The Cowboy

by Molly O'Keefe

  “You always had a ton of friends,” I said.

  “Did I?”

  “That’s how I remember it.”

  He laughed a little bitterly. “I think it was more fun being around me when I was winning.”

  “You got hurt and they left?”

  “They weren’t really friends, I guess.”

  God. The guy had been hurt. Was lucky to be walking and all his friends had left him. It was gross. “I’ll be your friend,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Again with that half grin, that charming curl. Like there was a joke and we were both in on it.

  “Yeah.”

  I walked around the bar and held out my hand. I’d avoided touching him because of those blank spaces in my imagination. Because my imagination clearly didn’t need any help building up incredibly deviant daydreams about this man. I’d avoided touching him because there were rules I was trying to live by. Because I was a new Bea King.

  And I wasn’t comforting sad cowboys with my body these days.

  And I wasn’t being comforted by sad cowboy’s bodies these days.

  We shook hands, and even though I was trying not to feel it, the touch of his sizzled up my arm. It sizzled up my arm and across my shoulders and down into my breasts. My belly.

  I sucked in a breath and so did he. Like he was feeling it, too. Like I wasn’t alone with this sizzle and this kind of gasping breathlessness.

  This sudden, delicious awareness.

  I knew. I knew it would be like this. Like he would be like this.

  Like we would.

  Lock the door, I thought in a fever. Tell me to lock the door and than shove me against it. Let me run my hand down your chest, to the front of your jeans. Let me touch you. And I will let you touch the fuck out of me.

  He squeezed my hand and I squeezed his back. His thumb brushed against the fleshy muscle at the base of my thumb and my lungs became too small to pull in a breath. I liked how small my hand was in his. How big his was around mine. It made me think of his body and mine, and the beautiful and perfectly compatible differences between them.

  “Bea,” he whispered, and his arm contracted, like his biceps spasmed and pulled me closer. Not a lot. Just a tiny stumbling step. I looked into his eyes. Green. Like a Mountain Dew bottle. He looked at my mouth, which parted on a breath I didn’t plan.

  None of this was coy. All of it was real and I hadn’t felt anything like this…maybe ever.

  He dropped my hand and took a step back. Putting double the distance between us. So I did, too. Soon almost the entirety of the bar was between us and I still couldn’t quite catch my breath.

  “Bea,” he said. “I don’t…I don’t want this to sound weird or be…weird.”

  “It already is.”

  “You are so beautiful. Just the most beautiful.”

  “None of that is weird.”

  “My gran died. My career…died. I’m broke. Like, broker than broke. I’m barely keeping my head above water.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m scared of pulling anyone down with me. And…” He smiled, his eyes walking all over my face, and then he laughed, a humphy, breathy thing that told me a pretty good story about his frustration.

  And his desire.

  Because I had the same breathy, humphy laugh in my throat.

  “I don’t have a lot of friends right now. And I think…I think I’d like to have you as friend.”

  “And you think fucking each other would mess that up.”

  “Has it ever not messed it up for you?”

  I shook my head. Because he was right. Friends with benefits always ended without a friend and without benefits.

  “Good point,” I said and turned away from him.

  “Did I make it weird?”

  “Nope,” I said. “You let me down very gently.”

  “You really are so beautiful.”

  “Trust me, Cody. I know.”

  I winked at him and took my place back behind the bar feeling a war rage in my brain.

  I had to tell him that I was the woman on the deck. I had to.

  But then that would be over.

  And now, because I’d waited, the friendship might be over. Because while none of what he said had made it weird between us, the truth about who we were to each other in the early morning sunlight would totally make it weird.

  And I hadn’t lied. I wanted a friend, too.

  Fuck. And I hadn’t told him I was a King.

  Oh, my god. I could fuck something up twenty different ways without even trying.

  “Bea? You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. I’m just…how do we knock this down?” I skated right past that moment that I needed to tell the truth about all of it. About everything. I pointed to the bar. In the mirror behind it I could see him looking at me. Watching me.

  And it made nothing easier that he was checking me out. His desire completely unguarded. We could be friends, but he wanted me.

  Which made me feel a little better about wanting him.

  None of it made me feel better about lying to him.

  “I’ve got a hammer next door,” he said.

  “A big one?”

  “Couple of them.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I watched in the mirror as he walked toward the door. As sweet as that man’s face was, the view of him walking away was just as fine. But then he stopped in the doorway. Put his hand up for the door and then stopped. Turned back toward me and then back toward the door.

  “Cody? You all right?”

  “Do you know…ah…do you know who lives next door?”

  My heart literally stopped in my chest. It was so fast. So sudden I saw stars. “Next door?”

  “In the apartment upstairs.”

  I bit my lip. Realized how hard it was to be different than who I was. How selfish I was in my heart and how I didn’t want to screw this up. How I wanted to be friends with this man and I wanted to keep getting naked in front of this man and how I would lie to get what I wanted.

  “No idea.”

  9

  CODY

  I walked out of Jack’s bar covered in dust, my shoulders screaming from the repeated slamming of a sledgehammer against the wall.

