2. Dalton
Dalton
At the time, taking PTO had seemed like a good idea. With Lucas gone, the finance firm of Hadley & Maine had been as dull as dirt.
Despite his closed-off grumpiness, Lucas had been my lifeline. When he’d reached out to me to haul two teenagers to the ranch he’d inherited part of, I’d said yes. Of course I would.
Not only had I been hearing about Snow Creek Ranch, as well as Lucas’ new boyfriend, Jesse, for a while now, I missed his face. Lucas had been a good friend to me, and I wanted to be there for him.
I couldn’t support him much long-distance, but taking a drive up into the foothills on a beautiful summer day was more treat than task, and I was glad to do it.
Even if Dillon and Cameron, the two teenagers I was giving a ride to, had more energy than I knew what to do with.
They were at the tail end of teenage-hood, about to burst into manhood.
Had I ever been that young? So full of life and liveliness? There had doubtless been a time, but I couldn’t recall it. My life was dull repetition that had once seemed safe and comforting but now felt stale and old.
Maybe I was desperate for change. Anything new was positive. Anything to take me away, if only for a little while, from Denver, where my two older brothers were still giving me the cold shoulder I didn’t deserve.
Or did I? Even months later, with the shock of my parents’ death worn away in a slough of old skin and bitter-tasting memories, I still carried some guilt.
Not that Dillon and Cameron gave me a moment’s peace to roll around in my darker thoughts, while I was driving or when they talked me into stopping at Five Guys in Longmont for some of the best cheeseburgers I’d tasted in a long time.
We ate inside the red-and-white-decorated restaurant so they wouldn’t spill soda on my car seats or leave wrappers tucked in undiscoverable places.
But they were good kids, overall, laughing and telling fart jokes pretty much the whole time as we drove along Highway 287, a blacktopped road among pine trees and cottonwoods.
I laughed because the jokes were funny, and the boys were funny, living fully out loud in spite of what they’d told me about foster homes and mean moms and everything that seemed to come with telling people you should have been able to trust that you were gay.
When we arrived at Snow Creek Ranch, Dillon and Cameron got out of the car before I’d fully parked it, and a cloud of dust settled over everything.
Lucas appeared, his arms wide and his smile wider, welcoming me with such warmth and joy that I was taken back to my first day at Hadley & Maine.
Hi, I’m Lucas. We can be office buddies. Do you want to?
At first, I thought Lucas had been flirting with me. I wasn’t interested because being alone seemed safer, but I quickly found out that Lucas was that way with everyone. Friendly. Outgoing. Easy to be with.
I’d gotten lucky that day, finding such a good friend. And had gotten lucky again this week when my office manager had checked the Yes box on my request for paid time off. You’ve earned it, she’d said. Have fun.
I’d earned it, but I didn’t think I was going to have fun, because, along with humorous tales about cattle getting loose on the ranch, there was the story about a rattlesnake curling around bags of grain left outside the barn.
Lucas had assured me that the rattlesnake had been a rare sight and that I shouldn’t worry.
Then Lucas introduced me to Mr. Jake Colter, one of the wranglers. I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye as I’d hugged Lucas and had dismissed him as being unimportant.
But now, as I looked Jake Colter up and down, he was an eyeful. My first thought was that he was some kind of joke. A cowboy cliché in threadbare jeans and dust-covered boots. He even had a cowboy buckle, a little metal oval with a bas-relief of a horse running full out.
The rest of him, flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and that straw hat with a small hole in it, had to have come right out of a costume box.
The cowboys I’d seen pictures of, and the ones in the movies, were poised and sleek. Like models. Not like this guy with his hard jaw and cruel snarl. Or maybe that was just how his mouth was shaped.
His eyes, when he looked at me, were flinty, like blue-and-green glass. He didn’t care for me. Which was fine by me. I’d dropped the kids off like I promised to do, so my job was done.
There was a quick discussion about my PTO and the fact that I was expected to stay. And that there was an errand that needed to be run. The kids needed gear, and could Jake take them? And could I accompany them?
Then Lucas said something about Jake’s phone, and wasn’t it funny, ha ha, that he never had it on him.
