The Stars in the Sky (Giving You ... #2) (14 page)

I didn't have a response to this. I wasn't sure that she was right, but since she normally was, I wanted to listen to her.

Then I whispered, "He quit chewing tobacco for me." We stopped walking. We had reached the bluff and watched the waves crash on the shore.

I continued, "But he's not going to change his politics."

She shook her head and sighed. "You both care so much about the fucking labels and what ideology you’re adopting that you aren't paying enough attention to the stuff that matters. The stuff beyond the label bullshit. Outside last night, looking up at the stars? In the grand scheme of things, we are all the same."

"You borrowed my Deepak Chopra?"

"And I'm not returning it."

I turned to her and gave her a hug and kissed the top of her head. "I'll think about it."

She nodded and we looked at the ocean for a while. And then we hiked back to the compound.

Once we got there, she got in the car to go. Will came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek, which I thought was sweet. Then Ryan gave me a big hug and shook hands with Will and invited us to visit his beach house.

After their car disappeared down the dirt road, Will gave me a quick but very public kiss and then left in his truck, Trixie in the back, to survey his land or wrestle a cow or something. I went back to the bunkhouse, where I'd spent very little time in the past few days.

Stephanie and Janine were both in there, so as usual there was no privacy. Janine asked me how my date went with Will, which meant that now Stephanie knew about it as well.

I'd barely thought about the repercussions of Will and me hooking up on the relationships with the rest of the staff.

I told her, vaguely, that we had a good time and he wanted to date me. It seemed like she wanted to ask more but she didn't. We chatted about their weekends and then I left, needing some time to think. Since I usually fed off of the interactions with others, this was unusual, but I needed to think about what I was doing with Will.

It was just sex, right? We were so sexually compatible. He turned me on and I apparently turned him on. He was hot and seemingly constantly aroused. It was fun to be with him. It was fun to have sex with him. But we'd never be together, together, because we were too different.

And that was it.

Maybe.

Fuck
.

What Amelia had said made me think. Having more than just sex with Will? I didn't know about that. I didn't know if I could show him all of me. I mean, while I was the type to organize a party, cheer up a friend, or start a Kickstarter project to get rid of the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I didn't usually open up to people, especially guys. I think it had to do with how I grew up, moving around all the time, always moving onto the next person. If you got too close to someone, it hurt, because you had to say goodbye and maybe you'd never see them again. So it was safe to be friendly and have fun, but not fall very deep.

I’d dated all kinds of guys, but had been in very few relationships and the ones that I’d been in didn't last long. I never really let them know what I felt, but rather hid it under my party exterior.

Will seemed to dodge my image as a party girl and go right for the
me
underneath. He just decided that he liked me and that was it. His actions, after yelling at me when I bumped into him naked that first day, were all caring—taking me to Andersen's for vegan split pea soup, cleaning me up before sex, immediately introducing me to his mother when I complained about not having met her.

Why did I complain about not having met his parents if it was just sex?

So it boiled down to the fact that he was so vehemently anti-politically correct, while I, essentially, was politically correct in every possible way. And while this may seem like a stupid thing to worry about, because these beliefs were so central to both of us, it mattered at a basic level. I wanted to be tolerant of others, but I thought of his politics as that of the intolerant. How can you be tolerant of the intolerant?

I mean, you want people to agree with you. At least about the important stuff.

Right?

Fuck
.

I didn't know what to think anymore. It was a lot simpler when I’d just decided to jump Will's bones and be done with it. Now that there was this possibility of more, I was scared.

Wanting to escape my thoughts, I wandered over to the barn and the corral to see what the wranglers were doing. Although I officially had the weekend off and could do whatever I wanted, I loved hanging around the horses.

Jimmy, the old wrangler, and Hector, the young wrangler were mucking out the corral, a daily activity. I grabbed a rake and helped them and they looked at me gratefully.

"Enjoying Headlands?" asked Jimmy, a guru with a drawl.

"I love it here. It's so beautiful and I love the work that the Program does for kids. I met Will's mom and dad and I am so glad that they opened the facility for others."

Jimmy paused for a moment in his mucking and turned and looked at me.

"Will likes you," he said.

"I don't know about that," I said, trying to be modest.

"I've known him since he was born. Never seen him take a woman to meet his parents."

Really?

"His parents are so nice."

Jimmy nodded.

"I just wish they wouldn't watch Fox News all the time," I said.

"They are the last of the old-fashioned California Republicans. Not this new stuff. Old style. Don't raise their taxes or tell 'em what to do on their land."

I raised an eyebrow. That was interesting. I’d assumed that his parents were the Fox News ultra-conservative.

Maybe I needed to just talk to them.

Was
I
being intolerant of
them
?

Hector came by with fresh hay after we had mucked out the corral and the stalls, and we fed the horses and made sure they had fresh water.

A fresh start.

And then it was time to get cleaned up for dinner.

In the chow hall, I sat next to Will, his leg pressed up against me again. He smelled clean and had just taken a shower. After dinner, he asked me to spend the night but I told him no because I wanted to stay in my bunk. I needed the space.

