42
I WAKE TO THE WARMTH OF BODIES BESIDE ME. Something soft and warm is pulled up to my neck, like a knitted blanket. I force my eyes open. Two cowboys with the same dimples kneel on either side of me as if praying, one with brown hair, the other’s, golden. On my right, West wears the haggard look of someone who hasn’t slept for a week.
My friends! How did you find us? Where’s Andy? I want to ask a million questions, but my tongue is too sluggish to even utter a syllable. I wander back to the sleepy realm.
? ? ?
“You did a good job knitting this up,” says Andy. Her cool touch on my right arm is familiar and gentle.
“I know how to set bones. I do for animals all the time,” comes Peety’s low, reassuring voice from somewhere behind me. “Andita, it is time for you to rest. You’ve been up all night.”
Did he say Andita or Andito?
“I promise to get you if Sammy wakes up,” he assures her.
“When Sammy wakes up,” she corrects.
Oh sister, go to sleep. I just need another moment here, myself. My whole body aches.
“That’s what I meant,” says Peety.
“Careful of that bump on her head,” she says. Her. The word never sounded so sweet. “Put the shawl back on. She’s freezing.”
Something comforting and warm is laid across me, and though my eyelids are too heavy to lift, I know it is the shawl that I lost a lifetime ago, made of the finest wool. I can almost feel its positive energy cocooning me. In an instant, I understand. West found it, that dark day when I nearly collided with him in the street. He knew.
I hear a double set of footsteps as Andy and Peety walk away.
West lies down next to me and lays his arm securely over my chest.
“If you’re going to start pitching woo, I’m making tracks,” says Cay.
“So make ’em, then.”
The gravel crunches as Cay walks away. Now I’m fully awake, but I don’t move.
“Samantha?” West’s voice is uncertain, almost shy. “That’s going to take some work.” His Texas drawl sounds more pronounced. It strikes me that he is nervous. I’m about to speak, but instead I let him continue. “I ain’t good at talking about things like this. So maybe I’ll practice so I get it right when you come to.”
I relax my eyelids and stay limp.
“I could give you a heap of reasons for my bad behavior. I didn’t have a smart daddy like you, or maybe where I come from, people like you don’t mix with people like me.”
A single drop of yolk can ruin a meringue. My cheeks flame as I remember his story about the blood in the fence paint. There were certain things about him he could never change, no matter how he tried.
“Or maybe I’ve just got stew for brains and couldn’t see what was in front of my nose until it was waving good-bye.” His voice takes on a more urgent tone. “You know when you were in that tree, burning? That was me whenever I looked at you. Stuck between heaven and hell, and not sure how I got there. All I knew was, I was gonna die if I didn’t do something about it. Thought I could get my head on straight if I just—” His normally smooth tenor cracks, and he pauses long enough for me to notice a songbird calling. “I’m sorry for what I did. By the time I realized no other hat would fit me, I figured you despised me, and there was no way I could dig myself out of that hole.”
I nearly open my eyes. Cay wasn’t talking about himself that night we peeled tangerines at Independence Rock. He was talking about West. I was the alligator-suede hat left in the window.
He lifts his arm off me and tucks the shawl up to my chin. “You know, I never needed much. Worked out good since all I owned was the sand in my boots and Franny. But now I do need something,” he says in a ragged voice, pausing to inhale. “I need you.”
The words send a delicious tingle through my ears and down to my toes. I should wake up now. Though it would be nice to hear this all a second time.
I open my eyes. He blinks when he sees me and the tears that have collected on his dark lashes splash onto my face.
“Well then, come here and kiss me.” I don’t bother lowering my voice anymore.
His face lights up and he does it, a kiss as sweet as a serenade and achingly familiar. The smoke of a lonely fire and something wild fills my senses and lifts me from my ordinary existence. My sigh echoes in his throat.
He lifts his face from mine. His eyelashes flicker. “You killed me twice in one day—once when you left that note, and again when I come here to find you half dead.”
“I’m sorry for so many things, for lying, putting you in danger, being a bur—”
“You’re apologizing for the wrong things.”
“What should I be sorry for, then?”
“For not trusting me.” He tucks his mouth into mine, making me lose all sense of who I am, and how I got here . All I know is, the snake’s aboard the rabbit again, and we’re flying to the stars.