The Cowboy

by Molly O'Keefe

  It was weird how nervous I was emptying everything out of the bar. I left the door open for him even though I knew it was early. He wasn’t supposed to show up until after noon.

  Ridiculous how nervous I was.

  This morning at 7 a.m. I’d stood at the sliding glass door out to my deck, my hand on the door, and forced myself not to go out there. It seemed mean knowing what he didn’t know. And I was a lot of things but mean wasn’t one of them.

  But he’d waited for me. Shifting from leg to leg for close to a half hour.

  He waited.

  And that felt…huge. Strange. Sweet.

  I cued my phone to the speaker and soon I had Kacey Musgraves blasting through the system. And after enough Kacey Musgraves blasting through the system, the nerves went away. Enough Kacey Musgraves at the right volume and I forgot I was a King.

  The right Kasey Musgraves song, at the right volume, and I started to believe I was Kacey Musgraves.

  The dried-out limes and lemons and oranges got dumped in the garbage, and I contemplated putting the cherries back in the jar but dumped them before I started to put the bottles into boxes.

  I pulled two dusty, barely used crème de menthe bottles off the mirrored shelf and contemplated tossing those away with the lemons and lines.

  “Hello?” someone yelled over “Step Off” and I didn’t have to turn around to see my cowboy to know my cowboy was there.

  My cowboy… That had to stop.

  “Hey.” I set the bottles down on the counter and turned Kasey down until I was myself again. “You’re early,”

  “Is that okay?” he asked. He stood just inside the door, and the sunlight coming through it behind him gave him a kind of halo. His face was shadowed but even from across the room I could smell he’d showered.

  “Totally,” I said. I found him hard to look at and I could feel my heart pounding in my neck. This secret I was keeping took all the air out of the room. Tell him, I thought. Tell him right now. Before you talk about anything else.

  He stepped out of the dusty murk around the door, each step bringing him into the brighter light of the bar. He wore a white shirt with faded lettering across the front, a pair of worn Levi’s, and those boots of his.

  “You sure are pretty,” I said, because when I was uncomfortable I liked to make the ground uneven for everyone.

  He smiled, a crooked, bashful thing that shouldn’t seem genuine. It should seem cheeky and cheap and put on. “I did my hair,” he joked, brushing his hand through the thick blond strands on his head, making it all stand up and glitter in the light.

  “For me?” I asked.

  “Who else?”

  It was barely C+ flirtation; really, the most it deserved was a good eyeroll. But I blushed and looked away like a teenage girl made all rattley inside. And even as a teenage girl I hadn’t been a person who got rattley. I was deeply uncomfortable being rattley.

  “It looks different in the daylight. Smaller,” he said, looking around the daylight wonder that was The Bar.

  “Dirtier.”

  “That, too.”

  “Bars usually do.”

  “Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

  “Leave? Why?”

  “You…well…you kind of look uncomfortable. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Not at all,” I lied emphatically. “And you don’t.”

  “Okay.” He nodded as if glad that had been decided. “Where should I start?”

  I shoved the booze in my hands into his hands. My pinky touched his finger. The finger he’d licked the come off. And both of us stood there for just a second, our fingers touching. And it was tiny, nothing. I could barely feel him there against my finger but somehow…I felt him. The touch of his finger against mine filled in all the blanks in my imagination. And there were so many. His skin was warm and rough. And I wanted more of it against mine.

  This was why I didn’t shake his hand the other day. It was dangerous.

  Tell him.

  “Cody, I should—”

  “So, where do these go?” he asked, pulling the bottles out of my hands and breaking the contact.

  “Those boxes.” I pointed to the boxes behind him and he nodded, glancing down at the bottles.

  “I guess you don’t use crème de menthe all that often,” he said, clearing the dust off the label with his thumb.

  “Not all that many grasshopper orders around here.”

  “Those green drinks with the ice cream?” he said. “My mom loved them.”

  “Yeah?” There was something in his voice. A kind of fondness that made me smile.

  “If she was home on a Friday she’d make a blender full of them. Give me some without the booze. They’re pretty delicious.”

  “Well without the minty booze they’re just ice cream.”

  “Mine were minty.”

  “Maybe she gave you the booze.”

  He laughed a little. “That wouldn’t be all that surprising.”

  He put the bottles in the boxes and picked up a few more from the bar that I’d taken off the mirrored shelves. “Kahlua,” he said with another smile.

  “Your mom have a thing for White Russians?” I asked.

  “As a matter of fact…”

  “Really?”

  “She was…kind of a throwback, you know?” he said and began putting bottles in boxes faster than I was getting them off the shelves so I stepped up my work. “She was a stewardess. Worked a lot. She was…a real looker.”

  “And loved a sweet drink?”

  “Loved them. Sweet drinks and Virginia Slims and hot pink nail polish. She smelled like hairspray and men’s cologne.”

  “Men’s cologne?”

  “She liked sweet drinks and dangerous men.” That smile faded.

