Page 52 of The Maverick
"The Rockies care even less than that," he said. "They're indifferent. It's rude, honestly."
I laughed.
"Valentine doesn't have mountains," he said. "Just sky. The biggest sky I've ever seen anywhere, and I've been a lot of places. You go out there in August and lie in the bed of a truck and the stars are so thick they look like something spilled."
"That sounds like home," I said. Which was what I'd said in the donut shop, and I meant it the same way.
"It was," he said again. Same past tense. Same something underneath it he didn't open up.
I didn't push.
I'd learned by then that there were rooms in him he'd let me into in his own time and rooms he'd keep closed until he'd decided, and pushing on the closed ones would only tell me what I already suspected—that there was something large in there that he carried carefully and alone. I understood that. I had rooms like that, too. Mine just had less square footage.
We were quiet for a while. His hand found my hair.
"Tell me something no one knows about you,” he said.
"About what?"
"Anything."
I looked at the ceiling. The water stain was invisible in the low light. "I'm ninety-four dollars short on rent," I said. "Or I was, before tonight. I'll make it by the end of the week, probably. But I've been doing math in my head since I got to Charleston the way some people do breathing. Just—constantly. In the background of everything."
He was quiet.
"I know that's not romantic," I said.
"It's honest."
"It's exhausting, is what it is." I turned onto my back. "I've been poor my whole life, so it's not—it's not new. I know how to do it. I know all the tricks. Buy the store brand. Eat before your shift. Keep your thermostat two degrees lower than comfortable and put on a sweater. Know which grocery store marks down the meat on which day." I paused. "But knowing how to do it doesn't make it not heavy. It's heavy. It sits in your chest and it's just—there. All the time."
He didn't say anything for a moment.
I braced for the thing people sometimes said. The well-meaning thing. Thehave you triedor theyou could alwaysor, worst of all, the version where they offered to help and it came out sounding like pity dressed in generosity's clothes, and I'd have to figure out how to decline without making it a thing.
"I know that weight," he said.
I looked at him.
"Not the same version," he said. “My daddy left when I was young and my mama held seven boys together on what the ranch could bring in, which wasn't always enough and was never reliable. I know the thing you're talking about. The background math. The way it's just—running. All the time. Under everything else."
"Seven boys," I said.
"Seven."
"Your poor mama."
The smile came, real and warm. "She'd agree with you." It faded at the edges, the way it did when he talked about her. Into something gentler and more complicated. "She's—she's not well. Now. It's a brain thing. She forgets."
I didn't sayI'm sorry, becauseI'm sorrywas what people said when they didn't know what else to say and he didn't strike me as a man who needed the filler.
"Does she still know you?" I asked instead.
He was quiet for a beat. "Some days."
"Then, you're lucky," I said. "For the some days."
He looked at me. Something in his face shifted—not breaking, just opening, the way a window opened to let air move through a room that had been closed too long.
