by Amy Aislin
“Can I give you cash?” Marco asked.
“Sure.” Austin took the phone back, set it aside, and grabbed a zippered pouch from behind a stack of prints. “There’s no tax if you’re paying cash, so it’s sixteen.”
After he’d paid and gotten his change, Marco blurted, “Your photography is amazing.”
Austin threw him a pleased smile. “Thank you.”
Las tapped the print in Marco’s hands. “This one was in Wyoming Traveler recently, wasn’t it?”
“This month’s issue, yeah.”
“Are you allowed to sell images that they’ve already contracted for?”
“Yeah, I made sure that was part of my contract. I still retain the rights, so I can do whatever I want with them except sell them to another magazine.”
Las turned to Marco. “Austin’s a photographer for Wyoming Traveler and Traveler’s Digest Yearly.”
“Cool,” Marco said, eyeing the photographs on the shelves, others that hung on pillars. “I don’t blame them for wanting you. These are stunning.”
Austin’s images appeared to be mostly night photography. A couple of shelves were dedicated to landscape photography and a small section to portraits.
“How did you do this?” Marco pointed at the foreground of his print. “With the water? It looks . . . sort of misty? Like it’s flowing faster than it actually is.”
Austin nodded. “It has to do with shutter speed. When your shutter speed is longer, say half a second, it captures more action. That’s how you get that blurry effect with water.”
Half a second was long?
“Cool,” Marco said again, even though he had no idea what any of that meant.
“Austin does all the photography for the ranch’s website too,” Las told him.
Austin narrowed his gaze on Las. “Do you want something? Is that why you keep talking up my work?”
“What? No.” Las elbowed him. “Shut up. I’m allowed to be proud of you.”
“At least one of my brothers is.”
The grin on Las’s lips turned sardonic. “No word from Ben?”
Marco went on alert. Ben? Las’s ex? That Ben?
“Nothing new since the last time he called.” Austin shook his head, nose wrinkling. “He’s spending the summer in England and can’t spare the cash to fly home for a visit.” A group of older women with designer name handbags and sparkly jewelry stepped into the tent. “Now that looks like a crowd that’d buy three hundred-dollar originals. If you’ll excuse me.” With a squeeze of Las’s shoulder, he edged past them to greet his new customers.
“Come on.” Las stepped out of the tent and lowered his sunglasses over his eyes. “We’ve still got half the market to browse.”
Marco tucked his print into the paper bag holding the rest of his purchases and followed. It wasn’t until they’d passed several vendors without entering their tents that he said, “Austin is Ben’s brother?”
“Yeah.” Las shoved his hands in his pockets. “There’s ten years between Austin, and Ben and me. We were constantly begging for his attention as kids and he always gave it to us. Never complained that we were getting in his way.”
“You and Ben have known each other a long time then.”
“Since kindergarten. It’s a small town, so class sizes are small, but even so, we didn’t really become friends until second grade. Our teacher sat us next to each other. We’ve been friends ever since.”
From under the brim of his hat, Marco watched Las’s expression. “Do you miss him?”
Lips thinning, a muscle ticked in Las’s jaw. “I miss my best friend. Oh hey, check these out.” He rerouted into a tent selling wooden music boxes.
Recognizing the diversion for what it was, Marco let the subject drop and trailed after him.
AS LAS HAD PREDICTED, MONDAY brought an influx of guests to Windsor Ranch House. Marco had seen guests on the ranch last week, of course, but now it felt like he was running into one every time he turned a corner. While Cherie had trained him last week, they’d seldom run into anyone else hiking the trails. Today, his first day shadowing Cherie as she led a group through one of the beginner-level trails, they ran into other guests who’d set out on their own.
By the time he took a seat next to Reid in the staff dining room for dinner at the end of the day, he was starting to believe Austin was right about not having another peaceful moment until September.
“How was your day?” he asked Reid. “Lots of people to shuttle today?”
