More cleanup, then he turns off the overhead light, The sun has fully set now, and it’s a different kind of black beyond the windows without any ambient city light. I feel rather than see him collapse heavily into the bed next to me.

“Alright, I guess we won’t be living together in my trailer, after all,” he teases, drawing me into his arms. “You won that fight, angel.”

I can’t see him. But I can sense him smiling.

Which makes me ask, “Is it true? What Lucinda told me about you never smiling or laughing. Like, ever?”

A beat of silence. Then he says, “Never had a reason to laugh or smile. Before you.”

I can’t believe he tried to claim he was bad with words earlier.

His answer makes me smile in the dark.

But then I say, “Waylon? About what I said earlier…”

“Yeah?” His voice sounds wary as if he thinks I’m about to renege on everything I told him.

And he’s kind of right. I do take one thing back—one very important thing.

“I was jealous. Very fucking jealous,” I tell him through clenched teeth. “I don’t want you to just tell that maid Cindy to put on some clothes. I don’t want her cleaning your trailer or any other place you occupy.”

Several beats of silence. Then the man who supposedly never smiles fills up the darkness with laughter.

“Okay, angel, okay. If that’s what you want.”

CHAPTER 17

Over the next three months, I discover that Waylon was right about his way being easy.

Easy like him teaching me long and hard on Sundays and driving me over to the medical trailer on the back of his bike the other six days of the week.

Easy like him pushing all the patients who come to see me for their physical to the top of the move-in list so that we can get the backyard clinic up and running that much faster. Not because he’s as passionate about preventative care as I am, but because he wants the extra teaching time in the morning.

Easy like him bringing home furniture catalogs and telling me to circle whatever I want—he only says no to my picks if they don’t appear sturdy enough to hold up to his lessons. We discovered that furniture requirement the hard way with the small kitchen table, which is now sitting out in the backyard in pieces, waiting to get chopped up into firewood.