by Claire Adams
Except I couldn’t. Now that I was in bed, now that I was supposed to close my eyes, I was suddenly wide awake, my mind spinning. Sex had taken my mind off of things while I had been in the middle of the act, but now that it was over and I was just lying here, all I could do was think about everything that had happened recently.
Was I losing my mind? Was that it? The water being left on, the cinch being loose, Ditto’s gate being left open . . . .
In the morning, though, any residual good feelings I’d had were gone. Wren had to leave, and I had to get out there and get started on the morning chores. Ditto’s corral was empty. I couldn’t even look at it.
I was about to head up into the loft to throw down more hay bales when Garrett appeared, asked me if I would come on up to the house for a minute. “Jesse can take care of the hay,” he said.
I nodded. “All right.” I followed him up to the house, neither of us saying anything.
Inside, he had me sit at the kitchen table. Marie was there, too, and all of a sudden, I got a real bad feeling.
“Would you like some coffee?” Marie asked.
“Sure,” I said, even though my throat felt parched and my pulse was racing. They were going to can me. They were going to tell me to pack my shit and go. Thing was, I couldn’t blame them.
“Is everything all right with you?” Garrett asked. Both he and Marie looked concerned.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I feel fine. Well, I don’t feel fine after what happened with Ditto, but . . . .” I shook my head. “I just don’t know.”
“Has anything been going on to make you feel more stressed out lately?” Marie said. “Have you been sleeping all right? Eating well?”
“Yeah. Yeah, nothing has changed. Except . . . .” I paused.
Garrett and Marie both looked at me. “Except . . .?” he said.
Except Wren. And yeah, I did think about her a lot, she was on my mind. But I didn’t think it was so much that I’d be forgetting to do things that were basically ingrained in me.
“Wren,” I said softly, feeling like I was betraying her.
Marie reached over and patted my hand. “She is a lovely girl,” she said. “Relationships can feel all-consuming at times. Especially at first.” She looked at Garrett with a faint smile. “I remember when I first met Garrett, he was all I could think about.”
Garrett shook his head. “A relationship is no reason to let your head disappear up in the clouds,” he said. I could still hear the anger—or maybe it was disappointment—in his voice. I’d let him down, I knew it, and that felt worse than anything else.
“I know it shouldn’t,” I said. “It’s completely unacceptable. I’m having a hard time believing it myself, that I was so distracted I just forgot to do things that I’ve always done before.”
But it made sense, I supposed. I was used to doing all the ranch stuff—though I did have a seven-year hiatus—what I wasn’t used to was the girlfriend aspect. It had been different with Carolyn; I hadn’t felt nearly as strongly toward her as what I felt toward Wren. Marie was right—it was, in a way, all-consuming. Maybe other people were better equipped to handle that sort of thing. Maybe if I had a job in an office or at the grocery store, the worst thing that would have happened was I’d staple my finger or knock over a bushel of apples or something.
“There’s no excuse for it,” I said. “And I know nothing I say is going to change anything, so the last thing I’ll say about it is that I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. You guys have been there more for me than anyone else, and it means the world to me that you even wanted me back here in the first place. I don’t want to jeopardize that.”
“We know you didn’t do it on purpose,” Marie said.
Garrett nodded, though I could tell he was having less of an easy time accepting the fact that it was merely an oversight. “The last thing we want is for anyone to get hurt—human or horse. Especially when it’s something preventable. I’ve been working in this business long enough to know that mistakes happen, and I’ve certainly made enough of them myself. So, I don’t want you to think we’re sitting here telling you that you need to be perfect, because we’re not, and we know that’s completely unreasonable. But we do expect a high level of professionalism, not just because it reflects upon who we are, but because it keeps people safe. It keeps the animals safe.”
“I’ll make it right,” I said. I didn’t come out and say it, but I knew what needed to be done, even though it was the last thing in the world that I wanted to do.
But I wasn’t going to put it off; I’d been down that path before and knew just where it led. Wren was planning to come over that afternoon, and I figured I’d just let her. I could tell her then. I couldn’t let myself think about it anymore than that—it had to be done.
When she got there, we went into my cabin. She tried to put her arms around me and give me a kiss, but I pulled back.
“Wren,” I said. “There’s . . . there’s something we need to talk about.”
“What’s that?” She pulled my face toward hers and gave me a kiss, her lips lingering on mine.
“You can’t be kissing me when I tell you.”
She nipped my lower lip, then let go. “Okay,” she said. “What is this big announcement you need to make? That’s so much more important than me giving you a kiss?”
I swallowed. “I think I have to break up with you,” I said. To my surprise, she started to laugh.
“Oh, you’re hilarious,” she said. And then she leaned over and tried to kiss me again.
“No, I’m not joking,” I said, putting my arm up to hold her back.
Her face froze, and then she frowned and bit her lip. “What?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be doing this.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because.” I stopped. How was I supposed to explain this without hurting her? There really didn’t seem to be a way. If I tried to do it without hurting her, I’d just end up not being clear. It would be so unclear, in fact, that she could very well think I wasn’t breaking up with her at all.
