It was so complicated, and so internal, and so...
Nothing she was used to at all.
Jake dropped his hand, and she was immediately upset. Well, she’d gone and cut her nose off to spite her face.
The Christmas decorations were gone from the ranch house, but it was still brimming with color and activity. She found herself fascinated by each and every one of his family members. Where her brothers were all sort of cut from the same cloth, this family was something else entirely.
His cousin Ryder was a Captain America type. Good, heroic. And adorable with his baby daughter. Ryder’s wife, Sammy, was a flurry of motion, hair and diaphanous fabrics. Police chief Pansy was the female counterpart to Ryder, with Rose the youngest, most stubborn and outspoken. Iris, the oldest of that sibling group, was maternal, but with a dry, quiet wit that snuck up out of nowhere. Then there was Jake and Colt. The cousins. She noticed that they talked and laughed easily enough with each other, but that they didn’t seem to ever talk about anything beyond the weather.
After dinner, she found herself in the kitchen with the women, and a few weeks ago that might’ve bothered her. But now... Now it didn’t. She liked these women. She had from the first time she’d ever been here. And she’d been fascinated by all the different ways that they were women. And now she felt like she fit. A part of them. Her own kind of woman, and just as much of a woman as anyone.
“Jake used to be an absolute hell-raiser,” Sammy said. “I thought he was going to give Ryder gray hair even back when we were kids.”
“I don’t understand how that worked,” Callie said. “Ryder taking care of everybody when they were so close to the same age.”
“The only reason we even got away with it was that this is a small town with limited resources, and it was easier for people to come check in on us than farm a bunch of unwilling, angry teenagers out to foster homes,” Pansy said. “At least that’s what I figure. Not that Ryder didn’t do a great job—it’s just...you know, that was a lot to put on him.”
“But he was the best,” Rose said, unfailingly loyal.
“And did you all listen to him?” Callie asked.
“Oh, they resisted it,” Sammy said. “The boys especially. It was only Iris and me cooking good food that kept them coming back at night. Colt and Jake were assholes.”
“It’s true,” Pansy said, nodding.
“I don’t remember,” Rose said, shrugging.
“Yeah, because you’re the baby,” Sammy said, patting her on the head.
“What was Jake like... Before?” She felt slightly like a turncoat asking that question. Like she shouldn’t try to get information about her friend that wasn’t directly from him. But things had changed. She wanted to talk to him in a different way. She wanted to talk to him more deeply, and she didn’t know how to access him. She didn’t know how to get down to that level. There were a whole lot of things that she just didn’t quite know about him right now, and she couldn’t pretend that their friendship was going to power them through it. Not when things had changed.
You know why they’ve changed.
“Oh,” Iris said, frowning. “I don’t know. I mean, he was always a smart-ass. But he... He liked to be at home. I figured he would be a rancher like his dad.”
“But he never really worked on the ranch, did he? I know he went into the rodeo. I remember that.”
“Yeah,” Iris said. “He just lost his interest in the place after our parents died. It’s strange, because it didn’t have that effect on Ryder, but Ryder ended up taking care of everybody, and I feel like in a lot of ways his future was decided for him. Ryder always planned to leave. He was going to play football. Jake... I never got the impression he did plan on going anywhere else, and then he ended up leaving right when he turned eighteen.”
“I never got to know him all that well,” Sammy said. “Not like the others. I mean, we know each other. But I didn’t know them before. He’s fun. But... There’s more to it than that.”
“Yeah,” Callie agreed. “I got to know him about eight years ago. I was sixteen. And I just thought... He was the best man I’d ever met. And he is. I...” She stumbled over the next few words. “I cared about him almost right away. He became my best friend. But I didn’t notice until recently that all that is just covering... He’s sad.” She looked up, meeting Iris’s gaze. “He’s really sad.”
She felt guilty, revealing him like that. She had never felt the urge to talk about her friend to anybody. And here she was, talking about him. Not because he was less of her friend, but because there was something she needed to work out, and he couldn’t help her do it. He wouldn’t help her do it. The space that they were standing in. That bridge that she’d realized they were on that night under the trees... That space between friendship and sex. This uncharted territory that she didn’t know how to map. That’s where they were.
“He just doesn’t like to talk about anything serious,” Sammy said. “He’s hard to know.”
Would she ever know him?
That ate at her.
Because she always felt like she had, but she didn’t in the process of realizing just how one-sided their friendship was in that way. He knew all her hopes and dreams. He’d up and left the rodeo without so much as talking to her. He’d started a ranch, when she hadn’t even realized he’d wanted that. So how good of friends were they really? He held her at a distance, and she hadn’t even noticed it.
“I want to do something for him,” she said. “But I don’t know what. I don’t know how to...”
She realized that they were all looking at her sympathetically. “What?”
“It’s like that, is it?” Sammy asked.
“Like what?”
“He’s... Important to you,” Pansy said slowly. “And maybe this isn’t as fake as it was in the beginning?”
She scowled. “I don’t know. Maybe. But he’s difficult.”
“Oh, that’s the Daniels family trait,” Sammy said.
The other women looked at her. “Hey,” Rose said.
“Sorry, but it is. You are all singularly pains in the ass.”
“If I recall right,” Iris said, “you broke Ryder’s heart.”
“He got better,” Sammy said, waving a hand.
“Still,” Pansy said. “Just be careful who you’re calling a pain in the ass.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t. But I’m just saying, it is hard to get to them when they decide to be problematic.”