Wild Card

by Elsie Silver

we’ve picked up two more regular members—ones I don’t hate. Ford, West’s childhood best friend, and Rhys, a stray that our local bistro owner dropped off one day. Don’t know much about the guy, but I like him a lot. He’s not annoying, and he doesn’t ask a bunch of questions. We’ve struck up a friendship that mostly consists of rolling our eyes at West and exchanging to-the-point text messages. He reminds me of my friend Emmett, a professional bull rider on the WBRF circuit. He travels a lot, so we don’t see each other often, but when we do, we just pick up where we left off. Now and then, I get a message from him that says, “You still alive?” I give it a thumbs-up. And then, a couple of months later, I’ll check the standings on the WBRF website and give him shit for not being number one. I get back a “fuck you,” and I also give that a thumbs-up.