Spencer is back up in Fort Collins doing his thing. But I’ll see him tomorrow when Ronin moves me up to the shop for filming of the first season of Shrike Bikes for the Biker Channel.

Ronin and I talked about this decision ad nauseam after Sturgis. I won’t go into the boring details, but he was managing the GIDGET contract so it was only fair that I got to do the show with Spencer because they start at the same time. It’s perfect really. Our last flirt with this crazy world of modeling, then on to vague new things.

We haven’t gotten that far yet, so I’m not sure what that means other than not what we’re doing now.

“Here,” Ford says, handing me a water and my partially unwrapped burrito. I take it and dig in. “We’ll find something to take its place when we get up north. Don’t worry.”

“Hmm,” I say with my mouth full. “I don’t see what, Ford. That place is in the middle of nowhere. And winter is coming.”

He smiles at the film reference. “Snowshoeing. Cross-country skiing. Extreme croquet.”

I spit out some eggs as I laugh. “What. The. Fuck. Is. That?”

“It’s croquet, but not.” He sighs. “It’s all relative, I guess.”

“Sounds like my kind of game, actually. It’s for stoners, isn’t it? Like Frisbee?”

Ford laughs. “Maybe. We can skip the extreme croquet then. I’ll figure something out. How’s school coming?”

School. I’m in school. Sometimes I have to pinch myself, that’s how excited this makes me. Ford, ever the stealthy hacker genius that he is, rigged my mandatory placement test for the community college up in FoCo and got me registered for fall semester. It’s all online, so it’s not really life-changing like if I was living on campus at Colorado State, which is the big FoCo university, but I’m stoked. I’m taking basic shit. English composition, History of Western Civ, biology, and pre-algebra.

Yes, I’m a total math loser, but what can you do? One baby step at a time.

“How’s math, in particular?” Ford asks, like he’s reading my mind. “I know you hated that I put you in a non-credit class, but it was the right decision, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I reluctantly admit. “I’m barely keeping up to be honest. It’s confusing for me. I’m not a math girl.”

“Well, luckily you need very little of it for film school, so don’t dwell. Just do your best.”

Ford is very supportive of my academic pursuits. Very supportive. It makes me wonder sometimes. It’s not like Ronin isn’t supportive, he is. He wants me to follow my dream. But Ford is supportive in a different way. Like he’s invested in it or something. Like his success is dependent on mine. And that gets me thinking back to what he said a few months ago. About how patient he is. About him giving me the tools I need to fix my life, so I’ll stop looking for Ronin to do that for me. He wants me to be strong all on my own. Not need anyone.

I like that about Ford. It’s like he trusts me. Like he’s got faith in me.

It makes me have faith in myself.

“How come you don’t have a girlfriend, Ford?”

“What makes you think I don’t?”

“Oh,” I reply, embarrassed. “Do you?”

He looks away. “I have… women.” He looks back, smiling. “But they’re not girlfriends.”

I’m not even sure what to say to that, so of course I choose something totally inappropriate. “Are they… whores?”

He laughs. “No comment.” And then he takes a big bite of his burrito and shuts that conversation down.

“Clare’s coming home tomorrow.” I’m not sure why I fill in the silence with that tidbit of information—

“You’re nervous about meeting her.”

—but apparently Ford has a pretty good handle on my psyche these days. “Yeah. I still think about what you said, you know.”

He shrugs. “I’m not going to say any more about it. Ronin’s your boyfriend, you like each other. That’s all that matters.”

I stare at him for a few more seconds and let this sink in. “Good, that means you’ve lost interest in me and all that shit you said last summer about wanting me to leave Ronin is over.”

He laughs. “We’re friends, right? I’m happy with how things are going between us. It’s perfect actually.”

Hmmm. That’s weird. In fact, I’m weird right now. I shouldn’t be asking him this stuff but I can’t help myself. “Because you’re… what? Emotionally incapable of intimate relationships? This friendship is as far as you go? There’s nothing after this but the physical act of sex?”

“Yes, yes, and yes. You missed your calling. You should’ve been a psych major.”

“I cheat. Ronin told me about… well, he told me why he was so insistent on me not talking to you.”

“And do you agree with my diagnosis?”

“Not really,” I say, shaking my head. “You’re a bit on the strange side—”

He laughs again, his eyes darting around the stadium, like he’s thinking about this.

“—and I’m guessing you really are some scary smart genius. I totally see that. But you’ve done a lot of very nice things for me, Ford. And I never asked for it. I’m not always nice back to you, but I hope you know I really, really appreciate it.”