I want to hear him say that again. I want to earn it again. This is a completely new and very specific feeling and, I need to think about it later when I am not standing in a barn holding an empty bottle looking up at a man who says good like it means something.
I text the group chat from the barn while Anthony checks on the new mule deer fawn. The signal is weak this far up the mountain and half my photos won't send but I try anyway.
MAYA: I bottle fed an elk calf.
I send a photo of two elk calves in warm straw, one latched onto a bottle, my hand visible at the bottom of the frame.
LILY: MAYA!
EMILY: She's crying I'm crying we're all crying!
MADISON: The EARS on that baby!
HOLLY: How is it going otherwise?
MAYA: He put his hand on my back to stop me from moving too fast with the calf and it was so sweet.
CHLOE: STOP!
AMBER: The hand on the back is a THING. A total thing.
MAYA: It was two seconds.
LILY: The best two seconds of your recent life?
MAYA: ...yes
EMILY: What did he say?
MAYA: He called me a good girl.
MADISON: Those are the best two words ever.
HOLLY: Maya, I need you to understand what's happening here.
MAYA: I understand what's happening here.
HOLLY: Do you? Do you really?
MAYA: I'm in a barn in Colorado being managed by a very tall veterinarian and I would like everyone to know I am handling it.
CHLOE: She's not handling it.
LILY: Not even a little.
MADISON: Cute barn outfit tho. Good choice.
MAYA: Signal's dropping, talk later, do not read into that.
Lunch is at a wooden table in the ranch's main building. It’s a simple affair of sandwiches that one of the staff made without ceremony, good coffee, and the easy comfortable rhythm of people who work together and trust each other. I'm included in it immediately, which I wasn't expecting, and it takes me a moment to understand that this is because Anthony included me. Somehow, he made it clear I was to be trusted and they included me.
Not by announcement, just by the way he sat down beside me and passed me the coffee before I asked, his hand closing overmine in a way that was not professional. It was intimate and it spoke volumes without him having to say a word.
The red-haired staff member, whose name is Colt, and who has the energy of a golden retriever who has learned to do veterinary science, asks me about travel blogging with genuine curiosity and I spend fifteen minutes talking about the content side of the business while Anthony eats without interrupting and occasionally, quietly, refills my coffee or water glass.
Every time he does it, I feel the meaning behind it. It’s like a hand steadying a bottle, like a press between shoulder blades, his way of caring.
I’m paying attention,he’s saying.I notice you. I've got this.
