Page 27 of Deviant
We load the feed in silence, hauling fifty-pound bags from the stack to the wheelbarrow. It’s straightforward physical work, allowing me to focus on it completely and not on the fact that Colt Dawson is four feet away from me, working up a sweat, humming to something he has playing in his single Airpod.
“I’ll get that one.”
His voice comes right as I reach for the bag on the top of the stack—the one that requires a full stretch to get down safely. I’ve grabbed it a hundred times, though, and I’m grabbing it now.
“I got it,” I say.
“Rhett, just let me spot it.”
Before I can reiterate my previous statement, he’s there, both hands on the sides of the bag, steadying it from below as I pull it down from the stack. And for the three seconds, it takes to get the thing onto my shoulder, his hands are right there, close enough to my ribs that I can feel the displaced air. Then the bag is on my shoulder, he steps back, and it’s done.
“Watch the angle on the way down,” he says, already turning back to the stack. “Bag’s heavier than it looks. Don’t want you throwing your back out before lunch.”
“I’m not old enough for that shit.”
“You act like it.”
I ignore the jab and carry the bag to the wheelbarrow and drop it off there.
We distribute feed, check the water troughs, move through the morning tasks in order, and all the while, I keep my eyes on my list and my mouth closed unless I’m giving directions. Colt follows instructions without argument, only asking two questions all morning—both of them practical, neither of them a trap. I start to think maybe the night at The Bar reset something. Maybe we’ve both decided, separately, to be professional about this.
Then we get to the stalls.
Working side by side is unavoidable. The barn has a center aisle and one stall each, and we work through them in order because there’s no logical reason to do it any other way, and I’m not going to manufacture an excuse because that would mean admitting I need one. I take the left side. He takes the right.
It’s fine…for the first three stalls.
In the fourth one, Colt is mucking the back corner when Dawson’s mare puts her nose directly into his hair, shoving her whole face into his curls like she’s looking for something in there. Colt freezes, and the horse snuffles.
He slowly turns his head and looks at her with an expression of complete offense. “Excuse me,” he says to the horse. “Personal space.”
The mare does it again.
I laugh obnoxiously, causing Colt to shoot daggers at me, and I stifle the noise, looking back at my pitchfork.
“She does that to everyone. Dawson spoils her.”
“She’s lucky she’s pretty,” Colt says, and goes back to mucking.
By the time we finish the last stall, we’ve fallen into a rhythm without discussing it. He moves; I move. He shifts the wheelbarrow; I hold the door. Neither of us says anything about it because there’s nothing to say. We’re just two people working efficiently, and I should be glad about that—Iamglad about that. I’m also deeply suspicious of it in a way I can’t explain.
Why is he being so calm since the other night?
Why amIso calm?
I’m not really. I’m still really fucking confused, but I haven’t gotten a boner since then when I’m around him. So maybe it was a one-time fluke thing.
We load the tools into the truck and head out to the east fence line.
Colt lays his phone face up on the truck bed. “I’m gonna grab the last load. Start the truck.” Then he walks toward the barn for the last bit of things we have to take back.
I pull out my phone and open the unknown number text thread and type:
Me:
Who is this?
I watch Colt’s phone.
