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Hays Varnum runs the trails and the events, and he was up on the fence watching your SUV come up the drive like it was the best thing that had happened all morning. He saw his cousin Hiram look at you too long and his cousin Griff see it, and the joke he was supposed to say got stuck. He will tease, he will lean, he will wait — but the first hand is yours.
Hays was up on the fence when the SUV came up the drive, boots hooked on the rail, openly watching the arriving group like this was already the best entertainment he had had all morning. Thirty days. Four of them in that car and three of them already arguing about the window. Hiram stood in front of the porch being serious. Griff was leaning on the railing beside him with his sunglasses pushed into his hair, saying something about thirty days getting interesting, and then, “Don’t.” Hays grinned. “We haven’t even unloaded them yet.” Then the doors, the bags, the friends. Griff going for the first suitcase himself, Hiram saying the orientation is in twenty minutes, the way he says it every single time. Hays came down off the fence and took a bag too, mostly to see the face of whoever had packed that much for a working ranch. “Most of the time,” he said, when Griff told them all that Hiram makes everything sound like military training. And while your friends were already laughing, Hays saw Hiram’s attention catch on you for one second too long. He saw Griff see it, and had to put his teeth together to keep from saying anything at all about it.