Chapter 16 #2
“Your mother thought it was hilarious. She said if the men wanted to act like children, they deserved to be documented like children. She used to help me write the posts before she passed.”
Callie staggers back. “She WHAT?”
“Saturday mornings, we’d meet for coffee and review the week’s ridiculousness right around the time everyone started getting on Facebook. She had the best one-liners. ‘Hank Thompson, defending his chili recipe honor since 1994’ was hers. So was ‘McCoys: Making Mountains out of Mayo.’”
“My mother helped you mock our family?” Callie asks.
“She helped me mock both families. Equally. With love. She said humor was the only way to survive being married to men who’d rather nurse a grudge than admit they were wrong.”
Callie’s quiet, processing. “She never said anything.”
“She couldn’t. Your father would have combusted.
So we kept it secret. We had tea every Tuesday while the men were at the cattle auction.
We exchanged recipes. She taught me her apple pie-making technique, and I taught her proper biscuits.
We complained about stubborn men. Laughed about the ridiculousness of it all.
Started a book club that was really just an excuse to drink wine.
She helped me through my husband’s death.
I held her hand through her cancer diagnosis. ”
“You were with her? When she was sick?”
“Every chemo appointment your father couldn’t make. He thought she was going alone. She was with me.”
Callie’s crying now. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She asked me not to. Said you needed to stand with your father, that the truth would come out when it was meant to. She said...” Mrs. Delaney pauses. “She said someday you’d find the tag, find the recipes, and you’d come asking. She said when that happened, I should tell you everything.”
“Everything?”
“About the feud being nonsense. About our friendship. About how she always hoped you’d be brave enough to follow your heart instead of your last name.” Mrs. Delaney looks directly at us guys. “Even if your heart led to three McCoy boys who are currently standing behind you dying to touch you.”
Callie turns and looks at us.
“My mom thought I’d...”
“Your mother was a romantic. She said love was worth more than pride.”
“Oh my God.”
“She’d be proud of you. For living your truth. For being willing to blow it all up.”
“Did my dad know? About your friendship?”
“Not then. I told him last week. He didn’t take it well. Then he took it very well. We’re going public this weekend. At the festival. Your mother would have loved the symmetry. You know, the feud ending where it began.”
Callie looks at the recipe card still in her hand. “She wrote ‘Choose love, grudges can wait’ on her apple pie recipe.”
“That was for you. She knew you’d find it someday.”
Callie nods slowly, then says, “The whole town’s going to lose their minds when you and Dad go public.”
“Good. Maybe it’s time for some truth in this place. Your mother always said Cedar Ridge was drowning in its own mythology.”
“She was part of that mythology.”
“And now you get to write a new story. The question is, what’s it going to say?”
Callie looks back at us one more time, then to Mrs. Delaney. “It’s going to say the Thompsons and McCoys were idiots for thirty years, but maybe their kids don’t have to be.”
We follow Callie back to her truck, still carrying the evidence of her mother’s secret friendship, her mother’s hope for her daughter’s future, her mother’s belief that love beats grudges every time.
Before getting in her truck, she stops. “Three days,” she says. “Festival. Be there. Be ready. We’re ending this properly.”
Then she drives away, leaving us to process the fact that not only was the feud fake, but two of the women in our town knew it all along. And were laughing the whole time.
“Our lives are a joke,” Boone says.
“But maybe the punchline doesn’t have to suck.”
Back at the ranch, we’re processing everything in our own ways. Which means Wyatt’s hammering another fence post, I’m fiddling with twisting a bottle cap into a ring shape, and Boone’s having a one-sided conversation with Rita’s photo on his phone.
“I’m sorry for the incident with the feed bucket,” Boone says to the photo. “And for trying to ride you that one time. And for suggesting you’d look good in a sweater.”
“Are you apologizing to a photo of a goat?” I ask.
“I’m practicing. Rita deserves a proper apology.”
“She’s a goat.”
“She’s Callie’s goat. She has feelings.”
“She has stomach acid and a criminal record.”
“And feelings.”
Wyatt throws his hammer down, making us both jump. “We’re idiots.”
“Agreed,” I say.
“Thirty years of fighting over nothing.”
“Less than nothing. Negative nothing. Anti-matter nothing.”
“Our families destroyed relationships, friendships, and business partnerships over expired mayo and a counting error.”
“Don’t forget the sick bull,” Boone adds. “That’s my favorite part. Someone’s bull got food poisoning and instead of calling a vet, they started a war.”
Wyatt picks up his hammer, stares at it, then sets it down gently. “We let this stop us. We let made-up history dictate our future.”
“To be fair,” I point out, “Callie also let it stop us.”
“We didn’t question it,” Wyatt counters. “We just accepted it. Accepted that Thompsons and McCoys could never get along.”
“Ok. Here’s something to think about. What did we have Callie have with us guys?” Boone asks, and it’s a real question, not rhetorical.
I think about it. Really think about it. Beyond the sex, which was incredible. Beyond the sneaking around, which was thrilling. Beyond the rebellion, which was satisfying.
“Something,” I finally say. “Maybe not love, but something that could have been. Something real. The way she laughed at Boone’s terrible jokes. The way she and Wyatt could communicate without words. The way she’d steal my coffee and claim hers tasted wrong. That’s... something.”
“Something we threw away because no one could count or check expiration dates,” Wyatt adds.
“She’s done with us,” Boone points out.
