and whites and browns, all four of them found abandoned in the same manure-filled pen.
I had already spent the morning grooming all four of them and instead led my brother down the path to the right, where another stable linked up to a separate pen. This was where Electra lived, a grumpy old thing that fought anyone who wasn’t a Gold, horses included. My mom had put a pink-and-blue-dotted birthday hat on her, which looked comically small on her massive head.
I smiled, a genuine smile that almost caught me off guard. “Hey there, lady.” I reached into a nearby bag and pulled out an apple.
Dusty leaned on a post as Electra whinnied her big gray head over the rail of her stable. She shook her head and bared her teeth in a hungry smile.
“What’s he even doing here?”
My brother shrugged. “Judging from the packed bags, it looks like he’s been offered to stay here. That’s just a hypothesis, obviously. You ran off so fast, I wasn’t even able to say hi to the guy.”
“And on my birthday. What a jerk. He clearly hasn’t changed.”
“Right,” Dusty said, looking down at his sneakers.
Electra grabbed the apple from my palm, the loud crunches that followed working as well as those addictive whispering videos I sometimes watched. Or the videos with the people cutting through clean layers of colored sand. Those got me hooked for hours.
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?”
I put my head against Electra’s, rubbing her cheek. No one else would have been able to do this without getting a stars-out kind of head-butt from her.
“You already know what happened,” I said.
Most of it.
“Yeah, but Benji, come on. I know you. Something else happened in Costa Rica. I know you two kissed but… why this reaction? Why the anger?”
“Because he’s as closed-minded as the family he comes from, and he said some stupid shit. Shit I can’t forget.” I went to grab another apple from the bag. Electra clopped in a little happy dance that made me want to do one in return.
Animals always had that kind of effect on me. I could be in the middle of a roaring storm and still feel comforted by a nuzzle from Electra or a cuddle with Tammy.
“Maybe he’s changed, Benj. People change.”
“I doubt it. Not with the way his dad’s been acting, trending every other day for some new dumb ‘save the family’ speech.”
“That’s his father, not him. Plus, he’s up for reelection, isn’t he? All that bullshit is going to float to the surface during times like these.” Dusty came over to my side and pet Electra’s head, rubbing the spot between her eyes. “Has anything been said about him?”
“I don’t know, I don’t keep tabs on them. His dad’s just such a big name, it’s hard to ignore.”
“Maybe he does ignore it, then. Maybe he’s not even involved with it.”
“Maybe—”
Another voice cut in. One as familiar as my own and still stranger than a random passerby. “Maybe I got into a fight with my father and it’s the reason why I’ve pretty much lost everything, having to take my best friend’s—your brother’s—offer of staying at his family’s sanctuary for a few weeks.” Rex lifted a hand and—fuckin’ hell—he smiled. Not just any smile either. It was the kind of smile that implanted itself deep into your brain, like a brand that marked a lifetime commitment to a sunshine and sex cult.
If I wasn’t so embarrassed at being overheard by him, I would have probably started to actively drool.
“Rex, I, uh, we uhm, we were just talking about you.” I motioned between my twin and me, completely lost for words. I wasn’t expecting this. None of it. All I had been looking forward to was a generous portion of vanilla-and-strawberry birthday cake and a long, substantial nap, followed by a Matrix movie rewatch that I had planned to last until at least four in the morning, around the time I’d be able to go to sleep.
Yeah, that’s what I had planned for my twenty-fourth birthday. Not… not all this.
“It’s good to see you, Rex.” Dusty offered a hand to shake. My twin was dwarfed by Rex’s six-foot-three stature, his presence made even larger by those ocean-blue eyes and pillow-sized lips. He had short dark hair that caught the sunshine in bright highlights.
Dusty and I weren’t mirror images of each other. There had come a point in college where I dove into sports and fitness while my brother