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“Better. The ride cleared my head a lot. Being on the bike with Noah, it was great. We camped by this river, and it was so quiet, which usually I hate, you know, when I’m tense. It was needed, though.”
“Tent sex is fun,” I said, reminiscing of my army days and conquests there. I watched him blush and knew I’d guessed right. “Fun?”
“Hot. It was sexy as hell.”
We had a good laugh, but then I got serious and bitched at him a little. “No more calls from that mother fucker. You hang up.”
“I know. I don’t know why I answered. I just hoped…”
“That he’d sincerely apologize?” He nodded. “I get that, babe. I do. Eli, honey, you did good, leaving him and you did good with how you handled all of it. I don’t blame you for leaving him without a word. I know you; he would have talked you into staying with him if you had confronted him head-on. You found Noah, leaving the way and the time you did.”
“I think it was fate, but Noah laughs when I say that. I think he thinks the same, but it’s not something he likes to talk about.”
“Like it’ll jinx it. Sure. It worked out for you, for Damon and me too. Joel’s becoming a very big part of us. Like…huge.”
“I can tell. He’s fucking crazy about you guys.”
“He’s coming up on a rodeo this week. Damon’s not happy,” I confessed to Eli in confidence. “Please, nothing to Joel.”
“No, it would hurt him. He really is proud of that, you know?”
“ I know, you know, Noah knows, but Damon hates it. To be perfectly honest, I might throw a party if he quit too. To think of him getting trampled, or getting a bunch of concussions and it…”
“I know. I secretly hate it too. But…until you can figure a way to talk to him without letting him know that you’re against it, don’t. One day, maybe list the pros and cons, whatever. One big pro is him not having to save for a ranch of his own now. He will have one. Yours. Use that for a pro once you’ve figured out if you all are permanent.”
“He’s permanent unless he says differently, but yeah, even his mother asked about that. We can’t rush into everything with him like adding him to the mortgage.” Though I already knew in my heart that he was ours for as long as he wanted us.
“He’d do it and likely pay it off for you five years early, knowing his stubborn ass.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
After they left, we readied to speak to Joel about a few things, cementing them for him before he took off for the rodeo. What we hadn’t figured on was being invited along. “I thought y’all might like to come.”
I saw Damon’s eyes lower as we ate dinner. He was staring a little too hard at the pasta on his plate.
I turned my attention back to Joel. “We’d love to, but…you have to realize, Joel, that it’s hard on us, a little, you know. Sure, we’re proud of you, to be sure! But…it’s scary.”
“Really? Ain’t all that scary, is it?”
“It is,” I said, speaking for Damon and myself. “It’s not that we don’t know you’re strong, and good at it, but you could get hurt, and as your partners, it’s…”
Joel’s eyes shifted to Damon, and he saw him, head hanging, picking at his sausage. “Damon?”
“Joel, you don’t want to ask me that.”
“Can I…finish out the season?”
Damon’s head shot up and turned so fast it was a blur to me. “You’d…stop?”
“Well, I figure it like this. Y’all could do thin’s that I don’t like. Iffin you do, I gotta speak up, right?”
Damon’s lips were twitching hard, but he affirmed, “Yes, Joel.”
“Well, sir, iffin that’s the case, I best listen ta y’all. I never meant ta scare ya.”
I rushed to ask, “When is it over? The season?”
“Fall. September ‘bouts.”
