Boots and a Dress

The gravel road to the Double Arrow Ranch hadn't gotten any shorter in twenty years. I know because I drove it with my windows down, getting dust on my sunglasses, grinning like a fool the whole way.

You ever go back to a place you worked one summer, two decades ago, and wonder why it still lives in your chest? That was me, late August, central Oregon, forty-two years old and single, driving a rental car that smelled like vanilla air freshener up a road I could've walked blindfolded.

My name is Kelly, and when I was twenty-two I spent a summer working for Bruno at this ranch. Haying, fence repair, some babysitting of the guest horses. I had a crush on him so big it was practically a second job, and I never told him, and then the summer ended and I moved to the city and it was over. Except it apparently wasn't, because here I was.

The main house came into view, all dusty wood and long porch, and there he was on the steps. Bruno. Forty-nine now, gray creeping into his beard, same wide shoulders in a white tank top.

"Kelly!" He stood up and spread his arms, then seemed to think better of it and stuck out a hand.

I took the hand. He held on maybe two seconds longer than a handshake needs, and I felt it all the way up my arm.

"Look at you," he said, shaking his head. "You drove all the way out here?"

"I did. You said I could."

"I said you could. I just didn't believe you'd do it." He let go and picked up my one bag like it weighed nothing. "Come on, you're staying in the guest room. House, not the bunkhouse. The bunkhouse has mice with opinions."

The house smelled the same, sort of. Wood and dust and coffee, and underneath it that dry hot air that comes in through every gap in an old building. We ended up on the porch with two bottles of beer, the sun going orange behind the hay fields, and honestly? I could've stopped right there and driven home happy. But I didn't, obviously, or you wouldn't be reading this.

"So tell me everything," Bruno said, boots up on the rail. "City. Dating. All of it."

"God, nothing!" I pulled my knees up in the old wicker chair. "I've been dating around, on and off, for like twenty years and it's all the same guy in different shirts. Guys who talk about their podcasts. I'm bored, Bruno. Bored out of my skull."

"Twenty years of podcast guys, huh?"

"Twenty, give or take. There was one who was nice, we went out maybe five times, but he checked his phone at dinner like it owed him money." I took a swig. "What about you? Anybody?"

He did that thing where he looked out at the field instead of at you. "Had a woman around for a while, couple years back. Didn't take. Ranch is a lot for people who didn't grow up in it."

"You grew up in it."

"Yeah, well, I'm stubborn." He tapped his bottle against mine. "You were the best summer hire I ever had, you know that? Twenty-two years old and you outworked guys twice your size."

"I was trying to impress you," I said, and then my brain caught up with my mouth and I took a very long drink of beer.

Bruno was quiet a second. "Were you, now?"

"It was twenty years ago," I said, way too fast. "Everybody tries to impress their boss. It's called being a good employee."

"Uh huh." But he was smiling, this small thing at the corner of his mouth, and he let it go. That was Bruno. He never pushed. He just sort of set a thing down on the table and let you walk around it yourself.

We sat there while the light went from orange to purple. A horse snorted somewhere in the barn. He asked about my job, I asked about the cattle, he told me his aunt Rosa had passed in the spring, and that was how we got to the attic.

"She lived in the house until the end," he said. "Everything of hers is still up in the attic. I keep meaning to go through it and I keep not doing it. You want to help? I'll make it worth your while, there's probably beer up there by now."

"Beer in a hot attic, wow, sold," I said, and he laughed, and we took a second round of bottles up the narrow stairs.

The attic was hot and close and full of boxes and old furniture under sheets. A single bulb on a cord, one window with a broken slat letting in the last blue light. Bruno pulled sheets off things and sneezed, twice, which made me laugh until I had to sit down on a trunk.

"This is where everything I own goes to be forgotten," he said, dragging a box out with his boot. "Rosa saved everything. Receipts from 1987. Letters. Clothes, I think, there's a whole wardrobe in the closet part."

"Wardrobe?" I was already up and over there, because I have never once in my life walked past a closed door without opening it.

The little closet nook had a rail, and the rail had dresses. Old ones, real old, the kind of thing you see in black and white photos. And one of them, halfway down, was this floral print dress, yellow flowers on a soft green background, with little buttons down the back and a full skirt that swung when I touched it.

