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“Hey Ranger?”
“Yeah?” he asked, standing, turning to face me.
“Do you always carry a condom?” I asked, some weird part of me simply needed to know.
To that, he almost looked a little bashful as he piled my clothes next to me. He reached his free hand up, rubbing across the back of his neck.
“No,” he admitted. “In the woods, I don’t usually carry a wallet. And I didn’t have any condoms. But Miller must have told Finn to pick them up. I found them when I was putting all the shit away.”
“And you started carrying them?”
“I know it was, ah, presumptuous.”
“It was smart,” I corrected. “And it came in handy, didn’t it?”
“Know you got this,” he said, running a finger over the small raised spot under the skin on my forearm, something I had put in two years ago just for peace of mind seeing as I hadn’t given that big question nearly enough thought to find myself confronting it when it was too late. “But talks need to happen first. Needles and papers and all that unsexy shit. Better to deal with that later on down the line.”
“I like your preparedness,” I told him, meaning it in every aspect of his personality.
“Haven’t found shit I don’t like about you,” he mumbled as he pulled on his shirt, completely oblivious to the way my heart squeezed in my chest at his declaration, a sensation so strong that my hand rose to press there for a second before I saw the shirt fall, my hand falling to my belly before I got caught, not wanting him to ask, to have to try to lie, to have him call me on it, demand the truth. And that truth, well, I wasn’t even that sure what it was yet.
“Hungry?” he asked, shrugging into his flannel, leaving it open as he found me my shirt, turning it right side out before handing it to me.
“Yes,” I told him, realizing it wasn’t a lie. We’d missed lunch.
“Think you might get your wish tonight,” he told me as I got into my shirt, hopping up to pull on my pants and panties.
“What wish?”
“That packaged crap you’ve been dying for.”
Boxed mac and cheese.
I didn’t realize how much I needed it until right that moment.
“You’re gonna eat it?” I asked, eyes wide seeing as he had out and out told me he wasn’t eating that ‘ultra-processed food imitation’ at least twice already.
“I’ll eat it,” he told me.
“I bet you’re going to love it. Even if you won’t admit it,” I told him, slipping into my shoes. “You ready? We should be getting back before Gadget gets a chill.”
I’d barely noticed it had gotten dark until then.
We had no flashlight, but the moon and stars gave us just enough light to avoid falling and cracking our heads open on overgrown, burgeoning tree roots or fallen limbs.
When we broke into the clearing, Captain came at us at a dead bolt, whining, stopping just short of taking me down, licking me all over, then sniffing me, then sniffing Ranger.
Maybe it was crazy, but I could swear he knew what we had just done. Like he smelled us on each other.
“You’re a good boy. Did you keep an eye on your little brother?” I asked, going over to the pen, watching as Gadget rushed to me, bleating, hungry for dinner.
Ranger fed him while I cooked, occasionally making conversation, asking what I thought of Finn, answering my questions about how the greenhouse plants were on their last legs.
I made the ultra-processed macaroni and cheese.
And took the whole of it, dividing it into two heaping bowls, then bringing it over to the table.
“Alright,” he admitted a long time later, after finishing every last bit of food in his bowl. “You were right. That was good.”
“See? I told you!” I gloated, stuffing the last two forkfuls of noodles into my mouth even though I was sure my belly was about to burst, not wanting to waste even the tiniest bit of the cheesy goodness.
“But only once in a while,” he specified.
“You men,” I said, shaking my head. “You never appreciate carbs like we do.”
“I can appreciate them in moderation.”
“If it is the box thing, I can make it from scratch. We’d just need to invest in cheese. Which, really, there is no losing there since that stuff takes forever to go bad. I had a block of cheddar in my fridge drawer for like over a year once without it going all green.”
“Like you cooking for me,” he told me, standing, grabbing our bowls, bringing them to the sink as though he hadn’t just said something that made my heart do the squeezy thing again.
I wondered if he knew the significance of the words he threw around so casually.
He must have, being a man of so few words, so infrequent personal admissions.
