Her mother heads off to check with the contractors alongside her dad. It’s definitely not my place – it’s not my scene, and I shouldn’t be saying shit considering I’m the guy who decided to turn up again after leaving the state – but I open my mouth anyway.

‘We’re here for you, May,’ I say tentatively. ‘If anyone can get back on their feet—’

‘Colt, you can stop now, alright?’ Her voice wavers, her eyes filling with tears, fists clenched at her sides. The hasty bun she’s tied her hair into threatens to fall out from on top of her head. ‘Please! Acting like you’ve been here all this time when you got out of this place as fast as you could and this, this is what we deal with while you’re up there at your game-night bars and your socials and your after-parties. Okay? I get why you’re here. I get it. I am sorry for the pain you are feeling. But you aren’t helping my pain when you treat me like you’re some sort of gift to the simple people of Oklahoma, right in front of my damn face and this house, our home …’

She covers her mouth with a quivering hand, shaking her head. ‘Please, please just let us be. Please, Colt.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

PBR on the Porch

Colt

‘Don’t take her too seriously.’

Mr Velasco’s reassurance comes with a cold bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, straight out of someone’s truck cooler. He nods, extending it my way. ‘Here. We really appreciate you helping us today.’

‘I don’t know that your daughter does.’

He lets out a laugh, probably the first someone’s laughed in this space in hours. The sun is starting to dip below the horizon, and we watch the teams clearing out for the day from up on the porch – one of the only parts of the house left intact. ‘She does. In her strange, Mayday way.’

‘Can I …’ I accept the beer, popping the cap in thought before I finish my sentence. ‘Would you guys like to stay at ours tonight? It can be the night; it can be however long you’d like. I just … I think …’

A weight seems to lift from Mr Velasco’s shoulders. He smiles, and it’s both grateful and melancholy. ‘We’d like that. Can’t thank you enough.’

‘You don’t have to. We can head over soon.’

He gives me one last firm pat on the back, and jogs down the driveway, hopping over rubble on his way out, talking to the contractors. I sip at my beer for a minute. May definitely doesn’t appreciate me. And it’s not like anything she said was wrong. She had the right to say every word of it.