But in the middle of the night, after tossing and turning in my bottom bunk, I snuck out of the bunkhouse and knocked on Will's door in my jammies. He let me in and I tumbled into his arms. He kissed me deeply, took me upstairs to his room, and kept me awake for a while. I eventually fell asleep in his strong arms, tucked into him, under his quilt, in his whitewashed room, in his old-fashioned farmhouse that was starting to feel like home, and I slept very well.

Campfire

"IT SMELLS FUNNY."

"I have to pee."

I stifled a laugh as I watched the noisy kids from Oakland spill out of the old, yellow school bus, their voices an indistinct chorus, becoming distinct as they stepped outside into the fresh midmorning air. Standing with the wranglers, we welcomed fifteen boys, fifteen girls, plus a few adults.

This was a seriously racially diverse group, probably reflecting the melting pot demographics of the East Bay. The kids looked shiny and new, with cell phones, wearing fresh jeans and clean tennis shoes, compared to the five of us program staff, who all had trail dust on us from riding horses early that morning.

I could see their young faces taking in the ranch buildings, the animals in their corrals and pens, and the landscape of brown hills, orchards, vineyards, and fields. None of them had ever been on a farm before.

"Hello!” I yelled cheerfully. “Welcome to Headlands Ranch! I'm Marie!"

"What the fuck is this shit?" I heard from one of the boys, a tall African-American with a very precise haircut, dark smooth skin, and a grouchy look on his face.

"I have to use the bathroom," whined a ponytailed Asian girl, the only one of the group wearing cowboy boots over her pale jeans.

"Ohmigod it smells," said a redhead with freckles, wearing clothes that were a little too big. She held her nose. "It smells bad."

"What, there's no WiFi here?" complained a Hispanic boy, very sharply dressed, in a button down shirt and skinny jeans.

I ignored them all and kept talking.

"I am so glad all of you are here. Let's get you set up and then you’ll meet your horses."

"Cool," said a small African-American girl with a shy smile, her hair in three thick braids.

A few other kids smiled at me and I was instantly charmed by the combination of their enthusiasm for the farm with their inexperience due to their urban background.

A tall, attractive, bald man with mocha-colored skin and dark eyes, wearing well-fitting jeans and a plaid button down shirt, came up to me and said, "Nice to meet you, Marie. I'm Maurice Jenkins, and I run the Bay Area program for these guys."

"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking his hand.

"I'm the boys' group leader," he continued, "and Tricia Pham," pointing to a petite woman with amazingly cool dark jeans and a fluttery top, "is the girls' group leader." I shook her hand.

After settling the kids in the bunkhouse, we headed over to the barns, the stables, and the corrals, to see the horses. As we were walking over, Will pulled up from his rounds around the ranch in his now again mud-covered truck, and hopped out, moseying over to meet the kids with Trixie at his heels.

He looked mouthwatering in a faded, tight blue t-shirt that showed every ridge of his torso and his usual jeans, belt buckle, and boots. His hair curled underneath a trucker hat, sticking out at the bottom. He looked at me and smiled.

I heard Tricia Pham breathe out "Oh. My. God."

I called out, "Everyone, this is Will Thrash, a genuine rancher, whose family has owned Headlands Ranch for four generations."

Will looked at all the kids and gave them his grin, speaking in his deep drawl. "Welcome. Glad you're here. Hope you like ridin'." Then he looked at me. "I know Marie does."

I hoped that no one else would pick up on his innuendo.

It still made me hot.

We spent the rest of the morning organizing the kids into their groups, assigning them to the wranglers, and having them meet and pet their horses. Then it was time for lunch. Will sat with me, leaning against me as much as he could without being obvious—or at least I hoped we weren't being obvious. Then he left to go meet with some visitors who looked like they were from the city. I wondered if they were the developers that he was so worried about earlier.

After lunch, the kids learned how to care for the chickens, goats, and other animals, and I planned a campfire for that night.

THE CAMPFIRE WAS
a failure.

The fire wouldn't light. Between me, Jimmy, and Hector, we couldn't get it to start. So Hector came back with a bottle of lighter fluid, which made the boys perk up and Will grumble about his insurance premiums and the cost of Worker's Comp insurance. He'd been pretty sullen since his meeting with the suits, but had come by the campfire and stood in the back, leaning against a tree, watching me but not participating.

Then it took too long for the tall flames to die down into coals so that we could roast marshmallows, so we didn't do that.

I made an attempt to get the group to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in a three-part round, but I had to do it all by myself, because all of the adults said, "I don't sing." Will looked at me with a "No way in hell am I singing" look on his face.

This seriously pissed me off. He really was an asshole sometimes.

But these were kids. Everyone knew the song, right? My singing voice wasn't great, but what good was a campfire if you didn't sing around it?

It didn't work. They just stared at me.

Will put his hand over his mouth, chuckling.

That wasn’t nice.

No one laughed at my jokes, except Cookie, who always looked like he wanted to laugh at me. God. These kids just didn't want to look uncool.

Will silently left in the middle of all this, clearly amused by my enthusiasm and the lack of response of the kids, and not helping in the slightest.