The Longest Ride

to sit on the ground. It’s a pasture.”

He watched as Dog began to circle her legs. “Can we bring Dog?” she asked.

“Dog will follow whether I want him to come or not.”

“Then the lake it is,” she said.

“Let me just get some things from the house, okay?”

He left her, returning with a small cooler and some blankets beneath his arm, which he loaded into the back of the truck. They got in, the engine coming to life with a roar.

“Your truck sounds like a tank,” she shouted over the noise. “I don’t know if you’re aware of that.”

“Do you like it? I had to modify the exhaust system to make it sound the way it does. I added a second muffler and everything.”

“You did not. No one does that.”

“I did,” he offered. “Lots of people do.”

“People who live on ranches, maybe.”

“Not just us. People who hunt and fish do it, too.”

“Basically anyone with a gun and a passion for the outdoors, in other words.”

“You mean there are other kinds of people in the world?”

She smiled as he backed out, turning onto the drive before heading past the farmhouse. There were lights blazing from inside the living room, and he wondered what his mom was doing. He thought then about what he’d said to Sophia and what he hadn’t.

Trying to clear his thoughts, he rolled down the window, resting his elbow on the ledge. The truck bumped along, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Sophia’s wheat-colored hair fanning out in the breeze. She was staring out the passenger window as they rode past the barn in comfortable silence.

At the pasture, he hopped out and opened a gate before nosing the truck through and closing the gate behind him. Turning the beams on high, he drove slowly to avoid damaging the grass. Near the lake, he stopped and turned the truck around, just as he had at the rodeo, and shut down the engine.

“Watch where you step,” he warned. “Like I said, this is part of the pasture.”

He opened her window and turned on the radio, then went around to the back of the truck. He helped Sophia climb up before setting up the chairs. And then, just as they had less than a week earlier, they sat in the bed of the truck, this time with a blanket draped over Sophia’s lap. He reached for the cooler and pulled out two bottles of beer. He opened both, handing one to Sophia, watching as she took a sip.

Beyond them, the lake was a mirror, reflecting the crescent moon and the stars overhead. In the distance, on the other side of the lake, the cattle congregated near the bank were huddled together, their white chests flashing in the darkness. Every now and then one of them mooed and the noise floated across the water, mingling with the sounds of frogs and crickets. It smelled of grass and dirt and the earth itself, almost primordial.

“It’s beautiful here,” Sophia whispered.

He felt the same word could be used to describe her, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

“It’s like the clearing at the river,” she added. “Only more open.”

“Kind of,” he said. “But like I told you, I tend to go out there when I want to think about my dad. This place is where I come to think about other things.”

“Like what?”

The water nearby was still and reflected the sky like a mirror. “Lots of things,” he said. “Life. Work. Relationships.”

She shot him a sidelong glance. “I thought you haven’t been in a lot of relationships.”

“That’s why I have to think about them.”

She giggled. “Relationships are tricky. Of course, I’m young and naive, so what do I know?”

“So if I was to ask you for advice…”

“I’d say there are better people out there to ask. Like your mom, maybe.”

“Maybe,” he said. “She got along pretty well with my dad. Especially after he gave up the rodeo circuit and was available to help out around the ranch. If he’d kept at it, I don’t know if they would have made it. It was too much for her to handle on her own, especially with me to take care of. I’m pretty sure she told him exactly that. So he stopped. And growing up, whenever I asked him about it, he’d just say that being married to my mom was more important than riding horses.”

“You sound proud of her.”

“I am,” he said. “Even though both my parents were hard workers, she’s the one who really built up the business. When she inherited it from my grandfather, the ranch was struggling. Cattle markets tend to fluctuate a lot, and some