Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
AUbrEY
Rye answered his parents’ door when I knocked, but his mama pushed past him to grip my hands and pull me inside.
The bag over my shoulder containing the bottle of red wine I’d picked up at the Liquor Depot in Wisper slipped down my arm, and for a second, I panicked, imagining walking into Calla Graves’s home and then dropping the bottle and spilling middle-of-the-aisle Merlot all over her expensive Brazilian walnut floors.
Grady Graves Sr. stood several paces behind his wife, looking irritable and put out. Rye’s parents reminded me of the well-known painting, American Gothic , the one with the strict farmer holding a pitchfork, standing next to his daughter, who I’d always thought was his wife, like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath .
But the Graveses’ home was nothing at all like one the Joads would’ve lived in. It was grand and featured shiny, impossibly tall, waxed-log walls.
Taking up most of a focus wall in the great room, the decadent fireplace had been made with large, polished stones, and the enormous, long-horn skull above it felt excessive, like some kind of display to speak to the Graveses’ wealth and standing within the Wyoming cattle community, but did I really need a desiccated cow head to tell me that?
Suddenly, the old cowboy boots I’d dug through my closet to find because I thought they’d be appropriate on a cattle ranch didn’t seem to fit this gilded wooden castle that looked like it came straight out of Mountain Living magazine.
Whiskey colored couches and pale-gold fabric armchairs surrounded a classic and ornate Persian rug. Hand-carved wooden end tables bookended the long couch, and there were enough trinkets and expensive knick-knacks expertly placed around the room that Rye’s mama could’ve started her own gift shop if she wanted to.
Simple art hung on the walls, from a beautiful Native American blanket hand-woven in oranges, white, and reds, to large monotone photographs of what I assumed was Graves land, framed in a similar wood to the end tables. And in the middle of it all sat a knotted-wood-style coffee table that looked big enough for me to sleep on. How the hell had they gotten that thing into their living room? It had to weigh a ton and looked to have been cut from the base of a five-hundred-year-old redwood tree.
I saw excess everywhere I looked, though Rye’s mama had made an effort to keep her home’s decoration understated and not too flashy, but still, it was clear the Graves family had money. I’d known that. Rye had said it, but I’d had no clue just how affluent his family was now. The house hadn’t been this big or fabulous when I was here in my teens and early twenties. They’d added onto it and shined it up nice and pretty.
“Come in, come in,” Calla said, pulling harder. “Welcome. Forgive the mess. I was only informed five minutes ago that we’d be entertainin’ tonight.”
“Oh, please don’t mind me,” I said, flashing a smile that somehow reminded me of picture day in elementary school. And there wasn’t a “mess” for ten miles in any direction. I couldn’t find one single thing out of place. “Your home is beautiful. Thank you for havin’ me. It’s nice to see you again.”
When Calla finally let go of my hands, I adjusted the tote bag’s strap over my shoulder and then remembered why it was there in the first place and pulled out the bottle of wine. I handed it to her, and she took it, but her face did a thing; her nostrils flared the smallest bit and her forehead scrunched up. Maybe white wine would’ve been a better choice? Dang it. But I thought red paired better with beef, and I was standing smack in the middle of the place beef came from!
“Yes,” she said, “it’s been too long. How are you, honey? We haven’t seen you since Thomas’s funeral.”
Yeah, great. Thanks for the reminder. In Calla Graves’s eyes, I was still Tommy’s widow. How could I betray him by dating her son?
We were off to a great start.
She handed the wine to Rye, who shook his head almost imperceptibly, his eyes full of apology for his mama’s rudeness, but then she grabbed my hand again and tugged me further inside, past the dining room to the kitchen.
Rye followed silently with his dad on his heels, like any good husband who knew if he abandoned his wife now, there’d be hell to pay.
Calla guided me down onto a chair at her kitchen table, then opened her fridge and began to empty it of all its contents. “What can I get you to drink, Aubrey? Coffee? Or I made a fresh batch of sweet tea yesterday.”