Jake flinched. I swear to God he did. If I’d not been looking right at him when Lucas turned comedian, I would have missed it. His whole body started, and then he went still, like it didn’t matter. Had never mattered.
“I have my phone with me,” I said.
I never got many calls on it, but I had one. Mostly I used it to scroll before a meeting started, or to text my boss when I was running late. Or leaving early. I also used it to delete the angry messages I sometimes received from my brothers.
Jake didn’t look at me, though his eyes flicked my way. Certainly not in gratitude, but perhaps in acknowledgment.
And now I was stuck with running that errand, though it might be nice to hang out before heading back, even if it was only for one night.
We put our stuff in one of the wooden bunkhouses. I snagged the single bed by putting my overnight bag on it, because, yes, I’d packed some things, just in case. Then we went back outside, with Dillon and Cameron racing ahead toward the sunshine-yellow truck, where Jake was waiting.
He’d tipped his straw hat to the back of his head, and if he wasn’t chewing on a stalk of hay, then it was the prop gal’s oversight.
He’d said the truck’s name was Daybreak, and as I came up close, I could see the vehicle was not only spotless, it gleamed.
When Jake said yes to the kids riding in the back, I decided to sit with them. To keep an eye on them, but also to avoid having to share the truck’s cab with someone who obviously didn’t think very much of me. And it would be fun to ride in the back, something I didn’t think I’d ever done.
As promised, the ride was smooth, with Jake seeming to take care like we were the basket of eggs he’d mentioned before. Moreover, the drive, beneath the wide-open blue sky, was pretty in a way I’d not expected.
I sat with my back to the tire well and tried to remember whether I’d put on enough sunscreen, thinking how strange it was to be rolling along at such a fast clip with no seat belt, feeling altogether like I was being carried pell-mell to nowheresville.
After a glance through the window into the cab, where Jake was driving seriously, I turned my attention to Dillon and Cameron, who were laughing, mouths open to catch the dusty breeze.
I noticed that Cameron had a bit of pink along the edge of his blond hair, something I’d not noticed before when we’d been introduced when I’d picked them up at the Center.
“You had your hair pink,” I remarked.
“Huh?” Cameron asked, as if startled out of jocularity with his coconspirator, Dillon.
“Right there.” I pointed. “Behind your ear.”
“Oh, that.” Cameron smoothed his hair like a debutante who had just been discovered in a corner feasting on illicit chicken wings. “I washed it out. I washed it out because I didn’t think cowboys could have pink hair.”
I remembered my first days at the Center, after I’d mistakenly told my brothers about how I liked boys better than girls. They’d told my folks, and that’s when the shouting had begun.
The Center had been a good place to go to avoid some of that anger and my parents’ feelings that I had somehow betrayed them. Their response, my brother's response, had taught me to be cagey.
I was sure Cameron and Dillon, as well, had learned similar lessons. That holding back was safest. He had, however, just shared with me, so I would repay his trust.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, as casually as I could. “I guess a cowboy can look any way he wants.” I shot a glance in Jake’s direction and made a face. “Besides, can you imagine anybody telling that guy what he can and can’t look like?”
They both laughed out loud, which was nice, and then they returned to their youthful in-jokes and running commentary on the passing scenery: a countryside with green grasses, and the gold stems of last year’s growth, and the blur of wooden fence posts.
An explosion of birds, twisting into a funnel in the blue, blue sky.
The air tasted clean, and I imagined I could smell a trace of moisture, as though there was a creek or river nearby.
After a few miles of all that fresh air and dips and curves along a winding highway that seemed determined to go where it wanted to go, we arrived in the town of Chance.
It was like a lot of towns I’d driven through, small with a central street packed with stores that meant business and only a few stoplights.
Jake parked, and we got out and followed him into a store called the Mercantile.
I thought it would be a tourist trap, but no, it didn’t sell sweatshirts with the town’s name or homemade fudge.
Instead, it displayed saddles on sawhorses, boots on racks, and hats on pegs.
And bolo ties and Buck knives and bandannas.
The floor creaked as I walked across it, and everything was comfortably untidy.
Jake led the way with long-legged strides to the back of the store, where the boots were sold. Where you could try them on and admire the diamond patterns on one and the scrollwork on another.