Page 47 of Brett and Rowdy
“I’d love to see it.”
“So come on.”
“What?” Had Rowdy just invited him to stay?
“You’re welcome. Come on out. Give it a look-see.”
He didn’t even know what to say. He couldn’t just go. “I have a dog.”
“Guess what? I do too.”
Brett chuckled, but he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to think. What did come-out-and-see-it mean even? “Maybe when Madison gets settled. I would hate to interfere with that process.”
Rowdy’s face went from open to carefully neutral. “Sure, man, no pressure. I was just getting to know you again and enjoying it, but I’m going home on Monday and it’s Saturday. I just wanted to spend a little more time.”
“I want that too. I’m just a little more… cautious, maybe? Shit, I don’t know, Rowdy. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not saying no. I’m only saying I’m not used to anyone telling me to just come on and visit.”
“Well, that’s kind of sad.”
Brett stared at him, taking his eyes off the road for half a second. “What do you mean?”
“Well, folks don’t ask you to come visit? I mean, that’s weird a little bit, don’t you think? I would love to have you come visit. I can kind of see where people might not want me to come and stay with them because I’m blind and a little bit of a pain in the ass. You got a basset hound, which is a low-maintenance kind of dog. And you can see, which makes you automatically less high maintenance. I’m not asking you to come and share my room. You can just come settle in the guest room. Hang out for a bit. Relax.”
Relax? Him? He had a thousand things to worry about, to stress on. “Yeah, I can see that you live a different life than I do.”
“It doesn’t make it wrong or anything, does it? Just makes it different.” Rowdy had an answer for anything. Some things never changed.
“What would your dad say if I came? What would the cowboys that work for you say?” They didn’t make gay cowboys, did they? No matter what the movies said.
“Well, my dad would say, ‘Hi. Nice to meet you. I like your dog’. The cowboys would say, ‘You’re a farrier? Can you come look at this horse? How about this one? How do you feel about looking at this horse?’”
“I don’t know. Surely you got folks to do that.”
“I do, but there’s always horses to shoe. That’s it. That’s the thing.” Rowdy smiled and shook his head. “Look, it’s not a big deal, man. You come if you want, it’s all cool. It was an offer, that’s all. Done. Don’t stress it.”
Don’t stress it. Right. It was kind of his job, stressing things. At least, he was fairly sure it was one of his jobs. Make art. Shoe horses. Work with iron. Stress about things. “Great. Sorry, I’m just a little bit freaked out about this whole thing. I neverexpected, I guess, to ever see you again. Really. I thought you were like a ghost.”
“That’s me. Spooky McMasterson. Seriously, man. I can tell you’re in your head a lot. I strongly suggest finding another hobby.”
“There’s no reason to be ugly.” He was trying here.
“Wasn’t being ugly, I was just telling you the truth.” Rowdy shrugged.
“So what, you just live your cowboy life not ever stressing anything?”
“No, I stress shit. But the simple fact is, the worst things that were going to happen to me happened. I lost my career, my sight, and my chance to see my little girl grow up all in the same day, in the same second. Once I figured out that I could survive that, make a new life, new career, newish career, and take care of my little girl when I needed to? Well…”
“What?”
“I guess after that, I took worrying with a grain of salt.”
Fuck, but Rowdy did have a way of distilling things down to the lowest common denominator.
Chapter Eleven
Most of the time, Rowdy didn’t think about being blind.
Well, he knew he was blind. He was aware that he couldn’t see, but he didn’t worry about it. It was his life. Hell, at this point, he was an incredibly short period of time away from having been blind half his life. However, in moments, just like right now, he really wished that he wasn’t blind because Ash and Dan were obviously wanting to be alone so Ash could deal with her own personal shit. Brett… Yeah, he wasn’t sure if Brett wanted to be alone, but he wanted Brett to be alone right now.