"Oh, Bruno. Look at this."

"That was hers?" He came over and looked. "Huh. That's from way back. Her mother's maybe, or hers when she was young. Fifties, I'd guess."

"It's beautiful. The print, and look at the waist on it." I held it up against myself without really thinking, the way you do, and then I felt him watching and got all warm. "Sorry, this is your aunt's stuff, I shouldn't be manhandling it."

"You're not manhandling it." He took a drink of his beer, slow. "You know, you always wanted to see the rest of the house. There's a mirror in the hall downstairs that's older than both of us."

I looked at him. He looked at me, real steady, and did not clarify. And my heart did this dumb hopeful thing, the same one it did when I was twenty-two and he'd say my name.

"You're saying I should try on your dead aunt's dress in your hallway," I said.

"I'm saying there's a mirror," he said. "What you do in front of it is your business."

Reader, I want you to know I stood there for a good three seconds with a hundred and fifty arguments and zero of them winning. It was late August and hot and I'd had two beers, so nothing about this was anything but clear-headed, both of us, just two grown adults deciding a thing on purpose. And the thing I was deciding was yes.

"Okay," I said. "But if it doesn't fit, we never speak of it."

"Deal." He turned and headed for the stairs, then paused. "For what it's worth, that color would've looked good on you in '03 too."

"Bruno."

"What? I'm an old man, I say what I see."

He went down the stairs ahead of me, boots on the treads, and I followed him holding that dress against my chest like it could hear my heartbeat, which is a ridiculous thing to think, but the whole attic had gone sort of warm and secret, and the dress was lighter than air and the stairs were dark, and I was grinning so hard my face hurt.

The hallway mirror was a big oval thing with a dark frame, hanging between the front room and the kitchen. Bruno set both our bottles on the little table under it and stepped back, arms crossed, giving me room. A gentleman about it. But also just watching, plain as anything, and not pretending otherwise.

I unbuttoned my flannel over my tank top, kicked off my sneakers, and stepped into the dress. It was cool from the attic. The dress slid on easier than I expected, and Bruno, without being asked, did up the back buttons, careful and quiet. The waist hit me higher than anything I owned, and the skirt flared out over my hips, and I turned to the mirror.

"Well," I said, kind of breathless.

"Well," Bruno said from behind me.

The woman in the mirror looked like somebody from a movie about 1955. Yellow flowers, green background, full skirt, and me, forty-two years old, sunburned shoulders, hair a mess from the drive, grinning at myself like I'd found money on the sidewalk.

"Does it fit or does it fit?" I spun a little just to watch the skirt move.

"It fits," Bruno said, and his voice had gone lower, rougher around the edges. "Turn around. Let me see the front."

I turned around.

He was looking at me the way I'd spent one whole summer, twenty years ago, hoping he'd look at me. And the porch conversation, the handshake that lasted a beat too long, the were-you-trying-to-impress-me, all of it came together at once, and I stopped spinning.

"Bruno," I said.

"Yeah?"

"What are we doing here?"

"I could tell you," he said, "but I'd rather show you."

"That's a big line for a guy holding a beer."

"This is a big night." He set the bottle down on the table, very deliberate, like it was a ceremony. "Kelly. I was twenty-nine when I met you, if you count that first summer, which I do. I know what I'm looking at right now, and I know what I want to do about it. But I'm not doing anything you don't want."

And there it was, plain as daylight, twenty years late. Reader, I laughed. I couldn't help it. Twenty years of what-ifs and he asks permission like it's a haystack that needs moving.

"Bruno, I had a crush on you so hard that summer I used to volunteer for the four a.m. irrigation shifts just to hear your truck pull in."

"I know."

"You KNEW?"

"Course I knew. You burned yourself out three weekends straight and never complained. And I was your boss, so I kept my mouth shut and my hands to myself." He rubbed his jaw, gray beard and all. "I'm not your boss now."

"No," I said. "You're really not."

"So. Can I kiss you?"

"Yes. God, yes, before I talk myself into feeling silly about the dress."

He came over slow, the way he does everything, and took my face in both hands, and kissed me. Soft first. Then not soft. I grabbed his shirt and pulled, and he made this low sound in his chest that I felt more than heard, and my