Chapter 17
JENNY
Ok, so, after some thinking, I’ve come to a conclusion.
Maybe Lucas is a person with feelings, and maybe I’ve been a little harsh on him considering everything he’s dealing with right now. I’m even willing to admit that maybe I’ve gone a little soft on him after our talk.
Maybe.
Or maybe I’m just having a psychotic break. That makes more sense than suddenly deciding I enjoy spending time with Lucas. I’ve even started coordinating my lunch breaks with him.
Yeah, I’m definitely going insane.
There’s no other explanation for the way I’m actually considering being friends with him again.
Thankfully I’m not crazy enough to listen to the little voice in the back of my head that keeps muttering nonsense about being more than friends.
It doesn’t matter that I still want him—he’s made it very clear that our little tryst was a one-off.
We’re both adults who needed to release some tension, and that’s all it was.
I’m not stupid enough to keep hooking up with him when I know it’ll end with my heart in tatters again.
Thinking about the potential of that outcome, being friends seems a lot less ridiculous.
I can handle friendship. Even if my heart jumps in my chest every time my phone lights up with a text from him.
Lucas: Dinner at mine tn?
My anxiety spikes at the invitation, mind whirling with too many possibilities.
Having lunch with him this last week has been easy.
Conversation flows without us winding up at each other’s throats, and taking a real lunch break to sit on the porch is good for me.
Work hasn’t dragged on endlessly, and I’ve been in a noticeably better mood.
But dinner is a different story.
Dinner means evening, means no one around to wander over and join us while we eat, means being alone. The last time we were alone… Well, I didn’t exactly behave myself in Bozeman.
Lucas hasn’t tried anything since we went on our ride, but I can’t help worrying that he’s asking me on a date. I can’t help the fact that I want it to be a date, just a little.
That’s not what he said. All he asked about was dinner. I’m reading too much into this.
If I get there and he has candles and flowers, I’ll walk right back out.
That simple. I don’t let myself spiral any further before texting him back with an agreement.
It’s already close to the time I usually call it a day, so I wrap up a little early to give myself time to change into a tank top and shorts and put some perfume on.
It’s not because I want to look good for Lucas. It’s just to give myself some time to calm down, a routine to focus on. Nothing more.
I keep my mind carefully blank as I make my way down to his trailer and knock on the thin metal door.
He answers moments later, his hair damp from a shower, wearing a well-loved tank top and a pair of black sweats.
He looks exceedingly normal—by which I mean he looks like a fucking wet dream, but not ike he’s trying to spring a surprise date on me.
I don’t see any candles or roses, either, which is a good sign.
“Come on in,” he says with a lazy grin, stepping back and tilting his head to invite me inside.
It’s pretty barren, even for a trailer. No knick knacks on the counter, no dishes in the sink.
His bed is unmade and messy, and his closet door is open, showing a sea of flannel shirts and worn-out jeans.
A brown paper bag sits on the tiny kitchenette table, the smell of greasy fast food wafting out from it.
It’s easy to relax when Lucas slumps into a seat and starts pulling food from the bag, not trying to fill the air with awkward conversation or make a pass at me. We’re just hanging out, just like we have been.
I refuse to acknowledge the part of me that wishes this was a date.
“I was so excited when I found out The Slop Shop was still open,” Lucas says with a bright smile. “Hope your order’s still the same, I just picked up what we used to get.”
“The Slop Shop?” I ask, an incredulous laugh bubbling up from my chest. “Jesus, I haven’t gone there in ages. Can’t believe you remembered my order after so long.”
I take a seat opposite Lucas, my nerves replaced with excitement and a warm, soft buzzing in my limbs that I ignore.
Lucas always surprised me with what he remembered when we were younger, seemingly memorizing even the most mundane details.
He nudges a burger and a pack of fries toward me, along with a strawberry milkshake, and my heart aches in my chest.
“Course I did,” he says simply, shrugging like it’s no big deal. “I was just worried you’d changed what you liked. I feel like I hardly know you anymore, but I figured this was a safe bet. No one can resist a good burger.”
My gut instinct is to snap at him, to tell him he doesn’t know anything about me and doesn’t deserve to anymore. He left me behind and lost the right to know anything about me. But I’m here because I want to be friends, aren’t I?
Lucas and I were good for each other as people, not just as partners.
If I want to get anything that we had back, I have to open myself up again.
I’m not saying that I plan to bare my heart and tell him that I never really stopped loving him, but maybe a little vulnerability isn’t a bad idea. It’s just a conversation, just dinner.
Just friendship.
“Time apart will do that,” I say slowly, unwrapping my burger as an excuse to avoid eye contact with him. “I don’t think I’ve changed all that much, really.”
Lucas is quiet for a moment, but he takes the olive branch for what it is and pushes just a little further. “Sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know you like I used to.”
He doesn’t mean it the way I wish he would. I’d walk away if he did, anyway. This is just us rekindling a platonic relationship. Friends know things about each other.
It could be easy, if I’d let it be.