  “Well, who doesn’t?” I said, because he seemed quiet and sad. I took a deep breath. “Look,” I said. “There is something—”

  “Are there more boxes?” he asked, changing the subject, no doubt because he was quiet and sad and embarrassed about being that way. He’d revealed too much, too soon. Conversations about mothers could do that. It was incredibly sweet. And I backed right off telling him about who we actually were to each other.

  He was already embarrassed. I didn’t need to compound it.

  What a cowardly Bea King thing to do, a little voice said in my head. But I ignored that voice. I always had.

  “In the back room.” I jerked a thumb at the dark doorway to the left of the bar.

  “I’ll get them,” he said and was gone before I could say more.

  He came back with an arm full of flattened boxes.

  “I had an idea,” he said, setting the boxes down and starting to build them.

  “Really?”

  “You should do a retro drink menu,” he said. “Grasshoppers and White Russians and Amaretto Stone Sours.”

  “You think someone is going to order those?”

  “I don’t know—those White Russians are real delicious. But, yeah, I think girls will. And boys will who want to hang out with those girls. And if you made it a thing.”

  “A thing?”

  “Yeah. You know. A theme night.”

  “Cody,” I said, my hands on my hips. “What do you know about theme nights?”

  He grinned that grin that went right through me. The grin that said he’d seen some things in this world and he wouldn’t mind seeing a few more. “A thing or two,” he said. “You could do a whole retro thing. You dress up like you were the other day.” Oh, I liked that. I liked that a lot. He’d noticed how I looked the other day and a warm blush climbed my body. “Or like that Mad Men show—”

  “I do like a pencil skirt.”

  “Right.”

  “And a crinoline.”

  “I don’t…know what that is.”

  “A thing that makes a skirt all poufy.”

  He shrugged. “It’s an idea. Jack would probably go for it.”

  “Jack would totally go
for it,” I agreed, and could imagine the whole thing playing out. He’d get all wide-eyed and excited and he’d tell me to run with it, and the next thing I knew I’d be manager. And there’d be a hundred expectations on me and I’d fail all of them.

  “But?” he asked.

  “But what?”

  “That silence of yours was a but silence—”

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “We’re not,” he said.

  “I’m just saying…I’m not in the position to be taking big ideas to Jack.”

  He shrugged and set the empty boxes on the stool. “I think Jack would do just about anything you told him to do.”

  Embarrassed, I shook my head and quickly changed the subject. “Cody, I’ve met you all of two times. I don’t know how you’d get that idea when I don’t even know your last name.”

  “McBride.”

  The name rang distant bells. “Cody McBride?”

  “That’s me. What’s your—”

  “Cody McBride. Why….?” I narrowed my eyes like that might help.

  “What are you doing?”

  I tilted my head. Like that might help.

  He laughed and kept building boxes.

  “Cody McBride. Cody McBride. Cody…I know you. Don’t I?”

  “Probably not. But my grandmother was Edna.”

  “Edna McBride! She made all the cakes!” Any special-occasion cake made in this town for a graduation, wedding, or birthday had been made by Edna. Nothing fancy, but delicious and decorated with flowers. Flowers no matter what. Someone could ask for a football on their cake and it would be a football made out of flowers.

  “Yes, she did.” He smiled down at the boxes. “But her real thing was pies. Did you ever have one of her pies?”

  “No.”

  “They were like…” He shook his head. This sweet talkative cowboy was made speechless by his grandma’s pies. “Nothing else I’ve ever had. Ever. That new bakery across the street, she makes cherry pies on Monday and they’re good. They’re close but they’re not my grandmother’s.”

  I did not expect to feel that warm little blast of pride. “That’s…that’s my sister,” I said. “Sabrina’s Sweet Things. Sabrina is my sister.”

  “No shit. She’s a talented woman.”

  “No shit. But the question is—who are you, Cody McBride?” I squinted and tilted my head and he chuckled a little. It was a nice sound and the kind that made me want to tease him into making it again.

  “No one special—”

  “Rodeo!” I cried. “You were a senior when I was a freshman. Right? You left early to rodeo full-time.”

  “Jesus, how do you remember that?”

  “You were kinda a big deal, Cody McBride.” He’d walked the halls of school and the freshman cheerleaders and rally girls fell in his wake. The walls smoked where he leaned against them. He left an impression and we’d been in school together for roughly five minutes.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said quietly. Sad again.

  What was it about sad men that made me crazy to make them smile? To comfort them in some way? I leaned against the bar, resting just right so he could get a good look down my shirt if he wanted. What was wrong with me that I’d give him that, just because he was sad?

  My sister would tell me that was my thing. Giving myself away for pennies when I was worth millions but…there was something about Cody.

  “You really were a very big deal,” I said, remembering. He’d won some big competitions and had been doing local commercials for car dealerships. I lost track of him when Ronnie and I went to Austin.

  “A long time ago.” He caught himself looking down my shirt and quickly looked away. The tips of his ears went a bit pink.

  Oh, honey, I thought. You’ve seen so much more. But now was clearly not the time to talk to him about that.

  “I competed for about eight years.”

