Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Dawson felt a bit adrift because Coke had taken Nate, his wife Tracy, and Mr. Dillon into Santa Fe for dinner. Little Bean had left to go to some sort of barn dance happening two towns over, and the other couple of guys that had been around to pull gates and put bull ropes on were God knows where.
So maybe he’d heat him up a TV dinner. Surely they had some in the freezer, right?
He wandered to the kitchen where he found Nick performing some sort of magical witchcraft on the stove with a wok and a paddle or something. He stopped to stare because it was fascinating.
He opened the fridge and hung on the door, staring into it, trying to figure out if there was something he could throw together, because now he felt guilty for wanting to heat up something that had been assembled in a factory.
“Hey, Dawes.” Seamus’s crew had started getting familiar now that him and Seamus had sort of made up.
“Hey, buddy, how you doing?” Look at him making small talk.
Nick snorted. “Do you call me buddy because you can’t remember my name?”
Dawson leaned out of the fridge to stare at the guy. “No, I know your name is Nick or Nicholas. And I know you’re the personal chef-slash-trainer-slash-physical therapist.”
“Very good. I just wanted to make sure you actually knew who I was. It’s a little bit of a… I guess it’s a matter of ego, right?” Nick added some sort of sauce to the stir-fry he was making, and suddenly it smelled so good that it made Dawson’s belly rumble.
“Hey, I get it. I wasn’t very nice to y’all when you first showed up. I said I was sorry for that?”
Nick nodded and laughed. “You did. No big deal. We’re used to not being so welcome on site sometimes. Nobody wants their job to be interrupted by people who are just here to learn it and then leave.”
“Is it weird to be so transient? I mean, I travel all the time too, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t do like y’all. I don’t stay at some place for six or eight weeks and then have to get to know everybody and stuff and then move on.”
In the bullriding world, they all traveled together, and they all knew each other. They might not all like each other. Sometimes there were bullriders Dawson thought were assholes, but they all knew each other’s foibles.
“Sometimes it’s weird. Sometimes it’s really cool. I mean, I love this kitchen. It has everything.”
“Mr. Coke actually likes to cook a lot. Mostly outdoors, but he needs this inside kitchen for prep and stuff.”
“I can totally see that. The outdoor kitchen is something really special.” Nick waved his spatula in the air. “But this is amazing. And sometimes I don’t have amazing to work with. There have been times when I’ve had a Coleman stove and a grill.”
Christopher wandered in, going to the fridge to grab himself a Coke, and Nick looked at him as if he had crawled out from under a rock or something.
Christopher glared at him. “I am not the one who has to watch what he eats and drinks, Nicholas.”
Ouch. If there was some kind of fight going on here, he needed to get the hell out of the way. So he bent down and started rummaging through the freezer on the bottom of the fridge.
“Dawson, what are you doing?” Nick asked.
“Looking for some kind of frozen dinner or maybe they’ve got some soup cubes in here. They do that. They freeze them in these silicone things—”
“Oh, good Lord,” Christopher said. “Don’t do that. Nick will be totally offended.”
“Why would he be offended?” He was lost now. Totally lost.
“I would be disturbed because I am making a healthy, soulful, not to mention incredibly yummy meal, and there will be plenty for you, so don’t do that. Don’t pull something out of the freezer.”
That threatening glare Nick sent him was kind of intimidating. Not that Dawson was one to back down from anything, but really, did he want to fight over this? He just wanted some dinner.
“Uh, what are you making?” While he would happily eat whatever smelled so good, he couldn’t take tofu. So if that was in there, he was going to have to turn it down.
“It’s just a simple chicken stir-fry, some brown rice, and some dumplings.”
His eyebrows flew up. “Are you making the dumplings?”
“I’ve made them. They are ready. And I just have to finish out the stir-fry. The rice is done too.”
“Well, if you don’t mind me sticking around to eat, there’s nobody else to eat with, and I didn’t make any plans for myself, like a kind of idiot…”
“We would be delighted.” Seamus came trotting into the kitchen and went to the fridge to grab a drink as well, and he came out with some sort of weird kombucha tonic or something.
“Good actor. Drink your probiotics.”
Seamus flexed—and Dawes wanted to fucking die from the sheer pretty.
“That’s me. ‘Good actor’. Did you hear that, Topher? I’m a good actor.”
“You’re a suck-up.” Christopher snorted at Seamus, rolled his dark eyes. “Like a big, hairy, weird suck-up.”
