The Cowboy

by Molly O'Keefe

  19

  “Bea.” That was all he said. My name. Like a curse.

  “I can…I can explain. Come up and we can talk—”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Cody!”

  “Was it fun?” he asked. “This fucking game of yours? Did you have a good time?”

  “It wasn’t like that. I swear.”

  He just shook his head at me and then walked away, out of sight. Under my porch toward his truck and out of my life for—I was sure—forever.

  I raced through my apartment, grabbing a shirt as I went, and hurtled down my steps, catching him at the street near his truck.

  “Let me explain,” I said. His eyes raked over me and I felt naked in my clothes. I felt bruised. I had never been scared of him, not once.

  But now I was.

  “Were you ever going to tell me?” he asked. “Just now…I gave you, like, ten chances to come clean.”

  “I know. I meant to tell you. I wanted to tell you.”

  “Did you tell Jack not to tell me who you were?”

  I nodded.

  “Before or after you knew who I was?”

  “After. But I was going to tell you.”

  “All that matters is you didn’t, Bea. Why?”

  “Because it was the only way I could be with you.”

  He shook his head and looked away like he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

  “You know what I did last night?” he asked, and I shook my head, my tongue too swollen to use. “Counted up all the times you lied to me. To my face. I couldn’t even count the times you could have told me the truth but decided not to.”

  “Cody—” I reached for him and he shrugged me off.

  “I thought we were friends,” he spat.

  I jerked back. “Which girl were you friends with? The woman you kicked out of your house yesterday? Or the woman you like to watch come every morning, but went out of your way to not see her face?”

  “Don’t make this about me,” he said.

  “It’s all about you. It’s all about trying to figure out how I could be close to you. Because you put so much shit in my way. What was yesterday, Cody? What the fuck happened at your house?”

  He yanked open the door to his truck and I jumped in front of it.

  “I liked you. And I lied so I could be in your life. Because I thought we had something special—”

  “And if it was some other guy out there that first morning, watching you bend over on that deck, would you think he was special?”

  I gasped. He looked away, his jaw tight.

  “I don’t deserve that,” I said. I pressed my hand to my stomach because it hurt so much. I felt like I was going to vomit.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You do.” He put his hands on my shoulders and carefully pushed me aside. And my skin soaked up even that contact like a sponge. “It feels like you pulled part of my life out from under me. Like I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I sure as hell don’t know who you are.”

  He walked around me, but I grabbed his arm and held on when he tried to shake me loose. “What I felt for you was real. And what you felt for me was real, too.”

  He looked at me like I was dirt. Pure filth. “Nah,” he said. “I think we scratched an itch. Go find some other fool to play your games with.”

  He left and I staggered forward, like I’d had my legs kicked out from under me. He drove away, leaving me in the dust. I made my way upstairs on legs that barely worked and once inside my apartment I fell down on my knees.

  Distressed by my distress, the dogs came over to lick my tears, of which there was an endless supply.

  I don’t know what time it was when my phone rang. I’d moved from my floor to my bed and the dogs were providing as much care as they could.

  “Hello,” I said into the phone.

  “Hey.” It was Jack. “You coming? We’re supposed to be meeting.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Well, you’re a half hour late for our meeting and it’s almost time for your shift to start.”

  “Jack,” I sighed.

  “Are you sick? You okay?”

  No. No. My heart is broken. My pride is ravaged. I’m a fucking disaster.

  I felt the swell of my excuses rise up in my chest. The old litany of shit I could say.

  I should quit. Right now. Save myself that hassle of doing it later.

  Save Jack the pain of trusting me and then having me fail him. It would be so easy to make up excuses for how I never really liked that place anyway. And those plans I’d been making for the expansion and the future, I never really wanted those plans.

  I started to do what I always did—fail everyone.

  Fail myself.

  “I’m coming.” I sat up in bed, startling the dogs.

  “You sure, because if you’re sick—”

  “I’m not. I just…give me twenty minutes.”

  Twenty minutes to get my shit together.

  Thirty minutes later I was downstairs for my meeting with Jack. I wore a pair of dress pants with heels and a button-up shirt that was a little too tight. I looked like a bank teller in a porno. It was kind of a costume and I needed it to keep my shit together.

  It gave my fake-it-until-you-make-it desperation something to cling to.

  “Bea,” Jack said, “Are you okay? Because, no offense, you look…not well.”

  “You say that to all the girls?” Lame, so lame, but I was barely keeping it together.

  “Hey,” Jack said, scanning up and down. He put his fingers through his belt loops and gave me a cheesy grin. Playing along like he knew that’s what I needed him to do. “You want me to make a deposit.”

  “For your information, I was going for banker-in-a-porno as my look.”

  “Well, mission accomplished,” he said. “Though—”

  “I know. I’m not your type.” I tilted my head and looked at him closely. “What’s your look?” He was wearing a button-down shirt. And a pair of dark jeans. His beard was even trimmed. I leaned over and sniffed him. He smelled like expensive beard oil.

  “Nervous investee,” he said.

  “You don’t need to be nervous,” I said. “I’m a sure thing.”