Reid licked his thumb and made a so-so gesture with his other hand. “Went back and forth to the airport a lot this morning. After that it was just a couple of trips to Yellowstone. I saw an elk. Or maybe it was a moose. Caribou? I don’t know, they all look the same.”
Marco had been here longer and all he’d seen was a single baby deer. “Seriously?”
Reid laughed at him quietly.
After he’d eaten, Marco checked out the corkboard tacked to the wall next to the door that advertised activities for staff. A registration sheet for group hikes. A notice about the bus that ferried staff to the bar in town every Thursday night at nine, returning at 2 a.m. Someone was trying to organize a knitting circle, someone else a book club. Oh hey, movie night under the stars.
“Damn,” he muttered to himself. Of course it was the weekend he was heading to Washington for development camp.
He checked the board over again in case he’d missed anything on his first pass. Nope. Nothing to occupy his time in the evenings other than sitting around the fire pit, which had already gotten old. Why hadn’t he thought to bring any books with him? A portable DVD player? He’d brought his laptop, but the Wi-Fi was so slow anything he tried to watch on Netflix kept pausing every three minutes to buffer.
Actually, there was one thing. A flyer taped to the bottom right asking for volunteers to help set up at the monthly dance party. See Alice for more details! Was this what Las had been talking about when he’d asked if Alice had roped him into helping yet?
The party was still two weekends away, but maybe Alice needed help . . . choosing color patterns? Buying decorations? Hiring a DJ?
He was grasping at straws, but he’d take anything.
Exiting the dining room, he made a right, bypassing the staff cabins and aiming for the barn a short five-minute walk away, hoping Alice hadn’t left for the night.
The barn was the quintessential picture book barn that he’d seen in every kids’ book about farm animals ever—a double-story, bright red building with white trim and a white peaked roof. Inside, the smell of animal assaulted his nose and his running shoes crunched on hay. With two dozen horses housed in this barn, Marco didn’t know why he’d expected silence. Water sloshing in buckets, whinnies and huffs, hooves scuffing against straw, and somewhere off to his right, a murmured conversation between a couple of women he couldn’t see.
He’d entered from the back entrance, which brought him past Harriet’s stall. But there was no Harriet.
Alice must’ve heard him coming because she rolled out of her office on her wheely chair. “Harriet stays in the other barn.”
“Huh?”
“The other barn.” Alice jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “On the other side of the highway?”
“There’s another barn over there?”
“There’s several, for the horses and the cows.”
“Oh.” Of course. Las worked on the other side of the highway, on the working part of the ranch. It made sense that there were separate accommodations for the horses on that side.
“Harriet was here last time because Las came on horseback to greet you.”
“Right.”
“Anyway.” She rolled back into her office. “What can I do for you, Marco?”
“I saw the flyer in the staff dining room. About the dance party? I wanted to volunteer to help set up.”
Alice threw her arms up like she’d scored a goal. “Amazing! Thank you. Everyone wants to go to the party but nobody wants
to help. We usually start setting up at about noon the day of.”
“Okay.” He stuck his hands in his back pockets. “Is there anything I can help with before then? I could help…” He cast his mind for something. “Make decorations?”
“Make… Oh, honey, we’ve got everything already. It’s all stored in the attic of the recreation building. We just bring it down the day of and store it away again the next day.”
“Oh.” There was no way he could spend the next three months bored to tears between dinner and bedtime. He needed a new hobby, stat. Hockey, college, and assignments had kept him busy for the past four years. Now that all of that was gone, he didn’t know what to do with himself. Who was he without the label of college student?
“Was there anything else?” Alice asked. “Everything okay with your training? Cherie’s your trainer, right?”
“Yeah, I’m shadowing her this week, and then next week I start leading my own hikes. Anyway.” He stepped out of her office doorway. “I’ll get out of your h—” His gaze caught on something sitting on the shelf bolted to the wall across from the door. “Is that your camera?”
