Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RYE
“Whatcha want?” The teenager at the concession stand inside the Jackson movie theatre looked dead bored while I tried to figure out what to buy.
I held out my credit card. “Just give us one of everything.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Aubrey had been perusing the “Coming Soon” movie posters lining the theatre’s walls, but she jerked her head in my direction. “I’m not eatin’ all that!”
“Okay, young lady, then what would you like?” Like a gameshow host, I waved my arm out toward the menu board and the lit-up case full of boxes and packages of candy.
“Popcorn, Rye. Just popcorn with butter and a Coke, please.”
The teenager shrugged and turned to round up the stuff.
“A big popcorn! Extra-large, and make that two Cokes,” I called after him, then I second guessed myself. Turning back to Aubrey, I said, “Unless you want your own?”
“Rye,” she whispered, peeking around the lobby discreetly to make sure no one could hear her, “your hands have been inside my body. I think we can share a bucket of popcorn.”
That put a smile on my face a mile wide. “Good.”
Yes, my hands had been inside her, and yes, I still remembered every second of our red-hot encounter in the back of my truck on a dark night at the edge of wild Wyoming, and how soft she was and how responsive to my touch.
Hadn’t had a “good” orgasm in ten years? Woman, you just didn’t have the right motivation.
We watched as the kid pumped a river of butter onto our popcorn. Aubrey didn’t seem concerned about the cholesterol. Myself, I wasn’t usually one to eat junk. The physical work I did every day demanded protein and complex carbs, not sugar and butter. But for her, I’d make every exception in the book.
“Ooo,” she said, pointing to a white box in the candy display. She smiled up at me, a girlish grin lifting her lips. “And maybe some Junior Mints?”
I leaned down to kiss those lips, like I did it every day, and she blushed crimson.
The kid tossed her box of minty chocolates on the counter and swiped the card from my hand. He tapped it on his card reader, handed it back, and rolled his eyes, which was our signal to move on with our goodies.
“I haven’t been to a movie in so long,” Aubrey said.
Juggling the bucket of butter in the crook of one arm with the Cokes tucked precariously next to it, I handed our tickets to the attendant, while Aubrey held onto her box of Junior Mints with two hands, like it was her only present on Christmas, and her face was as bright and excited as lights on a tree.
“Me either,” I said, opening and holding the theatre door for her. “I always tell myself I need to take more time to relax, but then a cow gets pneumonia, or the barn door gets busted by a bull, and then I forget all about the fun things in life.”
“Self-care is important,” she said as she pointed to the dimly lit top row. The very empty top row, I’d noticed, which suited me just fine ’cause I planned to steal a few more kisses. “At least, that’s what my friends tell me.”
“Yeah, but they aren’t business owners, are they?”
“No. Well, Juneau is a writer, so I suppose she does own her own business, but it’s a very different kind than mine. Billie probably does, too, but I’m not sure exactly what kind of business hackers run. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Everybody’s jobs keep them busy, but no, I guess you’re right. Running a store is definitely a full-time job, especially doin’ it all on my own. The sign might say 9–5, but they aren’t the only hours I work.”
“What’s your favorite part?” I asked, and we sat right in the middle of the row, below the patched-up hole in the wall from where the movies used to be projected.
“The books. It’s always been about the books. I went to school for business because I knew someday I wanted to have my own shop. But the downside is, by the time I actually opened my store, all the business 101 I learned back then had changed several times through the years. I feel like I’m constantly startin’ over.”
“Yeah, Spitfire,” I said, handing her our gargantuan bucket of popcorn, “but you’re smart. You can do it.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking the popcorn and digging her hand in. When she had a handful, she passed the bucket back to me and ate one piece at a time.
“Was there one book?”
“Huh?”
“What was the book you read when you were a kid that got you hooked?”
She smiled. “ The Secret Garden . Have you read it?” The love in her eyes for that book lit up her whole face, and she looked as happy as only a little girl could.
“No.”
“Oh, when I was a girl, I thought it was about adventure and I used to imagine I was the main character, Mary Lennox, and I’d go outside and climb trees and crawl under bushes, looking for my own secrets. But as I got older, it became more than that. It’s really about lettin’ yourself heal from heartache and loss and growin’ from that.”
The story seemed to fit her perfectly, and I wondered if I could find a first edition copy of the book for her.
“What about you?” she asked. “You said you have all these ideas about how to run your family’s ranch, but have you ever thought about startin’ your own? I have a feelin’ you’d be good at it.”
Grabbing a couple kernels, I popped them in and chewed. “It’s funny you say that. Just today I had the same thought.”
“Really?”
The lights dimmed in the theatre and the previews started up on the screen.
“Yeah,” I whispered, leaning back in my chair and closer to her so she could hear me. “You know Bax Lee?”
“Abey’s brother?”
I nodded. “He’s a friend, and when I called him on my way to pick you up, he mentioned puttin’ up a big parcel of his land for sale. It’s good farmland. Until last year, they raised sheep on it. It’d be a hell of a lot smaller than my dad’s outfit, but I think that might be ideal for a start-up while I work out the kinks. I’ve got the money for the land, with enough left over for labor and stock.”
“So,” she whispered back, inching closer to me too, “what’s stoppin’ you?”
Good question.
The previews seemed to last forever, but I didn’t mind ’cause I spent most of them leaned back, watching Aubrey experience them. Her eyes would get big during action scenes, her mouth forming a delicate ‘o,’ and she’d flash a little secret smile at the romantic scenes. When the “shut the hell up and turn off your damn phones” announcement came on, she turned to look at me.
“What?” she whispered.
Shaking my head slowly, I tried not to let it show on my face just how much her smile made me feel full inside and how much I adored her. I set the popcorn on the seat next to me and reached for her hand. When she placed it in mine without argument, I held on tight, and we settled back and waited for Thor and his friends to entertain us.