  “Don’t…” He shook his head. “Don’t make jokes that sell yourself short. If you do this for me, you’re changing my life. You’re changing the fucking town. If you can’t take yourself seriously, at least take that seriously.”

  “Right,” I said, sobered by his words. Sometimes I just had to be shown the way out of my own way. Usually that was what Ronnie did for me, constantly pushing me out of my ruts. And I’d come this far without her. I could do the rest. “Of course.”

  “I have, like, a proposal thing I found online,” he said and handed me two pieces of paper stapled together. “It’s got what I plan to do with the place. What I’d use your money for and some information on what the bar was pulling in per month."

  “Holy shit! That much?”

  “I know. But I’m the only bar in town with chairs. Imagine if The Bar was actually nice.”

  “We’re gonna make a killing.”

  “Here,” he said and pointed at another section of his proposal. “This is how I’ll repay you. Interest, etc. and here,” his hand slid down the form to the very bottom, “is what we agreed on. Price-wise.”

  “This is all awesome. Really, Jack. So awesome. I’ll run out to the bank today and get you a suitcase of cash.”

  “A check will do.”

  “Nah. I’m gonna get you a burlap bag with a big money sign on it.”

  “Is this the kind of humor I can look forward to for the entire project?”

  “Yep.” I put the paper down on the bar. “But I had another idea—”

  Of course, at that moment my sister walked in looking like a million dollars in a yellow dress and pretty red flats. Her hair was up high in a bouncy ponytail. She had that natural makeup look down cold. And she made my banker porno look
seem even worse.

  “Hey,” she said. “Bad time?”

  “Perfect time.”

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

  “My sister is part of my idea,” I said. “Have a seat. Let’s talk.”

  CODY

  I had to do therapy after the accident. Not just the physical stuff, but mental. A shrink came into my hospital room and just “wanted to talk.” She asked bullshit questions about how I felt not being in the rodeo anymore.

  I’d been through a lot of this before, so I knew there were three kinds of answers. The honest kind that would lead to more bullshit talking. The lying kind, which would lead to more bullshit talking. And the answers that lay somewhere in the middle. The answers that managed to let in all the ghosts I didn’t like thinking about, but ultimately made the shrink put a signature on the form and leave me the fuck alone.

  With the ghosts I didn’t want let out.

  But the shrink was pretty smart. And she’d caught on to what I was doing and told me that I should pay attention to when I was being defensive, because it usually meant that deep down I was scared.

  “You’ve seen my record,” I’d said, looking down at her lap. “I’m not scared of shit.”

  “Oh, Cody,” she said. “You’re scared of everything.”

  Well, that made me super defensive. And as I drove up to the ranch where Bonnie was being kept I was raging with defensiveness. I was purely pissed off.

  Fucking Charlie.

  Fucking Bea.

  Jesus Christ, I hadn’t even recognized myself this morning with her. I’d never spoken to a woman like that. Of course, I’d never been hurt by a woman like that.

  Not since my mother, which told me plenty about how I’d let it go too far with Bea.

  Way too fucking far.

  When I’d realized who she was last night, sitting in the dark drinking that beer she’d left behind, I wondered if I’d somehow known that they were the same person. Some place deep in my snake brain I must have known, because I couldn’t explain how I’d let my guard down so completely with two different women. How open I’d made myself in totally different ways. And how I couldn’t even show one person that much of myself.

  Unless she’d somehow tricked me.

  And then I just got mad. And stayed mad.

  When I saw her again, well, I needed to apologize, and then I’d stay as clear of her as I could in this town. Which wouldn’t be easy, but I’d done plenty of hard things before.

  I parked at the far edge of the lot that was full of fancy cars and trucks. I recognized Charlie’s old Denali and felt like I was going to have an aneurysm. I had to calm down before I went in there. Before I saw Bonnie and the old man.

  Or I’d stroke out in the barn.

  Outside the truck the day was hot and getting hotter but there were big poplars in between all the buildings casting a nice shade. The corrals were full of horses being worked out, nice and slow. There was a pretty black mare limping around the circle and I had to look away.

  The blast of the air conditioning inside the reception area turned all the sweat on my lower back into icicles.

  “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked, and the instinct to run was nearly out of my control.

  “Yeah. I’m Cody McBride. I’m here for—”

  “Bonnie!” She said, smiling wide like I was family just arrived for Christmas dinner. “Of course. What a sweetheart she is. And a fighter, my goodness!”

  “Yeah,” I said through a lump in my throat. “That would be her.”

  “The doctor and Charlie Hoynes are already out at the barn. You can join them through there.” She pointed to a glass side door and I quickly made my escape out into the sticky Texas heat. Sweat gathered in my hairline and ran down my spine. There was nothing really to be prepared for. I’d last seen Charlie in the hospital and that was just a few months ago. It was only Charlie, after all, but when I stepped into the wide-open door of that stable and my eyes adjusted to the murk, it felt like I’d been pulled from that horse all over again.

  Charlie. Jesus Christ. In that old brown suit and that beat-up hat. He was six foot and three hundred pounds of pure old-school Texas.

  He was the closest thing I have ever had to a father. By a mile.