“Hm?” Alice turned, spotted it, and grabbed it from the shelf. “Oh yeah. I always forget this is here.” She blew on the top; a layer of dust flew off and settled on her laptop screen. “My old DSLR. I went through a photography phase, like, seven years ago. Haven’t touched it since.”
“Can I see it?”
It was hefty in his hands, weighty. Way fancier than any pocket digital camera he’d ever seen. The LCD screen took up three-quarters on the back, and there were a dozen nobs and buttons with names like ISO and AF and one with a plus and minus sign. Next to the eyepiece was a dial with a bunch of symbols and letters. He flicked the switch from Off to On. Nothing happened.
“I’m sure the battery’s dead,” Alice said, having gone back to work on her laptop. “That thing hasn’t been touched in years. I don’t even know where I’d find the charger.”
Discouraged for reasons he couldn’t name, he handed Alice her camera back with a thank-you, left the barn, and went up to Windsor Ranch House. He’d spotted a den with a Beauty and the Beast-like library—but on a much smaller scale—on the day he’d arrived, and he’d been told staff had access to the same resources as guests, so he aimed for the den with the goal of finding something to read.
“Your boyfriend’s bored.”
Las exited Harriet’s stall, brushing horsehair off his thighs, and found Alice on the other side. “What?”
“Your boyfriend’s bored,” she repeated; the sentence still didn’t compute.
“Who?”
She huffed. “Marco, you dunce.”
“He’s not my—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” She waved a hand. “My point is—”
“He’s bored.” Las stalked past her, shoulders knotted from his craptastic day, right hip on fire. “So you said. I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
He’d had enough of this day, starting with the email from UW informing him that there was a chance he wouldn’t be assigned his single room in the graduate dormitory as he’d requested and that he may have to share, continuing with a throw from Harriet when his temperamental horse had gotten testy when one of the newer ranch hands tried to pet her, and ending with a stubborn cow that’d escaped through a hole in the east fence.
It was almost eight o’clock, he’d missed dinner, his entire right side ached from his fall, and he hadn’t had a chance to work on the USNC proposal for his mom.
“Well,” Alice said, keeping pace with him as he strode out of the barn. “You want him to stay, don’t you?”
He froze. “What.”
“Isn’t that why you invited him out here for the summer?” Relentless, she came around him to look him in the eye. “So that he’d fall in love with the ranch, like Dad, and want to stay, like Dad? Because you’re in love with him.”
“That’s… No, that’s…” That wasn’t true.
Was it? Sure, in the last few days he’d been showing Marco his favorite spots, hoping he’d want to stay, but that wasn’t originally why he’d invited Marco to work here. He’d simply been offering a friend steady employment for the summer.
Right?
Alice’s eyes narrowed. “Man, you’re really good at fooling yourself.”
“I’m not—”
“But back to my original point, which was that Marco’s bored. If you want him to stay, do you want him to realize that nights on the ranch—especially in guest services—can be super boring?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “He’s got to know the good, the bad, and the boring. Not that he’s going to stay. This is just hypothetical.”
“Uh-huh.” With a massive eye roll, she turned and continued on the path toward home.
“Is he okay, though?” Las asked, catching up with her as his frustration with the day faded to concern. “Like, is he making friends? Having fun?”
“Yeah, I see him at the fire pit sometimes, and he gets along with his roommate. It’s just…”
They stepped into the house. Las’s right elbow and lower back protested when he bent to tug off his boots. The sound of explosions on the TV drifted to them from the living room.
“I get the impression he’s more of the solitary type,” Alice said.
Las thought back to something Marco had said back in April. Two somethings, actually.
First was Marco telling him that he came from a large, Italian family that was so loud that he had to shout to be heard; because yelling was too much effort to join in on the conversation, Marco had learned to remain in the background.