“Is she though?” I hold up my phone, showing her texts about her mom. “Does this sound done?”
“It sounds like she discovered our families are idiots.”
“Exactly. Which means the reason for staying apart is gone. It’s all bullshit. Always has been.”
Wyatt picks his hammer back up, but instead of swinging, just holds it. “So what do we do?”
“We go all in,” I say, surprising myself with the certainty. “No more sneaking. No more pretending. We show up at that festival and make it clear we want her.”
“All three of us?”
“All three of us.”
“Publicly?”
“Publicly.”
“Dad will lose his shit,” Boone says. “Like, completely lose it. There might be violence. Definitely yelling. Possibly disowning. Not to mention how Mr. Thompson will react.”
“Good. Maybe it’s time for shit to be lost. Years and years of shit, all lost at once.”
Wyatt nods slowly. “She might reject us. Probably will reject us. We weren’t exactly relationship material before. Not sure we are now.”
“She might,” I agree. “But at least we’ll have tried. Not just fumbled around in barns and made assumptions.”
“I still need to apologize to Rita,” Boone says.
We stare at him.
“What? I feel she got caught in the middle. Collateral damage. She deserves better.”
“Boone, Would you rather date Rita the goat than Callie?” I ask.
Boone smirks. “Hey, Wyatt, did you hear Jesse wrote a book? It’s called I’m a Dick and I Know It.”
I laugh, twisting my bottle cap ring, thinking about Callie laugh-crying in the church basement, discovering that everything she thought she knew was wrong. “We need to be ready for her to say no.”
“We also need to be ready for her to say yes,” Wyatt points out. “Which might be scarier.”
“What would that even look like?” Boone asks. “The four of us, together, in Cedar Ridge? After everything?”
“Bedlam,” Wyatt says.
“Scandal,” I add.
“Paradise,” Boone concludes.
We’re quiet for a moment, each imagining what it would be to have Callie back.
Not sneaking around this time. Not hiding.
Just... together, whatever that means. Sunday dinners with both families glaring.
Town events with everyone whispering. Rita probably eating important documents at inconvenient times.
“Worth it,” I say.
“Definitely,” Wyatt agrees.
“Even if our fathers murder each other?” Boone asks.
“Especially then. Inheritance would be simpler.”
“Jesus, Jesse.”
“Too dark?”
“Maybe.”
My phone buzzes with a text from Callie with images of all the documents she found, spread across her kitchen table.
Callie: Thirty years of lies, expired mayo, and mathematical incompetence.
Then another.
Callie: I’m going to the festival.
My heart starts racing.
Callie: I’m going public.
Racing faster.
Callie: About everything.
“Guys,” I say to my brothers.
They look at my phone.
“She’s going to blow it all up,” Boone says, awed.
“At the festival,” Wyatt adds.
“Where everyone will be watching,” I conclude.
Callie: If my dad can hide a romance with the town gossip and my mother’s old best friend while maintaining a thirty-year grudge over bad math and rotten mayo, I can sure as hell claim what I want in broad daylight.
“Is she saying—” Boone starts.
“I think she is,” I interrupt.
“But is she saying it about us or just in general?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Before I can respond, one more text arrives, a photo of Rita eating the mayo receipt.
Callie: Even Rita knows this is all bullshit. She’s literally digesting the evidence of our families’ ridiculousness.
Then:
Callie: See you at the festival. All of you. If you’re brave enough.
“That’s a challenge,” Wyatt says.
“That’s absolutely a challenge,” I agree.
“We’re going to need a plan,” Boone adds.
“We’re going to need more than a plan. We’re going to need a miracle. And body armor.”
“Why body armor?”
“Have you met our fathers?”
But for the first time in a week, I feel hope.
Real hope, not the desperate kind that comes from wanting something you can’t have, but the solid kind that comes from knowing you’re about to try for something worth having.
Something worth fighting for. Something worth potentially destroying a thirty-year tradition of hatred for.
“We should prepare a speech,” Boone suggests.
“About what?”
“About why she should choose us. Our good qualities. Our potential. Why three boyfriends is actually optimal.”
“Um, no.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“No, again.”
We spend the next hour making lists. Jesse: good with his hands, makes excellent coffee, knows all the words to every John Denver song. Boone: funny, enthusiastic, will absolutely eat anything Callie cooks even if it’s terrible. Wyatt: stable, good in a crisis, owns his own truck.
“These are terrible. And embarrassing,” I say.
“We’re terrible. And embarrassing,” Wyatt agrees.
“Maybe we should just wing it,” Boone says.
“Wing the most important moment of our lives?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“Shit’s about to get real,” Wyatt mutters.
“Shit’s been real,” I correct. “It’s about to get honest.”
Three days until the festival. Three days to figure out how to prove to Callie Thompson that three McCoy boys are worth the trouble, the scandal, and the complete destruction of Cedar Ridge’s social order.
Three days to prepare for either the best or worst day of our lives.
I look at my brothers. “We’re really doing this?”
“We’re really doing this.”
“Even though it might destroy everything?”
“Especially because it might destroy everything.”
“And we’re apologizing to the goat first?”
“The goat gets a formal apology with treats,” Boone insists.
We shake on it, because we’re brothers and we’re idiots and we’re about to do something that will either be remembered as the greatest love story in Cedar Ridge history or the incident that escalated the biggest feud in the town’s history.
The bottle cap ring sits on the table between us, ugly and perfect and impossible.
Just our speed.