Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
RYE
“Ryder, what’s goin’ on with you?” my uncle Red asked. “You’ve been here two days. I know my little brother has his hands full this spring at the ranch, so I can’t imagine he’s happy you’re here.”
He stared me down as I sat on the stool behind his checkout counter in his outdoor adventure store, The Red Wild Outdoors, in the middle of downtown Wisper.
As soon as I’d been old enough to drive, working weekends at my uncle’s store was my escape from the ranch, and now, being surrounded by hunting rifles and bear-proof food storage felt like home.
I loved my job. Even as a kid, Graves & Sons Ranch provided new and exciting things for me to learn on a daily basis, but the older I got and the more capable, the more my dad made me feel like his employee and not his son.
My parents never really understood why I liked being around Red, but my uncle, even though he could be gruff, always looked out for me. He listened when I talked, and I was betting having me around sometimes eased the hole in his heart he’d caused when he pushed his son out of his life. He regretted it deeply. I’d always known that, and I was glad he’d finally begun trying to make amends to my cousin, though it didn’t seem like those amends were getting him anywhere.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I love havin’ you at my house, and I’ll never turn down your help here at the store, but aren’t you needed elsewhere?”
Red’s guest room was an absolute treat because it wasn’t a guest room at all but an extra place to store unwanted stock and was the size of a broom closet. The man never got rid of anything. I barely fit in there, and the “bed” was an old couch that smelled like mildew, which I definitely didn’t fit on. My feet hung over the arm every night.
“Presley has it handled, and as long as the work’s gettin’ done, my dad don’t care where I’m at.”
“I doubt that.”
Flipping through an old Field & Stream magazine next to the cash register, I muttered, “Uncle Red, you can doubt it till the cows come home, but don’t hold your breath, and maybe grab a snack so you don’t starve while you wait.”
“Well, I am hungry.” Red turned to his shop manager. “Oscar, hold down the fort while we hit the diner?”
“’Course,” Oscar said as he rearranged a reusable water bottle display.
I still felt a little proud of the changes I’d helped Red make to his store last year. My friend Devo kind of forced him into his new personality, but “nice guy and friendly small-town business owner” suited him, as opposed to the curmudgeon he used to be. Devo’s mama had a little something to do with it too. Red and Liluye were still in the honeymoon phase of their love story, and she’d promised to overhaul Red’s guest room for when I came to stay, but they hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
“Can I bring you anything back?” Red asked Oscar.
“Sure. A BLT, please, but ask José for turkey bacon.”
I shuddered. Turkey is not bacon! Why the hell am I busting my ass farming cows if everyone wants to replace real meat with tasteless substitutes? Turkey bacon, Impossible beef, which is impossibly not beef, and fucking Tofurky? What’s next, vegetarian brisket? Shit, somebody probably already thought of that. But I bet if the beef was responsibly farmed, more people would eat it again.
“You got it, kid,” Red said with a smile.
“Thanks.”
“C’mon, Rye. Let’s get our feed bags on.”
Uncle Red opened both front doors wide and left them open since the day was sunny and warm. Letting the magazine flop down onto the counter, I followed on his heels, sulking.
He was right. I couldn’t hide out in Wisper much longer. But when I was here, I felt hopeful. I watched as so many people lived their dreams in this town. They took chances. They fell in love. They lived good lives. Wisper’s residents might not have been the richest or the most successful, but they seemed happy.
The community center was booming. The new bakery at the far end of Main Street was killing it with the best French pastries I’d ever tasted. Even my friend Bax was starting up a new venture on his sheep farm that he’d recently decided to turn into a rustic-rental-cabin getaway. So many people seemed to thrive in the small, mountain-town setting.
And that right there was the real reason I came to Wisper so often.
Aubrey George.
Except her bookshop didn’t seem to be thriving like all the rest.
I knew because every time I walked or drove by, I looked in the windows. And every single time, I saw Aubrey looking defeated and alone. Not a customer in sight.
The few times I’d gone in to see her after I asked her out and she shot me down, I’d asked her to order some books about modern agriculture that the local librarian had offered to procure for me so I could check them out, but if I bought them from Aubrey, I supported her business, and I got to see her twice—once when I put in the order and then when I picked up the books. She knew what I was doing, knew I was making excuses to visit her store, but she kept things professional. I had begun to think that maybe my goal of getting her to say yes to a date with me was hopeless.
But I’d known Aubrey since I was ten years old, so I also knew she was stubborn, and if Your Local Bookie was struggling, she wouldn’t ask anyone for help.
Which gave me an idea.
What if the help was offered freely? And from someone she wouldn’t have to worry about paying back or that it might offend her pride. Plus, it would get me alone with her.
Oh the things I wanted to do to her alone in the dark.
