Page 55 of Sexting the Cowboy

“How young is too young for us?”

“I haven’t thought too much about that,” I admit. “But anything younger than twenty-one is probably too young for us.”

She nods. “That feels right.” She points her cup at me. “So how old is your…not-Reno?”

The wordyourslides right into a place in my chest that has been too quiet. I take a breath. “Forty-six.”

Mac’s eyes bulge. “But you’ve always said you only date guys within a year of your age. That’s why I thought you’d have a fit over my hookup’s age.”

I shrug, cheeks hot. “There are exceptions to every rule.”

“And he’s exceptional?” she asks, teasing, but gentle with it.

The truth rises before I can dress it. “In every way.”

She grins like she discovered buried treasure. “You’re killing me.”

“I’m killing myself,” I say, half laughing, half not. “It’s wrong. It’s complicated. It’s?—”

“Real,” she finishes. “Which is the worst and best combination.”

We sit in that for a moment, our coffees cooling, the fan ticking, the sunlight crawling across the tent’s floor like a cat finding a warm spot. I can hear a radio clicking somewhere out by the pens, a burst of static and a voice telling someone to move a gate. It’s the happiest I’ve felt in a long time and the most precarious.

Then she quietly asks, “Do you like who you are when you’re with him?”

“Yes,” I say again, and my voice surprises me. It’s steadier than I expect. “I don’t have to perform. I don’t have to shrink. He listens. He also won’t let me get away with my bullshit.”

“So he’s a person,” she says, relieved. “Not a project.”

I shake my head, and a half smile creeps onto my lips.

“Okay. I like him, in theory.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know you,” she says. “And I know what this face looks like when you’re about to climb into a burning building for the satisfaction of saving the wallpaper. That’s not the face you have. You have the face you get when something is easy in the middle of everything hard.”

I swallow and look at the doorway. The breeze decides to help for one long, generous second. “I hate that you’re good at this.”

“I know you a little.” Mac watches my eyes. She doesn’t look at the phone. She drains her cup, sets it down, and stands. “Promise me one thing.”

“Define promise.”

“If at any point your gut says stop, you stop. Even if your heart says go.”

“Deal. Your turn. Promise me you’ll ice that wrist before you work.”

She groans. “Rude. But fine.”

We’re grinning at each other like teenagers when the radio on the shelf cackles to life. “Grounds to medical, just FYI, the announcer will be testing audio in ten, and the petting zoo llama has escaped, again. Copy?”

“Copy,” I say into it, because I like being useful even when it’s stupid. “We’re on standby for hoof-and-mouth drama.”

Mac cackles. “Do not let that llama in here. I will film you fighting it.”

“Go away,” I say fondly, and she salutes with two fingers and slips out into the bright, just as the speakers across the fairgrounds crack and pop twice and a voice boomscheck one, two, threelouder than God.

I’m alone with the fans, the radio, and my traitor of a phone. I pick it up because I’m tired of pretending my hands aren’t itching.