but I needed to see how badly you wanted it too.” He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked at me knowingly. “And it would appear you wanted it pretty bad.”
I didn’t respond, but I didn’t need to. Our soft, embarrassed laughter into the night was confession enough.
“Tell me one thing I don’t know about you,” I said, staring up at the shadows of dancing flames on the ceiling.
Dusty drew in a deep breath and sighed, contemplating the question. I thought he would play it funny, like I planned to do, but he surprised me.
“I’m not usually this flirty with girls.”
It was my turn to look at him. “What?”
“My best friend in Eugene—Jake. He’s the flirt. The ladies’ man. I’ve always been more of his wingman.”
I processed this compared to what I knew of Dusty today. “I’m finding that hard to believe.”
He chuckled. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scared of girls. I’ve dated some here and there, but I always hung back. Was more quiet.”
I thought back to the Dusty of my youth. Julia was the loud and sporty one, I was the nervous and dependable one, and Dusty…Dusty was the constant. The easy-going, go-with-the-flow peacemaker. He was sweet and funny, but never obnoxiously so. He always had a quiet strength and confidence that I drew comfort from.
“What changed being here?” I couldn’t bear to ask directly why he was so flirty with me. I hoped my first question would be enough.
The fire popped and I sunk lower into the covers while I waited for him to answer the question I was already regretting.
“I’m not sure. From the second I got here it felt different with you. You make it fun. I know we knew each other a bit as kids, but as an adult, it feels like I’ve known you forever.”
The storm was forgotten. It was now a warm, sunny day and I was floating away on a cloud. “Me too.”
Dusty cleared his throat. “What about you? What’s something I don’t know about you?”
I pulled my blanket up higher, tucking myself in on all sides, wondering what to say and how much to say and if I should say, that I finally just said, “I worry a lot.”
“About what?”
“Everything. My mind is like another character in my life. In my story. Narrating and fixating on everything I do or don’t do until I ultimately do something stupid and drive people away.”
I took a deep breath. And then I kept breathing. Gulping air, focusing on pulling in oxygen. Counting to ten. Besides Julia and my mother, I had never told anybody that.
“Like what? Give me an example.”
I almost laughed. But it really wasn’t funny. Not to me. “There are literally thousands of moments to choose from.”
“Give me a recent example. With me. If you have one.”
My heart drummed loudly in my chest. My mind raced over the last day with him. But there was one instance in particular that still weighed heavily on my mind. Now if I only had the guts to say it to him.
“Come on, Lou.” His low, comfortable voice was a balm to my soul. In our short time together, he had given me a lot of reasons to trust him. I just needed to find my courage to do it one more time.
Deep breath.
“The whole time on the snowmobile ride today, I started freaking out about how I had been so forward with you and how I shouldn’t have done that to your ear and what you must think of me and and how you probably hated it and how I’m the only girl on the ranch right now and that’s the only reason you’re paying me any attention. That kind of thing. On repeat.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he held up a finger. “Hold up. After the hot ear thing? On the snowmobile? That’s when you were thinking all that?”
I braved a glance at him. “Yeah.”
He whistled, impressed. “Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that what things are like for you a lot?”
“Pretty much. It hasn’t been as bad here, actually, but my mind is still quick to run away from me. Quick to over-think my actions.”
“Do you want to know what I was thinking about on the snowmobile?”
“I’m scared to ask.”
“I’m going to spare you the full intimate details, but here’s the made-for-TV version. It went about like this, ‘Huh. I thought the creek was that way. Oh wait, yup, there it is. Dang, she smells good. I wonder how many feet of snow is right there in that hole? Man, my wet ear is freezing right now. If I tried to ride straight up that mountain, I wonder how fast I’d have to go to make it? Did she just touch my leg? I hope she finally puts the moves on me.’”
I laid there in stunned silence, a smile growing on my face. Laughter begging to be let free. I felt his gaze on me and I did the most mature thing and pulled my blanket over my head and laughed my butt off. A rich, deep chuckle joined me and soon we were wiping tears.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said, when things had settled. “Well, I do know, but I wish I knew how to turn it off.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Dusty’s voice cut through the night. “Sure, you worry too much. That’s just how your brain is wired. Always has been. But you were the one keeping Julia and me out of trouble half the time when we were kids. Sometimes it can be a gift to see the possibilities of things before they might happen. I know you have to find a balance, and maybe that means medication sometimes or just learning how to cope, but geez, I’d probably do a lot better if I worried about things more than I do. But there’s nothing wrong with you, Lou. I’d say you’re dang near perfect.”
I was afraid to move a muscle. Afraid to burst this beautiful, enchanting bubble he had cocooned me in. Afraid to breathe. But I needed to breathe. A small heated tear leaked out of the corner of my eye and I let his words wash over me again. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Lou.’
There was never a question of whether I was loved by my family and friends. Love was never something I doubted. But growing up in my family, we each had our place, our jobs. It made our day to day life more dependable, each of us playing our roles. Julia was who we cheered on at sporting events and the loud and funny one who stole the stage in every room. I was the responsible and dependable one. But I was also the worry wart. The one on medication. The one whose neurotic episodes became hilarious family stories told at Thanksgiving. Nervous things I’d said to guys during a date became family legends. Inside jokes. But always, always, always...after the laughs and after the plates were cleared from the table, I was left feeling hollow. Weird. Broken. Like something was wrong with me.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Lou.’
I couldn’t recall a time where anyone had ever told me that. Another stinging tear streaked down my face and I was thankful for this cloak of darkness. For Dusty. And for the storm and strange circumstances that found us sharing a room by a warm fire for the night.
Dusty must have taken the extended silence as a signal that I was done talking. “You sure you’ll be warm enough over there?” he asked, pulling up his covers and settling in.
I discreetly brushed at the last tear from my face. My entire body felt lighter, almost giddy. “Nope. I’m not.”
“If you need extra hotness, I’m right over here.”
I snorted. “Nice line.”
“I can’t believe, all this time, it was just to spite your sister that you wanted to make out with me. You didn’t even like me.” He heaved a dramatic sigh that brought a smile to my lips.
Heat bloomed in my chest as I thought back to my days on the ranch with Dusty. Between me, him, and Julia, we spent our days helping Grandpa and our nights playing ping pong or card games or sneaking pop tarts. We would stargaze out on the porch, explore the terrain with our horses, go fishing, and talk about our hopes for the future. What we would become. Who we wanted to be. Though Julia was the most vocal on her feelings toward our mutual cowboy friend, mine had been there too. More subtle perhaps, but there just the same. How could I not have liked Dusty? Even as a boy he had the soul of a man. Quiet, humble, sweet, and full of teasing and easy laughter.
“I never said that.”
There was a beat of silence before movement in the dark told me Dusty had turned his head to face mine. “What was that?”
My eyes closed and I swallowed, forcing myself to be brave. To stop fighting happiness.
“I never said I didn’t like you.”
I sunk deeper into my pile of blankets, bravery taking an exhausting toll. But I had a stupid smile on my face and a heart that wouldn’t stop threatening to explode. That was enough courage for one night. So I turned away from him, facing my couch, and said, “Good night, Dusty. And thank you.”
My words stretched out into silence as we lay there, the air humming between us. I was beginning to think I would have the last word, but Dusty came through, leaving me to fall asleep with sweet tingles of anticipation humming through my body. Where thoughts of soft kisses, green eyes, and tangled limbs filled my dreams.
“Fair warning, Lucy Davis. You better plan to make good on your bet soon, because if you don’t, I will. A man only has so much willpower.”