Page 6 of Brett and Rowdy (Gomillion High Reunion #5)

All of which he thought he’d just skip. He didn’t need a yearbook. He couldn’t see it. And while he had been known to play a solid game of beat baseball, basketball was not on his to-do list.

“Oh, come on,” Crystal wheedled. “It would be fun. We could dress up. I got one of the Choose Life shirts. And then I got some neon headbands and the whole thing, I’m so looking forward to it.”

“If you want to go, lady,” he told Ashley. “You go for it. I’m totally willing to hang out at the house, have a beer, and put my feet up.”

“There’s going to be awards, Rowdy.” Crystal was fixin’ to get on his last nerve. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah, I could go for the person who’s the most blind now. Oh no, wait, the person with the best seeing eye dog.”

Ashley chuckled. “No, Rowdy, you and me, we’d be the ones with the oldest kid.”

“And the newest graduate?” He shook his head and grinned. “Lord have mercy.”

“I didn’t mean to—” Crystal started, sounding shaky as leaves on a tree.

“Don’t apologize,” Brett grumbled. “They’re just trying to make you feel bad.”

“No, we’re not.” That wasn’t part of the deal, and Rowdy wasn’t going to listen to shit. “We were just making ourselves laugh. It had nothing to do with her or you.”

“You didn’t wanna come here? Why did you even show up?”

“Okay, Brett, don’t be tacky.”

Oh, he didn’t think so. “Because Ashley asked me to. I’m here for my girl’s graduation, and to take her home with me to the ranch. That’s it. I didn’t come to make any trouble.”

“Oh, bullshit,” Brett snapped, and the temptation to slam the man’s head down into his food was huge. “The way you two rolled in, you were here to make trouble.”

Rowdy felt Ashley’s foot touch his leg, and he kept his face calm.

“Last time I checked, I was an adult, and if I want to go to a high school reunion with the mother of my child or anybody else I fucking want to? It is my right. I don’t have to ask your permission to show up here in your town. I was invited.”

The asshole was implied.

Ashley kicked him this time, and it wasn’t as gentle.

“Y’all be nice. I invited Rowdy because I thought it would be fun.

Y’all know full well that I got trashed quite a bit while I was here in my senior year.

I just wanted a little of what was coming to me.

Rowdy is doing me a favor. He doesn’t even remember anybody from this town.

He was only here for a year and a half. But I don’t intend for y’all to be evil to him.

He was good to me when lots of others weren’t. ”

He got ready to ask Ashley if she wanted to leave when Brett sighed. “You know what, you’re absolutely right. It’s been twenty years. You did shock the hell out of some of these people, and it was glorious.”

Ashley giggled softly. “That was the point. I wish that bitch Deidre was here right now. I’d just…” She stopped, obviously calming herself down. “Oh, I don’t know. But I missed my chance earlier.”

“I bet she’s at the bar.” Brett chuckled, the sound dark. “You know… we could stop and get a beer afterward, the four of us.”

“You’d want to do that?” Ashley sounded about as surprised as he felt.

“Are you kidding? I mean if the two of you were a story, then four of us? We are a fucking headline.”

Rowdy barked out a sound that was sort of like somebody stepping on a catfish. “You know, I could use a beer. I mean… unless y’all want me to be the designated driver…”

There was a silence, and then the entire table cracked up.

Ashley giggled madly. “No, no, we’ll make Barney do it.”

“Oh, man. He looks like a very capable fellow.” Brett hooted, and Rowdy remembered that sound, just a little wild and a lot hilarious.

“Y’all rock,” Crystal said. “Seriously. I can brave the crowd by myself tomorrow night for the dance, but I would love to set tongues wagging.”

“Well, let’s lay it down, then,” Rowdy murmured. A beer would make it worth going to Timbers tonight. And if Brett was willing to be decent… “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Crystal. I get defensive.”

“And I babble when I’m nervous,” she murmured. “No big.”

“Well, now we can all eat without getting indigestion,” Ashley put in. “So, Crystal, I hear your Etsy shop is really taking off.”

“Yes. I mean, it’s doing well. I hope I can quit the one job by the end of the year.”

Shit. That had to suck. He had no idea how many jobs she was working, but he knew from having many friends in New Mexico who were artists that it could be a hard row to hoe.

“What all do you make?”

“I do dollhouse miniatures.”

“No shit? That’s cool.”

“Thanks. I mean, I make the most driving the bookmobile, but I would love to quit working at the Ingles. The bakery is fine, but if I have to pipe one more Happy Birthday, Oliver , I might explode.”

Ashley chuckled. “You probably did Madison’s graduation cupcakes.”

“Oh my God, I might have.” Crystal giggled again, and they all munched on their apps until their food arrived.

He breathed in deep, happy to have breakfast from a restaurant.

It was a hike into town from his ranch, and while the Elk Horn in Chama was yummy, he loved to go out for breakfast food when he traveled, no matter what time of day.

“Mmm.” Brett chuckled. “Waffle. You need a hand with where things are, man?”

“Yeah.” He was curious to see how Brett did.

“You do the clock method?”

“I do.”

“Cool. So your waffle is on the right at three. On your main plate, which is front and center, the grits are at nine in a little bowl, the eggs in the center, the sausage is up at twelve, and your butter and toast are down at six.”

“Nice. You’ve done this before.”

“My dad’s cousin, Jake, is legally blind, and he does the clock thing. I meet him for breakfast once a quarter or so.”

“Well, that works for me. No, down, Barney.” Barney did like grits. A lot.