  “And then what?”

  “I stopped.”

  “Why?”

  This time when he looked at me he wasn’t blushing and he didn’t look down my shirt. He was pissed. “Do you really not know? Or is this some kind of make-conversation thing?”

  “Make conversation? No, if we were making conversation I’d ask you about your sex life.”

  “Then what is this?”

  I shrugged. “Getting to know you.”

  Somehow, we both seemed slightly taken aback by my words. Which wasn’t anything new for me. Words often come out of my mouth that I hadn’t planned or thought about.

  “I got hurt,” he finally said.

  “When?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “That’s why you limp?” I was prying and that was crappy, but I couldn’t seem to stop. And he was answering, kind of like he couldn’t stop.

  He nodded. “Destroyed my knee. Total blow-out. Doctors said I’d never compete again. They said I needed to be grateful that I was walking.”

  “Are you? Grateful.” Because there was something in the way he said those words that did not seem the slightest bit grateful. I knew anger when I heard someone pretending it didn’t exist.

  “I wasn’t and now I’m…trying.”

  “How is that going?”

  “Some days better than others. Today is a good day.”

  Oh, cowboy, that smile is gonna get you in trouble.

  “What happened?” I asked. “The accident?” He was silent for so long I felt my face get hot. “Sorry, you don’t have to…I don’t mean to pry.”

  “Well, it’s hardly prying since you can go on YouTube and watch five minutes of video.”

  I would never do that. Wouldn’t want to. But the way he said it indicated he’d watched that five minutes of video lots of times.

  My heart just about broke for him.

  “Bulldogging competition. That’s when the rider—”

  “Steer wrestling,” I said. “I know the lingo.” Texas girls who had an eye for rodeo boys caught on fast.

  “Right.” The smile was a quick flash on his face. “Well, I misjudged the steer and he changed course last minute, and I tried to save myself and my horse but it was too late, and when I jumped, my foot got tangled and I ended up pulling her down with me. The steer dragged me and by that time I’d shattered my knee cap and my femur.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “They said I was lucky it wasn’t my pelvis. My horse broke two legs.”

  “They put her down?”

  “I begged them not to.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  He was still building boxes, but I’d given up making it seem like I was working at all.

  He opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head. I didn’t think he was going to answer and I certainly wasn’t going to push. I turned away and started pulling more bottles off the shelf behind the bar.

  “I miss being good at something,” he said, and I stilled, looking up to catch a glimpse of him in the mirror. “I miss how simple my life used to be. I miss the way my body felt—like I could do anything. I miss how it felt to win. I miss…” He stopped shook his head, and then looked up and caught my eye in the mirror. I startled as if he’d caught me. But he only smiled. “You don’t want to know all that.”

  “Sure I do,” I said.

  We were quiet for a second. I was waiting for him to say something and it was growing obvious as he built boxes that he was done talking.

  Now, I thought. Now. Do it now. Just say the words.

  8

  I know you’re doing the work next door and I know that because I’m the woman you’ve been watching on the deck every morning. I watched you lick come off your hand. Your eyes make me come so hard I can barely walk after.

  I imagined he’d be flabbergasted for a second and then he’d be angry. And he’d cross the room with long strides, just a tiny hitch on t
hat injured leg. And he’d flip that lock closed and when he turned, his face would be still and careful, but the tips of his ears would be hot.

  You lied to me, he would say.

  No, I would say, backing away from him. No. I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell you.

  You know what happens to women who lie to me? he’d ask, and scared and turned on I would only shake my head.

  And maybe he’d tell me to take off my clothes and maybe he’d tell me to lean over the bar. And maybe he’d bring that big wide palm down against the bare cheeks of my ass. Or maybe he’d drop to his knees behind me.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, snapping me out of my little daydream and the moment to tell him was over, burned up in my fantasy. But now I was all hot and bothered under my overalls thinking about him eating me out from behind.

  “What?”

  “Just wondering what your name is.”

  Right. My name. My name would put an end to all of this, too. My name would change the way he looked at me. My name had that kind of power.

  “Bea.”

  He smiled at me. “We went to school together, but I don’t remember you and I think I would remember you.”

  “You were four years older than me. And I was…awkward.”

  “I don’t believe it for a minute.”

  “Well, the class pictures would make a believer out of you.”

  “You want me to box those up?” he asked, pointing to all the glasses I’d stacked on the bar. I didn’t even remember doing that, lost in that fantasy.

  “Sure.”

  “Do you have paper or something? To wrap them?”

  “No. In fact, I think the best thing for these glasses is if they all broke.”

  He laughed. “I wish I had known you,” he said. “In high school. It would have been nice to know you.”

  Oh, my god. I wanted to strip off my clothes right then and there. I wanted to push him back against the door and kiss that beautiful sweet and sad mouth. I wanted my breasts to put a smile on his face and I wanted his dick to put a smile on mine and…

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably would have improved my high school experience to have you as a friend.”

  That made him laugh. “It would improve my experience now,” he said, “to have friends.”