by Amy Aislin
Ages ranged from teenager—maybe sixteen or seventeen, probably local high school kids, if Marco had to guess—to fifties.
Noticeably absent from every meal in the staff dining room was Alice. She worked in guest services too but she’d never eaten with the staff. Where did she and Las eat? Hell, where did they live? It wasn’t in the staff cabins. There was Windsor Ranch House, which was the main guest lodge. Did they live there? Was there another house for the Windsor-March family? That would make the most sense, but Marco hadn’t seen another house on the lands. But then he hadn’t been to the other side, across the highway, to the working part of the ranch.
After lunch, Cherie took him on a tour of a second beginner-level trail on the property. No frogs this time. No wildlife of any kind other than birds. Cherie told him he wasn’t expected to learn bird species—“This is a hike, not a bird-watching tour.”—but Marco, in the interest of thoroughness and, secretly, a desire to impress Las:
6. Buy a bird book.
Later, after Cherie had introduced him to all six beginner-level hiking trails, and after a dinner of yet more meat and carbs—this time there’d been bison burgers, of all things—he joined the nightly social at the fire pit.
Ten feet high, the fire burned bright and hot, casting flickering shadows against the grass, the line of trees several feet away, the angles of everyone’s faces. Rather than a chair, Marco sat in the grass and lay down, the back of his head against a log. There were more people at the social than he was generally comfortable with—surprising given he came from such a large family—so he was content to listen instead of engage. It was soothing to sit in the cool evening, the heat of the fire warming his skin, surrounded by murmuring voices, the sparking of the flames, the wind sifting between trees. No parents badgering him to find a real job, offering to put him in touch with friends of friends who could open doors for him, pressuring him to figure out the rest of his life, and how could he not know what he’d be doing with himself once his summer at Windsor Ranch was up? Why didn’t he have a plan? Why hadn’t he sent out resumes?
They’d pressured him into Glen Hill College—the full-ride hockey scholarship must’ve been a blessing to parents with three kids. And although he didn’t regret his time there, the constant hockey practices and games had quickly gotten old. Hockey had always been more of a hobby for him, never mind that he was an excellent goalie. But being pressured into college thanks to a scholarship when he’d wanted—needed—to take a year off, a brief break from the grind of classes and studying, meant that he’d been pressured into choosing a major, and now he had a communications degree he didn’t want anything to do with.
His parents meant well. They did. They wanted their kids to be happy. But Marco didn’t know what he wanted for the rest of his life, and their insistence on finding a job in his field, on setting himself up for success, on planning for the future, wasn’t helping.
Here, with the wide Wyoming sky and the sharply peaked mountains and the countryside tinted in every shade of green and the pungent smell of living animals, he could finally breathe for the first time since his parents had nagged him into applying for college.
He blinked up at a sky that was both dark and light—the dark of the night twined with the light of millions of silver-white stars. It reminded him of Las. Of the night Marco had bumped into him at the pizza joint off campus where, it turned out, Las had been stood up for a blind date. Of his offer to walk Las home, even though it was cold and Marco hadn’t been wearing a jacket and Las only lived a few minutes away, which was probably when Las had realized Marco had a huge crush on him. Of sitting on the swings in the playground near the rental house Las shared with some friends, staring up at the stars.
“Wyoming at night,” Las had said that night, “is fucking spectacular.”
He wasn’t wrong. It was so beautiful Marco wished he was an artist so he could capture it in a painting, or perhaps a photograph.
“Spending a night under the stars,” Las had also said, “always helps me chop my problems into small, manageable pieces.”
Was that why he had a tent in the woods? So he could sleep outside, under the stars, whenever he wanted?
If Marco was more familiar with the property, he might’ve set out in search of it, but all he had was a map of the property in his head, memorized from his employee handbook. And he wasn’t about to go wandering in the forest at night; anything could be out there. Bears. Cougars. Wolves.
Okay, he wasn’t sure about any of those things but they seemed like they’d be in the realm of possibility.
Tracing the Little Dipper with his eyes, he hugged his arms to himself, chasing off a chilled breeze that snuck under his hoodie despite the fire, and comforted himself with the possibility that maybe Las was at home right now, wherever home was, gazing out his bedroom window, or perhaps lying on his back on top of a sleeping bag next to his tent, blinking up at the same stars as Marco.
LAS SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN HARRIET’S stall, a map of western Wyoming in his lap. Outlined in black Sharpie was the Windsor Ranch, all three thousand acres of it. In red pen was evidence of the project he’d spent all of his free time working on last summer: sightings of rare plants and wildflowers; grazing locations of wild large game that found themselves on the property; grazing locations of their own cattle; the trajectory of the Little Wyoming River, which housed a healthy trout population and which started much farther up the mountain and traversed through the west end of Windsor Ranch before spilling into the Big Wyoming River much farther south and much closer to sea level; and one rare sighting of the endangered black-footed ferret—rare because its normal range wasn’t in this part of the state, and it was so endangered that even sightings in its habitat were uncommon.
