I roll my eyes. “I am not interested in Maisey Spencer. And she is not interested in me. And I don’t date students’ parents.”
“That’s why we’re warning you,” Kory says.
Regina nods. “You always go for the unavailable ones that clearly won’t work so you look like less of an ass when you bail after three sleepovers. And Kory’s right—your head’s in a bad place. Deciding to hate the woman who got Tony’s ranch and finding out you either have to move or live down the driveway from her?” She tsks. “You’re up shit creek, my friend. You want me to wrap your burger to go, too, or you gonna sit and eat here and let their dinner get cold?”
“You just said you’d keep it warm.”
“Only so much a little ole server can do before that perfect crust on the bison pie starts to dry out.”
One of them ordered the bison pie? Dammit. She’s right.
That shouldn’t go to waste.
Even if Maisey Spencer will have no idea how much she should appreciate it. June, either, but she’s a teenager. She gets a pass.
“Fine,” I mutter, fully aware that I’m once again doing Maisey Spencer a favor that she won’t appreciate and shouldn’t be my favor to do. “Mine to go too.”
Kory points to the next table. The one without a spectacular view. “I’ll move over there.”
Worst part of all this?
They’re right.
Unavailable women are my favorite kind, and one that knew and loved Tony?
Fuck.
Tony’s gone.
Can’t get him back.
But his great-niece is exactly the type of teenager I usually go above and beyond to help. She’ll definitely be in one of my classes. Most likely on my soccer team in the spring.
Which means I probably need to make nice with Maisey.
Chapter 5
Maisey
I knew when I decided to move here that I’d be facing some uncomfortable situations.
I didn’t expect them to all come at once, as an emotional-minefield sandwich with a side of angry-teenager coleslaw.
“Was this a terrible idea?” I ask my mom quietly over the phone as I sway on a swing at a small empty playground a couple of blocks from the tavern.
As if I had a choice.
We wouldn’t be here at all if we had a single friend or family member back in Cedar Rapids that I could count on, but with the divorce, Mom’s arrest, and her family imploding as a result, it was game over for Junie and me there.
We had to get somewhere without all that baggage hanging over our heads, and when I got an email from Flint a month ago with a note about an issue with the barn that he said would require something beyond his expertise, everything was crystal clear.
Uncle Tony’s ranch wasn’t a responsibility. It wasn’t that thing in the background taking precious time that I didn’t have to give to it in the midst of everything else.
It was a safe haven when everything else was falling down around us.
My daughter is hovering in the shadow of a building at the end of the main drag in Hell’s Bells. She’s crouched beside a cinder block wall that’s been painted with a herd of elk in front of the river bluffs. Her back is to me, and her earbuds are definitely in, so I’m reasonably certain she doesn’t realize I have an eye on her.
Dusk is falling quickly, but she’s in a well-lit area—whereas I’m not, though there’s enough ambient noise and light that I don’t think we’re at risk of an animal attack—so I don’t think she’d notice even if she looked this way.
Pretty sure she wouldn’t want to know her mom is watching out for her in case any random western wildlife wants to brave the noises and lights of town to grab a tasty teenage morsel. Or in case the teenage boys or girls around here smell fresh meat.
Much like driving, she hasn’t shown interest in dating yet. When or if she ever does, I’m ready for whoever she might bring home to meet me. And if she never does, that’s fine too.
So long as it’s not because she’s had such awful examples of what relationships are that she thinks it’s not worth it.
Then I’ll have mom guilt forever.
Correction: more mom guilt.
“Uprooting a city teenager and dropping her in the middle of Podunk nowhere to finish out high school might not have been your smartest move,” Mom says. She’s in her late sixties and recently faced a mandatory retirement from the real estate world after getting caught running shady, nonexistent homeowners’ associations all over Cedar Rapids. She gets one phone call a week to us from her white-collar criminal prison facility, where she’ll be residing for the next two years, and I almost missed this week’s.
“Thanks.” I lean my head against the chain, feeling even lower than I did when I realized I had to get both Junie and me out of Cedar Rapids for not just our relationship but our mental health too. If it wasn’t friends siding with Dean in the divorce, it was friends who dumped me after they were scammed out of thousands of dollars by my mother’s HOA-management company. More than a handful came after me, demanding I pay for her sins since you’re a rich reality TV star. You need to fix this. You owe us.
While I was just as flabbergasted at what she’d done as they were, I still lost friends. I couldn’t fix things. I didn’t have enough to fix things. “Just what I needed to hear.”
“Maisey, sweetie, there’s no such thing as an easy answer when it comes to major life decisions. Something told you that you had to go. Maybe that something needs you to know that you would’ve been miserable there, too, so you can quit wondering and then come home.”
I’ll move anywhere else in the country with no history dragging us down before I’ll go back home. Which isn’t something I’ll say to my mom. I know she did bad things. I know she hurt people. But she’s still my mom, and I don’t want to hurt her. “After the divorce, Cedar Rapids isn’t home anymore.”
“So maybe that something you’re feeling is a need to stretch in ways you haven’t stretched before so that you can find where you and Junie truly belong. Which is definitely not on some hellhole of a ranch in Montana.”
“Wyoming.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not a hellhole. It’s actually really pretty out here. Remember the sunset picture you had blown up for me after the last time I went to visit Uncle Tony? It’s like that every day. And if you get hot in the sun, you can just step in the shade, and poof! All better. When you can find shade, I mean. I should probably just carry an umbrella. And you should come visit when you get out.”
And move into the original cabin back behind the newer main house, where I can keep an eye on her.
This ranch has more buildings than I remember—gatehouse, cabin, bunkhouse, barn—but then, I didn’t care about them when I was a teenager.
Now they’re more to manage, which is actually a thrilling task to take on.
She harrumphs. “Come live on that ranch where that man abandoned the rest of us to?”
“He didn’t abandon you.”
“Did too.”
Eventually, yes.
The ironic part?
Uncle Tony was the family member that Mom’s relatives whispered about and never invited to anything, more so with every passing year. But he’s the one who’s provided Junie and me a safe haven, while my mother’s the one in prison.