Chapter 2

The fifth visit arrived by way of a fish fry that neither of them had planned.

It started as a text, the innocent kind they had gotten good at: Danny mentioning that his neighbor had left a cooler of crappie on his porch with no instructions, and Judy answering that fried fish was one of the four food groups, and the other three being gravy. He texted back that the porch was free at sunset. She texted back that she would bring the sass and a pie she had not made.

By the time she pulled up the gravel drive, the light had gone long and orange, and Danny stood at a battered fryer beside the house with his sleeves rolled and an apron over his chest that said KISS THE COOK in letters so sarcastic they could only have been a gift. Judy got out of the car, took one look at him, and put a hand over her heart.

"Damn," she said. "That's my kind of man."

"You said that at the sandwich shop."

"I stand by my record."

"Coming to the fish or coming to the apron?"

"Both. I'm versatile."

He laughed the way he did when she got him, a short exhale through the nose, like the laugh had tried to stay private and failed. She liked that laugh more than she had told him. Some things a woman kept for herself, the way she kept the fact that she had changed her blouse twice before leaving the house and had finally, out of spite, put on the comfortable one, the soft blue one that had been washed so many times it had opinions about nothing.

The fish was golden and reckless with pepper. They ate at the picnic table behind the house, a table he had clearly sanded that afternoon because there was sawdust still caught in the grain and a certain pride caught in his face when she ran her palm across it.

"You made this smooth for me," she said.

"I made it smooth for me. You're just benefiting."

"Careful. Generosity was going to spoil me, remember?"

"You're already spoiled. I'm keeping pace."

The pasture stretched out behind them, going from gold to lavender as the sun dropped. His horses stood at the far fence like they were being paid to look picturesque. Judy stole the last piece of fish off his plate, and he let her, and she noticed him letting her, and that was somehow the flirtiest thing that had happened all evening.

They talked while the light failed. About her sister who entered every chili cook-off within three counties and had never placed. About his fence he still had not mended, which had become a running joke, the fence that would never be fixed because it was too useful as a thing to say he meant to do. About the nutrition store, where a man had come in that week asking if protein powder could be smoked.

"What did you tell him?" Danny asked.

"I told him it could, but only over a campfire, in a ceremony."

"And he believed you?"

"He bought two tubs. Men believe anything you say with a straight face."

"I believe everything you say with a straight face."

She looked at him across the table, her fingers still greasy from the fish, and felt the familiar turn in her chest, the one that had been turning since the glass doors, since the duster, since the first time his hand had found hers across a restaurant table like it was asking a question only she could hear.

"You keep saying things like that," she said, "and I'm going to start thinking you mean them."

"I've been meaning them since the sandwich shop. You're a slow study."

"I'm careful. There's a difference."

"Tell me the difference."

She wiped her fingers on the napkin, taking her time, letting the pause do work. "Careful is when you know exactly what you want," she said, "and you make it wait because you want to be sure it's still there in the morning."

"And slow?"

"Slow is what you've been doing. Which I also like, for the record. You're the only man I know who can make waiting feel like a full-time occupation."

"I had good teachers," he said. "Cattle. You can't rush cattle or women. Both will go where they're going, and the trick is walking beside them."

"That's either the wisest thing you've ever said or an insult I haven't finished understanding."

"Depends on the morning."

The sky went purple. He put the plates away and came back with two cups of coffee and the blanket off the back of his couch, and they walked out through the gate into the pasture because the evening was too good to spend near a fryer. They settled on a low rise where the grass was thick, the blanket spread over it, the horses at the far end pretending not to monitor the situation.

Judy sat with her boots out in front of her, coffee warming her hands. Danny sat close enough that their shoulders touched when either of them breathed deeply, which they were both doing on purpose.

"Tell me something you haven't texted," she said, flipping his old line back on him.

He thought about it while the first star decided whether to commit. "I talk to the horses when you leave," he said. "I tell them things I wouldn't tell a person."

"What kinds of things?"

"That I like how she laughs before the joke's finished because she already knows it's funny. That she smells like the shop, coffee and that lotion she wears, and I notice it in the truck for two days after."

Judy felt her face go warm and was grateful for the dark. "You tell the horses that."

"They're discreet. Worst gossips in the county, but discreet."

"They're going to tell the other horses."

"Let them. I said it in front of witnesses. That's the closest a man my age gets to a declaration."

She set her coffee down in the grass, and the movement brought her around to face him, her knee brushing his thigh. He didn't move away. He never moved away; that was the thing about him, stillness that wasn't indifference, stillness that was a held door.

"Danny."

"Judy."

"Every time you say my name like that I forget what I was going to say."

"Take your time. I'm not going anywhere." And then, because he knew her by now: "Unless you want me to."

"I have never once wanted that."

"Then say what you came out here to say."

She hadn't known she'd come out there to say anything. But the pasture had a way of loosening things, and his patience had a way of inviting them, and the star had committed, so she did too.

"I don't want to be careful tonight," she said.

He looked at her for a long moment, the way he had looked at her mouth that first night and then chosen the more dangerous option of her eyes. "All right," he said quietly. "How uncareful?"

"Undecided," she said. "Start something and we'll find out together."

His hand came up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his knuckles grazing her jaw on the way back down, and by the way her breath caught you would have thought he had done a great deal more. That was the economy of him. He spent touches like a man who had counted them.

