Page 74 of Cattle Stop

Cooper fishes his phone out of his pocket and checks the time. How odd, to have Whit looking at him like that, all earnest and soft. “You’d have gotten there.”

“No, I don’t think I would’ve. So, thank you. Really.”

Cooper holds up his phone. “Say that again, let me record it,” he says. “C’mon, I’ll play it back to you next time I drive you nuts, and then you’ll tell me I’m driving you nuts, and then I’ll just say I’m doing what I do best. Now, let’s go, enough chitchat, we gotta boogie.”

“I’m really trying to talk to you,” Whit says.

“Talk and walk.”

Cooper checks the time again as they wait at a pedestrian stoplight. He pushes his phone into his pocket, grabs Whit’s forearm, and drags him through a break in the traffic. Two more blocks, then one. Cooper raises a hand to wave at Terry’s familiar profile, her blond hair cut short on the sides and back and falling long over her forehead.

But it’s Terry and Terry alone who waves back. Cooper slows and Whit nearly bumps into him.

“Where’s Mom?” he asks.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“She couldn’t make it?”

Terry wraps him in a hug, rubbing briskly at his stiff shoulders. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

“But we’re here by lunchtime, so—”

No. Of course. Of fucking course, Mom missing his visit was always going to happen. How dumb, to imagine otherwise. He closes his eyes and scratches a finger over his eyebrow, his thumb pressed into his temple. If they’d come here before dropping off the cheese, if Whit hadn’t taken so damn long to make his way to the subway, if they’d hustled out of the farm rather than lingering in the shower—

Whatever, he tries to think. Mom was probably never really going to find the time, no matter how he hurried.

“This is Whit,” Cooper mumbles and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Whit, Terry.”

“Cooper,” Terry says, her voice soft.

Cooper turns to look at the front of the restaurant. “Food, yeah? I’m hungry, but I know, I know, what else is new?”

He yanks open the door so he doesn’t have to see how Whit’s looking at him, his head tipped and eyes too intent.

At their table, Terry rifles her fingers through Cooper’s hair before she pulls out the chair across from him. “Whit, you know, I’ve heard a lot about you over the years.”

“All of it good,” Cooper says. The joke sounds weak. He cracks open his menu but stares at it blindly. He ought to be hungry, but his stomach churns with a slow, hard knot. He should’ve expected this. Should’ve known. Shouldn’t have even gotten his hopes up that, for the first fucking time ever, Mom would take a goddamn break from her work to see him.

“I doubt that,” Whit says. He turns his menu to read the cover, and then flips through the pages that list pizza after pizza. “Cooper, what’re the chances you chose this restaurant?”

Terry rips the top inch of wrapper from her straw. “Family favorite,” she says.

“Let’s spare me the embarrassing childhood stories, please,” Cooper says.

Grinning, she tugs the remaining wrapper slightly down and places the straw to her lips.

Cooper holds up a hand to shield himself. “And don’t.”

But Terry blows the wrapper at him anyway and hits him in the forehead. Cooper balls it up, throws a perfect shot into her water glass, and Terry laughs.

“Cooper has eaten every single one of those pizzas,” she says.

“Terry.”

“I used to find receipts in his pants pockets whenever I did the laundry.”

“Terry, please.”