“We’re trimming hooves on the lambs this weekend, don’t forget,” I told him.
“It’s going to be in the nineties ,though,” he complained.
I knew he’d still help me. He didn’t really have a choice. “We’ll get up early and trim them. There’s only twenty-five, so it should be easy enough. Easier than doing all the adults, anyway.”
Kyle still looked like he didn’t want to, but I was used to that.
Travis came up to the counter with the knitting needles I’d helped him pick out and a big bundle of purple yarn. It was a deep plum color and made out of an alpaca blend. It was also one of my favorites.
“Did I hear right that you have twenty-five sheep?” he asked. He sounded amazed.
I just smiled. “We actually run closer to a hundred head right now. The twenty-five we were talking about were the lambs. We have a couple rams, plenty of ewes, and some wethers. Ewes are the females, wethers are the castrated males.” I totaled up his two purchases, and he handed me the cash.
“I’m surprised you have any time for a store.”
“The sheep don’t take as much time as you would think.” He wasn’t alone in his assumption though. When managed correctly I could handle up to one hundred during lambing season. I wouldn’t want to have that many year-round, but the ewes pretty much took care of the lambs themselves.
Chapter Three
Travis
I was almost home when my phone started ringing. I didn’t look at the number, just answered the call from my steering wheel. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
Cal. I hated how my stomach got tight at the sound of his voice. I hated how things had gone so wrong between us and, now that he seemed really serious about some teenager, I hated that the likelihood that I’d ever get him back had pretty much slipped away to nothingness.
“Hi.” I swallowed thickly.
“I found a box of your things in the garage. I didn’t go through it more than just to see that it wasn’t my stuff. I could leave it on the porch for you to pick up whenever you want to, but it looks like it’s going to rain here soon, so I thought you might want to come pick it up while I’m off tonight. Dillon’s here though, if that matters to you. But it wouldn’t bother him if you came by.”
I was sure that it would bother Dillon. There was no reason that me being back at the house I’d shared with Cal for five years wouldn’t bother him. “Are you sure about me coming by there?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Seriously. He’s fine with us being friends. We’re just here watching TV, and he’s going through a bee catalog and circling things he wants. You won’t be interrupting. You might be saving me from another conversation about Varroa mites.”
I had no idea what those were, but they were probably pretty gross. “Okay. I can be there in an hour.” I’d had to go through his town on my way back from the yarn store, so it would have been nice if he had called sooner, when I was actually there, but this was fine too. I got off the highway and turned around. My stomach hadn’t lost any of its tightness and I didn’t feel any better about talking to him now than I had earlier, but I was trying to make it through this rough patch so that we could be friends later on. That was the ultimate goal, and if he was willing to work with me to get there too, then I wanted to do my best.
“Cool. So...”
“Do you have to go?” I was sure that he did. It was a stupid question. But I still wanted him to be there talking to me for as long as I could have him there too.
“Actually, no. I have time to talk. I just didn’t know if you wanted Dillon to know about where you were today or not. I’m glad you’re going, and I think it’s important, but I didn’t want to talk about it in front of him if you wanted to keep it private.”
I hated how much I loved him a little for that. “No, it’s okay if he knows that I’m in therapy. And today was good. I’m supposed to get a hobby somehow.” I hoped that the knitting needles and ball of yarn would help with that, but I wasn’t sure. Still, I’d give it a chance. It had to be better than painting, pottery, or cooking. I had tried all of those and hadn’t been very good, or very interested, in them.
“There’s cake here if you want it,” Cal said. He sounded like he was grasping at things to say. “It’s apple and honey. From Dillon’s brother’s orchard and from his own hives.”
“Did he make it for you?” I didn’t want to take any of his cake that his boyfriend had made just for him.
Cal laughed a little. It sounded forced and uncertain, not at all how he used to laugh with me. “No, he didn’t make it. I made it. I just got the stuff from him. You don’t have to be so worried about what he thinks about you coming over and stuff like that. He wants us to be friends too. I want us to be friends.”
“It could be an act.” I shouldn’t have said that. I knew that instantly.
“I thought so at first too, but I think he’s being honest when he says that he just trusts me and doesn’t want to have to spend the energy worrying about what I’m doing or who I’m with all the time.”
He probably hadn’t meant it to be a jab at me, but that was how it felt all the same. I tried not to take it personally, but it was hard not to. “He sounds good.”
“He is.”
“I should let you go. Do you want me just to text you when I get there so you can bring the box up?”
“No. I want you to ring the doorbell, or knock. Come up to the door, come inside, have some cake with us like you’re my friend. I know it’ll take time, and I’m willing to take that time. If it’s too much to see him here, then he’ll go upstairs or something. I don’t know. I want us to be friends again. I think I need that.”
“I need it too. I’ll come in.”
“Thank you.”
He hung up and I focused on the road, and on driving, and not on how much I still loved my ex and would have given anything to be with him.