  And my cheeks hurt. Because Bea was just that way. She was the kind of woman…the kind of person and friend who put a smile on a person’s face. And god, she’d worked hard.

  She must be sore. If I was sore…she must be really hurting.

  If I was the me of five years ago—fuck, seven months ago—I would go back in there. Rub her shoulders, take her to wherever she lived, and run her a bath. Pour her a glass of whatever she wanted.

  But I was the me of now, which meant that I said good night, gave her a smile, and walked out.

  The me of now was lame.

  My back pocket buzzed, and since I never got calls these days, I practically jumped.

  Glory Rehabilitation Center.

  Shit. I couldn’t bounce another check with them. I was on thin ice as it was.

  “Hello?”

  “Cody McBride” A woman asked. A woman I hadn’t heard before. She sounded like an accountant, too. Slightly disapproving. I could hear clicking of computer keys on her end. I was sure, despite how impossible it was, that she could see into my overdrawn bank account.

  Jack was going to have to give me an advance on that raise he promised.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m calling to discuss next steps with you,” she said.

  “What steps?”

  “Well, Bonnie has completed her rehabilitation.”

  “Right. I talked to Dr. Whittaker last week.”

  “And now I’m calling to see if you’d like to keep Bonnie here. Or if you have plans to move her.”

  “Move her.” I laughed, suddenly imagining Bonnie in Gran’s living room.

  “We have the facility for her to stay here but I just need to talk to you about payment.”

  “How…much doe
s it cost?” I asked. I closed my eyes and prayed because I had no place for Bonnie and it would be amazing if she could stay there.

  “Four thousand a month. Food, board—”

  I laughed. I laughed so hard. Four thousand was just slightly less than what I’d been paying for her rehab and care.

  “Mr. McBride?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But no. I can’t keep her there.”

  “Okay,” she said, and again there was computer clicking and clacking at her end of the phone. “You have four days until you need to find her other accommodations.”

  Four days. What in the world was I going to be able to do in four days?

  Of course, I was in Texas. There had to be twenty places offering boarding services within spitting distance. I had just had to find them.

  I looked down at my phone. My thumb of its own accord pulling up Charlie’s number.

  Charlie would know. He might even help. Fuck, who was I kidding? He’d fall over himself to help. He’d find out where I was and be here as fast as he could.

  And I wasn’t going to do that to Charlie.

  Not again.

  Tuesday I was supposed to be framing the joint bar space between the two buildings before the crews came in next week, but so far I’d spent most of the morning on my phone.

  I had twenty calls out and eighteen of them were coming in all at the same time. None of them had good news.

  Places were full. Places were closed.

  “You’re that rodeo guy,” one woman said. “The kid that got hurt—”

  “Lots of us get hurt.”

  “Yeah…but you’re Edna McBride’s grandboy.”

  I swallowed. “I am.”

  “Yeah. You know what happened the last time I had one of you rodeo hotshots in my place? It was party central every weekend.”

  “I won’t actually be there.”

  That made the woman on the other end of the phone pause. “What? You won’t be here on the weekends?”

  “I won’t be there ever.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter, if I’m paying the bill?”

  Her silence spoke volumes. “You know something, son,” she said. “I don’t think you’re our kind of people.”

  “Sorry?”

  “We don’t have any room.”

  And then she hung up. I stared down at the phone, its screen gone blank.

  That was the truth of things these days. I wasn’t anyone’s kind of people. Not anymore. I used to be all kinds of people’s kind of people and now look at me.

  I heard, in some kind of deep, dark corner of my brain, the swish of a deck door open. The bark of an excited dog.

  Jesus—I tapped my phone. It was five after seven.

  On any other day, in any other time of my life, the way I practically ran out the back door of that building to my spot under the tree beside the debris pile would have been embarrassing.

  Today I couldn’t care. I just didn’t want to miss her.

  I got to my spot on the other side of that tree and for a second I didn’t see her. The leaves and branches of that oak tree seemed bigger today. They covered more of her. The rain from last week doing its job.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was…busy.”

  She stepped sideways and I saw her more clearly. Well, her legs.

  Jesus. Fuck.

  She wore red heels and black stockings that ended at the tops of her thighs. I couldn’t see what else she had on but that was enough. That was….more than enough.

  I was ready for whatever she was going to show me. But she just stood there. Her legs, endless and strong looking, spread wide like she was conquering something. And then, suddenly, she turned toward her door, like she was going to leave.

  “Please,” I said, stepping forward, my knee screaming at the sudden movement. My knee did not like sudden movement. I could see more of her from this angle, which made me think there were places back here where I could probably see all of her. Even her face.

  I was going to do absolutely nothing to seek out those places.

  “I was busy on the phone. It’s important. Otherwise I would have been here.” I shook my head. I felt ridiculous. Desperate. Like I’d felt in the eighth grade trying to get Monica Blakely to keep doing what she was doing with her hand down my pants. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “Please don’t leave.”

  She didn’t leave. But she didn’t sit. Either. And the moment hung, us inside of it.

