Chapter Twelve

IN THE MORNING, Sam makes Lauren breakfast while she sits at the kitchen table with coffee and her phone. She’s wearing nothing but his flannel robe, and her hair is still down, long and wild and golden. He’s standing at the stove in his socks and pajamas, pushing scrambled eggs around a skillet.

He grins to himself, his back to her. “I can’t believe you lasted as long as you did talking to those people last night.”

“Sam, I am a thirty-nine-year-old woman. I know how to be polite to a room full of jackasses for a couple hours.”

He peers over his shoulder at her, and she gives him a saucy glance.

“I still don’t get why you wanted to go,” he says, switching off the stove burners. “For the most part, they were a bunch of boring, judgmental people who clearly didn’t think much of you.”

“Maybe their opinion of me has improved now that they believe I’m dating a sheriff’s deputy.”

“Oh, so that’s why you asked me to take you.” Sam brings the plates of food to the table and slides one in front of her.

“I asked you to take me because I’ve never seen you in a suit before. I can’t help it if those people assumed we’re a couple and think you’re respectable.” Lauren spears some of her eggs with her fork and peers at Sam across the table.

They eat in silence for a minute, and Sam reflects again how different it feels to be going through the morning-after-sex routine with Lauren than it did with his ex-wife, Jen. Last night at the holiday social was the only time in a year and a half of fooling around that he and Lauren have attended a public gathering together. It was like wearing a costume, playing the part of a woman’s boyfriend. He fit in with everybody else at the party, the way he used to fit in with other heterosexual couples at parties and events he attended with his ex-wife, but for the first time in his life, it didn’t feel true. He wondered more than once, while he made small talk with the other attendees and nursed his cocktail, what it would’ve been like to bring Montgomery. The cowboy would hate the whole scene. That makes Sam smile.

“You got Christmas plans yet?” Lauren says.

“No. You?”

“I haven’t decided if I’m going to go up to Flag to see my folks, crash my friend’s holiday in Salt Lake, or treat myself to a weekend at a nice hotel in Phoenix.” Lauren glances at him. “You’re not going to go see your parents?”

“I could—but I don’t want to.” He gives her a quick smile, moving food around his plate. “I haven’t seen them since before my divorce was finalized. Two Christmases ago.”

“All this time, and I’ve never asked you if you got siblings.”

“A sister. Sadie. You?”

“Oh, yeah. Two sisters. They’re married with kids, very well-behaved. They make it easier for my parents to accept I turned out the way I did.”

“Sadie’s married too. I got a nephew.”

They finish their breakfast in silence, two misfits in comfortable harmony with each other.

“So, you’re going to stay here with Montgomery,” Lauren says.

Sam smiles softly. “Yeah. I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere. We didn’t really get to do much last Christmas—I was hurt, and he and I weren’t close enough yet. Now, there’s nothing standing in our way. I haven’t had a good Christmas in at least three years. He probably hasn’t had one in longer. I want this one to be nice for both of us.”

“Aren’t you sweet.” Lauren sips on her coffee.

“I need to get him a gift. At least one gift. And I have no idea in hell what it should be.”

“Assless chaps?”

Sam snorts and chuckles, reaching for his mug. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Not yet. But you could. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go for it.”

“Lauren—I told you.”

“Yeah, I know what you told me, and I still think it’s bullshit. You’re clearly into him. You’d probably enjoy fucking him. Both of you need to get over your hang-ups and do it.”

Sam sighs in mild frustration. “It’s not—it’s not like that. I don’t need to have sex with him, and he’s not interested in doing it with anybody, which I already told you. We don’t have hang-ups.”

Lauren’s expression oozes skepticism.

“What?” says Sam. “We don’t.”

“A man who doesn’t want to fuck is like a dog that doesn’t want to eat. And as for you, Mister Deputy… Go have sex with a man, any man, then come back and tell me you don’t want it.”

“Okay, first of all, the part about the dog isn’t true. A man can dislike sex. And second of all, I never said I’m against having sex with a man. I said I don’t want to do it with Montgomery.”

“So, if he suddenly made a move on you one night, you’d turn him down.”

Sam pauses, caught off guard by the idea.

A sassy look creeps onto Lauren’s face.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I’d have to really think about it. I wouldn’t want to screw up our friendship.”

“You paused,” she says, pointing at him. “You’d have sex with him.”

“If he actually wanted to, I would consider giving it a shot, yeah. But he doesn’t. And what I would do in that imaginary scenario doesn’t mean I’ve spent this whole year secretly wanting to screw him. It sure as hell doesn’t mean I want to ask him to try for me. I don’t need sex from him. That’s my point. I’m happy with the way things are.”

Lauren gets up to take her plate, mug, and utensils to the sink. “Whatever you say.”

Sam runs his hand through his hair and slouches in his seat again. “What am I supposed to get him for Christmas? I don’t think he wants anything.”

“What are you going to get me for Christmas?” Lauren asks, facing Sam as she leans against the edge of the kitchen counter.

Sam considers her. “A date with one of the old widowers we met last night.”

She throws the hand towel at him.

*

MONTGOMERY WAKES AS early as he always does and lies in bed for several minutes. He thinks about the girl. Sees her face on the darkened highway, her bruised wrists in the red-orange glow of his taillights. He thinks about her coat left behind at the scene of the crime she wouldn’t name.

She should have her coat.

