“Of course not, but morphing into a totally different person is just weird.” Ben mimicked a frozen face.
“I’m not planning on doing that,” Silver assured him. “But when your face is your business, you do have to take care of it. Even the male stars get work done these days.”
“Work.” Ben chuckled. “Like it’s hard to do or something.”
Silver opened her food pouch and vigorously stirred the contents. She didn’t know a single person who hadn’t had some kind of plastic surgery. Even her mom who tended to stay out of the limelight had had a tummy tuck and endured the occasional injection of Botox.
“Must be nice to be so perfect that you don’t have to worry about the lines on your face,” Silver muttered between mouthfuls.
“Lines build character,” Ben said. “Look at Mrs. Morgan. She’s going on seventy, and she’s still beautiful.”
“That’s a different kind of beauty altogether,” Silver argued. “And she doesn’t have to see her face magnified five hundred times bigger on a screen where everyone can tell if you have a pimple or a booger up your nose.”
He snorted a mouthful of food and started to wheeze. She couldn’t help but grin even as she passed him his water bottle and helpfully thumped him on the back.
“See? You’ve never thought about these things, have you?” Silver finished off her meal. “We live in very different worlds.”
“But yours is totally fake,” Ben protested.
“That’s very judgmental of you.” Silver wasn’t buying it. “Are you saying that my family aren’t real people with real problems just like anyone else?”
He studied her for a long moment. “No, I’m not saying that. I have no right to judge you whatsoever.” He sighed. “Jeez... I’m beginning to sound as bad as my father, so just kill me now.”
“Your dad runs the ranch with you and your brothers, correct?”
“Technically, it’s just my dad, Adam, and me who work full-time at the place.”
“So what exactly do you do?” Silver asked as he handed her an apple.
“It’s a cattle ranch.” His smile dimmed. “I do all the stuff that no one else has the time or energy for. I’m basically the clean-up guy.”
“Or the guy everyone depends on?”
“Yeah.” He slowly raised his head to meet her gaze. “You could say that.”
“So they’ll probably miss you more than they thought,” Silver added encouragingly. “And when you go back, they’ll be nice and grateful to you.”
“I’m not sure I’m going back.” His smile was wry. “My dad wasn’t happy at me taking off to do this trail ride during calving season. He said he might not have a job for me when I return.”
“Did he mean it?” Silver felt instant guilt.
“Maybe.” Ben set his food pouch down and started on his apple. “He’s got something of a temper. When my mom left him, he threw all her stuff out in the yard and had a big bonfire.”
Silver pressed her hand to her mouth, aware that even though Ben was acting like they were discussing the weather, there were storm clouds gathering in his eyes.
“My parents never fight.”
“Lucky you.” Ben crunched down on his apple. “Mine were awful.”
“Did they divorce?”
“Yeah, when I was around ten or eleven.” He finished his apple and set the core on the ground.
“How long did you have to go to therapy to get over that?” Silver asked.
“Therapy?” He raised his eyebrows. “What I had was my auntie Rae coming to save the day, and a miserable bastard of a father who decided that hard labor was the best way to stop us having time to miss our mother. It kind of worked, too. Do you want coffee?”
Silver just stared at him.
“What?”
“You poor little boy,” she blurted out.
“Nothing poor or little about me.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Do you want to give the apple cores to the horses while I clean up?”
* * *
The fact that Silver felt sorry for him was still bugging Ben as they cut through the copse of trees and followed the line of the canyon wall around to the right. Sure, he’d cried himself to sleep a few times after his mother had left, but only because he was exhausted after completing the long list of chores his father laid on him every day after school. Ben was fairly certain there were laws about child labor, but Jeff hadn’t cared about such niceties.
Silver was supposed to be the one with the issues,