  Back in the day—my good old days—rodeo had been like this. Me and the horse. The steer I was going to wrestle. When it was good, when the day was right. It was just like this.

  Like we breathed the same air. Like we had the same heartbeat.

  “I like this,” I said. “These mornings. I…love them. But I have to tell you they’re going to end.”

  I knew she could hear me but she didn’t move. She didn’t sit in her chair.

  God, I really wanted her to sit in the chair. I wanted her to spread those legs with the red shoes and the black silk stockings…

  “There are going to be more people here,’ I said. “Next week. So, we can’t…you know. Keep doing this. We have five days,” I said. “Four, I guess.”

  She sat down in her chair and I saw the tops of those stockings. The black underwear, the sweet fleshy curve of her inner thigh. She had a birthmark there. A small dark circle on the inside of her leg. I hadn’t noticed it before. All the things she’d shown me and this felt unbearably intimate.

  I had a flash of Bea in the bar the other day, when she bent over and I saw that pink lace above her jeans. I didn’t want to think of Bea right now. Or the difference between my Morning Girl’s consent and Bea’s unknowing flashing of something private. So I shook Bea out of my head and I concentrated on my Morning Girl as she put her hands on her knees and ran them up her legs to that beautiful sweet spot. That secret place.

  “I’m so fucking lucky,” I said. Because I couldn’t not say it. “So fucking lucky you show me this.”

  I ran my hand up my own legs, to my aching cock under my zipper and made a move to undo my belt. But she held up her hand and I stopped.

  Like she’d yanked my leash I stopped.

  “Just me,” she said. I almost complained. Asked why. Said no. But then she slipped her fingers under that black silk and I didn’t care anymore. I could come in my pants and I couldn’t give a shit.

  I watched her play with her clit. I watched her slip a finger deep inside her pussy and then add another one, and gritted my teeth and kept my hands off my cock.

  She gasped and made this low growling sound in her throat, and I felt the orgasm bite down on my neck without even touching myself. Fuck, this hadn’t happened in years. Coming in my pants without even a pillow to rub up against.

  She lifted those fingers that had been deep in her pussy and I imagined her putting those fingers in her mouth.

  I closed my eyes, bit my lip, and made fists so hard I swear to god I could have broken my hands. But still I felt that orgasm rippling through me. I tried to think of baseball. The pain of a shattered kneecap. Charlie’s face over the side of my hospital bed.

  None of it worked.

  She groaned and laughed, and I opened my eyes so I wouldn’t miss a second of that woman’s orgasm. Her skin, the skin I could see, was flushed, rosy, and splotchy. She was gasping. Shaking in that chair. And then…slowly she was still. Her fingers slipped out of her body. Her legs closed.

  The moment over.

  I sat there, a wet spot growing on my jeans, and slowly she got up. She stepped from her chair to the door and I wanted to tell her to stop. I wanted to tell her to wait. To bend down so I could see her face. I wanted to ask her to invite me up.

  I kept my mouth shut and she walked back inside.

  10

  BEA

  I waited until I was sure he was gone. I watched out my front window from behind the shades as he put his tools in his truck. There was no way for me to h
ear the tailgate getting slammed shut, but I swore I could hear it. I even flinched.

  But then he stood there for a second, his arms braced wide across the rusty metal. The R in the Ram had fallen off, leaving only a dirty outline. He rolled his shoulders, the muscles under his shirt shifting. I wondered if he was hurt. I knew he was stressed out about something. He’d said that. He’d told me…

  Or he told the morning girl. The distinction felt clear.

  Look up, I thought. See me. Please, look up. I’m right here.

  But all he did was fish his keys out of his pocket, walk around to the driver’s-side door, get in, and drive away.

  Louise barked. She’d climbed up on the table like she knew I wouldn’t stop her. Like she knew I didn’t have the will or the power.

  “Stop judging me,” I muttered but she only barked more. “It’s a week,” I said. “One week. And then it’s over.”

  He’d made it clear he didn’t want to date me, and I couldn’t date him. So…we had this. The morning. For one more week. Well, four days.

  But who was counting.

  Four days and then…over. I could live with that.

  I dressed in my scrubbiest scrub clothes because I had unleashed a beast and I was going to clean up the bar after the work from yesterday. And then I was thinking I’d go after the kitchen if I still had steam.

  I gave Thelma a bone. It was my new way to try and keep her from destroying all my shoes. One delicious, super-expensive marrow-filled bone a day. I gave Louise a scrub under the chin while she gave me some serious side-eye and I went downstairs.

  The plan was to clean and work until I didn’t think about the four mornings I had left.

  Cleaning was pure Steve Earle time. I needed Steve Earle and The Dukes telling me they’d promise me anything to get through the gunge and the muck, and Steve Earle led me to EmmyLou and I wondered for the like the eight hundredth time how EmmyLou and I weren’t best friends. It just seemed ridiculous that we didn’t hang out all the time.

  “Hello?” someone yelled over “Two More Bottles of Wine,” like that wasn’t practically my motto. (See, EmmyLou? We were meant to be.)