The kitchen was just as fancy as the rest of the house, but more lived in. Photographs of cute kids covered the fridge along with stick-figure drawings of a large family surrounded by cows.
I saw a few dishes in the deep basin sink, and the small kitchen table looked similar to the one in my kitchen, but the appliances were all state of the art. The only thing that looked out of place was a red cooler resting on the granite countertop.
“Thank you. Water’s fine, if you don’t mind. The caffeine would just keep me up tonight.”
“Oh, well I know that’s true,” she said. “The older we women get, the less we can tolerate such things. It’s important to drink enough water. Keeps the skin elastic.” Under her breath, she mumbled something that sounded eerily like, “Too bad it can’t unshrivel your eggs.”
Oh, so not only was I Tommy’s widow, which in Calla Graves’s view meant basically still married to him, even though he’d been dead ten years, but I was also too old for Rye. I couldn’t give her grandchildren, so what good was I to her? She didn’t have to come right out and say it. I spoke “judgy mom” just as fluently as the next girl.
“Mama,” Rye warned, and he handed me a glass of water he’d filled from a filtered jug in the fridge.
She didn’t respond to him, so I said, “Thanks, babe,” laying the fake-girlfriend schtick on thick. I smiled at him, and he leaned down to kiss my cheek.
Rye’s mama watched us out of the corner of her eye. “So how did you two…”
“Hook up?” Rye asked, knowing it would push her buttons. The little wink he threw me gave him away.
Again, her face pinched into definite disapproval, but she caught herself and forcibly morphed her expression back to bland indifference.
Rye was having the hardest time not laughing, which made it hard for me too.
“We ran into each other in town,” he said. “I’ve always had a thing for her, so I asked her out, and she said yes.”
He beamed. It was all true. Kind of. But his mama scoffed and that pinched-up look was back.
“Ryder, you did not have a thing for her. She was Junior’s friend and way too old for you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you go through puberty with a goddess like Aubrey hangin’ around all the time.”
I felt my cheeks heat and probably blush the color of a red chokeberry. It sounded like Rye’s mama actually choked, and his dad mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Can’t blame him for that.”
“Grady Graves!” Calla scolded, and now I had to bite down on my lip to hold back my laugh. So, it wasn’t Rye’s dad who needed to be won over after all.
It felt like it took forever to get to the actual eating part of the evening, but Rye and I made good use of our time, flirting and touching every chance we got. Given the amount of time I’d spent worrying what Rye’s parents might think of me dating their much younger son, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself having fun.
While Calla beat her mashed potatoes into submission with a hand-held mixer, Rye leaned against the counter, holding me in place in front of him, his chin on the top of my head, his legs touching the outsides of mine, and his arms wrapped around my stomach, while his mama droned on loudly about her auxiliary club and how they’d just made her president for the seventh year in a row. She checked every few minutes to see if her son was still touching me.
Another of Rye’s delicious appendages was perceptible behind me, and visions of another marathon session filled my head, but then my manners got the best of me, and I offered and tried to help Calla set the dining table and get everything ready to serve.
She said, “No, thank you. You’re our guest. Don’t worry your pretty little head,” and pushed my hands away.
The phrase “cold shoulder” kept coming to mind. Surprisingly, though, Rye’s dad seemed to warm up as the night wore on.
“Tell us about your boys,” he said after Calla had served the main course of beef roast, potatoes, and baby carrots she’d sautéed and drenched in local Wyoming honey. “They’re in college now?”
Now that we’d moved into the formal dining room, it was hard to notice anything but the impressive drapes hung almost as high as the ceiling, highlighting a massive window that faced northeast and offered a stunning view of what I thought might be Pass or Tosi Peak. Whichever mountain it was, I knew it was part of the Wind River Range, and it was gorgeous.
“Well, yes, the boys were enrolled at Montana State, but they’ve… decided to pursue other avenues.”
