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it out here, keep the garden for your parents. You always have.” 
     
                  “Someone has to.  Doesn’t mean I dream about it.”
     
                  “I thought dirt was the kind of art you did, too.”
     
                  “Clay.  I made pottery.”
     
                  “That’s not dirt?”
     
                  Jesse exhaled slowly through his nose.  The last thing he needed was another reason not to sleep.  “If you ask my professor it was.  I don’t mess with clay anymore.”
     
                  “Your professor is an asshole,” he said authoritatively.  “That mug you made for me is still my favorite. The handle is the right size and I don’t have to keep getting up to fill it.  The colors remind me of a sunset in the mountains. Makes me smile just to see it.”
     
                  “That’s not how you evaluate art.”
     
                  “Maybe not in New York, but I’m from Texas.  It’s useful and it looks good.  I’ve had trucks I loved that were only one of the two.”
     
                  “I don’t even know how to answer that.”
     
                  “Then don’t.  Go to sleep, Jesse.  It’s going to be a long week if we don’t sleep for any of it.”
     
    ***

Chapter Two
                  Rebecca practically bounced while serving breakfast, tossing out cheery bits of folk wisdom like “Work shared is work halved” before sending them out to handle the garden and the chickens.  Derek put on his best smile while Jesse kept his mouth full of toast and eggs to avoid having to talk.
     
                  It was still early morning, but the sun already blazed overhead and the dew had long burned off.  It would be another scorcher and the only thing that kept Jesse motivated was the knowledge that it would get hotter as the day progressed.  Maybe he’d even be able to finish early and get in a nap this afternoon.  He certainly hadn’t gotten enough rest last night.  His mind kept revisiting the feeling of Derek’s hands on his in the barn and the way he’d protected him from his parents.  If Derek wasn’t leaving for Colorado Jesse might have tried for another encounter like the one in the barn, but the knowledge that he’d be gone soon made him cautious.  Once was a fantasy fulfilled.  Twice was asking for a heartbreak.  
     
                  Derek made it through twenty minutes of weeding tomatoes before his good mood began to disintegrate.  “Since when are you this quiet?” he asked. “Have you just forgotten how to talk stranded out here in the sticks for so long?  You couldn’t stand the ranch when you were in high school and now that you’ve been out and seen the world, I just can’t see how you’re happy living like you took a vow of silence.”  He lifted his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve, leaving a long streak of dirt across his forehead, before settling it back into place.
     
                  “I couldn’t make it out there,” Jesse said quietly.
     
                  “Jess, there’s a whole lot of out there you haven’t tried.”  He gave him a wink.  “Ever been to Colorado?”
     
                  Jesse blushed and looked down at the plant between his knees then pulled a prickly bindweed stem from between the tomatoes and tossed it into the stack for the compost pile.  The race of his heart made him feel light-headed, the way he always had around Derek.  His crush on the cowboy had been bad before and mind-blowing time in the barn certainly hadn’t done anything to ease the yearning.  He reminded himself again that Derej was leaving.  He’d always been friendly, always looked out for Jesse, and encouraging his not to waste his life in his parents’ garden was something a friend would do.  If he’d been interested in his