Second was Marco admitting that he avoided the Café Bar in the Student Union, Glen Hill College’s eatery/hangout/pub, because it was too loud and there were too many people.
“Yeah,” he said. “Definitely more the solitary type. Still, though, aren’t there activities for staff?”
“Not every night.” In the kitchen, Alice poured herself a bowl of cereal. “We can’t keep them entertained all the time.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“You could invite him over,” Alice suggested with an eyebrow waggle.
Las stared at her.
“Oh, come on. He’s here for only three months. Don’t you want to spend all the time with him that you can?”
“Yes!” Threading his fingers through his hair and fisting it, Las lowered his voice, conscious of his parents in the next room. “Yes, okay? Yes, I want to spend every spare second with him.” Huffing out a breath, he said, “I got thrown off my horse today.”
“What?” The spoon paused halfway to Alice’s mouth. “Are you okay?”
He waved away her concern. “Being thrown is part of ranch life, I know that. But do you know the last time Harriet threw me? I was, what? Seventeen? I was so busy thinking about Marco that when Harriet reared I didn’t even realize it until I was on the ground.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I can’t stop thinking about him. My every waking second is consumed with thoughts of him until I can’t see straight.”
“Aw—”
“I’m not in love with him,” he interrupted, his chest going tight. Quieter: “But I could be. So easily. And what’s the point? He’ll be gone at the end of the season. It’ll be Ben all over again and I’m not doing that again.” When Ben had stayed in England, Las had lost a best friend and a boyfriend, all at the same time. He wasn’t starting anything with Marco only for history to repeat itself.
Alice put her empty bowl aside and leaned back against the counter. “I’m sorry Ben hurt you.”
Las opened the fridge to search out the leftovers. “Is this where you tell me you’re sorry Ben hurt me but I shouldn’t let it affect the rest of my life?”
“No.” She hugged him from behind, her arms coming around his waist. “This is where I tell you I’m sorry he hurt you.”
She left it at that.
Swallowing hard, he squeezed her ha
nds. “Thanks.”
“Seriously though.” She stepped back. “Are you okay? From the fall,” she added at his questioning glance.
He grunted. “I’ll live. I’m gonna eat, take a hot shower, and then ice it.”
After doing exactly that, he lounged on his bed with an ice pack against his right hip, laptop on his chest. He woke the screen and it opened to the email from UW.
“Ugh.”
He closed the laptop. Stared at the ceiling. Rolled over to grab his phone from his night table.
And texted Marco.
Hey. What are you up to right now?
Twenty minutes later, Marco’s car pulled into the driveway.
Las jumped down from the bed of his dad’s pickup truck and wiped his palms on his thighs. This wasn’t crazy, was it? Wouldn’t be seen as too much of a romantic gesture? He just wanted to do something nice for Marco.
Marco stepped out of his car dressed much like Las: running shoes, sweatpants, and a hoodie.
“It’s a good thing you gave me directions,” Marco said, rounding the back of his car. “I never would’ve found your driveway in the dark.”
“It’s not all that visible in the daytime either. Since the entrance is behind a small ridge, everyone always passes right by it and has to double back.” Las slammed the tailgate closed. “Anyway. Ready to go?”
“Go? Go where?”
“Hop in and find out.”
Once they were on their way, Las following the driveway past the house and onto the road between the north pastures, Marco said, “I could’ve met you wherever we’re going.”
“Trust me, if you thought the driveway was hard to find, this place might as well be invisible.”
It was so dark that Las drove with his high beams on, and still he took the road at slower than normal speed. If he didn’t know his family’s land as well as he did, having spent his childhood seeking out every nook and cranny, he never would’ve known that the road they followed took them by yards of bright green grass that the cows grazed in during the day. To their right, mountain peaks rose several hundred feet into the sky, indistinguishable in the dark except as shadowy silhouettes splitting the horizon in two. To their left were more pastures, and beyond them, the highway.