“Ask away, then. What do you want to know?” Lucas glances up from his burger, freezing mid-bite like he expects this to be a trap. I arch my brow and gesture impatiently with a french fry before popping it into my mouth. “If I don’t want to answer something, I’ll tell you to fuck off. Just ask.”
He swallows the bite of his burger and washes it down with a sip of sweet tea. Silence stretches between us for a few moments as he thinks.
“What are you doing here?” he asks finally.
“Eating dinner,” I answer, easy as pie.
He rolls his eyes, some of the uncertainty draining from his frame. “On the ranch, you brat. You were always so insistent on getting the hell out of here when we were younger. Why not stay in Tallahassee, or move to California permanently?”
I blink in surprise, realizing that he knows nothing about what I did after he left town. I thought he was just playing stupid when we were in Bozeman, but there’s nothing but curiosity in those ocean blue eyes.
“I didn’t go to Tallahassee.” I say it bluntly, barreling on before he can say anything about that. “Wayne had already fucked off to Billings by that point and the ranch was falling apart. I decided to stay and keep Dad from running everything into the ground.”
It’s a very cut and dry version of events, but I’m not particularly in the mood to delve into my feelings. Besides, half the reason I stayed was because I kept hoping Lucas would change his mind and beg for another chance. For obvious reasons, I have no plans of bringing that little tidbit up.
“Do you actually like it here? You were so anxious to leave.” He runs a hand through his hair like he’s worried he’s pushing his luck, but I actually don’t feel any urge to bite his head off, even with all of the memories filtering through my mind right now.
“I just… Guess I’m mostly wondering if you’re actually happy here.
Figured you’d have some big plans or something. ”
I hide the sympathy that flares in my gut with a teasing smile and knock my foot into his ankle beneath the table. “Are you looking for ideas for your own life, Cross?”
Something almost wistful flickers across his features at my little joke. Maybe the words reminded him that our lives could have been intertwined instead of two separate things. Maybe I’m projecting.
Lucas snorts and rolls his eyes at me. “I don’t think I’m cut out for the glamorous life of accounting, sadly.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that he says nothing about his own goals. That might actually be a good sign. I was serious about him taking some time to let himself breathe before trying to plan his life.
“I’ve been thinking about moving out,” I say, finally answering his question as I toy with the lid of my milkshake.
“It’d be nice to start my own little accounting firm.
I could get my CPA license, get a couple partners to join in on it.
I’d probably stay in the state, but having my own space would be nice. ”
“Why don’t you?”
I huff out a sigh and sit back, shrugging as I glance around the trailer. Making eye contact feels too intimate right now, too much like I’m inviting him along.
“The ranch is doing alright now that Mary’s around, and with Wayne back to handle the legal stuff, things are better,” I say.
“But Dad’s still Dad, and Wayne is still Wayne.
It’s hard to just leave them to handle it on their own when they haven’t been able to handle it in the past. I know they’ve both changed, and I’m proud of them, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I left and we wound up losing the ranch because I wasn’t here. ”
I brace myself for Lucas to give me the usual rundown. Everyone always tells me I’m a perfectionist, that I’m too controlling, that my family can manage without me. They just don’t realize that I’m not doing any of this just to be in charge. I’m here because I worry, because I care.
If I could have run off like Lucas did, I would’ve done it years ago.
Instead of the scorn I expect, Lucas smiles at me, soft and understanding. He knocks his foot against my ankle in a mirror of my earlier gesture, and it makes me chuckle.
“You don’t have to go far,” he suggests, his voice gentle and quiet. “Could still come and check on everything if you didn’t go too far. And if you had partners, they could handle business if you ever needed to come back for emergencies.”
I freeze with a french fry halfway to my mouth, surprised at how practical Lucas is being. I’m even more surprised that he’s not trying to convince me to just ignore the ranch entirely and do my own thing.
Everyone I’ve talked to about it has insisted that the ranch will survive without me. I know it will, but those what-ifs are pretty fucking scary.
“I… Yeah, I guess I could.” I honestly haven’t thought about this as more than a pipe dream, but when he puts it like that, it seems doable. “It could work.”
“Just saying, it might be good for you to put yourself first occasionally,” he says with a fond grin.
“I know you worry about everyone, but you deserve to do things that are important to you, too. You don’t have to be silent about things you want just because you don’t think they fit with what other people are doing. ”
I sip at my milkshake just to have something to do while my mind spins at a million miles an hour.
I’ve always focused so much on how my plans put other people out, terrified that they’ll give up what they want to accommodate me.
It’s just been easier to mold my life around what everyone else is doing instead of doing what I want.
If I had tried back then. If I had told Lucas that I wanted to stay together…
It’s ridiculous to think about now, a day late and a dollar short, but maybe things could have been different.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, both in response to him and to my own thoughts.
“Giving your own wants a chance might be a good change of pace for you, Jenny,” he says, his eyes crinkling in a warm smile. “You deserve to at least try to go after the things you want, don’t you think?”
My own wants, huh? A place of my own, a business, a dog, or a few cats.
Lucas.
It may be stupid to wish for, but I can’t deny that a big part of me still wants him. Wants to ask. Wants to try.
Maybe this is his way of saying he wants to try again, too.