Page 31

“How are you not freakin’ out about this?” I asked for probably the fifth time since Westley had gotten back from working all day at the church. “How are you so cool with it all?”

He just shrugged. “Tryin’ not to think too hard about it honestly.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, that little tell he had whenever he was working up to say something he wasn’t quite sure of yet. We were sitting out on the little balcony off Dolly’s apartment, our feet propped up on the railing, a couple beers sweating between us in the evening heat. I leaned my foot over, nudging his toes with mine. His feet were so much bigger than mine.

“I mean it though,” he said after a minute. “I keep waitin’ for it to hit me. That feelin’ like the world’s supposed to end or somethin’. But it just... hasn’t.”

“That don’t seem weird to you?”

“Everything about the last few days has been weird, Buttercup.” He took a pull from his beer, staring out at the darkening street below. “Losin’ my home. Findin’ out I ain’t exactly the man I thought I was for twenty-five years. But you?” He turned his head to look at me, and there was something so simple and unbothered in his expression that it made my chest ache. “You ain’t weird. You’re just you. Same as you’ve always been.”

“I’m the reason nearly all of that list happened,” I muttered, picking at the label on my beer bottle.

“You’re the reason I finally figured out that what I wanted has been right in front of me the whole time,” he corrected, nudging my knee with his. “There’s a difference.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just took a drink instead, letting the quiet settle between us. Down on the street a truck rumbled past, somebody’s radio thumping bass loud enough to rattle the window behind us, and then it was gone, leaving just the crickets and the hum of the diner’s old AC unit.

“I guess what I don’t get,” I said slowly, “is that you spent your whole life around here, datin’ girls, doin’ everything the way it was supposed to be done. And now you’re just... fine. Like flippin’ a switch.” I paused. “I’m just jealous I guess. It was a lot harder for me.”

“I don’t think it’s a switch,” Westley said. “I think it’s more like somethin’ that was already there, and I just never had a reason to look at it straight on before. You were always just Rhett. My best friend. Didn’t matter what else you were underneath that, ‘cause it never occurred to me there was anything else to it than that.” He shrugged again, that same easy roll of his shoulders. “Findin’ out don’t change how I feel about you. If anything it just explains a whole lot of stuff I never knew how to explain.”

“Like what?”

He was quiet for a second, thinking it over, his thumb tracing circles on the neck of his bottle. “Like why I never could make it work with Jennifer, even though she was about as good a woman as you could ask for. Like why I always wanted you around more than anybody else, why I never once thought twice about you sleepin’ in my bed or me puttin’ my arm around you. Like why losin’ the ranch didn’t scare me half as much as the idea of you not bein’ there when I got here that first night.” He looked over at me again, his gaze steady. “None of that’s new, Rhett. I just didn’t know it could mean somethin’ else.”

My throat went tight, and I had to look away from him, out at the dark street, blinking hard until the sting behind my eyes settled back down.

“You’re gonna make me cry,” I said, my voice thick.

“Wouldn’t be the first time this week.” He bumped his knee against mine, gentler this time. “C’mere.”

I scooted my chair closer until our shoulders were pressed together, and he slung his arm around me, tucking me in against his side like it was the easiest thing in the world. Maybe it was. Maybe that was the whole point, that none of this had ever needed to be complicated between us, not really. We’d just spent so long assuming it had to be that we never noticed how simple it actually was underneath all that fear.

“I keep thinkin’ somebody’s gonna tell you you’re wrong for feelin’ this way,” I admitted quietly. “That it’s gonna hit you all of a sudden, and you’re gonna wake up one mornin’ and decide this was all some kinda mistake.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.” His arm tightened around me. “Besides, we ain’t alone in this town.”

I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Pastor Mike has a boyfriend too,” he grinned. “Cash Callahan.”

“He does not.”

Westley nodded. “Sure does. And apparently they got a bunch of friends around here just like them.”

I sat up a little, twisting to look at him better. “Hold on. You mean there’s a whole crowd of us out here and nobody ever said a damn word?”

“Guess so. Cash grew up here, moved off, came back after his daddy passed. Mike says there’s more than just them, though he didn’t name names. Said it real casual, like he was tellin’ me about the weather.”

“That’s insane.” I shook my head, trying to picture it. All these years I’d spent thinking I was the only queer soul for fifty miles in any direction, sneaking looks at ranch hands and hating myself for it every single time. “You’d think somebody would’ve said somethin’ to me. Given me a sign, at least.”

“Maybe they didn’t know you were lookin’ for one,” Westley said. “Maybe they were doin’ the same thing you were, keepin’ quiet, hopin’ nobody noticed.”

That sat heavy in my chest for a second. All those years I could’ve had somebody to talk to, somebody who understood, and instead I’d carried it alone because I never thought to ask, never thought there was anybody worth asking. Not to mention all that time I spent planning to leave Sagebrush, all the effort I’d gone through to make sure I could run at a moment’s notice.

“I… I’m not sure I want to meet them,” I said. “It just… I don’t know, it kinda pisses me off for some reason.”

Westley turned my direction, his eyebrow cocked. “I thought you’d be relieved.”