Rye tossed a kind smile at me across the table, because of course Calla wouldn’t let me sit next to him. “Men and women should face each other durin’ a meal,” she’d said.
“What does ‘ other avenues’ mean?” she pressed, and she speared a carrot with her fork so forcefully that it scraped and screeched across her plate.
I didn’t remember her to be so disapproving, but then, twenty-something years ago, she’d been a young wife and mom with three sons, a husband, and a huge ranch to tend do. She probably hadn’t had a lot of time to judge people.
Okay, well, let’s just go ahead and let Mrs. Judgy McJudgerson have her fun.
“They dropped out,” I said, and suddenly, it felt like I’d crawled out from under the guilt and nonsensical shame I’d been carrying about that particular subject. I felt like I could breathe again.
Helping Rye stand up to his parents was helping me stand up for myself too.
What did it matter if other people thought my or my boys’ decisions were wrong? They didn’t have to live our lives or pay my bills. The twins and I had gone through hell and back. All three of us were stronger for it, and we deserved to live our lives without worrying about what other people might say.
Fuck the haters. I’d played the part of the good wife for a long time. Far too long.
I wasn’t playing anymore.
If I wanted to screw Rye in plain view of everyone on Main Street, I could. Our “arrangement” had made me feel like a new woman. I felt alive again. Beautiful inside and out. There wasn’t a goddamn thing wrong with us being together, fake dating or not. What good would it do me to be awoken from a long, lifeless dream just to spend my time trying to appease other people?
Reaching over the table to serve myself an extra helping of mashed potatoes because, when you were gearing up to throw caution to the wind, potatoes were always necessary, I said, “The boys will do what they’re gonna do. I’m their mom, not their warden. I don’t always agree with their choices, but I love them. Rye didn’t go to college, and he’s smart and strong. He’s exactly the kind of man I want my boys to grow up to be. They’ve been through hell, so I’m gonna support them in whatever they do. Besides, it’s the mistakes we make in life that teach us the most, like my marriage.”
Calla gasped, Rye’s dad chuckled under his breath, and Rye grinned from ear to ear. He seemed to like this new, bolder, guilt-free Spitfire.
He had a hard time chewing with that smile plastered across his face the rest of dinner, but he managed. Calla served us her tres leches cake, which was maybe the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten, but before she could take her first bite, I stood from my chair and demanded we sing Happy Birthday to Rye. He deserved to be celebrated, and by God, Crab and Crabbier could show their son they loved him. It was awkward as hell, but we toasted the day this glorious cowboy was born with glasses of my sub-par wine, and then they joined me while I sang to Rye, like I was Marilyn Monroe singing to JFK, minus the overtly sexualized voice and charming vibrato.
As soon as Rye stuffed the last bite of milky cake into his mouth, along with the last stray slice of strawberry that had adorned the cake when Calla served it, he tossed his napkin onto his empty plate and stood. “C’mon, Spitfire. You haven’t been here in a stone’s age. Lemme show you around.”
“But we haven’t finished our conversation,” Calla protested.
Grady spoke up finally. “Darlin’, let the kids go have some fun. I’ll help with the dishes.”
Me, a kid? I laughed out loud. I sure felt like one tonight.
It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, like I was that wild, young girl Rye kept remembering.
“Thank you for dinner, Calla. It was lovely,” I said as Rye walked around the table. He came at me like a bull in a China shop and lifted me into his arms. My legs dangled over his forearm, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on for the ride. “You have to send me the recipe for that cake. It was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Rye raised an eyebrow, clearly questioning my last statement. Oh yeah, I bet he could think of one thing I’d liked tasting better.
“Thank you, Mama. Love you both, but I want some time alone with my girlfriend .”
He stared deep into my eyes when he said it, and nothing in the world could’ve stopped my smile.
As he dashed us out of the dining room toward the front door, I heard Calla mumble, “You’re welcome, I guess. Happy b?—”