Page 4 of The Banker and the Blue Collar Man

At first, I thought Lucas had been flirting with me. I wasn’t interested because being alone seemed safer, but I quickly found out that Lucas was that way with everyone. Friendly. Outgoing. Easy to be with.

I’d gotten lucky that day, finding such a good friend. And had gotten lucky again this week when my office manager had checked the Yes box on my request for paid time off.You’ve earned it,she’d said.Have fun.

I’d earned it, but I didn’t think I was going to have fun, because, along with humorous tales about cattle getting loose on the ranch, there was the story about a rattlesnake curling around bags of grain left outside the barn. Lucas had assured me that the rattlesnake had been a rare sight and that I shouldn’t worry.

Then Lucas introduced me to Mr. Jake Colter, one of the wranglers. I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye as I’d hugged Lucas and had dismissed him as being unimportant.

But now, as I looked Jake Colter up and down, he was an eyeful. My first thought was that he was some kind of joke. A cowboy cliché in threadbare jeans and dust-covered boots. He even had a cowboy buckle, a little metal oval with a bas-relief of a horse running full out.

The rest of him, flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and that straw hat with a small hole in it, had to have come right out of a costume box.

The cowboys I’d seen pictures of, and the ones in the movies, were poised and sleek. Like models. Not like this guy with his hard jaw and cruel snarl. Or maybe that was just how his mouth was shaped.

His eyes, when he looked at me, were flinty, like blue-and-green glass. He didn’t care for me. Which was fine by me. I’d dropped the kids off like I promised to do, so my job was done.

There was a quick discussion about my PTO and the fact that I was expected to stay. And that there was an errand that needed to be run. The kids needed gear, and could Jake take them? And could I accompany them?

Then Lucas said something about Jake’s phone, and wasn’t it funny, ha ha, that he never had it on him.

Jake flinched. I swear to God he did. If I’d not been looking right at him when Lucas turned comedian, I would have missed it. His whole body started, and then he went still, like it didn’t matter. Had never mattered.

“I have my phone with me,” I said.

I never got many calls on it, but I had one. Mostly I used it to scroll before a meeting started, or to text my boss when I was running late. Or leaving early. I also used it to delete the angry messages I sometimes received from my brothers.

Jake didn’t look at me, though his eyes flicked my way. Certainly not in gratitude, but perhaps in acknowledgment.

And now I was stuck with running that errand, though it might be nice to hang out before heading back, even if it was only for one night.

We put our stuff in one of the wooden bunkhouses. I snagged the single bed by putting my overnight bag on it, because, yes, I’d packed some things, just in case. Then we went back outside, with Dillon and Cameron racing ahead toward the sunshine-yellow truck, where Jake was waiting.

He’d tipped his straw hat to the back of his head, and if he wasn’t chewing on a stalk of hay, then it was the prop gal’s oversight.

He’d said the truck’s name was Daybreak, and as I came up close, I could see the vehicle was not only spotless, it gleamed.

When Jake said yes to the kids riding in the back, I decided to sit with them. To keep an eye on them, but also to avoid having to share the truck’s cab with someone who obviously didn’t think very much of me. And it would be fun to ride in the back, something I didn’t think I’d ever done.

As promised, the ride was smooth, with Jake seeming to take care like we were the basket of eggs he’d mentioned before. Moreover, the drive, beneath the wide-open blue sky, was pretty in a way I’d not expected.

I sat with my back to the tire well and tried to remember whether I’d put on enough sunscreen, thinking how strange it was to be rolling along at such a fast clip with no seat belt, feeling altogether like I was being carried pell-mell to nowheresville.

After a glance through the window into the cab, where Jake was driving seriously, I turned my attention to Dillon and Cameron, who were laughing, mouths open to catch the dusty breeze. I noticed that Cameron had a bit of pink along the edge of his blond hair, something I’d not noticed before when we’d been introduced when I’d picked them up at the Center.

“You had your hair pink,” I remarked.

“Huh?” Cameron asked, as if startled out of jocularity with his coconspirator, Dillon.

“Right there.” I pointed. “Behind your ear.”

“Oh, that.” Cameron smoothed his hair like a debutante who had just been discovered in a corner feasting on illicit chicken wings. “I washed it out. I washed it out because I didn’t think cowboys could have pink hair.”

I remembered my first days at the Center, after I’d mistakenly told my brothers about how I liked boys better than girls. They’d told my folks, and that’s when the shouting had begun.

The Center had been a good place to go to avoid some of that anger and my parents’ feelings that I had somehow betrayed them. Their response, my brother's response, had taught me to be cagey.

I was sure Cameron and Dillon, as well, had learned similar lessons. That holding back was safest. He had, however, just shared with me, so I would repay his trust.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, as casually as I could. “I guess a cowboy can look any way he wants.” I shot a glance in Jake’s direction and made a face. “Besides, can you imagine anybody telling that guy what he can and can’t look like?”