When I got to Cal’s house, the two cars in front were an unmistakable sign that Dillon was there. I loved Dillon’s car, and I hated it too. It was sleek and gorgeous, the kind of car Cal had always wanted for himself. He loved cars that looked practical on the outside but that he could heavily modify under the hood. For years I’d heard all about engine upgrades and mufflers, and I’d listened but largely ignored him because cars weren’t my thing. Now I would have given anything to have him go on and on about the kind of car he called a sleeper again.
I parked my truck on the street. It hadn’t been left on the street in years, but now that was where it was relegated to. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t exactly demand that Dillon go move his car so that I could park in the driveway. I got out, locked my truck, then headed up the walkway. I’d barely started knocking when Dillon opened the door.
Trying to hide my shock from him was something I wasn’t very good at. He was a teenager playing dating with a man twice his age. More than that, I had expected Cal to come get the door for me. “Hi,” I mumbled.
He smiled at me. “Hey. Come on in. He had to run upstairs for a second.” Dillon stepped aside so that I could walk past him. “I’m going to go upstairs when he comes back down. I get that this is awkward for you both, and I’ve got to make hotel reservations for an upcoming conference anyway. I’m not staying up there every time that you’re here, but I can go away for a few minutes.”
I shouldn’t have felt so relieved at knowing I wouldn’t have to see him. But when Cal came back down and Dillon went up, I was happy that he left.
“Hi,” Cal said as he came to stand in front of me.
I nodded to him. I felt awkward about Dillon leaving but still being in the house. I knew I should say something good about him. That’s what a friend would do. Or I should have asked about how Cal’s relationship was going. If I was a better friend I would have, but I couldn’t force out the words.
“Do you want some cake? Your box is on the couch, if you want to see what’s in it.”
I wa
sn’t sure what I wanted. I wanted to stay there with him, but I didn’t want to be there while Dillon was there. “This is really hard for me,” I quietly admitted. I didn’t want Dillon to know that it was. That almost felt like admitting weakness to the enemy.
“I know. It is for me, too. I want you to be my friend, but I can see how uncomfortable you are, and I don’t know how to make this any easier on you. He’s not even in the room.”
I knew how he could make this better. He could break up with Dillon, quit his job as a stripper, and take me back so we could live happily ever after. But I knew that would never happen. Even without Dillon in his life, when I had cheated on Cal, repeatedly, it had hurt him too much for him to ever look at me the same way again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I sighed. I dragged my hands over my face. I didn’t know how to get past this. “You’re happy with him, right?”
Cal smiled. It was the same smile he’d had for years with me. I knew he was happy before he ever said anything else. “I am. I don’t expect you to be friends with him, but it would be nice if you could not look quite so disturbed by him being here. He really is a good guy,” he said.
He was right. I did need to get past this. “When he’s done making reservations, maybe we could all have some cake together? I can go put my box in the truck while he finishes up.”
“Thanks. I’d really like that.”
I wasn’t really sure if I could handle it or not, but I was going to try, because we needed to get past this uncomfortable stage we were in. I needed him as my friend. I didn’t have anyone else, and I couldn’t go from having him be everything to me to suddenly not having anyone.
When Dillon came back down he stood beside Cal, close enough that I knew they were together, and I took a step away. It wasn’t like Dillon was claiming him or anything. He didn’t need to. The way Cal looked at him, the way he smiled at him, that was more than enough to show me just how much Cal cared about him. There was no room for anyone else in Cal’s life on that level. He’d gone from looking at me like that, and loving me like that, to suddenly being into a teenager. I hated it, but I swallowed all that back to be able to sit and have cake with them.
“So, you’re going to a convention?” I tried. Making small talk with my ex’s new boyfriend wasn’t exactly something that came easily to me, but I tried.
Dillon nodded and kept eating his cake. For his part, he seemed completely relaxed here, as if this was all just totally normal for him and not something completely awkward that he would have rather been anywhere else but dealing with here. I had no idea how he could pull that off.
“I’m on a few panels and giving a lecture about how to keep swarms caught in the late summer and early fall alive through winter. Want to hear it?”
I really didn’t, and maybe Cal had already heard it a few times, because he made a face. “I’m pretty sure Travis is good without knowing how much sugar water the bees need to get them through winter until the spring honey flow starts,” Cal said.
“Okay.” Dillon didn’t seem upset or concerned by my disinterest in his hobby or his life. But he was clearly interested in Cal. He kept touching him, kept looking at him. Those little moments of affection between them left me acutely aware of just how close they were. My ex-boyfriend and his teenage lover. I tried to hide my distaste for Dillon. I couldn’t really be friends with Cal if I couldn’t stand his new boyfriend, but sitting there with them and pretending we were just friends and that this wasn’t complicated as hell was nearly driving me insane.
I ate quickly to manage to get out of there faster. “Thanks for the cake. It was good.” Cal hadn’t baked many cakes while we’d been together. It was just one more thing for me to be jealous over, added to an already long list.
Cal walked me out to my truck.
“Thanks for coming in,” he said.
