Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BITTERN
It’s news to me that I’m taking Janie out Saturday night, but I’m not about to cancel plans.
I don’t like Deacon in my business, but this time around, he did me a solid.
I’ve managed to bypass all the awkwardness of trying to get to know her and remember what dating was like, and I’m headed straight to the point.
It does mean I need to find something to do in South Platte or Knifely.
I can’t fumble this. The obvious would be to take her out for a drink.
There’s a honky tonk bar down in South Platte, where they play live music on the weekends.
I’ve heard the wranglers talk about heading down there to drink and try to get laid, but I’ve never been.
On Thursday, we don’t run into each other. I spend most of the day fixing fences, since the heat is finally manageable. She must be inside, because I don’t even see her on her parents’ porch when I head home.
Friday, everybody is back to feeling good at the main house.
I’ve spent enough time there, and I don’t have food at my place, so I go eat dinner in the mess hall.
Long wooden tables line the back wall, laden with bowls of Ginny’s cooking covered in dripping plastic wrap, piles of cornbread, and dessert.
Deacon brings on seasonal workers to help her out, and they’re hurrying back and forth, trying to get everything set up before the wranglers get in.
I grab a plate, filling it with ham and soup beans poured over cornbread.
Freya must have helped, because these taste like being back home.
Sinking down in the corner, I take the field guide out of my back pocket.
A Field Guide to Birds of Montana. I got this in town the first month I was here.
Absently, I flip through, running my fingers over the worn pages.
It’s always in my pocket now, just in case I see something and need to look it up and there’s already a lot of wear and tear.
“Hi.”
I look up, startled. My entire body tingles.
Fuck—she’s standing in front of me, breathtaking in the softest, warmest way possible.
Tanned skin, a tousled golden bob, big eyes framed by thick lashes.
Thump, thump—my heart’s going like a screen door in a hurricane.
I think, but I’m not sure, that my palms are sweating.
Either that, or my hands are burning against the hot edges of my plate.
“Hi,” I manage.
She bites her lip, looking at the empty space across from me. I’m not sure what she wants? Is she trying to talk to me? I glance around—or worse, am I sitting in her seat? Does she know we’re going out tomorrow?
“Can I sit with you?” she says.
I shove the field guide aside. “Yeah, sit.”
She sinks down, swinging her bare legs over the bench. They’re long and lean, with a few freckles dusted over her thighs. I clear my throat, taking a second to get a handle on myself.
“Deacon—” I start.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know.”
She laughs, and I let myself laugh along with her.
It’s the best feeling in the world, like I was tense without realizing and now I’m finally about to relax.
I peel my hand off the hot plate, knocking the field guide off the edge of the table.
Goddamn it. Leaning down, I snatch it up and straighten, and she’s smiling, just a little bit.
“What’s that?” she asks.
I lay it down. “Field guide.”
She reaches across and—God, she’s got pretty hands—picks it up.
Her fingers touch the same place mine just did.
It makes my heart beat sideways. She sets it down, bending the spine where I bent it earlier.
Her eyes skim over the page, and by some strange coincidence, it’s on the page about bitterns.
“Huh,” she says.
“What’s that?”
“This is your namesake,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I was expecting them to be…different.”
“A little flashier?”
She shrugs. “Maybe, yeah. Is Bittern a common name back in Kentucky?”
I’m trying to pretend I’m eating, picking at my food with my fork, but it’s distracting to sit so close to her. The hair on my arms is standing on end.
“Nope,” I say.
She smiles, setting aside the book. “You’re not too talkative, huh?”
I check myself—I’m being a little bit standoffish, but only because my entire body is going off like a car alarm.
My palms are definitely sweating, goosebumps on my forearms. There’s a slight, uncomfortable tightness in the front of my pants, and I’m glad to be sitting at the table with my groin hidden.
God, I don’t know how I’m going to get through tomorrow night. Maybe I should cancel.
I glance up. She’s smiling, just a little.
Fuck that. I’m taking this opportunity and running with it.
For years, I sat on the porch steps and watched the world spin around me without being part of it.
This is my chance. I’m finally feeling good.
I’ve started sleeping through the night.
I have a home, people who like me, care about me.
And, if I’m not imagining things, I think this girl is interested.
