"Tell me something I don't know about you," he says.
I look at my drink. "That's a big ask."
"Small thing then. Something ordinary."
I think about it honestly. "I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was twelve. Spent two years completely committed to that plan. Read every book I could find, pestered the local vet for work experience, had the whole thing mapped out."
"What changed?"
"Got on a horse properly for the first time." I look at the dance floor. "Everything else just fell away after that. I didn't want to treat animals. I wanted to live alongside them." A pause. "The ranch made more sense than a clinic."
He's quiet for a moment, listening with his whole attention the way he does.
"Your turn," I say.
He considers it. "I played piano until I was seventeen. Seriously. Lessons three times a week, competitions, the whole thing." He looks at his hands. "I was actually good."
"Why did you stop?"
"My father thought it wasn't serious. Told me I needed to focus on something that would build a future." He says it without bitterness, just fact. "So I stopped. Went into business. Built a future." A long pause. "Haven't touched a piano since."
I look at him across the small distance between us.
Something about that lands quietly and stays there. Not the stopping. The why of the stopping. A seventeen-year-old boy who was good at something beautiful putting it down because someone told him it didn't count.
"There's a piano in the Silver Mesa ranch house," I say carefully. "It came with the property. Previous owner's wife played."
He looks at me.
"It's probably out of tune," I say.
"Probably," he agrees.
Neither of us says anything else about it.
We don't need to.
The bar thins out around ten-thirty.
Not empty. Whiskey River never fully empties on a Friday night anyway. But the families with kids have headed home, the early risers have made their excuses, the crowd has settled into its later, looser version of itself.
The band has come back from their break and moved into something with more edge to it, the fiddle doing something that makes the floor vibrate slightly under the table.
Remy left twenty minutes ago with a cheerful wave and no explanation, which is standard Remy operating procedure after nine o'clock. Silas finished his drink, said good night to the table with the economy of a man who considers goodbyes a formality, went home to the bunkhouse.
June squeezed my hand on her way out and said nothing, which from June said everything.
It's just me and Beckett.
The table feels different with just two people at it, smaller somehow, more deliberate. Like the whole room has narrowed down to this one quiet stretch of space between us.
Like the noise of the bar has organized itself into a frame around us rather than something we're sitting inside of.
He's been quieter since the piano conversation. Not withdrawn. Just thoughtful in the particular way he gets when something has settled into him and he's letting it sit rather than immediately doing something about it.
I've learned the difference between Beckett quiet because something is wrong and Beckett quiet because something is right, and he's paying attention to it.
This is the second kind.
