Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella (17 page)

She glowered at him and pulled a pencil and the drawing tablet in front of her. She thought for a while. Of course a little boy would like a bobcat. They are small but powerful, and they move silently. And like little boys, they are really cute in a dangerous way. She drew one standing triumphantly, and put one of Gage’s sneaky grins on its face, just in case that ran in the family. He was on a rocky ledge, and she drew it as if he was above the viewer. She got up to rummage for her tin of pencils and dug through it for midnight blues. It would have to be nighttime. A golden crescent moon, a few glittering stars. His tan fur would have blue shadows in the nighttime. Claws? No claws. He had a full belly and was only out for fun. Behind him were the black treetops with silver highlights, and an owl silhouetted against the dark blue sky.

The drawing was done, and Meg had no idea how much time she had spent making it. She might have forgotten she wasn’t alone, but there was something deeply satisfying in the way Gage concentrated on her drawing the whole time. At the bottom of the drawing she wrote, “Cole the Ninja Bobcat” and signed her name. Then she ripped it off the drawing pad and handed it to Gage. He almost looked afraid to take it from her. “He’s going to love this,” he said. “It’s amazing.” All trace of joking was gone.

Meg felt a little embarrassed. “It’s not high art,” she said.

“Who gets to say what high art is? When I hang something on my wall I’d rather it didn’t make me feel depressed, irritated, or scared all day.”

“So I shouldn’t draw you a mountain lion?”

His eyes lit up. “Would you draw something for me? Really? I don’t want to push you, the drawing for Cole is amazing enough.”

She smiled. “I like doing it.”

“It shows. No mountain lion, though. I want a drawing of the wild mustang… if it’s not too much to ask, of course. Should I commission you? I mean, I’d be willing to pay.”

She kicked him under the table, which wasn’t hard because in that tiny space their legs overlapped anyway. “Wild mustang it is.”
Of course.

She stared at the blank paper, but in her mind she was watching a movie. Wild mustang stallion. Nighttime wasn’t his time, daytime was. No, sunrise, the beginning of an adventure. Green grass, but instead of eating it, he’d be dancing. How do horses dance? She pictured rodeo bucking horses. No, that wasn’t quite right. Racehorses, reining horses, barrel racers, rodeo horses—they were all wrong. She pictured a rodeo bucking horse, but the head down, the desperation, just didn’t fit. But jumping did. This mustang would be jumping just for the fun of it. Leaping. Not head down for the balance and force of it, but head up, just enjoying the feel of stretching out long legs, catching the scent of the Montana air.

She sketched the horse coming down between leaps, front hooves together and reaching for the grass, back legs bucking free, head up and tilted, picking a cloud to aim for with his next jump.

“He doesn’t look like a planner,” Gage asked.

“Very funny.”

“Is he alone?” Gage asked. She could hear a little disappointment in his voice.

She looked up at him. “Who would he be hanging out with, a bobcat?” He shook his head. “A fox?” He shook his head again. Good.

“No, another horse. A pretty little mustang mare.”

“And what is she doing?”

He stared at her drawing. He seemed to be thinking about it very seriously. “Probably laughing at him,” he said. “But not really.”

Meg could see that clearly in her mind. She drew another mustang, smaller and rounder, a pale palomino the same color as the famous stallion Cloud in Montana’s Pryor Mountains. She was looking at the stallion over her shoulder, pretty mane and tail flowing in the breeze. She didn’t want to act like she was impressed by his antics, but she was.

The rest came fast, or at least it seemed that way to Meg. She saw the blue sky with the golden hint of sunrise in the horizon, long blue-green patches of pines bordered by patches of white snow still left in the shadows, wide green meadows with infinite purple lupines. Her favorite memories of seeing the mustangs in the Pryor Mountains came together all in one place, in one image. This was the reason she usually didn’t use a camera. The camera never captured things the way she remembered. The stallion was buckskin with a shock of unruly black mane and tail. And just below their hooves, scattered through the green grass, she drew tiny white flowers.

As the drawing came together Meg realized that she had been sitting in one place for a long time, perhaps even hours. Her legs were stiff, and her right shoulder ached. All the while Gage had barely moved. He laughed at the look on the mare’s face, oohed over the sunrise, aahed as simple pencil strokes turned into a field of lupines in the distance. “Done,” she finally said.

