She didn’t have to say that this one felt different. It was Christmas Eve, after all. What kind of mom would drive away on Christmas Eve unless she meant it?
More booze seemed in order. Lots more booze. The heat and alcohol didn’t burn this time. She could feel it spreading through her body, a stream of light warming her fingers and knees and the tip of her nose. “She told me I was old enough now. That when I graduate in May, I can leave. Just like her. And never come back.”
“Nice.”
She laughed at his sarcasm. “Parents of the year, I tell you.” A coyote howled, and they both turned toward what was left of the McKenzie property, which ran on the other side of the creek.
“Your dad worried about that coyote?” he asked.
“I have no idea.” Her dad never told her anything. He used to talk to Dean about that stuff. Coyotes and high pastures and grazing yields. Dean had once been the son her father never had. “You know, I never told you how sorry I was that he fired you.”
“Sure you did. Like eight hundred times.”
“Well, I’m still sorry.”
“It was ages ago,” Dean said. Dean’s family had sold off most of their herd, and Dean had been working summers for Dad since the minute he’d been able to sit on a horse and drive an ATV. Which was roughly about five minutes after being born.
“It was two summers ago,” she reminded him. It had been during the bright white-hot months of the fight between their fathers. “And it sucked.”
“It did. I liked that job.”
“Sometimes I think you were born in the wrong century.” She was loose from the booze and no food.
He gave her side-eyes.
“I mean it in a good way,” she clarified. “Like you would have been so happy in the old west, where there were tons of jobs on the land and you could just ride your horse and sleep under the stars and eat beans.”
He laughed. “Well, I hate beans, but the rest of it sounds good. But there’s still plenty of work to do in this century.”
“What are you going to do this summer?”
“I have pre-acceptance at Laramie Tech. Land Management.”
“You didn’t tell me that!” she cried.
He could blame his pink cheeks on the wind or the cold, but she knew the truth. And the truth was that big, bad, tough guy Dean McKenzie—blushed. “Well, it’s not Stanford—”
“Stop,” she whispered. “Don’t do that. That’s exactly the program you wanted, and you worked hard to get there. It’s awesome. What did your dad say?”
“That it was a miracle.” Dean kicked snow off the toe of his boot. Trina’s Mom once said that Dean and his dad, Eugene, fought like cats in a bag. And it was true, they couldn’t be in the same room without turning on each other.
Dean didn’t want what his father had. Not the money or the power. None of it. And Eugene could not understand that and so the fights were epic.
Sometimes Trina didn’t know who had it worse, her with her father and their long icy silences or Dean and his dad who clashed and fought and exploded against each other all the time.
It was a crappy toss-up.
“Screw him.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Dean tipped the flask to his lips and took a long pull. “Luckily, Laramie is far away and I’ll never have to come back here if I don’t want to.”
“Hear, hear,” she said, and took a swig when he handed the flask back to her.
The wind blew past the porch, and she couldn’t control her full-body shiver.
“You’re freezing,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she lied. But Dean got up off the blanket and wrapped the part he’d been sitting on around her. And then he tugged her against his chest, her cheek against the scratchy fabric of his camouflage snowmobile suit.
Her eyes went wide. She held her breath, both trying and not trying to feel his body beneath the layers between them. But she felt stupid and awkward. Heavy and stiff, like she’d suddenly turned into a mannequin.
She tried to pull away, because she didn’t know how to do that—how to lean back against Dean like it meant nothing. Because she didn’t know what she wanted it to mean. Or if it meant something to him.
Basically, she just didn’t lean back against guys.
“Just…relax,” he muttered, pulling her close, holding her still.
She sighed and did as he asked. In stages, she just let him hold all her weight and all the worry on her back, and after a while, after all the awkwardness faded away, it just felt really good. To just let him hold her up. He was big. He was strong.
He could handle it.
Dean was the one person in her life with whom she didn’t have to hide all her garbage.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, staring up at the snow falling from a coal-black sky.
“Yep.”
“Won’t your family miss you? I mean the party?”
“The McKenzie Christmas Eve Extravaganza will go on just fine without me. Besides, Josh is home.”
“How is your brother?”