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Stepping closer to Rye, I patted him hard enough on his back to leave a bruise, and he coughed out the coffee stuck in his windpipe, but neither Red nor my mom paid him any attention.

“Liluye? Did I get that right?” Red asked, and my mom’s eyes lit up when he said her name correctly. People usually didn’t—but they were still holding hands. “It’s a beautiful name.”

My mom blushed. She flippin’ blushed! “Thank you,” she said. “It’s Western Apache. It means Singing Hawk While Soaring.”

“It’s lovely. I’m a bit of a birder myself,” Red said. “But my true love is photography. If you can spare a minute, I’ll show you. I have a whole photo album inside filled with hawk pictures.” He let go of her hand, but he seemed reluctant. My mom nodded and followed him up the loading ramp into the storeroom. Hadn’t she just said she was late for work?

“What the fuck just happened?” Rye said.

I had no clue. I couldn’t even speak.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DEVO

Red helped my mom into her car, and I watched from the front doors of The Red Wild Outdoors, still dumbfounded.

I couldn’t seem to take my eyes away from the scene outside. Theo watched it go down from the stoop in front of Ace’s House too. Finally, he looked at me and I at him. I shrugged with a seriously confused sneer on my face, and he shook his head. When my mom drove off, Red jogged across the street, and there was a little bit of a pep in his step.

“Well, ain’t that the finger in your pie?” Rye said, pulling me out of my grossed-out confusion. What a visual!

I turned and slumped back against the doors behind me when I closed them.

He said, “If they get married, does that mean we’ll be cousins?”

“Uhh…”

He laughed at me. “Look at it this way. If they date, Red will be much nicer. At least, I hope he would be.”

I shuddered. My face was blank. I could feel it, but I couldn’t seem to rearrange my muscles.

He laughed again. “I told you his bark is worse than his bite. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen him react to a woman that way, and I’m damn sure he’s never been more charmin’. Your mama must be special.”

He did have a point there. “She is.”

“Alright then,” he said. “What’s the plan for your last day?”

Right. The reason I was stuck here. “I guess we should finish the display we started yesterday. Did Red say anything about it this mornin’?”

“No. He didn’t come into this part of the store. He was diggin’ through some boxes in the back room when I got here. He pulled a bunch of merchandise and said he needed to get over to the post office. I think maybe he wants to send a care package to that girl from the other day. He didn’t say that, but I can’t figure any other reason. He keeps talkin’ about her.”

“Okay, good.” If Red wanted to do something nice for Sylvie, then I was kind of excited to surprise him, to thank him.

So maybe I had learned a little something from this whole thing. I didn’t have to agree with someone personally to help them. I surrounded myself with issues I felt passionate about or issues that directly affected me, but that was pretty small-minded of me. There were plenty of other issues in the world that I knew nothing about because I hadn’t wanted to know about them. I ignored them or avoided them because they didn’t fit into my world view.

I still didn’t agree with hunting, but I had never really realized or thought about how many people hunted for their food. In this day and age, I guess I’d just assumed everyone went to the grocery store. But as I’d learned from being at Red Wild over the last week, that wasn’t true at all. And some people, whether it was how they’d been raised or out of financial necessity or a need from within, lived differently than I did.

The whole thing had the farm idea churning in my mind. Maybe we could do it through Ace’s House. Maybe Theo would be into it. In fact, I bet he would. He’d do anything to help people.

“I’m gonna grab some breakfast,” Rye said. “Think I’ll walk up to the café. You want anything?”

“Thanks, no,” I said as I turned to check our progress on the camping display we’d started setting up the day before. Making the displays had turned out to be fun. “I’m not hungry, and I wanna get started.”

The cowbell on the door clanked when Rye left, and I ran to the back room to grab the T-shirts that had started this whole thing. I hung them up on a rack in the new clothing area, but just ’cause I could, next to them, I hung shirts that said “God Created Us All.” It had a picture of mountains with bears and deer in the background and people in the foreground. If a customer wanted to buy the homophobic shirt, at least they’d have to look at the other shirt too. Maybe it would make them think.

I tapped my finger on my chin, looking at the camping display, trying to decide if I should set up a really comfy-looking inflatable couch to display with the other cool camping accessories we’d found still in their boxes in the back room. I’d already set up this amazing tent thing that was like an instant bathroom, complete with a portable toilet, sink, and shower. I could definitely be persuaded to camp if I was armed with a pop-up bathroom.

I stood there, envisioning it: setting up camp with Abey, hiking over beautiful golden plains and rugged trails through the Tetons, grilling fish we’d caught in a stream for dinner, and then laughing with her and snuggling up together in a big, heated sleeping bag… But then the clunky cowbell on the door jingled again.