“Sign it.”

She did, though she felt self-conscious about it.

“What are you going to call it?”

She thought about that for a while. She wrote “Gage’s Mustang” at the bottom. It was vague enough, but she knew what it meant.

He took it from her and set it in front of him, then started to laugh softly. “It’s even better right side up,” he said. The smile lingered on his face. “I could watch you draw forever.”

It was one of the most romantic things she had ever heard.

There wasn’t anything she could say. She sat lost in the look of his amber eyes and the warmth of his admiration. She drew silly critters, and he admired her for it. Things didn’t get much better than this.

Gage finally broke the silence. He took his drawing, put it next to Cole’s, and put them both safely aside. “Tell me what’s going on with Mouse and the antler Christmas trees,” he said.

They talked for a while about the bones of her story idea. He had lots of questions and even some suggestions. Of the suggestions some were good, some were awful, and all of them made her think. Her mind was buzzing with ideas. But even as they spoke they were trading contagious yawns back and forth across the table. Finally Gage rubbed his eyes and asked, “Have you got any tea? I know I should go. But if you don’t kick me out, I don’t want to. I’m having too much fun.”

This handsome man was having too much fun talking about her children’s books characters. Even though she was tired, Meg wasn’t ready to call it a night either. She filled a small pan with some drinking water and turned on the burner. Deep in thought about her story, she got lost for a while waiting for the specks on the bottom of the pan to turn into real bubbles. A funny sound made her turn around, and she saw Gage face down on the table. He was deeply asleep, and snoring.

Meg turned off the burner and stared at him. She should wake him up this instant, send him off in her Jeep. She knew that. But instead she watched the rise and fall of his steady breaths under the gabardine jacket. It stretched across his broad shoulders and his long arms. She thought of how it felt to be circled by those arms, dancing to songs older than either of them.

She backed up a few steps and took a fleece throw from her bed. She put it over his shoulders while her mind was saying no, it was past time to wake him up, and who did she think she was tucking him in like a boyfriend—or a husband? No, she reasoned, she’d wake him up in a second. She just didn’t want him to get cold in the meantime.

She sat down on the edge of her bed just a couple feet away from him. She wondered why there was so much comfort in his presence. It changed everything. Her book looked brilliant with him around, and her camper was an enviable work of art. She stared at him. Then she flopped back onto her back and thought,
I really don’t want him to go back to Texas
.

And that was the last thing she remembered thinking on the night of Joshua and Leah’s wedding.

Sunday

Bang bang bang!
The old aluminum door of her camper rattled with every strike. Meg’s first conscious thought was that the mountain lion was trying to get in. She tried to get up but found herself tangled in blankets. By the time the sound ended she was sitting upright, wondering if she’d been dreaming.

There was a man getting up from her floor, rubbing his wild black hair, wearing a nice wedding jacket that was now quite dusty and half covered with a fleece throw. It was a shocking scene. He caught sight of her, looked confused for a split second, and then gave her that troublesome grin. “Hi,” he said. It was all he had time to say before the banging on the camper door resumed.

Meg jumped to her bare feet, but he was faster. Gage went for the door as if it was his camper. “Hold your horses!” he shouted. As he opened it he looked at her and grinned, “Get it? Horses?”

The door flew open, and Joshua stood on the ground below. He glared at Gage, over to Meg, and then back to Gage. “I think you’d better get out here,” he said.

Meg couldn’t figure out what was going on. Why was Joshua here? Why did he look angry? That creeping guilty feeling came back strongly. She hadn’t done anything wrong, had she? Of course she had, she hadn’t waked Gage. This looked bad. But why was Joshua here? “Oh no, is it the mountain lion?” she asked. “Did it hurt someone?”

“What mountain lion?” Joshua barked, irritated.

Gage stepped out and she intended to follow, but she was barefoot. She reached for her burgundy shoes, but she couldn’t even imagine putting them back on her sore feet. She grabbed the next closest thing, a pair of pink and brown fuzzy slippers. She trotted out of the camper and stopped short.

Her campsite was crowded. Joshua was staring at Gage, his arms crossed over his chest, one fist clenching under his elbow. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Walking up was a teary Brie, and with her arm around her, a very cross-looking Leah.

“This must be the worst honeymoon ever,” Meg said. She didn’t mean to say it out loud, but nerves tended to loosen her tongue.

