Authors: Mandy Hubbard
Landon slides in beside me, and as he fires up the engine, his eyes sweep up and down my body. “So, you staying all the way over there the whole way into town, or … ?”
I roll my eyes and slide over, until I’m sitting in the middle of the big bench seat, our sides touching. He rests his hand on my knee. “That’s better. A guy doesn’t buy a truck with a bench seat for nothing.”
My cheeks flush a little as he puts the truck in gear and we back up, then turn down the long paved drive of the ranch. It was a huge expense, black-topping something this long, but Mr. Ramsey insisted that the guests who arrived in their pricey foreign cars would hate the gravel that existed last year.
Just as we’re halfway down the drive, Landon hits the brakes.
“What?” I ask when he comes to a full stop but doesn’t speak.
“Was the driveway done up like this when we got here?” he asks, twisting around in his seat.
Oh
. “Uh, yeah. I mean, they did it earlier this spring, I guess.”
“That’s weird,” he says, turning back to the front. “I could’ve sworn it was gravel.”
“Nope. Been blacktop the whole time we’ve been here,” I say, avoiding eye contact and trying not to sit too stiffly.
He narrows his eyes and for a second I think he’s going to disagree, but then he just releases the brake, and we’re gliding
toward the road. A minute later, he turns onto the county highway and picks up speed, until we’re barreling down the pavement at sixty, the windows rolled down and the hot, dry desert air whipping my hair in a thousand different directions. He rests his left arm on the windowsill, moving the other from my knee to the wheel.
I watch the rolling hills and dry sage roll past the window as I reach down and flip the radio on. Nothing but static crackles through the speakers, so I punch the dial a few times, and when it still hisses, I smack the top of the dash.
Landon reaches out to bat my hand away, swerving the truck a little in the process.
I make a phone out of my thumb and pinky finger. “Hello, ‘I’d like to report a truck driver who’s been endangering my life.’”
“Duel
. And I’m not endangering your life, you’re endangering my forty-year-old radio. It’s original. Be gentle.” He reaches out and spins a knob, and the static gives way to a familiar tune: the one we danced to together last year.
“Ugh, change it,” I say.
“No way. I like this song.”
I did too, once.
I put my hand back in my lap, and he grabs it, so that our clasped hands rest against my leg. I lean my head back against the sliding glass window behind me and let myself get lost in the song, in the contentedness of being with him on the highway, somewhere between our relationship on the ranch and the reality of home. His hand is warm and callused and way too perfect in mine.
Twenty minutes later, we’re pulling in at an Italian restaurant
I’ve never noticed before, sandwiched between a grocery store and a gas station. The big red awning and pretty scrolling script, proclaiming
Versanos
, beckons us across the lot, and soon he’s holding the door open for me again and I step through.
“Hi, two for dinner?” a hostess asks, beaming at us from behind a podium.
“Yes, thank you,” Landon says, and I follow him as the hostess leads us to a wraparound booth in the back, where a little candle in a jar flickers. We slide in on either side of the table but end up meeting in the middle. We accept our menus and then silence falls around us.
I don’t know how to act right now, on a date like this. Last year we always just hung out, watching movies apparently neither of us even liked and sometimes kissing. Were there rules, expectations, when one went on a formal date? Do we make small talk and end it with a kiss on the porch of my cabin? And how the heck did I get to be eighteen and still so ridiculously anxious about stupid stuff like this?
“I’m looking forward to the cattle drive,” he says, after a few minutes.
“I know. It should be
so
fun.”
“We’re going to be stuck training the guests, you know. Since we’re the lesson teachers.”
“That’s okay. I mean, they kind of slow things down. …” I stop myself. I shouldn’t know this. “I mean, I’m sure they’ll slow us down, but it won’t be bad.”
“We should sneak out an hour early and just do the drive ourselves,” he says.
“I think we’d be fired.”
His hand finds my knee under the table, and he rests it there. “True, there’s always that.”
The waitress walks up then, interrupting the moment. “You guys know what you want?”
I haven’t even thought about it, but when I pick up the menu, it’s impossible to resist the idea that lodges in my head. “I do,” I say.
