Page 30 of Deviant
I stand in the yard after he’s gone—just stand there—which is stupid, because there’s nothing to look at. It’s just the empty drive and the last of the dust his bike kicked up settling back down.
I go inside, shower, change, and end up on the front porch with a beer I don’t particularly want. I lower myself into the old rocking chair, watching the last of the light bleed out of the sky.
My phone rings.
Molly
I stare at her name on the screen for two full rings before I answer. “Hey.”
“Hey, you.” Her voice is warm and easy, the way it always is, and I feel the guilt settle into my chest like a stone finding the bottom of a well. “Some people from school are doing a bonfire out at Miller’s Creek tonight. Sarah’s bringing her boyfriend; the Hendersons are coming—it’ll be low-key. Come with me?”
I take a pull from my beer, watching a firefly drift past the porch rail.
“I can’t tonight,” I say. “Long day. I’m wiped out.”
A beat. The kind of beat that means she’s deciding whether to push.
“You’ve been wiped out a lot lately,” she says, finally.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I mean it.
That’s the worst part…I genuinely mean it.
“Okay. Rain check?”
“Yeah. Rain check.”
She says goodbye the way she always does—soft and without complaint—and I hang up, sitting there in the dark, with the beer going warm in my hand and the phone face down on my knee.
The fireflies keep doing what fireflies do. The pasture sits exactly as it always has.
Everything out here is exactly where it’s supposed to be.
She deserves better than rain checks.
She deserves someone whose face changes when she calls.
Someone who would have gone through that door three months ago and never made her ask twice.
She deserves the thing Cash has with every girl he meets without trying. But I can’t give it to her, and I’ve known that for a long time.
COLTON
Cash Thornwood:
Be there in 5.
Fuck. I was hoping Cash would be ready and waiting so I could just grab him from the ranch and we could go on our ride. I finish driving down the driveway of Thornwood ranch and kill the engine once I find my normal parking spot.
Most of them—Grandpa Ben, Luke and his wife, Rhett’s parents, Eli and Tierney—seem to be in the main house having dinner. Makai, Rhett’s younger cousin, is in the ranch-hand house, and Dawson’s light in his barn loft is on. Up above, is a shadowy figure sitting on top of the barn.
I squint my eyes, trying to make out which Thornwood is crazy enough to be on the fucking roof.
Rhett?
How the fuck did he get on the roof?
He’s sitting there, on top, staring out at the fields, lost in a daydream.
