Chapter 5 #2
There are two orphaned elk calves that came in ten days ago.
They are siblings, probably, found together after what Anthony describes in careful terms as a vehicle incident on a highway north of here.
They're in a warm enclosure off the main barn, and when we come in they are alert and interested and absolutely tiny, all legs and velvet ears, and I make a sound I'm not proud of.
"Here." Anthony hands me a bottle without preamble. "Since I didn’t let you touch the bear cub, you can help me feed them. Support under the jaw. Let him come to you, don't push the nipple."
The calf latches on and the sound he makes is this small, concentrated, absolutely focused sound of a creature doing the most important thing, it’s the best thing I have experienced in my recent memory.
"Oh my god," I whisper.
"Don't move too fast."
"I'm not moving."
"You were about to."
He's right again. I was leaning forward without noticing. I was about to move too fast because I was so enchanted I forgot where I was. I just wanted to get closer to the sweet baby.
I feel Anthony’s hand on my back, just a light press between my shoulder blades, steadying, grounding me in place and then it's gone.
It lasted maybe two seconds, but it felt like we had an entire conversation.
Stay, it said. I've got you. You're doing fine, just slow down.
I slow down.
He’s incredibly calming to be around. He’s grounding… just like I said I needed. Just like I’ve always wanted.
The calf finishes the bottle with the satisfied completeness of someone who has accomplished their one and only goal for the day and is now considering a nap.
I hand the empty bottle back to Anthony and look up to find him watching me with an expression I haven't seen on him before. It’s something softer, something that doesn't have any of the careful measurement in it.
"Good girl," he says.
Two words.
It lands in the center of my chest like he placed it there deliberately.
I want to hear him say that again. I want to earn it again. This is a completely new and very specific feeling and, I need to think about it later when I am not standing in a barn holding an empty bottle looking up at a man who says good like it means something.
I text the group chat from the barn while Anthony checks on the new mule deer fawn. The signal is weak this far up the mountain and half my photos won't send but I try anyway.
MAYA: I bottle fed an elk calf.
I send a photo of two elk calves in warm straw, one latched onto a bottle, my hand visible at the bottom of the frame.
LILY: MAYA!
EMILY: She's crying I'm crying we're all crying!
MADISON: The EARS on that baby!
HOLLY: How is it going otherwise?
MAYA: He put his hand on my back to stop me from moving too fast with the calf and it was so sweet.
CHLOE: STOP!
AMBER: The hand on the back is a THING. A total thing.
MAYA: It was two seconds.
LILY: The best two seconds of your recent life?
MAYA: ...yes
EMILY: What did he say?
MAYA: He called me a good girl.
MADISON: Those are the best two words ever.
HOLLY: Maya, I need you to understand what's happening here.
MAYA: I understand what's happening here.
HOLLY: Do you? Do you really?
MAYA: I'm in a barn in Colorado being managed by a very tall veterinarian and I would like everyone to know I am handling it.
CHLOE: She's not handling it.
LILY: Not even a little.
MADISON: Cute barn outfit tho. Good choice.
MAYA: Signal's dropping, talk later, do not read into that.
Lunch is at a wooden table in the ranch's main building. It’s a simple affair of sandwiches that one of the staff made without ceremony, good coffee, and the easy comfortable rhythm of people who work together and trust each other.
I'm included in it immediately, which I wasn't expecting, and it takes me a moment to understand that this is because Anthony included me.
Somehow, he made it clear I was to be trusted and they included me.
Not by announcement, just by the way he sat down beside me and passed me the coffee before I asked, his hand closing over mine in a way that was not professional. It was intimate and it spoke volumes without him having to say a word.
The red-haired staff member, whose name is Colt, and who has the energy of a golden retriever who has learned to do veterinary science, asks me about travel blogging with genuine curiosity and I spend fifteen minutes talking about the content side of the business while Anthony eats without interrupting and occasionally, quietly, refills my coffee or water glass.
Every time he does it, I feel the meaning behind it. It’s like a hand steadying a bottle, like a press between shoulder blades, his way of caring.
I’m paying attention, he’s saying. I notice you. I've got this.
I wonder if he knows how loudly he communicates without talking.
After lunch he takes me to check on the fawn.
She's stable. Better than the probably he mentioned earlier. He stands at the enclosure for a long moment, assessing, and I watch him assess her and feel something loosen in my chest in response to the loosening in his.
"She's going to make it," I say.
"Looks like it." He glances at me. "How do you know?"
"You relaxed."
He pauses before looking up at me. "You're observant."
"You're not that hard to read," I say, "once you know what you're looking for."
Something shifts in the air between us.
I said it without thinking about how it would land. It landed somewhere significant. I can feel the weight of it. I’ve just confessed to him that I’ve been watching him and not only watching, understanding.
He's looking at me and I'm looking at him and the fawn is moving quietly in the straw behind us and the thing that has been building between us is very present and very close.
"You should come back," he says. "There's more to show you."
He means the ranch. He's talking about the ranch.
He might not only be talking about the ranch.
"I want to," I say.
I also might not only be talking about the ranch.
We stand there for one more held moment, and then Colt appears in the doorway needing Anthony for something, and the moment releases, and I breathe again.
I wasn't aware I'd stopped.
He drives me back to the resort in the late afternoon.
We don't talk a lot and the space between us doesn't need filling. The truck is warm, and I have approximately three hundred photos and a full notebook and feelings I'm going to need more than one evening to sort out.
At the resort entrance he puts the truck in park but doesn't get out immediately.
"The Christmas preview event is Saturday," he says. "Holly's whole production."
"She's mentioned it several times with increasing enthusiasm."
"I'll be there. For the reindeer portion."
He's telling me he'll be there. He's not asking if I'll be there because he already knows I will be. He's just placing himself in my Saturday.
"I'll save you some ornament-decorating time," I say with a laugh.
"I don't decorate ornaments."
"You will on Saturday."
He looks at me. There's something in this particular look, a warmth that's been building since this morning, since the coffee, since his hand on my back, since good girl, and then it's there, the real smile, the one that goes all the way up to his eyes.
"Is that right," he says. Not a question.
"I'm going to need the content of course."
"Of course." His smile grows.
The way he says it, like he finds me delightfully adorable and is only just deciding whether to say so.
I get out before I do something inadvisable like tell him that I really like it when he calls me a good girl, and I make it inside the lodge and down the corridor and into my suite before I allow myself to lean against the door and press both hands over my face and think: what is happening to me.
The answer is obvious.
I just need a minute to catch up with it.