  My vision swam and that aneurysm felt imminent.

  “Mr. McBride,” the other man said. The doctor or whatever. “Glad you could make it.”

  I shook his hand and didn’t give Charlie a glance, but could feel his attention. And his disapproval.

  Leave it, Charlie, I thought. I’m just trying to survive this shit.

  “I was telling Mr. Hoynes that Bonnie’s recovery has been miraculous, really. We weren’t sure for the first month if she’d survive the injury. We managed to treat her physically but she remained in a withdrawn state. Horses are herd animals and being solitary can often lead to depression, so we made sure Bonnie was surrounded by other horses. We even put one of the barn cats in her stall. But nothing seemed to pull her out of that withdrawn state.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie muttered. “I wonder what she was missing.”

  I didn’t look at him, and the guilt I was trying not to feel was crushing me. I could barely breathe. “But she’s all right now?”

  “She is. We put her in a stall next to another rodeo horse. An older stallion who’d gone blind in one eye, and I don’t know…” The doctor smiled. “Maybe they told old war stories at night, but the stallion pulled her out of it.”

  “That’s good. That’s…real good.” I managed to say. Bonnie got better because she was competitive and if that old blind warhorse was on its feet—goddammit, she would be, too.

  “Would you like to go see her?” the doctor aske-, all bright eyed and happy at the idea of reuniting me with my old horse. It was a YouTube video dream come true. He could Instagram it and make it a Facebook story or some shit—get a million clicks of my horse and I seeing each other for the first time since the accident.

  “No,” I said. “That’s all right.”

  The doctor looked confused and I didn’t have the will to explain all the reasons why I couldn’t look into Bonnie’s eyes. And there was some kind of chance she wouldn’t be happy to see me.

  “Hey, doc,” Charlie said. “Give us a minute, would you?”

  “Of course. I’ll be in Bonnie’s stall, just around the corner,” he said and walked away into the labyrinth that was this giant stable.

  “Charlie,” I said, trying to cut him off before he could start. “Don’t—”

  But he surprised me by shoving me with his considerable strength. I stumbled back. My shoulders hit the wall behind me and tackle fell off a hook by my head.

  “Charlie, what the hell?”

  “I may be thirty years older than you, punk, but I can still knock you down a peg.” He pushed that old hat up on his wide forehead and got right up in my face. I looked away but he wouldn’t let me. “I’ve let you wallow in this shit enough, boy.”

  Oh, god. We were going with boy again.

  “It’s time you dragged yourself up out of this withdrawn state—”

  “Will you stop?”

  “No.”

  “I have a job, Charlie. A good one that could grow into something big. And you know what? I like it. I’m okay. I have friends, too. Real ones.” Well, I might be down a friend after the other day. Bea would have every right never to speak to me again. “I know you want me to be destroyed because I can’t rodeo anymore, but guess what? I’ve moved on.”

  “That’s why you aren’t returning my calls?”

  “What do we have left to say, Charlie? I told you I’d pay you back—”

  “I don’t want your fucking money.”

  “Then why do you keep fucking calling?” I shoved him back, stepping away from the wall where he had me pinned with his bulk. It wasn’t smart, going after Charlie, he was a dirty-fighting son of a bitch. But I wasn’t going to be backed into a corner.

  “I’m c
alling about you. About how you’re doing. About how your life is going.”

  “Just great.” I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic but it was how it came out.

  He sighed and glanced away, his hands on his hips. “I just want to help.”

  A cold chill ran down my back and I realized what was happening. Why Charlie kept coming back. It was because I was giving him a fight. I needed to answer him like I answered that shrink. Just enough honesty to get him to leave me the fuck alone.

  “You did help,” I said. “You believed in me when no one else did and Charlie, we had some good times. Some…really good times. And I was happy to wear your sponsorship. I was proud of it.” Fuck. My voice was getting thick. This was too much honesty. “But rodeo is behind me.”

  “You saying after all those years together, all those miles, we were nothing but rodeo? It was me with the money and you in the ring, and that’s it? That’s all? Because son—”

  “Yep,” I said, fast and hard. Because that son always fucking broke me. “That’s all.”

  “So, you’re putting me and Bonnie out to pasture. Goodbye and good riddance?”

  “What else is there to do?”

  Charlie looked at me a long time and I forced myself to look right back. “I keep forgetting how feral you were when I found you.”

  “Shut up, Charlie.”

  “How you didn’t know how to disagree with someone without putting a fist in their face. And you didn’t know how to be a friend with someone—”

  “I have friends.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said in that emphatic way that said he knew better. “You have girls you fuck until they break their heart over you, and you had your gran, that kid Jack, and you had me. You telling me that’s all changed?”

  Did Bea break her heart over me? Or did I break mine over her? Either way, neither of us walked away from what happened between us intact.

  “I call you because I care, Cody. I know you don’t like it when I call you son.”

  “I’m not your goddamned son.”

  “But you are,” he whispered. “To me you are. And you’re breaking my heart leaving me in the cold like this.”

  It was like someone was squeezing my chest in a fist. Things were breaking up and crumbling. It felt like I was honestly going to die.