2. brooks
two
brooks
. . .
That’s Alright With Me - Kip Moore
There’s only one religion my best friend Jody Fisher believes in, and that’s a cold beer and cornhole on a Sunday afternoon.
Don’t get me wrong. He’ll willingly worship at the altar between a beautiful woman’s legs.
Hell, we’ve even shared, taking turns a time or two, back in our younger days.
But for right now—even though it’s a Tuesday evening in July—Jody has only one God, and he’s praying hard for his salvation, taking a long swig from the bottle and staring down the cornhole board, beanbag in his other hand.
He tosses the bag and it slaps into the board with a dull thud.
“Aw, shit.” He tips back the beer bottle again and pulls his phone from the pocket of his jeans as he jogs up the steps onto the deck, presumably reading the same message that just buzzed in my own pocket.
There’s a smirk on his face as he watches me try—and fail—to convince the grill to catch light.
“Ev’s on his way over. Still can’t light a grill, I see.
” Jody reaches up to flick the brim of my hat with his bottle hand, and I swat it away with a scowl.
The asshole might be my best friend, but he’s still an asshole.
And no, I still can’t light a damn grill.
“Some things never change.” The smooth voice of Everett Tanner cuts through the early evening birdsong and lifts my mood a little.
Everett is my other best friend. The three of us grew up together like brothers.
My family has lived and worked on the Tanner ranch for generations, and the Fishers own the neighboring land, running a horse rescue and agricultural farm.
We were all born within a four-month span, and we’ve been inseparable since before we could walk.
I give up on the grill for the moment, turning to see Everett making his way across the grass, sidestepping the errant beanbag, and climbing the steps of the deck, hand-in-hand with his surprise wife.
They must’ve cut across from Jody’s parents’ house to be coming from that direction.
A four-pack of beer bottles is in Ev’s other hand, and he lifts it in greeting.
It’s weird as hell to think of Everett as a married man.
But he’s been whipped since the moment he met Ruth in an airport bar, and a few months ago, he proposed.
That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that she said yes.
It had been like, five minutes, and they got married literally an hour later, so it’s been a bit of a whirlwind. But Ruth is good for him.
She’s smart. Pretty, too. She’s a lawyer, and she lives in London, so right now, they’re living in limbo while they try to figure out if they’d rather be in the humid land of cattle and year-round sunshine, or a big city where it apparently rains more than three hundred days out of the year and rarely gets above seventy-five. A no-brainer, if you ask me.
But they didn’t ask me. I tip my hat to Ruth and Everett, shove the lighter at Jody, and skip over to join my friends.
“Ashton’s coming home in a couple weeks,” Everett announces. He takes a seat on the sofa on one side of the low table and pats his thigh, gesturing for Ruth to take a seat in his lap. She rolls her eyes and slides beside him, tucking herself under his arm. I sit on the opposite bench.
“Hello to you too,” I joke. “Hi, Ruth. Pleasure, as always.”
“Hi Brooks,” Ruth answers as she settles against Everett’s side. “What’s this I hear about a broken horse?”
Everett chuckles. “Jagger,” he explains to me, then turns to his wife. “He ain’t broke, baby girl. He’s greenbroke.”
“And the difference is…” Ruth raises an eyebrow as she speaks and immediately, Everett looks suitably contrite. Damn, I do like a woman with a little sass. And from what I hear, Everett has his hands full with the amount of sass Ruth is carrying.
“Greenbroke.” I take over Ev’s explanation.
“It’s what we say when a horse ain’t been fully trained or broken in.
Take Jagger, for example. He knows a saddle, and he knows how to stop and go when you tell him, but he ain’t a domesticated horse yet.
He ain’t ready for ranch work. He still got too much wild in him. ”
“I see,” Ruth says. She looks like she has more questions, but she stays quiet for a moment. And then: “So, you… break him?”
“That’s the idea. Some horses don’t take to it. Some horses are meant to be wild. But some can be broken. Domesticated. Tamed, if you will.”
“You remember Periwinkle, Ruth?” Everett nudges his wife’s side as he speaks.
Periwinkle is one of the working horses on the ranch.
Jody’s mom rescued her about six years ago, and between the three of us and Ashton, we broke her in.
Ev’s Grandaddy Smith bought her from the Fishers and now she’s one of our best workhorses.
“Was she greenbroke too?”
“When the Fishers first brought her in, she wasn’t even greenbroke. Perry was as wild as they come. Skittish and mean, all at the same time. But with some tough love and some extra care… well, you’ve seen her.”
“She’s a sweet baby.”
“Perry ain’t no baby,” I snicker. “She’s all woman.
Strong as an ox.” Periwinkle is one of our workhorses, but she’s the closest thing to a personal horse I have.