“Seriously, kid,” Uncle Red pressed when we grabbed a booth at José’s Diner and the server had brought our waters. “What’s goin’ on with you? I’ve never seen you this down.”
The place was packed for lunch, but we’d nabbed the last open booth before a loud group of tourists crowded into the diner and stood watching us while they waited. Setting my hat on the bench next to me, I dragged a hand through my hair, listening to the happy chatter from the other diners and the clinking of their silverware against their plates.
“Dad and I just don’t agree a lot these days. And…” Sighing heavily, I said, “And I guess, lately I’ve been thinkin’ about the future.”
“What about it?”
“I dunno. Maybe I’m on the wrong path.”
Red stretched his arm over the back of the booth bench. “I thought you loved workin’ the ranch. You’d mastered your horse and could rassle cows to the ground by the time you were twelve. You got stars in your eyes before the cattle drives every year.”
“I love it,” I admitted, “that freedom I feel out on the range, and the knowledge that what I’m doin’ helps people. Feeds people. Doesn’t get much better than that. But I got ideas, Red, and it just so happens that my ideas piss Dad off.
“I don’t get him. Junior and Shelby are off livin’ their lives. They want nothin’ to do with the ranch. I’m the one who’s been here the whole time. I’m the one gettin’ up before the crack of dawn to do the old man’s biddin’. I do the work without complaint every day. So why won’t he listen to me? I know that land better than anyone. Maybe even him.”
“Ryder, your dad has always been set in his ways, but I know he loves and values you. Have you ever thought that maybe he’s just scared to try somethin’ new? We Graves men grow more stubborn the older we get. I got lucky and had my incompetencies pointed out to me, and then I made changes in my life, but not everyone is so lucky to have friends like I do.”
Red sighed, and a sad, faraway look settled on his face. “I tell you what, though, if your cousin would return my phone calls, I’d listen to anything he has to say. So you’re frustrated with your dad, but I know he loves you, and I know he appreciates you.”
It had been something like twenty years since Red and my cousin RJ had spoken. Red had tried to reach out many times recently, but maybe the damage had been done and RJ would never call his dad back. I wished he would, though. He’d be surprised at what he’d find if he did.
Shaking my head, I fiddled with the bundle of silverware wrapped in a napkin on the table in front of me. “I wish I believed that.”
“What about your mama? What’s she say?”
“She says nothin’. Ever. At least not anything positive to Dad about me. And to me, she says she wants me settled down. She wants more grandbabies. She can’t understand why I ‘can’t keep a woman.’”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
I laughed at my uncle talking like a college kid. “Really, Red? ‘What’s up with that?’”
“Well, what about that pretty brunette you were seein’? The one you brought to Red Wild? She seemed nice.”
“That was almost two years ago. Her name was Vivian, and she dumped me at the fall brandin’ barbecue. She was pissed I’d been gone ten days on the drive, and she still hadn’t gotten over the fact that I could never take her dancin’ ’cause I have to get up so early for work, but she wanted to party till the wee hours in Jackson.
“She was always mad about somethin’, and then to prove it, she smashed a paper plate full of potato salad to my face in front of everyone. I’m still livin’ that shit down with the ranch hands.”
Holding in his laughter, Red unrolled his silverware, looking hard at the old resin tabletop.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” I said, and my uncle let out a little snicker. “It was for the best anyway. She wasn’t the one. Not even close.”
I hadn’t realized I’d done it, but I found myself gazing out the diner window, wondering where Aubrey was. Maybe she’d walk by after her book club and I’d get a glimpse of her infectious smile, her amber eyes, and the way her hips always swayed seductively when she walked.
You ain’t that lucky, dumbass. Besides, she’d probably dump a plate full of Jello salad or somethin’ over your head if she knew you memorized her schedule, down to what time she gets done at book club.
I kept coming up to Wisper, hoping for… I wasn’t sure. An opportunity? A chance encounter? I had no idea. Aubrey George had never given me the time of day. I was just some kid in the background of her younger memories. Why would she? We barely even spoke.
But then, there were plenty of looks.
I hadn’t missed how her lips would part when she watched me. I caught her in the mirror at the new hat and boot shop in town a couple months ago. And sometimes, when I walked by her store, she’d actually smile at me. Not every time, but still, it proved she had considered me. The day I asked her out, I’d forced her to see me as something other than her dead husband’s friend’s little brother.
But maybe she needed a little more convincing.
When I turned back to him, Red was staring at me with a dubious look in his eye. “What aren’t you tellin’ me, Rye?”
“Nothin’. It’s nothin’ at all.”
As our waitress approached, pen and pad in hand, ready to take our order, he said, “Well, kid, when you’re ready to talk, I’m here. You hear me?”
“Yes, sir. I hear ya.”