Page 96 of Cattle Stop

“Cooper?”

He freezes, a hand on the door and rain splashing over the threshold. “Whit?”

“Hey.” Whit hunches under the narrow awning over Cooper’s door. Behind him, Cheryl waves, then disappears up the path to her house.

“Hey,” Cooper says.

Rain pings against the roof and jumps where it splashes from the eaves to soak the cuffs of Whit’s pants.

Whit. Here.

The fuck?

Cooper steps back and widens the door and Whit comes through it, tugging the hood of his rain jacket down, his shoes squeaking against the floor.

“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting,” Whit says.

“It’s fine,” Cooper says. It’s not. Or it is. His ears feel like they’re buzzing.

“You were working,” Whit says.

“I’m having lunch.” More water rolls down Cooper’s face, and he pushes his hair off his forehead. He blinks once more, and Whit’s still standing there, his hands loose at his sides and the hem of his pants damp.

Whit licks at his lips. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why?” Cooper squints, like it’ll bring Whit into sharper focus.

Rain pounds down on the roof and Cooper wishes it would stop, just so he could hear himself think for a second, see if he can figure this out. Whit, standing in his tiny, cramped cabin. No, impossible. Cooper wants to rub his eyes and look again to find out if Whit’s really still there.

“I want to talk to you, just for a minute,” Whit says.

“A minute?” Cooper sets his hat back on his head, though his hands feel empty without it. He pushes his fingers into his pockets. The nails are still in there, his knuckles bumping against them. Cooper jerks the nails out of his pocket and sets them next to his keys on the small side table. That’s right, lunch. He was getting lunch. And then Whit walked out of the misty fog, and here he is, rain splattering down behind him.

“Gonna let me all the way in?” Whit asks.

Cooper gestures him forward with a jerky motion and pushes the door shut. “You on vacation?” Cooper wipes his palms on his thighs, then looks down at them, goat hair clinging to his wet skin.

“No, I wanted to talk to you.”

Whit sounds like a broken record. His raincoat looks new, must be new, Cooper’s never seen it before.

“Okay.” Cooper wipes his hands off again, like his pants are any dryer.

“Is—” Whit pauses. His head tips. Cooper’s not sure he’s ever seen Whit do that, glance away from Cooper and then back again. “Would that be okay?”

“I guess.” Cooper jerks open the fridge. Takes a breath, too. It sounds shaky. Whit, in Oregon. On this farm. Here to see him, apparently. Cooper clears his throat and when he turns back, Whit’s still there. “You, ah, hungry?” Cooper asks. That sounds like the type of thing he should say. Someone over to visit. Whit over to visit.

“Yeah.”

His cabin’s even more cramped with Whit taking up so much room. Whit steps out of his boots and Cooper looks down at his own. Normally, Cooper leaves muddy tracks all over, and then gets annoyed about it when he steps out of the shower, the floor gritty under his bare feet. Quickly, he bends down and unlaces his boots, the leather stiff with caked mud and soaked through with rain.

Cooper has bread. And peanut butter. And an old, mostly empty jar of jam that’s got dried rings of strawberry around the lip from not screwing the lid back on right. None of his knives are clean, and he rinses one quickly. Soap, he tells himself, squirting some onto a sponge. It’s Whit. Whit’s a soap kind of guy.

“Coffee?” Cooper asks the tiny sink.

“No, thank you.”

“What’re you doing here?”