“That’s not a good enough answer,” she said.
“It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I’m getting too distracted by you. I think about you a lot. About . . . the stuff we do, about us. And it’s been causing me to fuck up around the ranch. Not just little shit, but big things. Ditto wouldn’t have gotten out. Wouldn’t have cracked his cannon bone and had to be destroyed. That’s my fault. I killed that horse. I might not have pulled the trigger, but it was my own damn fault. You were right there—you saw how much fuckin agony he was in. And it was my fault.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “And maybe you did forget to lock the gate, but it happens! Not everyone is perfect. People forget to do things sometimes.”
“Yeah, they do, but it usually doesn’t result in something dying. I just can’t take the chance of something else happening again. Something worse, even. Garrett was the only one who was there for me when I got out of prison, he gave me my job back, he’s been there for me this whole time. I can’t let him down by fucking everything up.”
“So, you don’t want to see me anymore.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I do—Trust me, I do. You make me feel better than anyone ever has. I love being around you. But I’ve got to do this. I’ve just got to.”
The frown on her face was deep. I hated seeing her so unhappy, hated knowing that I was the one causing her to feel this way.
“Do you remember that talk we had?” she asked. “And you told me how you hadn’t done things right with Carolyn, but you were going to do them right with me? Do you think this is right? Breaking up with someone that you ‘love being around’? Because in case you didn’t know, once we break up, I’m not really going to want to be around you that much. Or at all, really. Maybe some girls can handle that shit, but I’m not one of them.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to want to be around me,” I said, alre
ady feeling sad at the thought of never getting to hang out with her again. But then that image of Ditto reappeared in my mind, and I knew I couldn’t retract my statement. This was the best thing, even if it hurt, even if it wasn’t what I wanted. “I’m sorry, Wren.”
Her chin trembled, ever so slightly, but her eyes were dry. She was blinking fast, though, and I knew she was trying not to cry, which just about broke my heart. How was I supposed to explain to her that I didn’t want to do this, yet I had to? It hardly even made sense to me, other than I knew I had to put my job first, I had to put Garrett and the ranch first. At least for right now. I couldn’t let him down, and I couldn’t keep doing things that were a danger to people and animals.
“What are you going to do if it keeps happening?” she asked. “What if we break up now and you stop thinking about me, but then you forget to close a gate again? Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
And I really didn’t, but I was almost one hundred percent certain it wouldn’t happen. That the forgotten gates and cinches would simply stop because I’d remember to latch them, I’d remember to tighten them. I’d never forgotten that stuff in the past, and she was the only thing that was different about the whole equation.
“I think you’re making a big mistake,” she said. “And I don’t mean that as a threat.”
“I know you don’t.” I wanted to take her in my arms, just wanted to hold her to me until that look disappeared from her face, but I was the whole reason that look was there in the first place. The best thing I could do right now would be to end the conversation, to let her go, so she could start moving on. She’d forget about me soon enough, I hoped. I didn’t want to think of her with another guy, but at the same time, I knew it wouldn’t be hard for her to find a date at all. “But really, Wren, it’d probably be better if you just forgot about me.”
The expression on her face went from disbelief to shocked to angry in about two seconds. “I can’t believe you just said that.” Her voice shook. “I can’t believe you think that I could forget about you, just like that. You can break up with me right now if you want, you can forget all about me, but I will never be able to forget about you! Even if we hadn’t started seeing each other, even if we never met each other again after you got out, I will never be able to forget about you.”
I felt simultaneously elated and completely shitty to hear that.
“You know I love you, don’t you?” she said. “I’ve never said that to a guy before. I’ve never said it because I never actually felt it. I do now, but I’m beginning to realize that doesn’t matter.”
Tell her you love her back! Tell her she’s about the most amazing person you’ve ever met and you never thought that you’d ever stand the chance with someone like her.
I wanted to. The words were there, right on the tip of my tongue.
But I bit my lip and didn’t say a word.
21.
Wren
I thought he was going to tell me he was just playing some awful prank, maybe just trying to get me to say that I was going to break up with him. But that never happened. He just kept saying how he couldn’t let Garrett down, how he’d never been so forgetful before, how a horse had died because of it. And that it was basically my fault.
“He didn’t say it was your fault, did he?” Allison asked. We were sitting on my couch, sharing a pint of double chocolate ice cream.
“No, he didn’t come out and explicitly state it,” I said. “But that’s basically what he was saying without putting it into words. If he hadn’t been thinking about me so much, then he wouldn’t have forgotten to latch the gate. He wouldn’t have forgotten to tighten the . . . the . . . whatever the fuck that thing is called that holds the saddle on—”
“The cinch.”
I looked at Allison. She shrugged. “I rode horses when I was younger and still had time for that sort of shit.”
