Chapter 2
chapter
two
Leo
There are few things in life genuinely, unconditionally better than breakfast at Ruthie’s.
The coffee is strong enough to wake the dead.
The bacon is thick-cut and arrives on the plate still crackling.
The biscuits are made from scratch every morning at five a.m. by a woman named Dottie who has never once in forty years of biscuit-making consulted a recipe, because the recipe, I’m pretty sure, comes straight from her DNA.
And they are what my Granny would’ve said was, “slap your Mama” good.
If you get here early enough, meaning before seven, Ruthie herself might materialize at your elbow without warning and call you sweetheart while she tops off your coffee. Then she’ll somehow convince you that you need a slice of pie despite the fact that the sun hasn’t even fully risen in the sky.
It’ll be worth it, though, because Ruthie’s pies are legendary.
Unfortunately, I’m sharing my booth with two of my cousins, Oliver and Henry, and evidently, they’re very anti-pie this early in the morning.
Which feels wrong on every level.
“I just want to go on the record saying it is never too early or too late for pie,” I say.
“You’re wearing that?” Oliver asks, ignoring my pie rant.
He says it the way people say there’s been an accident. Grave. Mildly horrified. Braced for impact.
I look down at my t-shirt. Black. Soft from about a hundred washes. Features LEGO minifigs of Hobbits and a wizard across the front, and it says: Mordor Fun Run. It’s comfortable and hilarious. I fail to see the problem.
“Yes.” I take a bit of my omelet and chew thoughtfully. “What’s wrong with it?”
Oliver glances down at my shirt, then back at my face. He points his fork at me. “You look like a fourteen-year-old.”
Henry glances up from his pancakes, a short stack of blueberry with chopped pecans topped with homemade blueberry compote. He considers me for a minute, then looks back at his brother.
“Give him some credit, Ol.”
It’s on my lips to thank my older cousin, but then Henry smirks. “He looks at least sixteen.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “You two suck. I would’ve thought being in love and married would have made y’all nicer.”
Oliver delivers another fork point. “Incorrect. Payton is the nice one. Though I am nice to my Cora.”
“I’d like everyone to remember that I am a grown man. A grown man who owns a company. Not only that, someday y’all will be jealous of my youthful good looks.”
“Debatable,” Oliver says.
“The man part or the company part?” Henry asks.
“The grown part.”
“You’re just jealous,” I say, “because I know how to have fun.”
“Fun,” Oliver says, with the weary conviction of a man who has repeated this position many times, “is overrated.”
“Fun isn’t overrated,” Henry says, not looking up from his pancakes. “People just stop inviting Oliver to things.”
Oliver flips us both off with unhurried ease.
I grin and take another bite of bacon.
Ruthie’s is busy this morning. Every table full, every booth occupied, the long counter lined with people who got here before us and made better choices.
Farmers and ranchers in various states of early morning, a few still with the look of men who have already been up for three hours and accomplished more before breakfast than most people manage in a day.
A table of church ladies near the window who likely come every week, without fail, and order the same food every time.
There’s a couple near the door who have the particular look of tourists who wandered in looking for authentic Texas and have stumbled, entirely by accident, into the best breakfast in the county.
I know all of this without really cataloging it. Ruthie’s has a rhythm. I’ve been coming here my whole life.
There was a time when I thought I wanted to leave Saddle Creek. Get out into the “real world” and have a busy life. That sentiment didn’t even last through college. I suppose there’s truth to that whole, you can’t take the country out of the country boy.
I knew I wasn’t interested in the ranching side of things. My father is the Landman of the family so he’s got all of the mineral rights taken care of. I’m the computer nerd. So I digitized everything for all of the family industries. Brought the West and Blankenship families into the modern age.
Now, I have the best of both worlds.
I know there’s something still missing, but I know she’s out there somewhere.
These two idiots across from me managed to find their forevers.
Henry found his pretty close to home considering Gracie is his sister, Kelsie’s best friend.
Oliver, though, always has to do things differently.
So his road to his happy ending started at the local honky-tonk and ended at his grandparents’ house.
Long story.
In any case, I’m pretty sure my someone isn’t here in Saddle Creek. But I have faith that I’ll find her. My dad might be sour on love because of how horrible my mother is, but I’ve seen it all around me my entire life. My aunt and uncle, Oliver and Henry’s parents, are one of the greatest examples.
Then my uncle Graham met someone after years of being a confirmed bachelor. They’re ridiculously happy.
Henry refills my coffee from the carafe on the table without being asked, which is the kind of thing he does that makes you remember he’s actually a decent human being underneath all the cattle rancher stoicism.
“What time are you leaving?” he asks.
“After lunch.”
“For your nerd convention?” Oliver asks.
“It’s a Comic Con.”
“Same thing.”
I consider him. “Actually, no. That’d be like calling cattle ranching and synchronized swimming the same thing.”
Oliver nearly chokes on a bite of bacon.
Henry chews his pancake thoughtfully. “They do both involve a lot of repetitive motion.”