She leaned in first. She was proud of that later. The kiss started the way their kisses always started, soft and almost polite, and then it did what their kisses always did, which was stop pretending. Her hand found the front of his shirt. His arm came around her waist and drew her across the small distance between them until she was tucked against his chest, the coffee forgotten, the horses pretending harder than ever.

The blanket held them. The grass beneath it was soft and the night had gone warm the way Texas nights do in apology for the afternoons. He kissed her slowly, then not slowly, then slowly again, like a man reading a good book twice. Her fingers worked at his collar, found the top button undone, and rested there, asking the same question his had asked at her jaw.

"That all right?" she whispered, using his line.

"If it wasn't," he said against her mouth, "you'd know."

She undid the second button. Then the third. He let her, breathing carefully, his hands still behaving themselves at her waist, which was its own kind of provocation. She got the shirt open and put her palm flat on his chest, on the gray-white hair there and the steady heartbeat underneath it, and felt him exhale like he'd been holding that breath for weeks.

"Your heart's going," she said.

"It's been going since the glass doors. You're just now noticing."

"I noticed. I just finally got to put my hand on it."

His hand came up and covered hers, pressing it there, holding it in place. "Then keep it there a while," he said. "It's yours for the evening, if you want the deed."

"You keep offering me deeds. One day I'm going to accept and you're going to regret the paperwork."

"I regret nothing about you, Judy. Not one minute of it."

She kissed him for that, hard, and he made a sound low in his chest that she felt more than heard, and that sound undid something careful in her that had been holding out for a committee vote. She shifted, and he shifted, and somehow she was in his lap, her knees in the grass on either side of him, her skirt riding up to where she allowed it, his hands settling at her hips like they'd been briefed.

"You're straddling me in a pasture," he observed.

"I'm getting comfortable. There's a difference."

"Tell me the difference."

"Comfortable is when you know exactly what you want and you stop pretending you don't."

He laughed up at her, and she looked down at this handsome man, this careful man, this man who had waited by glass doors and never once pushed, and she felt powerful and soft at the same time, which she suspected was the entire point of him.

She reached back and pulled the pin from her hair, letting it fall, and the way his face changed made the whole drive worth it. He sat up, one arm banded around her to keep her settled against him, and buried his other hand in her hair, and kissed her neck, her jaw, the place below her ear that made her grip his shoulders.

"Danny."

"Mm."

"You've been saving that."

"I've been saving all of it. You think a man my age spends it fast?"

"I think a man your age knows exactly what he's doing."

"Finally," he said, and kissed her collarbone, open-mouthed and unhurried, "she notices things."

She laughed, and the laugh broke into something smaller when his mouth found the edge of her neckline, the soft worn cotton of the blouse giving way to warm skin, and she felt the night air on her shoulders where he pushed the fabric aside, and she let him, and the stars got an eyeful and were, she felt sure, discreet about it, in the way of all country witnesses.

His hands were everywhere she allowed and nowhere she hadn't, which made her want to allow more, and she was halfway to deciding when he pulled back and looked at her, hair down, blouse off one shoulder, lips gone soft and serious.

"Undecided still?" he asked.

"You're making a strong case for careless."

"Tell you what," he said, brushing her hair back with both hands, holding her face like it was a thing he'd found and was not going to return. "We got no clock out here. No couch that knows us. Just horses and stars and a blanket I'm going to have to burn if we don't behave."

"We're not behaving."

"We're negotiating. Behaving is the opening offer."

She laughed again and put her forehead to his, their breath mingling, his heartbeat under her palm going like a hoof at a trot now. "Counteroffer," she said. "You keep doing what you're doing, exactly the way you're doing it, and I'll decide by the time the moon's up."

"The moon's already up."

"Then I've decided."

"What did you decide?"

She took his hand from her face and put it on her waist, on the warm bare strip of skin above her belt where the blouse had come untucked, and held it there.

"I decided," she said, "that careful is for sandwich shops, and I am done with the sandwich shop portion of the evening."

He kissed her like the decision had been read into the record. They went down onto the blanket together, the grass cushioning, the night holding its warm breath around them, and what followed was long and slow and had no use for clocks. His hands learned her the way he'd learned the land, thoroughly, without hurry, appreciative of every acre. Hers learned him right back, the map of old work in his shoulders, the softness at his middle he was slightly vain about and she was slightly fond of, the sounds he made when she found a place he liked, which were quiet and honest and made her bolder than she'd been in twenty years.

Clothes loosened but did not entirely leave; there is a version of undressed that is somehow more undressed than naked, and they found it, shirts open, belts undone, skin everywhere skin wanted to be, the rest of it a rumor the stars repeated to the horses, who kept their own counsel as promised.

She ended up with her cheek on his bare chest, his heartbeat finally slowed to a walk, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her shoulder blade, the blanket tangled around them like a third party that had gotten attached.

"You know what I'm going to say," she murmured.

"You fell for a man because of a coat."

"I fell for a man because of a fish fry, which is worse, and I'll deny both."

"Then what do I tell them?"

She smiled into his chest hair, comfortable as a cat in a sunbeam, ruined in the best way, and delivered her verdict to the pasture at large.

"Tell them," she said, "he had terrible manners and the horses talked."

Below the rise, one of the horses snorted, which they both chose to take as testimony.