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“I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know what we are,” she admitted, and there was an awkwardness to it. “I mean, we’re friends, I know that. You’re my boss. You’re Rick’s boyfriend. And you and Rick have a thing, aproperthing. I’m not sure what that makes us.”
“What do you want it to make us?” I pulled away from Katie’s street and felt so much better.
She shrugged. “That’s a question and a half, Carl. I don’t know how you want me to answer that off the cuff.”
“With honesty,” I said. “It’s not a hard question, you must know how you feel.”
“I like you, if that’s what you mean. I like you both, a lot.”
“Youlikeus?”
“Like you, enjoy your company, enjoy your dicks,” she laughed but I didn’t. She stopped. “I really like you guys. You’re funny and you’re smart, and kind, and different, and great in bed.”
“But you’re in it for the cash,” I said. “It’s alright, I get it.”
Her eyes burned me. “No,” she said, and there was fire in it. “I’m not justin it for the cash. I hardly think about the cash.” She sighed. “If I didn’t have a dream and no way to pay for it, I wouldn’t evenwantthe cash.”
“So, whatdoyou want?”
She pointed out the sign for Woolhope. “I want to see my baby boy,” she said. “That’s what I want.”
“Fine,” I said. “I can take a hint.” I reached for her knee and her hand was waiting. “Onwards, to the furry beast. We’ll pick this conversation up another time.”
The furry beast seemed bigger without Rick there too. Bigger and clumsier. He threw his head up, ears pricked as he followed Katie along to the stable block. I nipped ahead of him, avoiding his clomping feet, playing it cool even though the brute made me uneasy.
Katie could tell my unease regardless. “Relax,” she said. “He’s totally fine.” She offered me the lead rope. “Take it if you want, you’ll see.”
“I’m ok as I am for now,” I said.
“So am I,” she said, and leaned in to kiss my cheek. “That’s what I should have said in the car. I’m happy, Carl, with everything. For now.”
“For now?”
She nodded. “For now, yeah. We’re good. All of us. I like it.”
I wanted to say so much. Spill my load in more ways than one. The need to lay it all out slept uneasily in the pit of me. I could wake it with just a touch, and it would spring into life and come rolling out. And it would plough into her, and maybe she’d run. Just like the others.
“I like it, too. Very much.”
“Good,” she said. “Then we’re good, right?”
I wrapped my arm around her waist. “We’re good.”
She tethered Samson to a loop of twine outside his stable door. “Surely he could break that?” I asked.
“That’s the point,” she said. “If he got freaked, or spooked or whatever, he could break the twine. He wouldn’t hurt himself.”
“Nice to know,” I said, imagining that flimsy bit of nothing doing sweet fuck all if the brute decided to go for me.
He was still eyeballing me, still hostile. Even chomping on hay he was eyeballing me. She picked up his feet one by one, held them between her thighs as she scraped the mud out of them. Rather her than me.
I wished Rick was with us, making her laugh with his easy conversation. He’d know what to say, what to do. He’d do thiswhat’s going onconversation so much more casually than I could. Probably because he wouldn’t do it at all.
Katie saddled up, fastened up her helmet. She was all smiles.
“Do you need a leg up or something?” I asked, but she shook her head.