Given the choice, I’ll always take her out when I need to ride.
Sometimes, I take her just for fun rides, too.
She and Della have spent many a leisurely afternoon traipsing beyond the end of the working land.
“Perry is practically Brooks’s horse,” Everett tells Ruth. “He and Ashton did the lion’s share of breaking her. She tolerates most of us but for some reason, she loves Brooks.”
“Of course she does.” I raise my brows. “She’s a red-blooded woman.”
Ruth snickers. Everett scoffs. Jody plops down on the bench beside me.
“What’s this I hear about red-blooded women and Ashey coming home?”
“Those need to be two separate sentences,” Everett insists. “Brooks thinks all women love him. And Ashton is coming home next month.”
“Brooks thinks all women love him because he only ever sees them when they’re tipsy at a bar. Ash comin’ home for good, or for a visit?”
“Just a visit… for now, anyway. Still got another few months of school left ‘fore she’s done.”
“Damn, that went fast. She comin’ back after that?” Jody leans back against the bench. He turns his head to check on the grill, which is smoking away nicely.
“What am I, her keeper?” Everett leans forward and uses a bottle opener on his keychain to pop the tops off all four beer bottles on the table, then brings one to his lips and tips his head back. I reach for a bottle for myself. “You can ask her yourself. Ain’t like you don’t got her number.”
“Can’t believe I finally get to meet Ashton,” Ruth says excitedly. She takes Everett’s beer bottle from him, takes a sip, and pulls a face. Guess that’s why she didn’t take her own bottle from the table. More for me, then. “Imagine, she’s kind of the reason we met, and I still haven’t met her.”
“Naw,” Everett says. A dopey grin splits his face in two. “We woulda met anyway, baby girl.”
Ruth wrinkles her nose as she grins at him.
“S’not that exciting,” Jody says. He snags a full bottle from the table and replaces it with his empty one. “S’just Ashton.”
“Now try saying that like you don’t love the shit outta her.” I point the neck of my beer bottle at Jody.
“You know what I mean, Brookey. We all love Ash. She’s our little sister.”
“And you’d do well to remember the little sister part,” Everett grumbles.
He turns his face into Ruth’s hair and she giggles.
Ever since Ashton was a teenager, more woman than child, his protective big brother instinct has been on high alert.
I can relate. Even though my big sister Harriet is eight years older than us, all three of us have spent our whole lives looking at her through protective-brother-tinted shades, too.
“Dude,” Jody says. “That’s what I mean. We all love her to death, man, but she’s just Ashton. Baby sister Ashton. Big tough cowgirl, can drink us all under the table, whoop our asses at Texas 42-Ashton.”
I wince. I’m still sore over the amount of money she swindled out of me in that last game before she left for New York.
And from the hangover I had the next day from all the whiskey we drank.
Somehow, even though she’s the smallest of us all, she can drink the most and not feel a damn thing.
I’m never sure whether I’m impressed or jealous.
Hell, maybe a little of both. Ashton has always impressed the hell out of me.
Ever since she was a little girl, running faster than all of us despite her legs being much shorter, she’s had me awestruck.
I ain’t ashamed to say I’ve imagined things with her once or twice.
Always knowing it could never happen—not with my best friend’s sister.
Not with my best friend. Those two relationships have always been the most important in my life, and they mean far too much to me to risk them for sex.
Or for anything else, for that matter. But that don’t mean I’ve never wished it could be different, and that I could just kiss her breathless.
Taste the whiskey on her tongue, wipe that damn smirk off her mouth with my own lips.
I ain’t never told a soul how I always imagined it was her I was kissing, every time I went home with a different girl.
About how, no matter who I dated, when I thought about my future, the woman next to me always had Ashton Tanner’s face.
And about how, the day she turned eighteen, I almost did it.
I almost turned around and kissed her, friendships be damned, but then Jody showed up, and I lost my nerve.
Two years later, I still hadn’t worked up the courage to take the risk, and she moved across the country.
When she first left for New York, we texted regularly.
She made me and Everett swear to take care of her horse, and for the first six months or so, she’d text our group chat and demand daily photographs and updates.
Obviously, I obliged, because her boy is pretty damn sweet.
But then her messages became less frequent, and I was busy on the ranch, and I guess life and distance just got caught up between us.
Everett always keeps me updated on Ashton’s life, even when she goes quiet, and I try to stay cool about it.
I know she’s gone quiet on Jody, too. Not just me.
But the truth is, Ashton has always been just as much my best friend as Ev and Jody are.
We’ve always been close—maybe a little closer than friends ought to be, especially when her big brother is around—and I’ve missed the hell out of her every day she’s been gone.
This month can’t go by fast enough.