I stare at Henry for a long moment. “That might genuinely be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. And you’ve said some things, Henry.”
Oliver laughs into his coffee. A real laugh, surprised out of him.
These guys give me shit. I give it right back. But we’re family and none of us ever forget that.
I pull out my phone. “Here. Look.”
I bring up the photos and slide it across the table. Both of them lean in instinctively, the way people always do when you hand them a phone, and then both of them immediately regret it.
Oliver pulls back first. “What the hell is that?”
“Captain America.”
“That’s Captain America?”
“Tactical version. Not the parade one.”
“It looks expensive,” Henry says.
“It was.”
Oliver shifts in his seat. “It looks uncomfortable.”
“Deeply,” Henry agrees. He squints at the screen. “It looks… ”
“Do not say stupid.”
He looks up at me. “I was going to say involved.”
“Sure you were.”
Henry takes the phone and swipes through the photos slowly. He’s genuinely trying to understand what he’s looking at. Which I appreciate about Henry. He might not get it, but he makes the effort.
Months of work in those photos. Molded armor plates built up piece by piece over a compression base layer, sealed and detailed until they actually look like something that could survive a fight instead of a costume contest. The star on the chest was hand-painted, not printed, because I could tell the difference even if nobody else could.
The shield was a separate project entirely ?fiberglass core, an aluminum rim, and a paint job that took longer than the rest of the costume combined.
More hours than I’d admit to Oliver, who would use the number against me.
Worth every single one of them.
Henry hands the phone back. His expression is the particular one he gets when he’s landed somewhere between impressed and baffled and isn’t sure which one wins. “You made this?”
“Most of it.”
He nods, slowly. Like he’s filing it away somewhere. “Huh.”
That’s a Henry compliment. I’ll take it.
People make assumptions, I’ve noticed. They look at me, the Texas accent, my family owning land in several counties, my own company doing quite well, and they construct a version of me that’s mostly accurate and partially not.
The tech part, they get. The ranch part, they get.
They do not understand the part where I have very strong opinions about the internal politics of fictional interstellar empires.
Nor the part where I have spent more time than I will publicly admit crafting original prop replicas.
Very few people outside of a fandom would get the part where my internet search history at any given moment contains a minimum of three active rabbit holes about worldbuilding or lore or production design.
That tends to catch people off guard. Like when I took Home Economics in High School. I met my first girlfriend in that class. Up until that point, I think everyone—my family included—expected me to come out as gay.
Already, I was the nerd trifecta: not a giant beefy guy, like the rest of the men in my family (my father included), tech genius, and science fiction aficionado. It really is a wonder that I didn’t get my ass kicked more in school.
Probably helped that everyone knew how much money my family has.
In any case, I’ve never spent much energy managing other people’s expectations of me. Dad raised me to know who I was and be comfortable there. For which I will always be grateful. Were it not for him, I’d likely still be trying to earn approval and affection from my mother.
Whatever else you can say about our family, we’re not a group that apologizes for taking up space.
But Comic Con is different.
Not because I feel like I need permission anywhere else. More because it’s the one place where nobody does the quick recalculation. Nobody clocks the nerdy shirt and files a note somewhere. Nobody asks if I’m really spending my hard-earned money on toys and comic books.
At Comic Con, my LEGO shirt is just a shirt. Only there people will get it and laugh.
My people are there. Thousands of them, strangers who are not quite strangers, who all know the language and speak it fluently and don’t need it explained. Three days of that, uninterrupted, is… I don’t know, necessary. A specific kind of necessity that feeds my soul.
“You’re smiling again,” Henry observes.
I hadn’t realized. “Can’t help it.”
“You’re that excited?”
“Yeah.” I take a sip of coffee. “I really am.”
Oliver shakes his head, but there’s nothing mean in it. Oliver is many things, but he’s never been cruel about the things that matter to the people he loves. He just doesn’t understand this particular thing, and he’s honest about that, which I respect more than if he pretended.
“I’ll never understand you,” he says.
“You’re not supposed to,” I say. “That’s what makes me interesting.”
Henry lifts his coffee mug in a small, solemn toast. “Have fun, cousin.”
“Plan to.”
“Maybe you can uh… hookup with an alien chick or something,” Oliver says.
I nearly choke.
“Just don’t accidentally get married,” Henry says. “Unless it’s to the love of your life, then carry on.”
“That is an oddly specific thing to say,” I say.
Henry’s face goes carefully, deliberately blank in a way that means he is absolutely thinking about something and has decided not to share it. “Experience,” he says simply.
I look at Oliver.
Oliver looks at his biscuit.
“Is there something I’m missing?” I ask.
“The sooner you finish your breakfast, the sooner you can get on the road,” Oliver says.
Fair enough.
I eat my bacon and drink my coffee, letting Ruthie top off my cup one more time. This time, when she calls me sweetheart, I order a piece of pie to go.
Because let’s be honest, the only thing that will make this convention even better is a slice of Ruthie’s pie.