How cool would it be if Windsor Ranch was associated with the largest environmental organization in the country?
Grabbing his notebook from the floor, he picked off pieces of hay and jotted down a few notes.
“Don’t suppose Mom will be convinced by the ‘it’s cool’ argument, huh?”
Harriet ignored him and kept eating.
“Yeah, didn’t think so.”
He needed a different avenue. Solid, logical reasoning. Facts. Benefits to the ranch. His rational mother wouldn’t be swayed by “But Mom, we can help save animals!” He needed something more mature than what his seven-year-old self would say.
In fact, his seven-year-old self had said something similar once when he’d brought an injured northern pocket gopher home. Rarely seen above ground, the gopher was a tiny thing, barely larger than the palm of his kid-sized hand, and had been bleeding from one little leg. He and Ben had rescued it from the pasture to the north, where they’d been playing tag in the summer sun. The gopher had scratched and clawed at him; Las had picked it up anyway.
“Lassiter Windsor-March,” his mom had said, and Las had known he was in trouble. “How many times have I told you not to bring wildlife into the house?”
“But Mom, he’s hurt. We have to save him.” Blood had dripped onto his running shoe. His or the gophers, he’d never known.
His mom had thrown her hands in the air in exasperation.
Alice had called him stupid and asked if gophers had rabies.
Ben had stood next to him, shoulders squared, chin lifted in defiance, and told Las he was brave.
In the end, Las’s dad took them—Las, Ben, and the gopher—to the vet clinic in town, and then to the walk-in clinic to treat Las’s hands, where he learned that not only could gophers carry rabies, but also a bunch of other diseases Las’s seven-year-old brain hadn’t been able to pronounce.
Ben had sat next to him the whole time the doctor had cleaned his hand and administered a shot.
Smiling at the memory, Las leaned his head back against the stall. There were times, like now, when he itched to grab his phone to give Ben a call or send him a text. Nothing serious. Just a friendly Hey, remember that time we found the injured gopher and I had to get a rab
ies shot?
Ben had broken up with him but that didn’t mean they’d had to stop being friends. “I need to stay here,” Ben had said when he’d called from England. “And figure myself out.” Figure what out? Las had wanted to demand. But Ben had sounded so stressed, so pained, Las hadn’t had the heart. “But I still want to be your friend. We were friends first, right?”
“Best friends,” Las had whispered through a throat gone thick with sorrow.
But then radio silence as Las nursed first, a broken heart, then anger that Ben could just leave him like that. And after that he’d . . . what? Still not gotten in touch with Ben because he was waiting for Ben to make the first move? Was still waiting for Ben to make the first move.
Was Ben waiting for him to reach out first?
That thought made him sad for reasons he couldn’t explain.
“Hey.” Alice poked her head over the stall door, reached in, and ran her fingers through Harriet’s mane. Harriet shied away, making Alice growl in the back of her throat and mutter, “I’ll get you to like me one day.”
“Hey. What are you doing over here?” Over here being his family’s land on the east side of the highway. It was twice as big as the west side, the guest services side. This was the funner side, in Las’s opinion, where the good stuff happened and where he didn’t have to deal with guests.
“What am I doing here, he asks.” Alice stepped into the stall. Harriet tossed her head. “It’s dinner time.”
“Damn,” Las said with a quick check of his watch. It was a large, ugly, functional thing he’d had for ten years. There were so many nicks on the face that he had to hold his wrist at a certain angle to see the hands.
Alice stood over him. “What are you working on?”
Las gathered his papers into a pile and stood. “Nothing.” Picking his hat up off the ground, he whacked it against his thigh to shake dust loose before plunking it on his head.
“’Kay. What are you actually working on?”
He ran a hand over his horse’s withers as he passed. “See you tomorrow, Harriet.”
She went back to eating.
“What’s this?” Alice asked, grabbing the folded map out of Las’s hands as they walked out of the barn toward home. Unrelenting as older sisters tended to be. “What are these red marks?”
“Sightings of… Actually, let me backtrack. Have you heard of USNC—the United States Nature Conservancy?”
“The biggest environmental organization in the country?” Alice refolded the map and handed it back. “Sure.”
“One of my professors last year is their lead scientist in Vermont. We were talking in a lab one day—” He’d been lucky to be assigned a lab time taught by the professor and not one of his TAs. “—and I was telling him about the ranch. Anyway. Long story short, he said USNC has been interested in expanding their work in Wyoming. Specifically, they’re looking to partner with a working ranch to research best conservation grazing practices. I’m trying to put some notes together to convince Mom.”
“I take it by the tone of your voice that she hasn’t been receptive?”
Las nudged up the brim of his hat. “She wasn’t when I talked to her about it when I was here for Christmas.”
Alice made a “hmm” sound. They crossed out of the shaded overhang of the cattle barn, the smell of cows hanging in the air as familiar to him as Harriet’s temperamental moods, as the paved path that led from the barn to the back of the house, as the potted flowers hanging from the top of the porch.
