9. Dalton #2
It was no fun to brandish that CSBS certificate if my parents weren’t around to show it to. Not that they would have praised me. Their expectation that I would follow in my father’s financial footsteps was supposed to have been enough to keep me going.
I took pride in my achievement, but the growing chasm between my brothers and me, while it didn’t make me sad or angry, did make me realize that they didn’t care about me. Had never cared beyond the tiniest amount.
When I complained about my family, Lucas never said Oh, but they’re family. You have to love them. I loved that about him. He had family problems of his own, so he understood mine.
Tired, as I always was, of walking down that particular road of memories, I yanked my attention back to the present, where pointed tips of flame danced in the air against a very dark sky.
Someone had turned off the outdoor lights on all the bunkhouses, and now the gold-and-orange firelight was the only illumination.
I turned to Jake, expecting that he’d be staring into the middle distance, at nothing. But his head was tilted back, and his eyes were focused on the night sky.
“What’re you looking at?” I asked. I looked up, too, but all I saw was a spread of stars. They sure were pretty, but I could see no discernible pattern.
“Them,” he said, and he drew his focus from the sky and onto me with a graceful turn of his head.
Something curled in my belly, and my face grew warm.
A second later, he was pointing upward. “That’s Saturn. That bright light there.”
I looked where he was pointing.
“And that’s Ursa Minor.” He traced a little square, just to the north, halfway up from the horizon. “Over there is Ursa Major.”
The tracing was more complicated this time, and I really couldn’t follow it. What I could follow was his quiet joy in spotting constellations that seemed very familiar to him.
“Where’d you learn all that?” I asked around, a mouthful of popcorn. It was dark, and I’d evidently thrown my manners to the side. “They teach you that in school out here?”
“No,” he said. “There was this book, Star Finders. Walter gave it to me a long time ago. Don’t know where it is now.”
For a heartbeat, I got the feeling that he was bracing himself for criticism.
I knew that feeling, boy did I. When I did my best, I still half expected praise from my brothers.
My parents. The other half of me knew better but couldn’t quell the hope that, one day, they’d throw me a party for getting that master’s degree in banking.
The party never came, nor did the acknowledgment.
Well, I wasn’t going to continue that practice. Instead, I let my admiration show through very clearly in the dark.
“That takes brains,” I said. “Teaching yourself all that. What do your parents think of you? They’re proud, I bet.”
He glanced away, out over the collection of young cowboys and older ones gathered around the fire, like they were taking part in a star-lit ceremony.
Then he settled himself, looking down at his hands as he laid them on his thighs. “Didn’t have any,” he said, like he was pulling the words out of his soul. “Foster care kid. Walter made me get my GED.”
He’d just flayed himself open. I was so bad at delivering candid, honest praise because I’d seldom gotten any myself, but I’d be goddamned if I was going to tease or screw this up in any way.
“Walter sounds like a good man,” I said. “The kind that knows how to recognize goodness in another.”
That was wrong. I had just said nice things about Walter, rather than the good man sitting next to me. What a fuckup I was. Jake must have thought I’d stabbed him in the heart.
“He took a chance on me,” Jake said. He was looking at the fire, though I could tell he wanted to look at me. Maybe he was fearful that those eyes of his would say too much.
I was so out of my depth, it felt like I was reaching up for a life buoy I was sure would never come.
Jake had led a ragged life, that much was obvious. Pain-laced and uncertain.
I wanted to open up and tell him that I got it, because my life hadn’t been a bed of roses, either. That he could talk to me about his childhood, and I could share with him.
Then we’d be friends, and we could hunt down a copy of Star Finders so I could read it and I, too, could point out constellations in the night sky as I sat on a hay bale in a circle around the prettiest campfire I had ever seen.
Dillon and Cameron came up to us, just when I didn’t want them, or anyone, to interrupt.
“Hey,” I said, in that casual way old friends do. “How was your popcorn?”
Beside me, Jake settled back, letting out a slow breath, like he’d just eased away from a cliff’s edge. This was worse than terrible, right? I’d led him on, maybe, with promises of acceptance, and now this interruption.
“It’s good, but Mr. Dalton—”
I looked up at Dillon, usually so quiet, but who was well-spoken. “What is it?” I asked. “Everyone okay?”
“We know you told us not to tell—” Dillon began.
Cameron interrupted him. “But everybody knows.”
“That you’re afraid of horses,” Dillon said.
“That’s why you fell off,” Cameron said. “Because you were afraid.”
“We only told Lucas, but he already knew,” Dillon said.
“He’s always known,” I said slowly. I doubted that everyone knew, but because the one person they told had already known, they’d decided that everyone did. But now the truth was out, and Jake was looking at me hard. “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You could try again if you wanted to,” Jake said. Like this bit of old news gave him a reason to toss everything else aside, because someone needed his help. Some wild thing needed rescuing.
I very much wanted to be a creature that he’d hold on his lap and show popcorn to and let crawl along his shoulders before it disappeared into the dark.
I’d like to be Buddy, getting a good, firm brushing and plenty of wordless praise in each touch, each pat, each pet.
I’d soak it in like the driest desert until nobody would recognize me.