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I decided to settle it the next morning on our run. Until then, I was left to wonder…
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday,Iwenttoeat dinner with Damon, Burke and Joel. I needed to get away from the Belish family. Love them, sure, but they were getting to me. All of them, except maybe Colby. Colby was an angel.
All of them were, of course. They were a wonderful family. But the runs with Rick were getting strange. I kept seeing him glancing at me. He’d be ahead of me, but he’d slow and glance over, and no, that wasn’t weird in itself, it was the way he glanced.
At times, it was as if he were dying to say something. I hoped he would blurt it out, even if it was that he’d figured out he was straight, and we could only be friends. But…nothing came.
We’d sit when we were taking our breaks, and he was sitting closer to me. That didn’t mean a lot except in my romanticized mind. His heated looks were fierier, his words to me seemed more pointed, and with more of those things I needed to see tucked way between the lines.
Like that morning, we were sitting, and the breeze was cooler than normal. “It’s getting close to fall. What can I do to get you to stay after Chandler leaves in the spring?”
“Hire me to start getting Colby ready for the world?”
“Shut up,” he hollered, laughing. “One heartbreak at a time.”
“You know, he’s coming home, Rick. Chandler’s coming back to you.”
He sighed a little and it was lost in the breeze. His hair moved around his face, and I watched all of it, as if memorizing it. I, too, had worried about Chandler leaving and with him, my position.
“Kanan, this isn’t about Chandler leaving. I’m, well, dealing with that. Barely,” he said, laughing. “I’m figuring out some things about myself. It’s all coming as a big surprise for me. I didn’t think, at my age, that new things happened to a person. I mean, it’s not like it happens a lot. Not like when you’re young. We were just talking about this not long ago.”
“I remember, Rick.” I knew what he was thinking, but I was too much of a coward to put into words what I meant. I instead put into words other things I had to say, that I knew were somehow more important. “Rick, you have to figure things out completely. If you’re not sure about…something, get sure about it. Before anyone becomes involved.”
“If there’s a chance that this is, something else. If I’m painting a picture on top of loneliness and empty nest. I feel that. I do.”
“Good.”
He leaned his head to look straight at me, his eyes squinted in the sun. “You…make me happy, Kanan. Of all the confusion and pain that I’ve experienced lately, you are the one thing that keeps me on steady ground.”
The words melted my heart. I felt myself smiling, tears welling in my eyes that I willed away with a few curt blinks. “How do I do that?”
“You’re strong, Kanan. You’ve been through a lot in life, and I feel like you’re weathering a storm right now, but you can smile, you can laugh, you take people in. For someone that’s been hurt, and recently, that’s no little thing, letting people in.”
“Maybe they’re just the right people to let in. I don’t know, but I like it here, Rick. I love the kids, and you…have become someone I truly enjoy being around.”
“You love the kids. That’s always a good thing to tell a parent. And for me, that means the world. And…if you like Colby enough, can you maybe watch him this evening? I have this dinner with a bunch of investors for a motel at the end of town. They want it huge, and I know the town’s people won’t like it.”
“A big place will bring a lot of money into town though. Won’t some want that?”
“A couple, sure, but mostly, people want the town to stay this way, where we don’t have big ugly buildings blocking the view, and cars lining the streets. The club your friends have, it’s once a month, and mostly everyone stays there, shops in town enough to make people money, but they’re not crowding the streets.”
“It’s pretty small in the scheme of things.”
“It is.”
I stared at him hard, thinking back to our last conversation about Cowpokes. “You’ve seen it?”
All he did was smile so I took off after him and pestered him halfway back to the tennis courts, where he stopped and bent over, catching his breath.
I caught mine a little faster, insisting, “Have you seen Cowpokes?”
“You’re still…” He was breathing loudly, but he continued to smile. “On that?”
“I am.”
He rose and slapped a hand on my shoulder. “Kan, this is a small town and I’m the mayor. Do you think there’s much that happens here I don’t know about?”
