Chapter Three – Lila19 #3
“Salt is a much more serious condiment,” I said.
“Exactly,” Rhett said, and something in his voice had settled, easy and satisfied, as though this had always been the destination, and he had simply been driving. “You pass someone the pepper, maybe you’re forward. Salt, you’re practically engaged.”
“That tracks,” I said.
Cole set down his glass. “I’d like to state for the record,” he said, in the measured way he said everything, “that I passed this man the sugar this morning, and I’m not planning to change my life significantly as a result.”
Rhett pointed at him with his spoon. “Different category. Sweetness implies friendship. Salt implies commitment.”
“It implies seasoning,” I said.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
I looked at him. He looked back with the grin and the laugh lines and the complete, unruffled confidence of a man who had decided the evening was going the direction he wanted it to go, and I found I did not have the energy to argue with him about condiment philosophy, which was either a genuine position or a sign that the day had worn me down past my usual defenses.
Possibly both. I picked up the salt and used it and set it back in the center of the table.
The conversation loosened the way ice does: not all at once, but in sections, small pieces letting go and floating free.
Rhett supplied most of the fuel, one story folding into the next with the ease of someone who had spent a long time being responsible for the temperature in a room.
He had worked a ranch in the hill country for four years, had a brief and unsuccessful career on a circuit that he described as brief for structural reasons, had learned to cook out of necessity and had come to the conclusion that necessity was the worst possible teacher and that the things it taught you were all the wrong lessons.
Cole occasionally added a sentence, short and accurately placed.
Wade asked me two questions over the course of the meal, both about the ranch, both open enough that they required a real answer rather than a deflection, and both delivered with the unhurried attention of someone who was actually listening rather than waiting to speak.
I had forgotten, somewhere in the last few months, what it felt like to say something and have someone receive it. That was not a thought I planned to examine.
Cole rose when the bowls were empty. He stacked them and carried the stack toward the kitchen and I pushed back my chair.
“Sit,” he said. He said it over his shoulder, without stopping. Not unkindly, without any edge in it, but with the total matter-of-factness of a man who had made a decision and considered the matter settled.
I sat.
My jaw went tight. I looked at the space where my chair had been pushed back, the slight gap between me and the table, and then I pulled the chair back in and straightened and let my hands rest ion my baby bump.
“The condensed milk incident,” Rhett said, as though he had been waiting for exactly this moment. He laced his hands behind his head and tipped his chair back on two legs. “I should tell you about the condensed milk incident.”
I looked at him.
“I want it on record that I had every reason to believe it would work,” he said.
“The recipe was unclear. A Dutch oven has no business being used for dessert, and I stand by that, but no one told me that at the time, and I was seventeen and confident, which is a combination that should come with a warning label.” He paused.
“The short version is that the lid came off. The longer version involves a ceiling.”
I smirked, but then asked, “Was anyone hurt?” I asked.
“Emotionally, yes,” Rhett said. “Materially, we had to repaint.”
Wade was still at the table, turned slightly in his chair, his large hands curled around his coffee mug. He let the pause after Rhett’s story sit for a moment, then looked across the table at me.
“The land to the east,” he said. “Past the scrub line. Is that yours, or does it run to the county line before the next property?”
“Mine,” I said. “Another two hundred acres past the treeline, but it hasn’t been grazed in two seasons.
Ground’s waterlogged around the creek bed in the south corner.
” I thought about it for a moment. “There’s a section above the creek, on the high ground, that would be worth fencing properly. It’s been on the list.”
“Everything’s on the list,” he said, not unkindly.
“Everything’s on the list,” I agreed.
He looked at me when I said it, and what was in his face was not sympathy, which I would have closed off, but something more like recognition, and I held that look for a second without pulling away from it.
I looked him for a moment. Then I looked back at Rhett, who had moved on to a story about a horse, a fence post, and a quantity of industrial peanut butter that he said he would explain in full if anyone wanted the details, though he maintained the context made it better and insisted on building to it properly.
“Go on then,” I said.
He did.