13. Dalton
Dalton
It was past lunchtime, so I threw my suitcase onto my twin bed, changed into my own jeans, t-shirt, and flannel shirt, put Lucas’ cowboy boots back on, and hurried to the office in the staff building.
“You still stink,” Lucas said by way of greeting. “Did you not shower?”
“I’ll shower later, thank you very much,” I said back with a smile.
Work contained me for a few hours, the bank boxes of files being my first target. Unalphabetical. Unlabeled. They were a mess, but I wasn’t going to complain about it or even mention it, because I was sure Lucas already knew.
By dinnertime my stomach was also a mess from too much coffee and not enough to eat.
The first person I saw when I stepped through those wooden double doors was Jake.
He was standing alone at the end of the buffet line, the tray in his hands loaded up as usual.
When he noticed me from all the way across the room, he lifted his head, eyes focused, as though he’d seen something that interested him. That maybe he liked.
I waved. Half halted, like a high schooler who didn’t want to look foolish in front of his classmates.
Screw that. I pointed broadly to the left, to the table beneath the large windows that was drenched in slanted sunlight.
With a single nod, he began to move in that direction.
I got in line and grabbed whatever was on offer: a plate of something called cowboy spaghetti. Fruit salad. Breaded and fried cheese sticks with a small bowl of sauce that could be ladled from a Crock-Pot. I shouldn’t have gotten those, but I was hungry.
I went over to the table where Jake was sitting as fast as I could. All the food on his tray was still untouched. “Don’t tell me you waited for me,” I said, sliding into a seat across from him.
“I did,” he said.
Lucas would have said Okay, I won’t tell you that I waited for you. But Jake was sincere and finally began to eat. I was going to share my cheese sticks with him until I saw he already had some.
After a few moments he looked up at me, chewing thoughtfully on the cowboy spaghetti, which, I later learned, was spaghetti cooked in sauce rather than water. “Do you need more butterfly bandages?” he asked, as though he knew all about my daydream.
“I do, actually,” I said, when normally I would have dismissed any concerns about my ability to patch myself up, but nothing about how I was feeling this week was usual. “But I guess there’s a first-aid kit in the office somewhere.”
“Only the barn has butterfly bandages,” he said. “I can help you.”
Gripping my fork extra hard, I shoved spaghetti into my mouth so I didn’t have to say anything. So I could cover the fact that my breath had caught hard in my chest. “That’d be great,” I said.
“Maybe after dinner, after I’ve finished chores, you might like to go for a walk?” h asked. “Along the creek,” he added as if he wanted me to understand the significance of that particular route.
He’d read my mind. He’d up and read my mind, and asked me exactly what I wanted him to ask me.
The spaghetti was a lump in my throat, but I breathed through it and focused instead on him.
His unruly dark hair. The way his dark gray t-shirt pulled across the muscles in his arms, the breadth of his chest. Had the damn shirt shrunk in the wash, or was that the best the t-shirt makers of the world could do regarding properly sizing their product?
He looked at me and paused. Drank some milk, and I realized I’d kept him waiting for his answer.
“Along the creek?” I asked because I was an unsettled idiot who needed to make sure. Of what? His intentions?
“The rain is coming,” he said, rather than a simple yes. “Can you smell it?”
“Maybe?” I said, my voice rising as I chewed. “I thought it was from the river, that smell.”
“The rain scent will grow as twilight grows and the clouds gather. Bats will come out for the mosquitoes. We’ll walk a ways. If you want.” He paused, dipping his chin, a flush to his cheeks as though he felt he might have been too forward.
Anyone else, it would have been an offer of dinner and drinks, maybe dancing. Have a few laughs, go back to his place. Not this guy. Rain-scented walks were what he was offering, and my only mistake was not saying yes faster. But, then, my mouth was full of food.
“I’d like that,” I said after swallowing hard. “I even have my own sweatshirt. Packed it when I went to my apartment today.”
“Cameron did tell me.” His eyes held mine, and I wondered if Cameron had teased him or been nice about it.
“Will I need it?” I asked.
“Not until after it rains,” he said. “When the sun goes fully down.”
“Okay,” I said.
I ate as fast as I could and probably more than I should have. More than I usually did.