He washes up, gets dressed, eats, then heads out in the pale morning light to search for the coat. He drives north on Iron Springs Road, out of Skull Valley, and follows it until the road winds east. He turns off the blacktop and ventures into the desert, his truck bumping a little over the dirt and gravel. He doesn’t drive too far away from the highway before parking and hopping out of the truck with his gun slipped into his waistband.

Montgomery spends half an hour wandering around in the brush, searching for the spot where Shannon and her mysterious attacker tussled last night. In the back of his mind, he knows it’s stupid and futile, but he doesn’t give up until he’s covered a certain amount of ground. When he does return to his truck empty-handed, he’s disappointed.

He goes home again and feels restless. He has the day off work, and he almost wishes he didn’t. He usually spends part of his Sunday with Sam unless one of them wants time to himself, but Montgomery doesn’t even want to talk to Sam right now.

The house is too quiet. The sound of it, the floorboards creaking under his footsteps, makes him long for Sam.

Montgomery sits on his bed and pulls out the wad of photographs he keeps rubber-banded in his nightstand drawer. The most recent ones at the top of the stack are of Sam and himself, only a few of them. A few days ago, the pictures would’ve made him smile, but now, they’re depressing. He moves on to the many pictures of his younger self and his ex-wife, Al, and feels worse. He misses her all over again. He hasn’t seen her in years, and he still misses her.

Montgomery scrubs at his face with one hand and puts the pictures away again. His eyes prickle with tears, but he refuses to let himself cry. He’s going to pull himself together like he always does and deal with what is.

It’s his own fault he let himself think he might actually get what he wants. Men like Sam don’t spend their lives single, treating a best friend like a wife. What Montgomery wants doesn’t exist anywhere except in his own heart.

*

SAM DOESN’T SEE Montgomery until Wednesday night because the cowboy makes vague excuses to decline Sam’s dinner invitations on Monday and Tuesday. Only when Sam asks Montgomery if he did something wrong does Montgomery agree to have dinner with him Wednesday.

Sam can tell something’s off as soon as he lays eyes on Montgomery. His friend barely tries to smile at him when Sam opens the door. Montgomery asks the polite questions about how Sam’s night with Lauren went and how work has been so far this week, but when they’re through with that part of the conversation, he becomes quiet and withdrawn.

“Did something happen?” Sam asks after a long moment of silence.

“Nope,” Montgomery replies and sips on his beer.

“Are you sure? Because you seem upset.”

“I’m fine.”

Sam decides not to push it any further. He’s learned he can’t pry Montgomery open if the other man wants to stay closed. “I was thinking about Christmas,” he says instead. “We can have dinner here the day of or on Christmas Eve. I’ll cook. But I also want a tree and decorations and…the whole thing, I guess. I didn’t keep any Christmas stuff from my marriage, so we’re going to have to go shopping for it pretty soon.”

Montgomery lifts his head to look across the table at Sam. “I might go out of town for Christmas.”

Sam stops. “Oh. Where?”

Montgomery’s mother is dead, and he hasn’t spoken to his father in twenty years. He has no siblings and, as far as Sam knows, no friends in distant places he speaks to on a regular basis.

“I don’t know yet. I’ll pick somewhere and go.”

“Alone?”

“Yup.”

“You’re not going somewhere to spend Christmas with someone. You’re going somewhere to spend it alone.”

“You got a problem with that?”

Sam blinks at him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, but it feels like Montgomery is suddenly turning tail and running away from him. Maybe Sam shouldn’t have assumed Montgomery intended to spend Christmas with him, but they did Thanksgiving together two weeks ago and had a good time. He could accept Montgomery choosing family or even an old friend over him, but rejecting him to be alone feels like an intentional blow.

Sam didn’t realize how much he was looking forward to a whole month of Christmas with Montgomery until now. And he’s not just disappointed. He’s hurt.

He tries to hide his emotions when he says, “If you want to leave town, that’s fine. But if you’re only going to avoid spending Christmas with me, then you should drop the charade and stay. You don’t need an excuse to turn me down.”

Montgomery watches Sam over their dirty plates with those stormy gray eyes. He’s as hard to read as ever. It’s obvious he’s unhappy, but Sam can’t pin down exactly what emotion he’s in the middle of. Anger, sadness, loneliness, something else. He wishes the other man would tell him.

Montgomery drains the last of his wine, and Sam reaches for his own glass.

“As long as we’re okay,” Sam says.

Montgomery drops his gaze to his plate. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want to see you.”

Sam sits in his chair, stunned, the sting of those words not setting in right away.

Montgomery gets up and takes his plate, glass, and silverware to the sink. Sam listens to him rinsing them off and putting them in the dishwasher, the sound of his boots on the floor. Sam turns on his seat to face Montgomery.

“What is going on? Did I piss you off somehow without even knowing it?”

Montgomery dries his hands on the towel Sam keeps folded over the oven door handle. “I don’t want to talk anymore, Sam,” he replies and starts to head out of the kitchen.

Sam springs to his feet and follows him. “What the hell is wrong with you? Everything was fine the last time we saw each other. I’ve barely spoken to you since then, and now you show up here acting like this? Why won’t you just tell me what happened?”

Montgomery’s putting on his jacket by the door. “I’m going home. When I’m in a better mood, I’ll call you.”

Sam pushes Montgomery’s shoulder gently to make him stop.

Montgomery does stop, his eyes meeting Sam’s again.

They stand there looking at each other in silence until Sam says, “How am I supposed to fix it if you won’t tell me what’s wrong?”

Montgomery pauses only for a second. “I don’t know how to tell you. And I can’t talk to you right now. I’m sorry.”

Then, he’s gone.