Then Mae set the mug down in front of me and looked up at him. “She's spoken for, Brendan.”
Brendan closed his mouth. He looked at Soleil. He looked at me. He looked at the table. He stood up, smoothed his fleece, and said, “Right. Have a great morning, you guys. Nice to meet you, Soleil,” and walked out of the café in defeat.
Mae went back to the counter and refilled one of her regular’s coffee without being asked. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t have to.
But Soleil did. “You didn't have to do that.”
“I didn't have to,” I said. “But I did.”
She picked up her Magic Latte. She took a sip and set it back down. Then she looked at her sketchbook. “Treyton.”
“Yeah?”
“You can't have this both ways.”
I sat with that for a beat. She wasn't wrong. She wasn't wrong and we both knew she wasn't wrong and Mae knew it from across the room and Brendan was probably figuring it out in the parking lot, and I sat there with my hand around a mug I hadn't touched and I tried to decide what version of the truth I was capable of saying out loud in the Switchback Café on a Sunday morning.
I finally settled on, “I'm working on it.”
She looked at me for a long beat the way she had looked at the side table in the workshop, with the focus she gave to things she was trying to understand all the way through. Then she nodded, picked up her pencil, and went back to her sketchbook.
I drank my coffee and sat at her two-top for another twenty minutes without either of us saying anything else. She drew. I sat there. Mae refilled my mug without being asked.
When Soleil went to the bathroom, she paid the bill, and when I tried to argue she said, “I didn't have to, but I did.”
Then she walked out of the café with her sketchbook under her arm, her braid down her back, and her SUV keys in her hand.
I sat there for another five minutes after the bell on the door stopped ringing.
Mae came over and sat down across from me in Brendan's vacated chair. “You look like you've been hit by a truck.”
“Thanks, Mae.”
“What are you doing, Berg?”
“I don't know.”
“Hmm.” She squinted out the window at her own parking lot. “Well, whatever it is, do better.”
I drove out to Gibson's because I didn't want to drive back to my own cabin and I didn't have anywhere else to go.
Gibson was in the pasture with two of the goats and a fence post and a roll of wire when I pulled in. He waved me over with one elbow. I walked across the pasture with the length of cedar I’d brought in case I needed an excuse. I’d told him weeks ago I'd bring him some for a stall partition but hadn’t delivered yet. While he finished the wire, I leaned against the post.
He stood and looked at my face. “You slept with her, didn't you?”
“Gibson —”
“Yeah. You slept with her.” He picked up his wire-cutters. “Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to lean on the fence and not talk about it.”
“The second one.”
“Okay.”
I leaned on the fence. Penny wandered over and put her head against my hip and stood there for a while. She’d never done that before.
While Gibson worked, the sun came up over the east face of his pasture and warmed the side of my face and Penny breathed against my hip, and I stood there and didn’t talk about it.
After a long stretch of quiet, Gibson said, “Don't tell anyone I said this. But the girl's pretty. And smart. And probably in love with your ugly ass, I would guess.”
