Page 23 of The Bride
“Yes, Jake,” she answered, but I could tell she was humoring me.
Still, I figured I would leave her to her… conversation. All that typing. I don’t get why he didn’t man up and call her.
“I think I’ll go up and watch ESPN.”
She smiled at me. “Okay.”
I got up and started to head out of the living room when she said, “Jake?”
“Yep?”
“Game of Thronesis coming back soon. You like that show, right?”
“My favorite.”
“Okay, so we can watch that together.”
She was lonely, I thought. The texting Riley aside, this was different. Being in the house with someone. Sam had been more than her father, he’d been her whole world. Except for me.
“Yeah,” I told her. “We can watch that together.”
* * *
Ellie
April
“Not bad,” Jake said as I showed him the numbers. We were at the kitchen table. It was Sunday night, which meant we were working financials of the ranch.
Expenses, our calf yield, the current market rates for beef, and what we needed to sell to hit our goals.
It was strange because I wasn’t the best at math in school, but for this stuff you could use a calculator and I seemed to have a head for it.
Like now I was showing Jake how we were overpaying for hay. My dad had always stuck with Mr. Johnson, but they were charging almost ten dollars more for a large bale than the McCurdys.
I had no intention of being disloyal to Mr. Johnson, but I told him if he didn’t come down on the price I was walking.
He crumpled like a tin can under extreme water pressure.
Jake could care less about that kind of stuff. Until he saw the result.
“You really called Mr. Johnson up and started haggling for hay cost,” he said smiling as I showed him what it meant in savings per year.
“Girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.”’
He looked at me then and I could see he was thinking something serious.
“You’re really getting into this. I wasn’t completely sure if you would or not.”
“Uh, hello? Like I sort of have no choice. Future here.”
He nodded. “I guess it never it occurred to me if this was the future you wanted?”
“Of course it is.”
Right? I mean I always knew ranching was my future. I suppose I wanted it. Or maybe I hadn’t really thought it out because I was supposed to be way older before I started having to do any of this stuff.
And it was a lot of stuff.