“He’s a food hound compared to Wilma, huh?” That was Ashley, who always seemed fascinated by a dog in a restaurant, no matter how many times she dealt with it.

“He can be, yeah.” Rowdy grinned, reaching down to rub his good boy’s ears. “But he’s pretty well-behaved.”

“Is it weird?” Brett asked.

“What?” He wasn’t sure what the man meant.

“Having a dog everywhere. Do people give you shit like we always see in the TikTok videos?”

“Some places, yeah. Believe it or not, the worst places are airports and stuff. Or big box stores. Places where they ought to know better.”

“Seriously?” Crystal sounded downright outraged. “They’re supposed to have all this training.”

“Yep. But I guess they have the most fakers too, right? I walk into a restaurant in Chama, they haven’t seen a couple hundred ill-behaved emotional support dogs.

But in Walmart in Albuquerque, they have.

” He’d had a couple of those crappy-owner dogs come after his over the years.

Rowdy never blamed the dogs, just the assholes who let them be a problem.

“That’s not cool, man.”

“Your cousin doesn’t have a dog?” Rowdy asked.

“No, he uses a cane, but he’s better at distance than at close up, so he does okay.”

“Ah.” They all shut up then, digging in, and Ashley helped him out with butter and syrup on the waffle and butter on the grits. She was so used to it by now that they didn’t even discuss it, and he wondered what Brett’s face was saying that wasn’t coming out aloud. He’d have to ask Ash.

“So, Ashley, I bet you’re going to miss your girl.”

Ashley snorted at Crystal’s words. “I missed Madison when she was at the dorms because she didn’t want to live with me.

I missed Madison when she got her own apartment.

But I have to tell you, knowing that she’s going to be with her dad, where she’s wanted to be for her entire life? I sort of hate him.”

Rowdy chuckled softly, tickled to death. “She’s a cowgirl to the bone. She’s not meant to sell real estate, honey.”

“No she’s not, not even a little. You know, she’s never once wanted to do anything else but be a cowgirl on that ranch. Never wanted to be a ballerina, never wanted to be an astronaut, never wanted to do anything else.”

Poor momma, losing her calf to the great wide world. “Well, it’s not like you can’t come see her whenever you want to. I think you’re always welcome.” He stopped and grinned. “You can stay on her side of the house.”

Because it wasn’t like they didn’t have ten thousand square feet of main house plus eight casitas. It was very rare that all the casitas were rented out.

“So what is she going to do out there in New Mexico?” Brett asked, like she was going to the damn moon.

“She’s got a lot of ideas, actually. We’re going to bring her in as a junior partner, let her do some planning.

My father and I are co-owners, and we both agreed to give her ten percent of our ownership, so she would have a twenty percent stake.

And for that, she’ll have to work her little butt off.

Then, once my dad retires, we’ll renegotiate ownership, and when I retire, it’ll be hers.

But she has a lot of thoughts about livestock management.

We also run a bunch of outdoor excursions.

We have elk tags. We have stocked ponds for fishermen, we’ve got a certain amount of mustangs that we run, and then there’s the beef.

And there are some discussions about churro sheep.

We’ve got a nice little herd, and she has some ideas about all that stuff.

So we’re going to kind of—not let her have her head, per se—but let her implement some ideas, take some risks in a controlled situation so that she can figure out what works, what doesn’t, and get some real-life experience. ”

He was proud of her and her ideas. And honestly, he and his dad had enough of a solid base to let her make some mistakes, take some risks, and be the cowboy she’d always wanted to be.

“You sound excited,” Crystal said.

And Brett added, “You sound like such a dad.”

“I am, thank you.” What else would he sound like?

He was Madison’s daddy, all the way to the core.

“And Madison is the neatest kid you’ll ever meet.

Smart. Sure. Steady, stubborn as the day is long.

The idea that I could get up and have coffee with her and not be thinking about when I was going to have to send her back home? It’s pretty damn appealing.”

“But I get her back when she’s forty-two, right?”

He snorted at Ash. “Shit, when she’s forty-two, we’re going to have grandbabies.”

And wasn’t that a wild thought? Grandbabies? Them.

“What does Dan think about all this?” Brett asked, and his voice sounded tight in Rowdy’s ears.

“I don’t know, Brett, what does Dan think about this?

You two do have a beer every now and again.

” Ashley chuckled. “He’s damn proud of her, and he’s gonna miss her, but he loves having the excuse to go out to New Mexico and go fishing.

In fact, if I told him tomorrow that we were going to retire and move to New Mexico to fish?

The house would be packed in ten point five seconds, no question, no comment.

He’s just waiting for me to tell him that all he has to do is fish for the rest of his life. ”

Like Ashley would be any happier in New Mexico than he would have been here. Ashley needed a certain amount of gentility and a lot more humidity than they had.

They finished their meals and Rowdy sat back, taking a deep breath. “Damn, that was good shit. I do love a good bowl of grits.”

“I bet they don’t do good grits out your way,” Brett said, and Rowdy shrugged.

“Rose makes them, but not very often.”

“Rose?” Brett sounded confused as fuck.

He nodded. “My housekeeper. She cooks for me, my dad. She’s a good lady.

Her husband is a trail guide for me, and her kids do all sorts of odds and ends at the ranch.

” It was a great situation for him because he could just—he trusted Rose and Javier with his life.

It was hard not to blush, though. Because even Ashley didn’t have a full-time housekeeper. “Y’all ready to go get that beer?”

He was. He wanted to get this over and done with so he could go take a damn nap. He was tired of this whole being social, and dealing with former lovers was for the birds.

Rowdy needed to be able to breathe, and the air here was damn pea soup.