Seamus’s lips dropped open as if Christopher had wounded him on a deep level. “I am not hairy. I got lasered all over.” He shot Dawson a long-suffering look. “It’s damn hard work to be this pretty.”
He got a playful wink.
“Yeah, I can tell it’s a real hardship…” Lord have mercy, these guys were hilarious and utterly aware.
It had taken Dawson a bit, but he finally figured out that Seamus wasn’t full of himself. If anything, he was real practical about what was going on. The son of bitch just knew what his assets were. Sort of like Dawson knew he was quick, had great twitch muscles.
“You really got all your hair burned off?”
Seamus glanced at him and nodded, “I did. No lie. I have to tell you, I was shaving and that left terrible razor burn type stuff.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And then when I tried waxing? It takes a whole layer of skin off.”
“And that takes his tan off. Pasty Shay is not hot.” Christopher’s voice was dry as dust.
“Hey!” Seamus’s laugh rang out, and he stole a bite of chicken right out of the wok as he headed over to the kitchen table, earning a swat from Nick for his trouble.
“I ended up getting burned a couple of times, leaving marks, so I decided fuck it. I’d just get it all removed.
It took a little bit, and it hurt like a motherfucker, but now I’m all smooth.
I don’t have to worry about all the upkeep near as much. ”
Suddenly Dawes was filled with questions—some about how smooth that chest was, but also did Seamus have to wear makeup a lot? Did he know how to do his own makeup? Did he ever have to sit in a chair and get like crazy shit put on his face?
Everything Seamus did was from this world that was so foreign he didn’t even know how to begin to think about everything.
“Don’t worry, man, we’re not all that weird. Just Shay.” Christopher rolled his eyes and winked at him. “Seriously, some of us are just jackasses from La La land.”
“Ah, Topher isn’t a jackass, he’s just kind of grumbly.
And I have to tell you, man—” Seamus leaned in close enough for Dawson to smell his soap.
“I travel with my best friends. Nick and Christopher are my ride or dies, and Jess is just the best assistant I could ask for. I adore her too. So I get to meet people, I’m privileged to get to know them.
It’s a good life— weird, unbelievably weird sometimes, but good. ”
Dawes nodded. “Sure, man. I mean, I travel all the time, and the bullfighters and the entertainer, we’re a unit.
I mean, Michael, he’s the clown, he has a lot more money than us…
” Dawson offered a wink of his own. “But he’s solid.
A lot like Mr. Dillon, in that he has our backs and carried enough weight to help get us what we need.
And the other guys, well, they’re my brothers. ”
Seamus nodded to him like he totally got it.
“Right on.” He leaned his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.
“So what’s your favorite part about the job?
I mean, like, seriously. This doesn’t have to go beyond this table.
This is not for public consumption. I’m just trying to figure out the different parts of a character. ”
Okay, well, that was a fair question. A sensible one. “I like the guys. I mean, that’s the best part. Not that the job itself isn’t satisfying. Saving cowboys satisfies on a bone-deep level, but hanging out with the guys? Seeing different things, meeting fans? That’s fun.”
“Do you get recognized a lot?” Nick asked.
He shook his head. “Not like Mr. Man here, no, but there’s something very comfortable about the rhythm of the work— We all have our jobs. We all do them because if one person doesn’t do their job, somebody could die.”
“Wow. Wow. Not me. If I don’t do my job, then well, somebody might want to die because it costs money, but—”
“What does?” He didn’t follow.
“Well, let’s say I don’t show up or I show up poorly prepared.
All those people that are on set? They have to get paid.
The electricity, the set costs themselves—they have to be paid.
You’re talking about a big payout, and I pride myself on it never being my fault that we didn’t get a shoot in.
That it’s not that I’m hungover or that I did something stupid and got hurt.
Sure, I’ve been sick. Like, I was really sick a couple of times. ”
“That’s why I was brought in,” Nick added, and Dawson tilted his head.
“No shit?”
“None at all.” Nick grinned at him. “Someone was being stupid.”
“I wasn’t being stupid.”
“It was pretty stupid.” Christopher agreed, and Dawson thought, whoa. It was the first time he’d ever heard those two agree.
“Guys, we don’t have to get into it,” Seamus started.
Nick snorted, waving his spoon. “Oh, we totally do. So, Christopher, you start. I’m stirring.”
“Okay, sure.”
Shay’s eyes rolled. “Traitor.”
Christopher shrugged. “It was quite a while ago. We’d gone to the beach one afternoon. We were off-shoot, and someone stepped on something.”
“It was just a little cut,” Seamus started.