“You do?”
“Yeah. I do. I heard that we had some new ranch hands. Though, we had those all the time. But that it was a family. And they had a kid. I was really disappointed that you were a girl.”
She laughed. “Wow. I didn’t know that. Our friendship is built on lies.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“When did you get over your disappointment?”
“About the time you pulled me aside because you noticed that I was struggling with my reading. You managed to do it in a way that didn’t make me feel like an idiot. In a way that didn’t make me feel embarrassed. For the first time, when you sat there and put your finger on the page I felt like I could actually focus on it. There was something about the way that you explained it that held my attention. I’ll never forget that. After that, I figured maybe we ought to be friends.”
“Well, I was disappointed that you were a boy. I wanted to get to know some girls my age. But I had a hard time with it. There were the Sullivans, but they had each other. And that bond seemed really strong. It was difficult to get around that. I don’t know. It was like a magnet pushed me toward you. And at some point I quit caring that you were a boy. At some point, I was just happy to have a friend.”
“I still remember you crying because your parents were fighting and...”
“When was that?”
He laughed. “When wasn’t it? I don’t know. It was easier, right? For us to band together. To kind of cling to each other rather than deal with our families. Because Lord knows they were just a mess.”
“They were. But it never seemed bad here. Before we were here we were in Sacramento. And my dad had worked, but only sometimes. Tension was really high, and we lived in a tiny apartment. We moved here and there were other kids. We moved here and at least the basic necessities felt handled.”
“I never asked you this, and that seems kind of stupid. Did you move here because your grandma was already here?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess my mom grew up in the area. And my grandma never left. But it isn’t like we talked a whole lot about that. There weren’t open lines of communication. I mean, you know I don’t talk to them now.”
“Yeah. Well. I don’t talk to mine either.”
They looked at each other. It was a terrible thing to have in common. Parents that were just so terrible they might as well be dead to you because not speaking to them at all was the only way you could manage your damned life. And yet, it had always been the bad things they had in common. The good things... they were different. But it was why they worked.
“What do you need to make tomorrow the best day possible?” he said.
She looked up at him, the adoration on her face just about knocking him for six.
“You’re going to be there. I’m marrying Asher. Everything is going to be perfect. That’s all I need.” She wrapped her arms around his neck.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, letting her linger on a hug. The familiar weight of her, combined with the scent of her shampoo, was one of the most comforting things he could even think of.
“Thank you for tonight. Thank you for being such an important part of my life.”
“Thanks for teaching me how to read,” he said.
She let go of him. “Anytime.”
After Rue drove away, he went into the house. The bridal veils were still pinned to the wall, and there was still lewd paraphernalia strewn all about. The dishes had been collected and he could hear chatter and glass clattering against itself in the other room. He walked into the kitchen, where Daughtry, Bix, Landry, Fia, Arizona, Micah and Denver all were working at putting everything away.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Of course,” came the response, along with varying degrees of dismissive noises.
“Could y’all come to the church early with me tomorrow to help set up?”
“Rue is important to all of us,” Arizona said. “Of course we’ll be there.”
And the underlying thing of all that was that he was important to them too. And it mattered to him.
He thought about that as he headed back to his own cabin on the property. He and Denver might never get married and have kids. They might never be normal in the way the rest of them were. But the King familyhad built something better than what they’d had before. They had made something real out of all the messed-up nonsense that had come before. And that was something.
He was going to hang on to that.