“Dillon seems nice.”
“He is, but you don’t have to pretend to like him, or to even be okay with this. I saw how much you were struggling in there. I’m glad you tried, and I doubt he noticed anything, but we were together for five years. I know when you’re uncomfortable and hating something.”
Right then I was hating that he was able to see through me so easily to be able to call me out on this. “I don’t hate him. But I hate that you’re together. I hate that it isn’t us in there and that you didn’t make cake for me.”
“I get that, but this isn’t changing, so I need you to figure out where you want to go from here.”
I knew he was right. I knew it and I hated it. “Okay.”
Cal took a step back from me. “Drive safe.”
I nodded and walked around the truck. By the time I was ready to drive off, he was already back inside with Dillon.
Chapter Four
Gavin
Dinner with my ex-wife had once been an awkward affair. We’d thankfully moved well past that. I dropped Kyle off at the house and drove to go pick her up for our weekly dinner out together. Sometimes we didn’t keep these unofficial dates as often as we should have, but when Kyle was in school, it was good to check in with each other. We shared custody of him, but it wasn’t as if either of us had a custody order. Not anymore, anyway. We’d moved past that into something much more friendly.
Cindy lived in Arkansas, but just over the border. She adored my sheep, and when she wanted room to spread out and stars to look at she came up to Missouri and visited me. When she was in her home, she liked condo life. It was cheap, and she kept it nice. I parked in the visitor area and came up the steps to get her from her first-floor condo.
She was ready on my first knock and, even though we’d been divorced for years, I still took the time to appreciate her in the flowing yellow summer dress she had decided to wear. I leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “You look great.”
She smiled at me and took my hand. “How was the shop today? Anything fun happen? And how’s our kid, too?”
“So many questions,” I teased her as we walked to my car. “Kyle is fine. Not straight A’s, but at least he’s trying harder this year. He may not ever be an Ivy League student, but he’ll get into Missouri State if he keeps trying like he has been. And the shop was good. A new customer came in to learn how to knit. I’m hoping he keeps with it.”
“Because he’s cute?”
Cindy knew my weakness was people who enjoyed the fiber arts. “He was cute enough. He’s got ex baggage, though. Not something I really want to tangle with.”
“Pity. I’d like to see you go on a date sometime.”
I tried to think of the last time I’d been out with someone so that I could counter what she was saying. But as we got into the car I realized it had been a lot longer than I would have liked. “I should go on a date. You’re right.”
“I could hook you up with someone,” she offered.
As much as I appreciated her offer, I didn’t really want my ex-wife setting me up with someone. I figured that would get dicey sooner or later. “Thanks, but I think I can find someone on my own.”
She made a low noise that seemed to ask me just how well that had been working out for me so far, but at least she didn’t say it out loud. “Well, at least Kyle isn’t dating yet. He asked me when he was allowed to. I don’t think he’s found someone either, but he’s thinking about it.”
I was so not ready for my kid to start dating. I sighed and drove us to a Cajun restaurant I’d made us reservations at.
“We should probably decide on an age, though. I told him twenty-five, but he pointed out that Dillon is nineteen and happily dating someone. Your cousin is killing my parenting vibe here.”
Dillon killed everyone’s parenting vibe. I liked Cal, now at least, but my cousin’s boyfriend was twice his age and had a lot more life experience than Dillon did. It had been hard seeing them together for a while, but Dillon seemed happy now, and he was young enough that if Cal did end up being a mistake, he could probably recover before too long. I didn�
�t like thinking his relationship was going to go up in flames, but I’d thought Cindy and I would be together forever too, and life hadn’t exactly turned out that way.
“Eighteen?” I offered.
“That’s only three years away. Not even three, since his birthday is in a few months,” she countered.
She did have a point, but I couldn’t really tell him what he could and couldn’t do past then, especially since he’d probably be in college and well out of my sight.
“But I suppose you’re right. Eighteen it is, then. My little baby.”
She took my hand, and I smiled. He was our baby, but he was growing up, too. I couldn’t keep pretending otherwise.
The restaurant was one of our favorites and a long-time staple in the community, though a lot of people complained about the spice level in some of the dishes. It seemed that many people in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas just couldn’t handle the spice of a good pepper sauce.
We sat down, and I already knew what I wanted. The crawfish etouffee was my favorite thing on the menu, and the portion size was huge. I would happily spend the next hour eating it.
Cindy took her time deciding. She’d had nearly everything on the menu, sometimes twice, but she liked it all, too. In the end she settled on the alligator sausage with onions and tomatoes over rice. It was the special for the night, and it did look good.
I liked eating with her. Neither of us really enjoyed cooking at home, and we weren’t all that good at it either, so going out had always been one of the things that we’d done together. When Kyle was very little we had mostly done take out. He’d been a fussy baby in public, even though he was pretty good at home. Now, going out to eat with her was something that reminded me of when we had been together. I had always loved these moments with her, where we were sharing something that we both enjoyed so much.
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