Page 43 of Cattle Stop

Sadie circles, panting, then lopes back to Penny again, tongue hanging nearly to the floor and her nails clicking on the wood.

“Anyone grab the hot dogs?” Drew asks.

“How are you still hungry?” Penny asks.

“Sadie.” Cooper whistles and she totters over and noses his hand. “Sadie, you’re a good girl. It’s just a storm.”

“I’ll take her. She can sleep with me.” Drew hooks a hand under her collar, his cheeks a ruddy red in the white light of Whit’s phone.

“I’m going to bed,” Whit says.

Cooper follows Whit’s light up the creaking stairs and down the hall. Behind him, Penny swears once, then tugs her door closed.

“I don’t think sprinting and beer are a match made in heaven.” Cooper presses their door shut, touching his fingers to his stomach through his soaked shirt. “That, or I’m getting old.”

“Or both,” Whit says.

“I’m rolling my eyes at you right now.”

“I’m sure you are.”

Cooper tosses his shirt onto the floor with a wet smack and feels for the closest piece of furniture. The dresser, it must be, and there’s the foot of Whit’s bed.

A body bumps into his. Wet and humid and too close, damp cotton against Cooper’s bare chest and arm.

“Sorry,” Whit says, his footsteps sounding awkward, as if he’s stumbling.

“S’fine.” Cooper pushes his foot out across the floor, feeling for his bed.

It’s farther away than he’d expected, despite how he and Whit trip over each other half the time, stuck too close to each other in this room of theirs.

Cooper sits down on the edge of Whit’s bed, and his eyes adjust slowly, until he can see Whit standing by the window. Cooper’s cheeks buzz with all that beer he drank and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, but it pulls at the muscle in his back. With a groan, he reaches around to try to rub his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Whit asks.

He jerks his hand back. “Oh. Yeah. Fine.”

“That’s my bed.”

Cooper just scoots backward, his shoulders against the wall and his feet tossed out in front. He wiggles a little to further muss Whit’s quilt. “Do you ever think about the fact that you’re a grown-ass adult, sleeping in a twin bed?”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Ouch. Hard truth to hear, man.”

Whit’s still hovering over there across the room, though when he catches Cooper looking, he turns around and tugs at the window, trying to close it. Lightning flashes and lights him up, his arms raised, and the shape of his body is dark against the panes of glass.

“Gotta jiggle it,” Cooper says.

“I know. It’s my window.”

“Just sayin’.”

One of these days, Cooper’s going to find that Whit’s packed his duffle bag and set a route in Cooper’s phone that ends at the Pacific Ocean. Well, joke’s on Whit, ’cause there’s probably no getting all the hay Cooper’s tracked into the bedroom out of the floorboard cracks. Cooper’ll be a permanent stone in Whit’s shoe, no matter when he finally leaves.

Which isn’t a bad idea, actually. Tossing a pebble into Whit’s work boots and seeing if he even notices, or just works all day with a sore foot, stubbornly powering through.

Probably the latter, just like he’s pulling mulishly at the window without the little shimmy it needs to slide closed.