“Go ahead.” Landon nods.
“I’ll take the surf and turf,” I say, tapping on the menu.
The forty-two-dollar surf and turf. I force my face to remain neutral as Landon searches for the item on the menu. I wait for him to react as he realizes the price.
“Um, actually, that sounds great. Me too.”
Him too?
This is officially the most expensive date I’ve ever been on.
“Uh, can I get a strawberry lemonade as well?” I say, smiling sweetly at the waitress.
“You got it.” She gathers our menus and then disappears, and there’s an awkward pause. I half expect him to call me out on my pricey selection, but he doesn’t, he simply sips at the water glass in front of him.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say, a heartbeat later.
“Sure. Shoot.”
“What is it you love so much about riding?”
He releases my leg and sets both hands on the table so that he can fiddle with the cloth napkin. It’s like I’ve struck a weird chord, flipped a switch, and he went from happy little Landon to serious Landon.
“You want the real answer or the short answer?”
“Real,” I say, wondering why there’s a difference.
“My dad left when I was ten.”
“Right,” I say. I knew this, since long before we talked about his sisters while we were mucking stalls today.
“I idolized him, you know? I thought he was such a
man
. Really tough. He nearly cut his finger off in a chop saw once, and he barely flinched. Just calmly wrapped it up and asked me to go get my mom. I never saw him cry or anything, either. And, well, there’s just something about the cowboys that are like that. The way the horses and the cattle and the guests always come first. They’re real men, you know?”
He pauses for a long moment, and the silence gets awkward.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m not done yet. You said you didn’t want the short version.” There’s something a little tense about the way he says it, so I nod, urging him on.
“I feel like I’ve spent my whole life trying to be there for my sisters because he’s gone. Somehow the hole he left is just too big to fill, no matter how hard I try. Yet when I think of the cowboys, it becomes more concrete. Something I can handle.”
“Oh,” I say.
“That’s why I like riding,” he says. “Because I don’t have to think. I just live by a certain, basic code of honor. Those guys may be rough, but they’re men. And sometimes when I’m around them, I think maybe I’m just as good as they are.”
There’s such a raw, hoarse honesty to his tone I believe everything he’s saying, which only makes this all the more confusing. Because a man who wants to desperately prove himself better than his father’s legacy doesn’t dump a girl like he did with me.
He didn’t even freaking dump me! He just started making out with his ex-girlfriend.
“That … makes sense,” I say, swallowing down the odd bit of emotion that is bubbling up at his confession.
“You think?”
I nod. “Yeah. Can I ask you another question?”
“Sure.”
“It’s more serious than the last,” I warn.
“More
serious?”
I nod.
“Okay.”
“If we were to invent robots that could do everything for us—cooking, cleaning, babysitting, walking our dogs, driving our cars—do you think they’d take over the world and kill us all?”
He half snorts, half laughs, and I find myself grinning at him.
“Well, let’s agree on the basics, first. They’d have to have a certain amount of artificial intelligence, right? In order to adjust their behaviors as necessary. Even a perfect assembly line can manufacture defective products, so the robots would need to be able to identify problems and exercise judgment.”
“True,” I say.
“So we’re talking about robots with actual intellect. Eventually they realize what a bunch of screwups human beings are, and they eliminate us. It’s inevitable.”
“No way,” I say, shaking my head vehemently. “They’re robots. Even if they did decide to kill us, we’re still the superior being. We put a stop to it. Shut them down.”
“You’re
assuming
we’re smarter. We do dumb stuff every
day. Just watch the news for five minutes. You’ll find some idiot who decided to gamble at a casino for six hours and he left his kids in the car, or a guy who calls the police because Burger King is out of Whoppers. That
actually happened
. The robots would do a better job of running the world. Easy.”
“There might be some idiots out there, but look around. Everything we have was created, was dreamed up by a human being. A robot lacks imagination. Their plan would be predictable. You can’t win a war anymore by marching onto a battlefield. It’s about smarts, creativity.”