The same porch where he and Ben had shared their first kiss one early summer evening after Alice’s birthday party. Sixteen years old, slightly drunk off beer they’d pilfered from the fridge when Las’s parents weren’t looking, tucked into a corner of the wraparound porch where Ben had smiled so sweetly, prompting Las to lay one on him under the waning sunlight.
There’d been a lot of firsts with Ben. First crush, first boyfriend, first awkward fumble into sex, first love, first heartbreak. Las hadn’t dealt well with the breakup, hiding in his room in the house he shared with three other guys off campus and diving into his schoolwork with single-minded focus. It was during this time, while he was researching a possible transfer to the University of Wyoming in Laramie, that he’d come across their master’s degree in agriculture and applied economics—exactly what he’d need to take over the ranch one day. He was leaving at the end of the summer for two semesters of in-class instruction before returning home to participate in a two-semester research project with USNC.
Given his mother approved it, of course.
Alice tapped the map, bringing him back to the present. “And the red marks?”
He explained, finishing with, “I’m trying to figure out how to turn that into a logical reason to partner with USNC that Mom will actually listen to.”
“Ah.” Alice climbed the steps ahead of him, their boots thumping against the white-painted wood. “You’re using facts and figures with her. Smart.”
“I thought so.”
Like Windsor Ranch House, their family home was a wooden structure with peaked roofs, exposed beams, and many windows, but smaller in size. Unlike Windsor Ranch House, home was informal and messy. Family portraits on the walls, a stack of board games in the living room from Sunday’s family game night that they’d yet to put away, a half-empty coffee mug on a side table, dirty boots lined up against the back door, the vacuum sitting out like someone had gotten interrupted midway through. An addition had been built onto the south side of the house before he was born and housed a state-of-the-art kitchen and dining room; it was where the ranch hands ate while on the job, or where they grabbed their packed lunches from in the morning if they had to spend the day out in the fields. The cook his mom had hired years ago never let the ranch hands go hungry—there were always snacks and drinks available.
Home was everything he’d missed while away at college, everything he’d wished he could come back to. And he almost had, hence why he’d been looking into transferring to UW for his senior year. It was still six hours from home, but much, much closer than Vermont. But not all of his credits would’ve transferred properly, delaying graduation, and really, at that point, did it really matter where he spent his last year of college?
Besides, if he’d transferred, he wouldn’t have met Marco. Wait no, that wasn’t strictly true. If he’d transferred, he wouldn’t have become friends with Marco—they’d already been acquaintances, sort of: Las got his Thursday morning coffee from the Coffee Cart in the quad on campus, which was the day Marco manned it. Had Las transferred, however, he wouldn’t have been sitting in Mama Jean’s one evening in April, waiting for a blind date that never showed up, Marco wouldn’t have come talk to him, wouldn’t have walked him home that night.
Sometimes Las convinced himself he’d have been better off transferring. Then he wouldn’t have been so ridiculously attracted to the gentle hockey player who was as laissez-faire as Las wasn’t.
Las let the door slam behind him, announcing their presence. He and Alice left their boots by the back door.
“Dinner’s on!” their mom shouted from the kitchen.
“Just gotta wash up,” Las shouted back and headed upstairs.
Five minutes later, after a quick shower to scrub the dirt and dust off, he joined his family at the table in the kitchen, sitting across from Alice.
“We started without you,” Alice said with her mouth full.
“That’s fine.”
He served himself chicken-fried steak and gravy, potatoes, vegetables, and a couple of rolls, and tucked in, letting Alice tell their parents about her day. It had been an unspoken rule in their house since they were kids: family dinners at least four times a week. They were so busy with running the various aspects of the ranch—his mom managed the ranching side, his dad did marketing for both the ranching and guest services sides, and Alice ran an entire department on the other side of the highway—that otherwise they’d hardly see each other. The rest of the time
they were free to do whatever they wanted. In Alice’s case that meant meeting friends in town. In Las’s case that meant spending the night in his “tent in the woods,” as Alice called it.
“Las, how’s your friend settling in?” His mom sat diagonal to him, dressed down in leggings and a thigh-length sweater, the sleeves pulled up to her elbows. “It’s been what, five days now? How’s he liking it here?”
“Yes, Las,” Alice said, voice full of sarcasm. “How is your friend settling in?”
He cocked his head at her. Why did she say that like she knew something he didn’t?
“Since you’ve seen him so much and all.”
Ah. She was berating him. God love older sisters who thought they knew better.
His mom passed Alice the bread basket. “You haven’t checked on him?”
Las shoved food in his mouth and glared at his sister. “How would you even know that?”
She smirked. “I have eyes and ears everywhere. Speaking of—one of my ears tells me he screeched like a toddler when he found a moth in his cabin.”
“I heard that too,” Las said on a chuckle. “I plan on teasing him mercilessly about it.”
“So you do plan on seeing him again.”
His glare was back. “I’ve been busy.”
“Las is in love with Marco,” Alice whisper-shouted to their parents.
Las’s chest clenched. “What? I’m not—”
“And he’s staying away from him so he doesn’t get too attached,” she finished.