Cameron and Dillon never joined us, though whether Jake had anything to do with that, I didn’t know. We ate mostly in silence, though once Jake pointed to the windows where the clouds were gathering over the foothills like gray lace, sifting over the setting sun. Thick, dancing cobwebs in the air.
“See?” he said. “Rain.”
After we ate and bused our places and stood in the doorway to the dining hall, he said, “Come to the barn. I’ll attend to that cut.”
He had chores to do, and still he was taking time for me.
He led me to the barn and gestured me into the dusty little office. There, he said, “Sit.”
So I sat, as still as an oak tree, while he wiped around the cut with an alcohol swab. I inhaled the faded scent of drugstore aftershave. Looked at the veins in his forearms. Held myself very still as he pressed his fingers gently.
“You still got a bump here,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, proud that my voice was steady.
He put on the two bandages, butterfly ones, and I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know they’d be parallel and at a right angle to the cut. Holding my skin in place so it could heal with the smallest scar possible.
“Give me an hour to get my chores done?” he asked as I stood up.
“Yes,” I said after clearing my throat. His eyebrows dipped as though he were puzzled. “Not a problem. I need to unpack anyway.”
Unpack and calm myself the hell down so I didn’t come across like someone so unsettled by his nearness that it was a little hard to breathe or slow down the blood pulsing all through me, winding through my groin like a whip snake.
He put the first-aid kit in its battered box away, and I went back to bunkhouse four and unpacked like I’d said I was going to do. All the while I gave myself a talking-to.
Where was this going? I didn’t know. Surely he didn’t mean the walk was a date, the way I imagined.
It wasn’t just the way he looked. Tall. Powerful. That strong, hard jaw. Arms that could lift whatever he wanted them to. The way he never smiled.
He was always careful where he walked. Careful with what he said. Mindful. Always watching with his cut-glass hazel eyes.
All he wanted me to do was wait until his chores were done.
All I needed to do was scrape the nervous lather from my skin and behave like a decent human being. I needed to be attentive on this walk.
I was always a good listener, but this man. He would hold himself back. Hold his own wants in reserve. Just like he’d waited for me to sit down before eating a pile of food to give his body the energy it needed to get through each and every day.
I was never the kind to take advantage, and I didn’t want to take advantage now. I did want to find out, well, all kinds of things. What drew me to him was only the half of it. His intentions were the other half.
Beyond that was the pure and powerful desire to treat this man right. He’d mentioned being in foster care, which might or might not have been as bad as living in the family you’d been born into but where you came last, each and every time.
But this wasn’t going to be about me. This walk. Him and me. If I could draw him out, then I could understand what it took to make him smile. And understand what it would mean when I did.
I met him by the barn an hour later on the dot.
There was sweat on his neck. Hay in his hair. Dirt on his jeans. “I should go clean up,” he said.
“No,” I said. “We’ll miss the bats chasing mosquitoes in the rain.” I gave him a small smile, though I told myself I would not flirt. “We don’t want to miss that. Right?”
“I reckon not,” he said.
The back of his neck flushed, and his eyes danced for a moment between me and the sky. Then he settled his shoulders as though doing his best to be brave while walking into some kind of lion’s den. Which meant I, in this scenario, was the lion.
Did that make him a helpless fawn hiding in the grass?
No, it made him very brave. At least in my eyes.
“Which way?” I asked.
“This way,” he said.
I followed behind him as we went from the barn, across the dirt road, and past the staff building, through a thick collection of pine trees until we got to a bridge.
The bridge was wooden and old, and wide enough to span Snow Creek at a narrow point in the river. When we got to the other side, the rushing water a soothing sound, the scent of pine stronger than before, I saw a series of rooftops beyond the trees.
I was about to head that way, thinking it was our destination.
He must have sensed this, because his fingers curled around my wrist, then slid down to link our fingers together.
The calluses on his fingers and his palm scratched.
His hand was warm and strong. I went the direction he was pulling me immediately.
“There’s a bend with some cottonwoods,” he whispered, as if someone might hear us. “It’s mighty pretty.”
Cottonwoods grew everywhere on the ranch, but he made it sound special, his voice soft, like he was reciting poetry to me.
I was being courted, sure as anything. Courted cowboy-style.
“That sounds nice.” I said, an understatement as to how I really felt.