And I did, in fact, steal a kiss, but I waited till her favorite superhero was up on the big screen flexing his biceps, driving home the fact that whoever that movie star was, he could be her dream, but in real life, I was the guy who could make her blush and swoon and come alive.
“That was so good!” Aubrey practically skipped to my truck after the movie.
It wasn’t Thor’s movie, technically, but his friend’s, another dude in too-tight pants and ridiculously unmanageable hair, but she didn’t care. Thor made a couple cameos and that was enough for Aubrey. She liked to laugh, and those superheroes with their raunchy back-and-forth and their constant pop culture references had her snickering the whole two hours.
“Glad you liked it,” I said.
“Thank you for takin’ me.”
I still held her hand, and in my other I carried the half-empty popcorn bucket ’cause it was a metal superhero edition, and she thought her boys might like to have it. Thinking back to when I was twenty-three, I couldn’t seem to remember wanting shit like that, but she knew her boys. And if they didn’t use it for popcorn, they could always use it to hold cold beers or Doritos or something.
“You wanna drive over to Town Square and walk around a bit?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Would you mind walkin’ around downtown Wisper instead?”
“Sure, Spitfire. Whatever you want.”
I was right. She hated crowds, and it was late enough in the season that the tourists would’ve already started pouring into Jackson Hole. I didn’t blame her one bit for wanting to avoid the throngs of people you had to actively work to dodge on the sidewalks around Town Square or all the people out in front of their stores trying to convince you to come in and buy shit.
If you wanted peace, Wisper was the place to go.
In my opinion, the laid-back easiness of Wisper was its number one selling point. Sure, they got their share of tourists, too, but way less. If you didn’t run into at least one person you knew on the street every day in Wisper, you’d think you were in a twilight zone. Even me, and I’d never even lived in town.
She smiled up at me. “Thanks.”
The drive back was relaxed. She held my hand for most of it, humming along to popular country songs on the radio, while I stroked her wrist with the pad of my thumb.
“So what are your boys up to lately?” I asked, releasing her hand and turning the song down a notch.
“Um. They…” Suddenly, she groaned, and her head fell back against her headrest. “I have no idea. They deliver pizzas up in Bozeman. Benji failed most of his classes. You know, that’s what happens when you don’t actually go to class. God, it took so much energy to get them to agree to go in the first place. And then instead of tryin’ again, Benji dropped out. Then Micah followed. His grades weren’t nearly as bad, but he has to do everything Benji does. They have that weird twin mind-meld thing.”
I laughed.
“Yeah, well, their school was paid for by their dad’s military benefits, so they’re really lucky they didn’t have to take out loans. Anyway, I don’t know what they wanna do now. They’re still livin’ right off campus in an apartment, partyin’ it up and actin’ like they don’t have a care in the world.”
Sounded to me like they both needed a kick in the ass, and maybe a summer out at the ranch with my old man as their boss. He’d cure them of their carefree twenties real fast.
“What were they studyin’ before they dropped out?”
“Actually, agriculture.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Benji’s always been enamored with the cowboy life. Micah, not so much, but like I said, he does everything Benji does. Actually, I think Micah would excel in business.”
“I can’t speak to the business stuff, but Benji might benefit from a summer on a ranch. He’d learn more than he ever dreamed about agriculture and the life. It might give him an idea about where to go next.”
“Can we talk about somethin’ else?” Aubrey asked. “This subject makes me feel like a complete failure.”
“What? Why?”
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t have kids yet.” She rolled her eyes and huffed out a breath. “When you do, you’ll understand. Everything your kids do is a reflection on you.”
She paused, maybe realizing there was an opportunity for a divide between us around the subject of me wanting kids. Fortunately, I didn’t, and I already had my argument lined up to battle hers, just in case.
“If they punch a kid on the playground in third grade,” she said, “everyone thinks there must be problems at home, even though that kid had bullied them since kindergarten. If they fail Mrs. Simmons’s biology class in high school, then you must be workin’ too much and can’t help guide them through their studies. People gossip and talk no matter what I do. I tried to ignore it, but then after their dad died, it just got worse.”
“I’m sorry. That had to be hard on you, all that talk.”
“The worst part was how everyone suddenly worshipped Tommy. Please don’t misunderstand me. I respected him for serving his country. A lot. I still do and for his sacrifice. I know that sounds cliché. But back here at home, Tommy wasn’t a hero at all. Sometimes, he wasn’t even kind. He wasn’t abusive. Not physically. I don’t mean to imply that he was.
“But he was dissatisfied with our life in a lot of ways. He never wanted me to work, but all he did was complain about not havin’ the finances to do the things his friends were always doin’, like expensive vacations or huntin’ trips. Things like that.
“And he was a good dad to the boys,” she went on, really saying what she was feeling now, “but he wasn’t a great dad, you know? It was always me who took them to the movies. I helped with their homework and cooked and cleaned and basically catered to Tommy, while he played around with his truck or?—
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to get carried away.”
“Spitfire, you can talk all night if you want to. I love listenin’ to you no matter what you wanna talk about. Besides, I like knowin’ how things were for you. I’ve imagined your life, but it was just a daydream in my mind. Although, I’ll admit, I don’t like knowin’ you spent all that time feelin’ alone. You don’t have to censor yourself, though. Ain’t nobody here judgin’ you.”
Cautiously, she placed her hand back in mine. “Thanks. It’s nice to be listened to. But I’m changin’ the subject. It’s been such a nice night. I don’t wanna ruin the mood.”
“Impossible,” I said, squeezing her hand. “My mood could never be ruined with you sittin’ next to me.”