Gage laughed. Then he pointed at her slippers. “Nice,” he said, and gave her a thumbs up.

They were the only ones smiling.

Meg took stock of the situation. First of all, there was Joshua. Unlike her, he had on a clean change of clothes. Since when did he get up early? Maybe it was later than she thought.

Then there was the crying maid of honor. What had happened to her? Meg tried to make sense of it. Brie was glaring at Gage. Meg wondered if Brie had just told Joshua something new and horrible about Gage. Or maybe he had been lying to him. Maybe he was lying to her. Did people who liked drawings of ninja bobcats lie? Meg felt self-doubt closing in on her.

Worst of all was Leah. She was looking at her new husband, and everything about her expression dripped irritation. Meg closed her eyes for a second. If she had ruined Leah’s wedding somehow, she would never forgive herself.

“That,” said Joshua, pointing at Meg, “is my sister. Well, she’s like my sister. And you know that. What are you doing?”

Gage gave Joshua the same patient look he had given Brie the night before. “I know she is, Josh.”

Leah was staring at Meg’s slippers. Then her dress. Then her face. She scowled and looked back at Joshua, and Meg felt terrible.

“Just answer the question, Gage. What do you think you’re doing here?”

Gage’s eyes narrowed. So that’s what he looks like mad, she thought. He looked calm and dangerous. “Josh, I know you’re concerned. I know Meg is family. But you’re on the edge of insulting me and her. Are you sure you want to go there?”

“I am there, Gage. On my property, as a matter of fact.”

Gage fumed silently. She saw him thinking it over. And as she watched, Meg’s mood began to change. Leah being unhappy with her was new and awful, but there was nothing new about Joshua being mad at her. He was right, they had been like brother and sister, and they went through phases where they bickered like crazy. And she hadn’t done anything wrong.

So bring it on, she decided. “Joshua Parks, haven’t you got something better to do on your first day of married life? It’s nice that you care about my welfare, but you forget that I’m twenty-seven and I live an awful lot of my life without your supervision.”

He spun on her. “Well, maybe you need it.”

Meg felt wounded. This wasn’t about what he thought was going on, or whether it was any of his business. Now it was about what kind of person he thought she was and how qualified she was to run her own life. Gage sensed the change in her and his best friend, and he stepped closer to her, almost in front of her. “Josh, you’re letting your anger get the best of you. Don’t say things you’re going to regret.”

“The only person around here who doesn’t feel regret is you, Gage,” Brie said. Her sobs had stopped. She looked furious. “You do whatever you want, and everyone else pays the price.”

Leah said something to Brie that Meg couldn’t hear, but Brie didn’t seem to respond. “Did you think no one would notice you left with her? Did you think no one would notice you didn’t spend the night in Caleb’s tent? You just thought you’d get away with another conquest?”

Gage took a step forward. “Just hold on a second. There was a mountain—”

“Yep, that’s me,” Meg said, cutting him off. “Gage’s latest conquest. Joshua, I know you’re disappointed, deal with it. Leah, I’m sorry about all the turmoil, I hope it stops here. Brie, I don’t even know what to say to you, except that if Gage makes you this miserable, you should probably cut the ties and move on.” She put one fist on her hips and looked at the watch on her other wrist. “Now I need to get ready for church. Do ya’ll mind clearing out?”

Everyone stared at her. It was Leah’s eyes she avoided, because she hated having any part of casting a shadow over her wedding. Leah began pushing Brie back down the road. The Monster was there. How had she slept through the sound of that engine? She turned back to Gage, who was the last to move. “I’m going,” he said. “You sure you’ll be okay?” She nodded. As he walked by, he handed her the fleece throw and threw her a brilliant smile. She smiled back at him, and then he ran to catch up with the others.

Meg wondered if they’d even give him a ride.

She pivoted in her fluffy slippers and got back in her camper trailer. She headed toward the bathroom to brush her teeth and caught sight of herself in the mirror, makeup smudged, mascara running, hair tangled. She was mortified. Then she started to laugh. “Oh my,” she said to her reflection. “I did set tongues wagging, didn’t I?” She said a little prayer for peace in her family, then started laughing again for no good reason. “I hope you have a ‘fixer’ handy, Lord. I certainly didn’t plan for this.”