“You assume they won’t evolve, though. They could easily—” He stops when the waitress walks up, holding two overflowing plates. She sets them in front of us, then sprinkles a little bit of freshly ground pepper on top before smiling and walking away.
Showtime
.
“Oh, shoot,” I say, frowning at my plate.
“What? Something wrong?” He scans my plate.
“Um, no. I just thought that the surf meant they served the steak on, like, a surfboard,” I say, gesturing at my plate and trying desperately to obliterate the urge to grin like a big ol’ idiot. He can’t possibly be buying this, can he?
“Huh?” he asks, furrowing his brow.
I point at the giant,
expensive
lobster tail on my plate, trying to give him the most puppy-dog, innocent expression I can muster. “I totally hate seafood,” I say, frowning. “I’m super sorry, I guess I should have paid more attention to the menu.”
He glances at our plates, no doubt calculating the almost hundred-dollar tab between the two of them.
“Not a problem.”
And then before I can move, the lobster tail is gliding between our plates, sliding onto his. “I love lobster.”
“Oh. Uh, great.”
And thirty minutes later, he’s proven it.
I might not be hurting his heart just yet, but at least I got to his wallet.
I’m stooped over, pulling rocks out of the underside of Zoey’s hoof, when someone approaches from behind. The steps are familiar, a casual stroll that can only belong to one person.
“Admiring the view?” I ask, then straighten and turn around, dropping Zoey’s foot back to the ground.
“Maybe,” Landon says, crossing his arms. “I mean if the opportunity presents itself, you can’t fault a guy for checking out—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, fighting a blush as I wave my hand. “How many in the two o’clock class today?”
“Six.”
“All right,” I say, tossing the hoof pick into the nearby grooming supply bucket. “Meet you out there?”
“Actually, I just passed the guys in the south wing, and they’re pretty short-staffed. Since you’re ready to go, do you
wanna go help tack up the guest horses? I’ll get Storm ready, and then I’ll bring them both out for us.”
“Oh. Uh, sure. See you in a few,” I say, wandering away.
I slip through the gate to the indoor arena. It’s too small for our group lessons, but there’s two tween girls, seemingly more interested in gossiping than riding, plodding around on fat little gray horses. I wait for them to pass and then exit through the other gate, so I’m now in the opposite wing.
“Roger?” I call out, glancing into the first few stalls.
“Down here,” he replies, and I find him in the second-to-last stall, slipping a halter over the head of a bay with a graying muzzle.
“Need a hand tacking up?”
He quirks a brow, and that’s when I realize that Landon didn’t actually ask if they needed help, which is probably why he sent me instead of doing it himself. First rule of cowboys is they never admit they can’t handle a job. “Uh, sure, I guess. Tack the dun at the end.”
I nod and set to work, running a quick brush over the mount before tacking him up. I lead the horse out, pausing just long enough to let Roger out in front of me. Seconds later, two other guys emerge from the opposite wing of the barn just as we do, and I suddenly understand Roger’s odd look.
They’re not short-staffed at all. Three hands is plenty to tack six horses in time for the lesson. Which means Landon is up to something. My heartbeat quickens as I scramble to think of what it could be. But if I could predict Landon’s actions, I wouldn’t have been so blindsided last September. I have no idea what he’s thinking right now.
My radar perks up, and I know, in an instant, that he used
this chance to mess with me. But five minutes isn’t possibly long enough to dye Zoey’s blaze blue or red, so why’d he want to bring her out for me?
I lead the dun mare over to the far gate, where the guests are standing under the shade of an enormous oak tree, and arrange the reins for the rider before giving her a boost. She’s tiny, barely five feet, and I easily help her aboard.
“Go ahead and warm up, and we’ll get you going in a minute,” I call out to the group as they walk away, paralleling the pipe-rail fencing.
Finally, I turn away and head to the opposite end of the arena, where Landon is standing with Storm and Zoey. Storm’s red and blue are practically neon, even from across the ring, and I know I shouldn’t have trusted him with my own horse after dyeing his. I can’t actually see her, just her chestnut legs, because she’s standing behind Storm.
Landon’s tossing the reins over Storm’s neck as I arrive and round his horse to grab my own.