Page 99 of Cattle Stop

In the barn, a goat bleats, impatient for her hay.

“You said to Drew, that I’m not—” Cooper shakes his head. “You didn’t even tell Drew about us.”

“I thought you didn’t want him to know, so I—”

“And you said that you tell him everything and this? Us?” Cooper waves between them. “Of course I didn’t fucking say anything to him, you’re so goddamn fed up with me all the time.”

“I’m not,” Whit says. “I’m, Coop—I—”

“You just wanted to hook up with me. That was it.”

“No. Cooper, I want—you have no idea.”

“Apparently not.”

Cooper grabs the sides of the ladder and climbs up to the loft. He needs hay bales. And a second to make sense of everything rushing through his head. He catches his shin on the top rung and winces, bracing himself on the stacked hay.

When he turns to look down, Whit’s still there, just standing in the middle of the aisle.

“I constantly annoy you,” Cooper says.

“You don’t. I get—I get frustrated with myself. Around you. Cooper, I can’t think straight.”

Cooper pitches a bale down and Whit neatly sidesteps it. Chaff puffs up and clings to Whit’s damp pants. “You think I’m a joke. Immature.”

“I think you’re fun, you’re so much more fun than I’ll ever be, you bring out this side of me that’s—I’m better when you’re around, Coop.”

“You hate all my ideas. Everything I ever say, you just disagree with.”

“I’m not good at change. At new things. You told me that, but I—I can try to be.”

“Did you just fly out here to argue with me?”

“I—I guess I did.”

“You got a goddamn plane ticket to tell me I’m wrong to have moved out here?”

“I wasn’t going to put it like that.”

“How were you going to put it?”

Whit licks his lips. He’s rehearsed this, Cooper’s suddenly sure. On the plane here, before he left. That fact lights up Cooper’s chest, warm and bright.

“This summer,” Whit starts. Shifts his weight, scrapes his foot against the straw littering the barn. Cooper drinks it in, Whit’s uncharacteristic twitchiness, his plain-as-day nerves. “I—it was like out of a dream. You coming to the farm, and ending up staying for so long. I hated it and I loved it and just every day, Coop, you drive me nuts with how into you I am. You’re everything I could never be, you’re always just going for it. Grabbing life with both hands. And I get it if I’m not—if I’m too different. But you told me I’m too stuck in my ways and you’re right, so I came out here to just. . .to just try, Coop. ’Cause I can’t stand you thinking I don’t care about you, that you’re not who I wake up thinking about and that I haven’t missed you every damn day since you left.”

Cooper crosses his arms. Sniffs once, hard. “Yeah?”

“There wasn’t anyone else, Cooper. You kept asking but there wasn’t and there hasn’t been since you left.”

Cooper sniffs again. “Good.”

“Good?” Whit asks, taking a small, quick step toward the ladder.

“Yeah, that’s good.”

Whit seems frozen, staring up at him. Doesn’t look like he’s breathing, even. His eyes are wide, his fingers working together where his hands hang loose by his sides. Beside him, the goats strain through the fence, sticking their lips out, trying to reach the bale sitting at Whit’s feet.

Whit jerks when one of them bleats. Bends down to awkwardly, hastily start pulling the baling twine off the bale. He’s really going to help feed the goats. He got on a plane, flew out here, probably rented a damn car, and no matter what Cooper says in response to all of this, he’s going to lend a hand around the barn. That’s just so…that’s just so Whit.