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She perks a brow at me. “I’ve been doing this for most of my life. I hope I’m good at it by now.”
“Yeah, sure. I love watching you do this.”
“Watching me work?”
I shrug, then send her a sheepish grin. She smiles.
Over the past week, Isabella and I have become so much closer. That’s probably thanks to my efforts since I’ve been following her around like a lost puppy. Whenever I catch a glimpse of her across the way, I drop everything to see what she’s doing.
She’s noticed, of course. It’s hard not to. But I don’t care. I might not be here for long. What do I have to lose?
“Don’t you have other responsibilities to tend to?” Bella asked me one day as she hauled a bag of horse feed towards the stables. “Seems like you’ve forgotten that you’ve got a ranch of your own.”
“I’ve got a whole team of people much more experienced than me handling that. Trust me. I’m just a nuisance to them.”
“Ah. Somehow I can believe that.” A playful glint shines in her golden hazel eyes. “What makes you think you’re not a nuisance to me?”
“That’s impossible. I’ve seen the way you look at me.”
There are some nights when she and I enjoy a nice cup of iced tea together after a hard day of work. I do whatever I can to assist her, but she barely lets me do anything. Not because she doesn’t want to work me but because I think she doesn’t like the job I’ll do. I can’t blame her.
It’s nice to sit and gaze at the stars with her by my side. We don’t have to say anything. The peaceful silence that wafts between us while cicadas chirp in the background makes me nostalgic for a time that I’ve never lived.
“Do you ever wonder where you’re going to be ten years from now?” I gaze over just as she takes a languid sip of her tea. Her eyes narrow. “Do you see yourself living on a ranch for the rest of your life?”
“I haven’t thought too hard about that,” she says. “The ranch is my life. I can’t imagine leaving it all behind. I’d need a very good reason to pack my things and head elsewhere.”
“Can that reason be a person?”
“Maybe. But they’d have to be pretty incredible.”
I wonder what kind of man a woman like her winds up with. When you’re in the midst of a crush, of course, you always picture yourself with the girl you like. But the chance of ending up with any particular person is… literally one in a million. Smaller odds than that.
But still. I wonder if the man she winds up with will be like me at all.
Bella’s been talking about the local fair going on in town, the same one where I followed her before. I’d be ashamed, sure but I know I’d do it again in a second if I thought it might get me closer to getting Lily to say yes.
Her eyes light up whenever she talks about the fair, and it’s the second to last day.
When I make my way over to the house, she surprises me by coming out in a red checkered dress that complements her figure beautifully. I wonder if she realizes what she can do to a person just by existing. That’s all it takes.
“Ready to go?”
“Absolutely,” I reply, gesturing towards the car.
“You’ll have a grand ol’ time, I promise,” she says with a smile, eyes twinkling as she hops into the passenger seat and allows me to drive. “There’s a bull riding show I want to catch. I always think I could do what those riders do, but I’m probably kidding myself.”
“Why not? You can do anything that you put your mind to.”
“And get impaled by a bull? No, thank you.”
“Yikes,” I whisper, frowning deeply. “You’re right. Don’t do that.”
When we arrive at the fairgrounds, the parking situation is a mess that takes us around twenty minutes to figure out. By the time I finally find a spot and squeeze in, I’m exhausted, but Bella’s a ball of light.
She drags me to the nearest corn dog stand.
“I have never had one of these,” I tell her, and she simply cannot believe it. She tells everyone who’s in the vicinity that this man has never had a corn dog.