“I’m just used to being quiet,” I say. “But I can talk, if you let me.”
“Good,” she says primly. “Because I’m assuming you’re taking me out tomorrow.”
“I am,” I say firmly.
“Alright then. Where are we going?”
I consider it, shoulders relaxing. “You like that little bar in West Lancaster?”
Her brow furrows. “Jack Russell’s bar?”
“Uh?” I take a second. After everything that happened in the mine, my memory isn’t what it used to be.
It gets me every now and then, completely erasing recent conversations or events from my head.
The doctor said it was post-traumatic stress from growing up the way I did or something like that. I believe him—that shit was stressful.
“The Brass Terrier?" she asks.
“No, it's…it’s in South Platte.”
She thinks, pursing her lips. I like that. It kind of scrunches her nose up. “Maybe the Left Boot Saloon?”
“I don’t know. It’s on the main drag, right where the street makes a T.”
She nods. “That’s the Left Boot. You ever been?”
I shake my head then remember I’m trying to be more talkative. It’s just really hard when she’s sitting so close, it’s distracting.
“I don’t go into town too much,” I say.
“By choice?”
I shrug. “Deacon’s been keeping me pretty damn busy. I go there to pick up from the feedstore. You go out a lot?”
She nods, chewing her lip absently. My eyes stray after that motion, noting the soft curve of her mouth, the freckle at the corner of the left side.
How her face is close set so when she smiles, it scrunches her nose a little.
One side goes up, the other is tempered. All that, I get in a single snapshot.
“I used to when I lived here,” she says.
“Oh yeah? What’s your favorite place in Knifely?”
“Well,” she says. “You ever been to the diner on the corner? They have the best-worst coffee you’ve ever had. Just burnt to a crisp, but I get it every time because it tastes…like home, you know?”
My mind goes back to the coffee pot in our house growing up.
It was a drip machine, originally white but yellowed from years of people touching it.
Thousands of cups of coffee went through that machine over the years, every morning before we headed out to work nights in the factories or on Aiden’s handyman business.
When we moved to Montana, everything was gathered up and thrown into a county dumpster.
A stack, a heap of little bits of my life, in a huge green can in the yard.
“Yeah,” I say. “Kinda do.”
“Well, when I was in high school, I had a job downtown,” she says. “Nothing much, but I would park in the city lot and walk through the diner. The owner gave me free pie.”
“Sounds nice,” I say. “Familiar, you know?”
“It's a very small town.”
“You like that? I thought you lived in the city now?”
She sobers, and I wonder if I said the wrong thing. A line appears between her brows, and then she shrugs.
“I think I’m a small town and a city person,” she says.
“Can be both.”
“You definitely can.”
She starts talking about Knifely again. Pretty soon, I’ve had an introduction to every business owner down the main drag, and I know who their families are down to their second cousins.
I could probably sit and listen to her talk for a few more hours.
Our plates are empty. I’m leaning on my elbows, nodding and adding a few words here and there.
It’s nice not to feel the pressure to talk.
“Janie!”
We both startle. Leah’s standing on the far side of the room, a stack of tablecloths under her arm.
“Your mom’s looking for you,” she says. “Needs some help.”
Janie stands abruptly. “Sorry, I’m probably talking your ear off and you need to get back to work.”
I probably do need to get back to work, but I don’t care.
“No, I liked it,” I say sincerely. “A lot.”
We don’t speak for a moment, just staring through the distance between us. Her lips curve in a little smile. A zing runs through the air, right to my chest and down my spine.
“Well, see you Saturday night,” she says.
“You will,” I say.
She blushes, tucking her hair behind her ear, and goes to join Leah. They’re talking all the way to the door, probably about me, because they keep glancing back. I don’t think I’ve ever made anybody blush before, but I like it.
That night, I don’t think about anything but her and tomorrow night. It takes me through my evening routine and right to my bed, where I lay on my back and stare up into the dark.
It’s not so suffocating anymore. The ceiling is just a ceiling—I don’t see the hewn inside of a collapsed mine or the dirty, molding ceiling of my childhood home. No, it’s just sanded wood and the faint impression of her face, all soft and glimmering in the faint moonlight.
My eyes close, and I sleep hard.