Chapter 6 #2
“Nice job,” Jesse mutters.
“You started it,” I point out.
“You creeps ruined it,” Wyatt adds.
We trudge back to our booth, where we sit in defeated silence, watching Callie rejoin her friends. She’s telling them something that has them all looking our way and laughing.
“We need a system,” I finally say.
“We need to not act like morons,” Wyatt corrects.
“Same thing,” Jesse says.
But we all know we’ll do it again the next chance we get. Because when it comes to Callie Thompson, none of us can help ourselves.
An hour later, Callie and her friends decide they’ve had enough of the bar. I watch from our booth as they gather their purses and say their goodbyes, calling it a night.
“She’s leaving,” Jesse observes.
“Good,” Wyatt says, but he doesn’t sound like he means it.
“We should just let her go,” I add.
“Absolutely,” Jesse agrees.
“Definitely the smart thing to do,” Wyatt finishes.
None of us moves.
Callie hugs her friends goodbye and heads for the door, and without discussing it, all three of us follow. We leave money on the table and push through the crowd, emerging into the parking lot just as Callie’s fishing keys out of her purse.
“Callie,” I call out.
She turns, and when she sees all three of us walking toward her, something flickers across her face. A kind of awareness. Like she knows something is about to happen.
“Heading out?” Jesse asks, his voice casual but his posture anything but.
That’s my brother, Captain Obvious.
“Yup, heading home. It’s late.”
“It’s barely eleven,” I point out.
“That’s late for some of us.”
“Some of us don’t want the night to end,” Wyatt says, and there’s something in his voice that makes her stop fiddling with her keys.
We hang back a little, hands stuffed in our pockets. Waiting.
“What are we doing here?” she asks, looking between the three of us.
“Talkin’,” Jesse says, stepping closer.
“This doesn’t feel like talkin’.”
“What does it feel like?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer, just bites her lower lip.
“You smell lovely,” Jesse murmurs, close enough now that he could touch her if he wanted to.
“She is lovely,” Wyatt adds, his voice a low rumble.
“Very lovely,” I finish with a grin.
Callie’s breath catches, and she shuffles her feet.
“You three are… bad news,” she says, her voice wobbling.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Jesse says.
“Isn’t it?”
“Depends on your perspective,” I tell her.
“My perspective is that trouble gets people hurt.”
“Sometimes,” Wyatt agrees. “But sometimes trouble is worth the risk.”
“And sometimes,” Jesse adds, reaching out to trace a finger along her jaw, “trouble is exactly what you need.”
She shivers at his touch, and I can almost see the heat rolling off her. The parking lot suddenly feels very public. Very exposed.
“We can’t do this here,” she whispers.
“Do what?” I ask innocently.
“Whatever this is,” she says, waving her hand around.
“This is just three friends talking to another friend,” Jesse says, but his hand is still on her face and his thumb is brushing across her cheek.
“Friends don’t look at each other the way you’re looking at me.”
“How are we looking at you?” Wyatt asks.
“Like you want to devour me.”
“Maybe we do,” I say.
The admission hangs in the air between us, loaded with possibility and danger.
“That’s impossible, Boone. You know it,” she breathes.
“We seem to specialize in impossible,” Jesse points out.
“People will see.”
“There’s no one here but us,” I say, gesturing to the nearly empty parking lot.
“Someone could drive by.”
“Someone could,” Wyatt agrees. “But they haven’t.”
She looks at the three of us, unable to hide the war going on behind her eyes. Want versus logic. Desire versus safety.
“Not sure about this,” she says finally.
Okay,” Jesse replies.
“I should go home.”
“Probably,” I agree. “But do you want to?”
She opens her mouth to answer, then closes it.
“Because the way I see it,” Jesse continues, “you have two choices. You can go home, climb into your safe little bed, and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“Or?” she asks.
“Or you can come with us and see what happens when you stop fighting what you want.”
“Where would we go?”
“Somewhere we can talk without worrying about who might see us,” Wyatt says.
“Just talk?”
“For now,” I say. “Unless you want more.”
Her cheeks flush pink in the streetlight.
“One hour,” she says finally. “And then I go home.”
“One hour,” Jesse agrees, but his smile suggests he’s planning on making that hour count.
“Where?” she asks.
“Leave your truck here,” Wyatt says. “Ride with us.”
“Is that safe?”
“Probably not,” I admit.
She considers this for a moment, then drops her keys back into her purse. “Let’s go,” she says.
“Let’s go.”
Wyatt drives us up to Miller’s Ridge, a spot about fifteen minutes outside town where you can see for miles in every direction. It’s where teenagers come to park and where adults come when they need to think, far enough from everything to feel like you’re alone in the world.
