That last part was directed at Thor, who at least had the good graces to look slightly ashamed.
“Go ahead, Wylde, tell him why I’m so pissed off right now.”
“You know what, Thor, tell him yourself if you want him to know so badly,” I said. “I’m going to go pick up the supplies for the garden. Payne, if there are colors you’d prefer, could you please text them to me and I’ll see how many I can find?”
I walked out without a backward glance and took the UTV to the parking lot where my truck was waiting. In the mood I was in, I’d have preferred to take the Harley, but that would leave me no way to haul home dirt and pots, so the truck would just have to do.
The whole way there I was a bundle of tension and also pissed off. Why Thor couldn’t just give me the time to make up my mind was the biggest source of my aggravation. I hadn’t even said that I was going to do it. At the very least, he could have waited for that declaration to lose his shit and make a scene in front of Payne, especially when there was just as big of a chance that I’d just throw the damned form away and say to hell with one more ride.
A ride I wasn’t sure I was capable of making.
A ride I didn’t want to be scared about trying to make.
That was the truly fucked up part, the part I might have been able to explain to Thor if he’d have just stopped talking at me and let me work through why I’d felt the need to pick the flyer up in the first place and fill it out when all I’d felt was more dread than exhilaration at the thought of getting back up on one of those double-horned wrecking machines. I didn’t want to be afraid. That was the crux of my whole dilemma. I was scared, and I didn’t want to stand there feeling the way Thor felt about a part of our lives that had been as wonderful as it had been soul-crushing. I wanted to remember the good times when we reminisced. I didn’t want the only conversations we had about it to be the failures, the wrecks, and the end of our careers.
Clearly, I couldn’t make him see that part, so until I figured out how, I wandered aisles and racks, dragging a pallet behind me, grabbing pots and soil and starter plants and all the other stuff, like trowels and gloves and scoops. I found Payne a fifteen-piece gardening set with an apron and padded cushion for kneeling, a bucket, and a pouch to carry his tools in. It was teal and gray and sparkly, which immediately made me smile and think of him. It even came with a bottle for misting the plants, pruners, and gloves; everything he’d need to care for the garden he’d been so eager to plan out.
I even picked up a few extra aprons for those times when he might need to protect a costume he’d chosen to wear while he worked. I’d found purple, aqua, and light gray pots too, because I knew he loved that color palette and my phone hadn’t dinged with a list from him. I added window boxes and pretty plants whose only purpose was to flower and bring him joy.
Somewhere in all the shopping, my mood lightened, and I started to truly get into the spirit of the task. I grabbed gnomes designed to sit in the pots beneath the plants and others whocould be attached to the rims of them. By the time I made it to the checkout line, there was a whole gaggle of gnomes on the pallet, along with the rest of our supplies. I was almost giddy, anticipating the look on his face when he saw everything I’d found.
He was going to love them, I just knew it, and I was going to love watching him and helping him if he wanted me to, because Payne’s excitement was infectious, and I loved getting pulled into the things that were fun for him. That was all I could think about as I loaded the truck and drove back to the Ranch, singing along to the songs on the radio.
The last thing I expected was for Thor to step outside the moment I pulled up. Groaning, I got out with a plea on my lips for him to not even start back in with his argument as I walked around the side of the truck to drop the tailgate.
“Payne moved into the service sub suites.”
Screech.
Car crash sounds flooded my brain as his words registered. All the joy drained out of me as I skimmed the carefully packed bed of the pickup, assuring myself that nothing had gotten damaged on the drive back.
“Did you hear what I said?” Thor asked. “Payne moved into the suites instead of the house. He said that it was clear that we had things we needed to work through that we weren’t ready to include him in yet, and that until he could be a full piece of the partnership, he was going to stay there.”
“So… he didn’t break things off with us completely,” I murmured, still trying to wrap my head around this sudden and abrupt turn of events.
“No.”
“Did he leave because you told him I was going to ride in the Bull and Barrel Bash?”
“I didn’t tell him you were going to ride; I told him you were thinking about it and asked him to help me convince you not to,” he said. “He asked what your reasons were. I told him they didn’t matter. That getting on the back of a bull was too reckless to have rational reasons and that I could never support you doing something so unbelievably asinine and potentially dangerous. I told him I couldn’t even consider it because I can’t.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that out on the ride. You can’t even think about it, which means that I can’t talk to you about it. I can’t explain myself to you so you can help me unravel it, which is a whole different kind of scary. And I get it; I can’t ask you to put your feelings aside to sort through mine, which is also kind of terrifying. So here we are, two scared, terrified bastards clinging so tight to our feelings that the one good thing in our lives is gone. And it’s my fault again. Face it, Thor, I’m the problem. I’m not good for you. That’s why you fought so hard against us being friends in the first place, all the way back in the beginning. Because you could already see that one day my impulsiveness was going to break your heart.”
“Wylde—”
“I need to unload the truck and set up Payne’s flowers so they don’t die, and so he can see that his vision mattered enough for me to see it through before… I have to go, and you have to get him back. You have to convince him that moving in with you was the right idea, because it was. He was good for you, and you were good for him, and he deserves to have all his wishes come true. You both do.”
“It isn’t you he’s upset with,” Thor blurted. “It’s me. For issuing a blanketnowithout discussion. Because one day there might be something he wants to do, or try, or experience, and he was afraid that if I was already being so bullheaded about the possibility of you doing something I didn’t agree with, it would be nothing but a tug of war between us whenever something theleast bit dangerous came up. Like him getting on the back of your Harley, which he desperately wanted to do and planned to ask you about; only after the way I blew up in the kitchen, he didn’t know if he could. He didn’t know if he could trust me to talk about the things that came up on a case-by-case basis, so he told me that I needed to figure out how to deal with my fears in a way that didn’t make them everyone’s fears, and honestly, Wylde, I don’t know how to do that right now.”
“I get that. Which was why I’d never meant for you to find the flyer. I should have left it here before we went to the cabin. It was poor judgment on my part. I’m sorry.”
It was strange that the day, which had started out so bright and sunny, was blurred to a shimmery haze that was dull around the edges, like we were in for a storm. Maybe tarping everything in the bed of the truck would be better. It was only after I’d put down the bag of potting soil I’d picked up that I realized the day hadn’t changed at all. It was still as bright as ever. I was just staring at it through a haze of tears.
It had only been a few hours since I left, and I was already pining for the sight of Payne’s brilliant smile and unending exuberance, while convinced that the best thing I could do for both of them was let them go.
And I’d thought I was scared about the possibility of getting back up on the back of a bull. No. What I was truly terrified of, on a soul-deep, earth-shattering layer, was that I was never going to feel like my old self again, ever. But more than that, it was the sudden knowledge that for the first time in my life, I was going to have to figure that out alone.
Chapter Fourteen