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Whoever had decorated the cabin truly left no inch untouched, filling the space with everything from vibrant polyester tapestries and rugs that had a vaguely Native American design to massive wooden statuettes of cowboys on dramatically reared horses to various sets of antlers hung on the walls. Even the coffee table seemed to be nothing more than a large tree split in half and turned on its side so it could balance on stumps from smaller trees.
"Aww, poor Bambi," Eli said and Layla turned to see him standing beside the wall, cradling the set of antlers positioned lowest.
"Don't worry," she told him, "They don't hurt the deer to get those. The animals shed them every year so you can just go out and pick them up off the ground."
"That's convenient. It's more masculine than gathering wildflowers, too. Maybe they have baskets available at the front desk so we can go gather."
Layla shook her head at Eli, not wanting to break his soul by letting him know that there probably wasn't an overabundance of antlers just strewn across the ground waiting for him to skip by with his wicker basket and scoop them up. She glanced around the cabin again, finding herself liking the awkward surroundings a bit more with each passing second. It was almost like the cabin version of Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin on Halloween. Never could there be a more sincere tiny cabin trying to look like a real cowboy retreat.
"Where's Quinn?" she asked as she realized only she and Eli were still in the living room.
"I'm in the bedroom!" Quinn called back through one of the two doors along one wall.
"Bedroom? As in singular?" Eli asked, releasing the antlers and crossing the living room toward the door.
Layla and Eli met in front of the bedroom door and peered in cautiously.
"Perfect," Layla said, sighing and sagging against the doorframe.
Inside the small bedroom, Quinn was standing proudly beside a triple bunk bed that appeared to be made primarily out of rejected firewood lashed together at the corners with strips of brown leather. Layla sent up a silent prayer that was only for show, hoping that the bed had a bit more structural integrity so that it at least had a shot of supporting two curvy women and one rather tiny man.
"I get the bottom bunk!" Eli shrieked, pushing past Layla into the room and tossing himself sideways onto the lowest bunk.
"Like hell you do," Layla said, stepping toward the bed so she could grab him by his ankle and tug him back out.
"Yeah, I don't think those physics work out," Quinn agreed, "There's a reason pyramids are pointy at the top and not at the bottom. We need to arrange this by size. Since I am the most prominent of the three of us, I will take the bottom. Eli, you weigh nothing so you take the top. Layla, you come in somewhere in the middle, so that's where you'll sleep, too."
"A Layla sandwich!" Eli said, scrambling up to the top bunk and lying down.
Quinn followed suit, stretching out across the bottom bunk.
"Delightful," Layla said and sighed before performing an awkward half-crawl, half-jump into the middle bunk and lying down.
The position left her with her face approximately six inches from the bottom of Eli's bunk, and her bunk around the same distance from Quinn's face.
"This place does have running water, right?" Layla asked after a few seconds of silence while they all got used to their sleeping arrangements.
"Of course. The toilet is in the room right beside here."
"The toilet? What about the shower?"
There was a long pause.
"That's outside."
Twenty minutes later, they had trekked back to the front of the ranch and were inside the optimistically named "General Store" tucked in the row of buildings that contained the front lobby and the dining hall. Eli had insisted that they needed to buy supplies for the week, but the shop looked like the retail version of their cabin and Layla was even more grateful there was no survival element of this whole ranch adventure.
Layla wandered through the rows of souvenirs and completely impractical clothing choices, chewing on a length of watermelon-flavored fruit rope until she found Quinn, who was at the far end of the store trying on a pair of rhinestone-studded pink cowboy boots.
"Those are lovely," she said.
Quinn grinned up at her from under the brim of a matching cowboy hat.
"Aren't they? I told you – rhinestone cowboy!"
"I still don't think that means what you think it does," Layla said, taking another bite of her candy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the curtain in front of a small dressing room open dramatically, "Dear lord, here comes Dances with Queens."
Quinn joined her gaze to take in Eli walking toward them in what Layla could only imagine was supposed to be a Native American warrior, but in reality, consisted of little more than a loincloth, fringed arm bands, and a feather headdress that would have made any Vegas showgirl proud.
"Come on, Layla! Get into the spirit!" he said, linking arms with Quinn so they both grinned at her.
"I am absolutely in the spirit. I'm eating watermelon jerky."
Layla waited while Eli got dressed and then walked with them to the front counter so that they could make their purchases. A dark-eyed man smiled at Eli from behind the old-fashioned cash register and Layla nudged him playfully. She felt his hand brushing her toward the door and she took Quinn's arm to steer her out of the store.
As she leaned on one of the rough-hewn wooden posts on the edge of the wooden platform connecting all the buildings, Layla caught sight of two men standing at the edge of a corral. They both looked better than anyone should be allowed to in fitted blue jeans and faded plaid shirts with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows. Weathered boots and well-worn hats completed the look of Western lusciousness and told Layla these two beautiful boys were the most authentic thing in the Middle of Nowhere.
One of the men glanced up at her and put his fingers to the brim of his hat to tilt it slightly downward at her. Layla got far closer to swooning at that moment than she would have liked to admit and was thankful when Eli stepped out of the store looking like he, too, might catch the vapors at any second.
"Why didn't I get one of those in my welcome basket?" he breathed, fanning himself with the ends of the headdress feathers that were sticking out of the bag in his hand.
"You know," Layla said, linking arms with him as she took one more glance at the cowboys by the corral, "I think I'm starting to feel a bit more amiable about this whole ranch idea."