Page 14 of Wicked Cowboy

“I don’t hate it.” I think about the long afternoons stringing lights, the way the townsfolk show up to carve pumpkins like it’s a ritual. “It’s a lot. But it matters to the town and to my family.”

She nods, like that makes perfect sense. “People remember nights like this.”

A barn owl ghosts from one cottonwood to another. Behind us, the wagon murmurs, kids counting fake gravestones, a couple tucked close under a blanket, someone telling their friend the haunted maze totally has real ghosts this year. In the dark, our shoulders brush every time the tractor bumps. Each pass lights a fuse under my skin, and I’m fighting not to notice.

By the time we loop toward the mill gulch, low fog creeps across the ground where Luke hid the smoke machine. The kids go wild. A preteen Dracula stands and proclaims something about “the mist of the otherworld” and falls backward into a haybale, cackling. Frankie cheers, delighted.

“You don’t spook easily,” I say.

“Grew up in a noisy building where the fire alarm tested itself every other week,” she says. “Ghosts are nothing.”

“Good to know.”

We rumble under the last arch and back into the glow of the yard. The wagon unloads, new riders clamber on. The second round is an older date-night crowd, with teens in face paint and a couple in their sixties in matching skeleton sweaters who have been holding hands since before I was born.

On the next run, Frankie quiets. The cold sneaks in off the creek, and the air goes thin and silver. When we hit the bend, I throttle down for the bumpy patch, and she braces her palm on the console, fingers spread, steady.

“You okay?” I ask.

She nods. “I’m storing all of this in my memory, the sound, the sky, and your face when you’re not pretending not to smile.”

“I’m not—” I stop, because I hear the lie as I say it.

She tips her head, satisfied. “Uh-huh.”

The north fence is a line of dark against darker hills. I should be thinking about the weak post near the old cottonwood. Instead, I’m thinking about her last night under the quilt, the way she looked at me like I was special to her.

We’ve only known each other for a few days. It’s crazy to think that she could feel anything about me but how much I annoy her.

We return the hayride to the noise and light of the harvest party again. The skeleton-sweater couple thanks me like I ferried them across the Styx. The teen ghouls scatter toward the maze. A third crowd piles on. Luke appears long enough to toss me abag of kettle corn and flash Frankie a thumbs-up so exaggerated it should come with a warning label.

“Subtle,” I say.

“He’s proud of his fog machine,” she says, laughing, even though we both know that’s not what he was thumbs-upping us for.

Two more runs and Grandma finally waves me off the tractor, shooing a volunteer into the seat. “Go eat,” she orders. “You look starving.”

“I could eat,” I say, as she’s already pushing a paper boat of chili dogs into my hands.

Frankie ends up with a cinnamon-sugar donut and a cup of hot cider. We stand by the fence, half in the crowd and half out, the noise a shimmer that doesn’t quite reach the field. The pumpkins glow like campfires scattered across the dark.

“Brush Creek magic,” she says reverently, stealing a bite of my chili dog like this is a thing we’ve always done.

“Don’t call it that,” I say, automatically.

“Why? Because you don’t want to admit something magical might be happening?”

“Because Luke’ll brand it and make T-shirts.”

She laughs, head tipping back, and I fall a little further into the mess I’ve been trying not to name.

The fiddler has found a rhythm now, joined by a guitar and a mandolin. The front of the barn has been swept clean for dancing, and a handful of couples spin in a loose circle, their boots shuffling, skirts brushing, kids weaving between them.

“You dance?” she asks.

“Only when Grandma strong-arms me.”

“I’m sure I can get her to tell you to dance with me,” Frankie says, eyes bright.