Page 56 of Cattle Stop

“Then give it a try. It’s absurd that I only just got the cows back onto pasture, and it’s almost midafternoon. And I know, I know, I show up here and want everything to be different, I have stupid ideas, I don’t know anything, etcetera, etcetera, but really, Whit.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Yeah, sure you weren’t. But we should try it, okay? Drew’s farm—it should be the best one there is, you know?”

“We,” Whit echoes. He kicks at the cattle stop. When grass starts to grow over the edges of the grate, it won’t look as out of place as now, newly installed and too obvious with shiny metal that’ll be dinged and scratched soon enough.

Argue with me, Cooper wants to snap, but Whit stares off across the field without levying at Cooper the heated, exhaustive list of how and why everything he’s said is wrong.

Whit nudges the cattle stop again, like he’s decided it’s crooked, that Cooper fucked up installing it, along with everything else he’s ever failed at, and that tiny kick is enough to shift it into a neater position.

“It’s a couple weeks until I can get my stitches out,” Whit says.

“So?”

“So, I guess I gotta ask Penny to help out with chores and all, ’cause I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done.”

“I’m literally standing right in front of you.”

“You’d stick around that long?”

“If I can change everything that you’ve set up over the past couple years and make you watch me do it, then hell yeah.”

“You sound delighted.”

“You have no idea.”

“What about seeing your parents?” Whit asks.

“They can come visit,” Cooper says. They won’t, he thinks before he can begin to imagine it, all the excitement of a trip that’s never happened and never will. “And I’m serious. What the hell is your plan, Whit, if Drew needs to make more money around here? Clone yourself so if the herd grows, there’ll be two of you to slog around this place with double the cows?”

“Apparently I don’t need a plan with all your great ideas,” Whit says.

There it is, that perfect coolness to Whit’s tone. Though it’s not nearly as fun when Whit looks as tired as he does now, like Drew’s defeat wore off on him, too.

Cooper wants to fucking hug Whit. Walk forward, wrap him up in his arms, and promise it’ll all be okay.

Wow, he needs to get his head on straight. Or maybe he needs a time machine, needs to go back and warn himself that this is where he’ll end up if he gives in to the searching softness of Whit’s kisses. A rewind button for his entire fucking life.

“Look, I was thinking about this the other night,” Cooper says. Thinking about it while at dinner with Brad, he doesn’t say, just points across the pasture so he’s not looking at Whit any longer. Cooper wonders if Whit can see the mark he left on his throat, the one Cooper had touched a finger to as he’d brushed his teeth that morning. “Let’s leave that fence up so we can move the pigs onto this field.”

“The pigs are in the woods,” Whit says.

“Right, which is why I said move them. As in, relocate. Point A to point B.”

Whit’s lips purse. Cooper hates that he knows how soft they are. “They’ll make a mess of the pasture.”

“Well, that’s just rude. Don’t let them hear you say that.”

“They’re pigs.”

“They’ll kick up the grass a bit, but if we move them quick behind the cows, it won’t be that bad.” Focus, he tells himself. Talking about farming is good. Easy. He can do this. “It’s going to cut down on how long fencing takes each day.”

“It doesn’t take that long.”

“Whit, it’d be a better use of your time to watch paint dry. Or actually try training the squirrel army.”

Whit squints across the field. “You really want to put the pigs out on this? To graze?”