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“Huh. You must have scared the shit out of him then. Or the Wyoming air has something in it. That man’s never given 100 percent to anything, as far as I know.”
I made a noncommittal noise, and after a beat, I forced myself to bring up the real reason I’d made the phone call. “Tell me about him,” I said as nonchalantly as possible. “What’s his story?”
Of course, Oscar, being my oldest and closest friend, saw right through my false indifference. He let out a long sigh. “Don’t get any ideas in your head, Boone. Richard’s a man-eater.”
I wandered toward the fence edging the calving pasture, my eyes automatically assessing the cows most likely to calve next. Even though Hiram was responsible for keeping an eye on them tonight, I still couldn’t help looking out for them myself. “I don’t have ideas,” I lied. “I just realized you were kinda short on facts last time we spoke, and Richard mentioned he dated your friend James—”
“Richard used my friend James,” he said with a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Led him on. Told him he wanted to settle down and start a family, same as James, but that he just wasn’t ready yet and needed time, yada yada. James waited around for years before he recognized the truth: Richard was never going to be ready to settle. He’s terrible at commitment.”
I frowned. “That’s harsh.”
Oscar sighed. “But true. Richard’s obsessed with the new and the shiny. Always has been. New cars, new friends, new hobbies. He was the same way in his relationship with James. First, he wanted them to move to a new apartment, then to try a new diet, then to spend every waking moment having quality time together, then to spend less time together so they could spend more time with their friends and Richard could party every night. He throws himself into each new idea with both feet, but he sucks at follow-through. As soon as something loses its shine, he gets bored and moves on—” I heard him snap his fingers in the background. “—just like that. I don’t know why he stayed with James so long when they were both unhappy.”
I jammed my free hand in my pocket as my brain replayed Richard’s words from earlier in the day. “He was… my person. For a while anyway.”
“Maybe it shouldn’t surprise me Richard’s working hard for you,” Oscar went on. “Ranch life is probably his newest obsession. He’ll go all in on playing cowboy until it’s not fun anymore; then he’ll bolt.”
I didn’t want to believe what Oscar was saying. In fact, I didn’t believe it entirely. Oscar’s loyalty to James was clearly coloring his interpretation of events. But over the years, I’d known too many people like the man Oscar was describing to dismiss his view entirely. Some people did seem to hop from one thing to the next, always searching for their purpose without a care for the people they left behind when they moved on. My father had called it “work avoidance,” while my mother had called it “finding yourself.”
In my mind, I heard Richard’s sleep-edged voice promising that he’d do better tomorrow. He hadn’t sounded like a guy who didn’t care. He sounded like someone who cared very, very deeply.
“But he did stick with James,” I pointed out, “so he must have some ability to commit.”
I hadn’t meant for the words to come out like a question, like a request for reassurance, until Oscar spoke again in a softer tone. “Boone, I know how easy Richard is to like—”
I snorted. “This coming from someone who hates the guy.”
“I don’t hate him,” Oscar protested. “I just don’t want you being blindsided and getting hurt like James did. You have to remember, Richard’s a baby. He’s had everything in his life handed to him on a silver platter. He’s never had to work for something like you and I have.”
I thought back to growing up in small-town Texas with Oscar and our promise to each other that we’d leave the moment we graduated high school. Unlike Oscar, I’d been raised with money—my family’s ranch was one of the largest in the state—but with that money came expectations. I’d been expected to stay in Texas, to do what my father told me, to let him run the ranch as he saw fit, even if I disagreed with his practices, to marry the girl they picked out for me—someone from a good, god-fearing family with land that would expand the size of our ranch.
Needless to say, I wasn’t too keen on any of that. So when I left after high school, I did it with the money I’d earned petsitting for neighbors and washing trucks on a nearby ranch. I’d gotten from there to here through nothing but stubbornness and hard work.