The stars are brilliant tonight, scattered across the sky like diamonds. There’s no moon, which makes them brighter and the night darker.
Wyatt parks his truck at the edge of the ridge and kills the engine. The silence is immediate and complete, broken only by the sound of cattle lowing in the valley below.
“So beautiful up here,” Callie whispers, climbing out of the truck to get a better view.
“Best view in the county,” I tell her, grabbing a couple blankets from the truck bed.
“Better than the view from Thompson Ridge?” Jesse asks with a grin.
“There is no Thompson Ridge,” Callie says.
“Exactly my point. Nor is there a McCoy Ridge.”
I spread the blankets on the ground a few feet from the truck, and we settle in to look up at the stars. Callie ends up in the middle, whether by accident or design, with me on her left, Jesse on her right, and Wyatt stretching out below us.
“So,” she says after a few minutes of comfortable silence, “what are we doing here?”
“Stargazing,” I say innocently.
“Talking,” Jesse adds.
“Figuring things out,” Wyatt finishes.
“Figuring what out?”
“What happens next,” I say.
“Between all of us,” Jesse clarifies.
“Nothing happens next,” Callie says, but there’s no conviction in her voice. “This is just... a moment. A temporary lapse in judgment.”
“Is that what you want it to be?” Wyatt asks.
“It’s what it has to be.”
“Says who?”
“Says reality. Says logic. Says the fact that this is impossible.”
“You keep using that word,” I observe.
“Because I mean it. Impossible means this can’t happen.”
“No, impossible means it’s never been done before,” I say.
“I don’t think so, Boone.”
“Well,” Jesse starts, “people said it was impossible to fly. Go to the moon. Put a computer in your pocket.”
“This isn’t technology, Jesse. This is people. People with families and histories and expectations.”
“People change,” Wyatt says. “Families adapt. Histories get rewritten.”
“Not our families. Not our history.”
“Maybe it’s time they did.”
She’s quiet for a moment, looking up at the stars. I can almost hear her thinking, weighing possibilities against probabilities.
“Tell me something,” she says finally.
“What?” I ask.
“Why me? Out of all the women in Cedar Ridge, why the one Thompson woman you’re supposed to stay away from?”
It’s a good question, and one I’ve been asking myself.
“Honestly?” I say. “I have no idea. Maybe because you’re the one we’re supposed to stay away from.”
“That’s not a good reason.”
“Maybe not,” Jesse says.
“Or maybe,” Wyatt adds, “it’s not about reasons at all. Maybe it’s just about connection.”
“Connection?”
“The way you laughed when Boone spun you around the dance floor,” he explains. “The way you challenge Jesse when he’s being an ass. The way you look at me when you think I’m not watching.”
“How do I look at you?”
“Like you see something that no one else does.”
“Like what? What do I see?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Wyatt says.
A shooting star streaks across the sky.
“Oh, wow. Did you see that? Make a wish,” I tell her.
“I don’t believe in wishes.”
“Make one anyway.”
She closes her eyes for a moment, and I wonder what she’s wishing for. When she opens them again, she’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read.
“What did you wish for?” Jesse asks.
“If I tell you, it won’t come true.”
“Superstitious?”
“Practical. If I don’t tell you, I can’t be disappointed when it doesn’t happen.”
“Pessimistic, too,” I observe.
“Realistic.”
“Same thing, sometimes.”
The conversation lapses into comfortable silence again. Callie pulls the extra blanket tight around her shoulders, and without thinking about it, I scoot closer to keep her warm.
“Cold?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
Jesse moves closer on her other side, and then Wyatt shifts until we’re all surrounding Callie.
“This is nice,” she says quietly.
“Just nice?” Jesse asks.
“Don’t push it.”
“I thought you liked being pushed.”
“I like a lot of things I shouldn’t like.”
“Such as?”
“Such as sitting on a ridge in the middle of the night with three men who are supposed to be off-limits.”
“What else?” Wyatt asks.
“Such as the way you all look at me like I’m a human being instead of just another Thompson to avoid.”
“You are a human being, at least you seem like one,” I tell her.
“Human with a capital H.”
“The best kind of H,” Jesse says.
“The only kind of H worth having,” Wyatt adds.
She turns to me and in the starlight, I swear see something vulnerable in her expression.
“What are we doing, Boone?” she asks.
“Right now? We’re keeping each other warm and looking at stars.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. And honestly? I don’t have an answer. All I know is I’m having a good time and I don’t want it to end.”
“It has to end.”
“Why?”
“Because reality exists. Because our families exist. Because the whole town would lose their minds.”
“Let them lose their minds,” Jesse says. “It’s not their business.”
“Everything is everyone’s business in a town this small.”