I lean against Chad’s truck, then jump away and wince as the hot metal burns my arm. The incident makes me laugh for some reason. “Actually, he’s a rancher.”
“Same thing,” blurts Salvador.
I don’t correct him. I’m in such a strange, elated state, I’m not even sure I recognize my own emotional landscape right now. “All I’ll say is, I’m happy, and it’s really strange, and … I want to see what happens with this. I want to see where it goes.”
“Oh, wow! I’m so happy for you!”
A window opens at the side of the house that I can only half see from here. I watch a dirty towel or rag get flung out of it, soon followed by another, then another, then five more all at once with a very clear and audible grunt from Chad …
He’s really making an effort.
It’s kind of adorable.
Figuring I have a minute, and wanting to get out from under the hot sun, I stroll to an old wooden bench that sits under the covered walkway right by the living room window. “So how’s your modeling coming? You had that big gig this weekend.”
“Oh, it was … um …” Salvador frets, his answer coming out in a nervous stammer. “Oh, y’know. Business this, business that, it’s not important. Stupid politics. Timing of things.”
I frown and prop a foot up onto the bench, hugging it to my chest. “You’re saying a bunch of broken sentences that don’t make much sense.”
“Really? You’re gonna make me say it? One sec, I gotta move to the other room. Richie is back to snoring like goddamned Smaug.” I listen to him huff as he—very demonstratively—climbs out of bed, walks some distance, and then shuts a door. I can’t tell if he left my bedroom or is now talking to me inside my closet or bathroom. “That modeling deal I was hoping for? It’s gone. Sorry. I know we were counting on it so Richie and I could get a bigger place, but—”
“Wait, how is it gone? I thought you already met with that photographer I referred you to, and he had an agreement in place with you to shoot for that big ad.”
“The plan fell through before you even left. I didn’t have the heart to tell you.” Salvador sighs. “Don’t hate me.”
Somehow, there was a part deep inside me that never quite believed Salvador would follow through with the deal at all. This isn’t the first time, and I’m sure it won’t be the last that he’s bailed on a job I got for him. He’s always been a free spirit: difficult to pin down, refusing to conform, hating the establishment … Am I just spinning wheels trying to get his modeling career to take off?
Without me, I’m sure he would just sit home all day long, sip wine, and complain about other people’s successes.
And marry their ex-boyfriends.
“I don’t hate you, Sal.”
“But you helped me get the gig. Ugh, and I messed it up. You should hate me.”
“I don’t. I’m just—”
“Deeply disappointed in me?”
The wind picks up suddenly, stirring dust and dirt off the hot ground. A nearby wind chime’s glass and metal ornaments tinkle and giggle against the breeze.
I’m trying to focus on Salvador and his issues, but this whole place keeps pulling my attention to it, almost persistently. It gives me an untimely urge to laugh and smile.
There’s either something very wrong with me.
Or else I’m falling in love with my hometown, and some dusty, wayward spirit of my past is coaxing me to stay.
“What I was going to say is …” I give it a thought. I want to be sensitive here. “I may not always … be around … to give you that extra leg up, Sal.”
There’s a long pause. I don’t even hear his breath anymore.
Then: “Are you not coming back at all?”
Oh, oops. Not what I meant. “No, no. I am. I have my show!”
“Then what the hell do you mean by that? ‘I may not always be around.’ That’s ominous as fuck, Lance!”
“I just meant …” I let out a soft sigh that somehow ends with a smile on my face. “Sometimes, the best paths in life are the ones we carve out on our own. You remember how it was for me when I first started building a name in the fashion world. It was ruthless. And I compromised pieces of myself in order to get seen.”
“Like that awful Texan accent, you mean?”
I laugh. “Sure, maybe. The point is, at some point, I realized I couldn’t give up pieces of myself anymore. It felt wrong. I had to learn to be myself, or else I was no one at all. I couldn’t depend on others. My point is, I think your next leg up needs to be your own.”
Another long pause swells in my ear.