dude a fight before they torch the sheets.
If you’re going to spend two hours glued to a chair, watching a screen, you expect something gripping, dammit.
“I tell you, Ridge,” Grady rumbles again, refilling Tobin’s water. “The market’s due for a comeback anytime. You hear the latest news from one state over? They had a showdown worthy of John Wayne, a ghost town, even a frigging rock from—”
“Dude. This isn’t Heart’s Edge,” I cut in, holding up a finger. “This is Dallas, North Dakota. You want this place to be movie famous—or even Heart’s Edge-documentary famous—you need a good reason to put it on the map.”
Grady drags a hand through his thick beard, his eyebrows pulling together. “We’ve had to eat our drama pie. Hell, that tale with North Earhart Oil, how old man Reed’s granddaughter inherited everything, and how Bella and her bodyguard saved Dallas from those Jupiter Oil fucks...now that’s a story. Great movie material right there. She wound up marrying her bodyguard. Tell me that ain’t romance.”
I snort, trying not to laugh as I glug down another sip of beer.
“I mean, Edison might be Hollywood stuff. He’s a lot more lovable than Bojack.”
“Shit, man, the only thing Edison the horse can’t do is speak,” Grady says, grinning as the oil guys laugh at our conversation.
Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the whole wild story before.
I know Drake and Bella Larkin personally. They’re my neighbors.
As close to real neighbors as they can be, with each of us owning more acreage than the eye can see. They’re good people, and I like them. I’ve caught their boy Edison on my property more than a few times and brought him home after he Houdinis his way out every lock known to man.
Exactly why I’d never blow their privacy by pitching anything about their lives to the industry.
Based on a true story sucks for a lot of folks when it’s their story.
Drake and Bella are too smart for that crap and too busy, practically employing half this town in the oil fields.
“Ridge,” Tobin says in his slightly smarmy, always stern tone. “It’s going on eight o’clock.”
“Oh, is that my bedtime?” I ask, letting out a chuckle, then looking at Grady. “You see what I put up with? I’ll trade you for the kids.”
He rolls his eyes, topping off my beer.
Truth be told, I’m not nearly as drunk as I’m letting on. I just like pulling old Tobin’s tail every once in a while, waiting for the day I might be able to get him plastered enough to stop fussing over damn near every detail of everything.
That’s the good part about being an actor—well, former actor.
I can still turn the charm on and off on demand. The other thing about being an actor, you have to learn to believe in lies, in fiction, in the utterly ridiculous.
Maybe I’ve been doing that most of my life, even before making my first movie.
One thing that’s true is that the winter this year doesn’t want to end. It’s late March, and we’re still getting enough powder to make it look like the second coming of Christmas.
When I moved to Nothing, North Dakota, I’d wanted out of the limelight. A low profile and a chance to remake my life away from California and any gossipy asshole ready to flash a camera in my face.
It was easy to get that here.
I just wish it didn’t come with a metric fuck-ton of winter.
Tobin and I have been cooped up at the ranch for months going stir-crazy. Even the biggest, sleekest places you spend a pretty penny having tailored to your specifications start to feel like prisons when there’s only one person to talk to.
After hearing another storm was due tonight, I’d insisted we go to town, stock up on supplies, and visit other human beings while we can.
Ideally, human beings who don’t spend their Friday nights with an ironing board and Russian lit novels bigger than my head.
Hell, it could be two weeks before we even get mail again.
Not that I receive a lot that escapes being fed to the fireplace, but the whole rain, snow, sleet, or hail brag isn’t true. Not when it comes to postal deliveries in rural North Dakota.
A junk letter offering a chance to win a million bucks in a sweepstakes isn’t worth a mailman sliding off the road and turning up frozen solid in the spring thaw.
I’m only slightly exaggerating. Without a plow, those drifts outside could swallow a person whole until summer.
“Need I remind