Page 52 of The Lonely Road

“You sure it’s okay I come along?” Mason asks as I drive us in my Wrangler to Mav’s for the Kincaid spring barbecue.

“You’re with me,” I reply simply.

“And that’s good enough?”

“At Mav’s place?” I glance at him. “Yes.”

“Good to know I’m with someone with influence.”

That makes me laugh.

Mason makes me laugh.

Since I left Aspen and started building a life in Wildflower Canyon, I wouldn’t say I’ve been sad or depressed—but I haven’t been happy, either.

I’ve been busy.

Processing Griffin and the life I had there.

Accepting—becoming—who I think I was always meant to be.

But since Mason, there’s a flutter in my chest, like buds stirring at the onset of spring.

“You look nice.” He rubs the fabric of my dark gray jacket between his thumb and forefinger. I’m wearing it with jeans and a blue blouse.

All of it from Joy’s place—or rather, all of it purchased there because she made me, insisting these were my colors, then giving it to me at an outrageous discount.

“Thanks.”

I drive along the creek corridor, where the cottonwoods are just beginning to show that first impossible green—the pale, almost yellow that lasts about four days before deepening into something more certain.

“I love this time of year,” I murmur.

“Yeah?”

“Spring is the season of possibility. Here, you earn your weather. Not like Florida or California, where it’s sunshine and daisies all year.”

Wíitsin called this the time of beginning. Not spring because it was too simple a name for something this unambiguous.

Mason puts his hand outside the open window—the first time it’s been open since October—as if to test the air. “I like the seasons, too. But there are times when I just want warm, hot, and colorful drinks with umbrellas.”

I slow down as an image of him on a beach, without many clothes, pops into my head. My cheeks heat up, and I step on the accelerator, aware that I’m behaving like a teenager with a crush.

“What kind of holiday do you like?” he asks, then, to my surprise. “Mountains or beaches?”

I consider his question. “Depends upon the time of year. If it’s the middle of the freeze around here, I want a beach with sunshine. But in the summer, when the air is mild, no place beats Colorado.”

“Will you….” He trails off, not finishing his question.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says as if chagrined by whatever he intended to ask me.

Trucks are parked all the way down the fence line when we arrive. The smoke reaches me before I park—brisket, ribs, mesquite—and underneath it the smell of the land coming back to life, that green-mud smell that means the ground has given up on winter and is remembering what it’s for.

Mason is out of the truck before I’ve cut the engine. He comes around to my side with an ease that stopped being a performance some time ago and holds out his hand.

“Counselor.”