“Well, whatever the fuck it’s called, he didn’t tighten it all the way and this little girl went to get on the horse and the saddle slipped and it was all very traumatizing, I guess. The point is, none of this shit would have happened if he hadn’t been distracted by me and he’s decided the best way to remedy it is for us to break up.”
“Then he really is a shit head.” She handed me the ice cream container. “I’m sorry, Wren. It sucks. Him being a shit head doesn’t make it suck any less.”
“It was awful,” I said. “I didn’t cry in front of him, but I definitely did a lot of ugly crying once he left.”
“Don’t for a second feel bad about that!” she said. “What a dick! Does he have any idea how much of a dick this makes him?”
“Probably not. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. I can’t fault him for that.”
“Then he’s not a dick, he’s just a moron.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I think life would be a hell of a lot easier if men just didn’t exist.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Except I don’t want Ollie not to exist—I just want him to have not broken up with me!”
“He’s a fool. Maybe he’ll realize it. But even if he doesn’t, don’t for a second let yourself believe that it is any reflection on you. Well, actually, maybe it is. I mean, he broke up with you because he can’t stop thinking about you. Which itself is kind of a fucked-up reason to break up with someone. You’re too much woman for him.”
“I don’t want to be too much woman for him. Up until now I thought I was just enough. Everything about us was working out perfectly.”
“Nothing is ever perfect, especially not in a relationship.” Allison shook her head. “Here we are. You who’s just been dumped, me who’s about to go get an abortion. Yay us. Fuck, we deserve a vacation!”
The mention of vacation made me think about the trip Ollie and I were supposed to take to San Francisco. Looks like that wouldn’t be happening, either.
I called Dr. Mike.
“Hello, Wren. I’m a little surprised to hear your voice,” Dr. Mike said. “I figured I’d seen the last of you that day you left my office. Everything okay?”
“No,” I said, and just the sound of Dr. Mike’s familiar voice made my throat ache. But I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek. I had resolved not to cry about this, after all, and I was going to stick to it. I swallowed, the coppery taste of blood running down my throat. “I’d like to book an appointment, please. The sooner, the better.”
“Tomorrow at nine is my next available.”
“I’ll take it.” So what if it was right in the middle of the morning rush? I didn’t give a shit.
It was a little strange and completely depressing to be back in Dr. Mike’s office, because I was just reminded how happy—and maybe even a little smug—I had felt the last time I was here.
“He broke up with me,” I said. There was no point mincing words, there was no point in being anything but completely straightforward about it.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Mike said.
“He broke up with me because I was too much of a distraction. That’s basically what it comes down to. Which means he cares about his job more than he cared about me. Not that I’m saying he shouldn’t care about his job. I just don’t think that he understands how big of a deal this was for me! He was my first boyfriend. The guys in high school don’t count.”
“And why is that?”
“Because . . . well, just because!” Because it had seemed so long ago that I could barely remember it? Because I’d been so young? Because I’d never loved them? “I don’t know—they just don’t.”
“Do you think perhaps you’re so willing to discount these past relationships because they didn’t mean as much to you as the one with Ollie does?”
I shrugged. “Sure, that sounds about right. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less. And then part of me keeps thinking that he’s going to change his mind, that he doesn’t really mean it. But each day that goes by without him calling or texting makes me realize that’s probably not true.”
“Rejection i
s never an easy pill to swallow,” Dr. Mike said.
I perked up a little. “Are you going to prescribe me Xanax?”
“Why are you asking that?”
I shook my head. “Never mind, bad joke . . . you mentioned pills . . . .”
He cracked a dry smile. “You don’t need Xanax. And even if you did, I’m not a psychiatrist. You’ll be okay. I want you to know that. This is not the end of the world, even if it feels like it.”
“I know. But it sucks. And tomorrow I’m supposed to take my best friend to get an abortion, and that sucks, too, and it seems like everything is going horribly now, when just a few weeks ago, everything was great.”
“Life does have a way of working like that. But it doesn’t mean you’ve got to let yourself be completely derailed. He might’ve made a foolish decision, Wren, but you don’t have to let it affect you any more than you choose.”
I stared at the ceiling and wished there was some magic pill Dr. Mike could prescribe me that would make me forget everything.
The next day I took Allison to her appointment at the Planned Parenthood in Boulder.
“So, you decided not to tell him,” I said as we approached the city.
“I have spent every day since I found out thinking about what the right thing to do would be. But I decided not to,” she said. “You can judge me all you want, but I know this is the right decision. He’d beg me to keep it, and I know that I’m not going to. There’s nothing he could say that would change my mind.”
“You’re never going to tell him?”
“I don’t think so. It would just hurt him. If I tell him after the fact, he’d blame himself because he’d think there would’ve been something he could’ve done or said that would make me want to keep it. But there’s not.”
As I drove, I thought how it was too bad she couldn’t have the baby and just give it to me. Not that I knew anything about taking care of a baby, but I was almost thirty, and I didn’t think I’d mind having a child. Maybe that wasn’t enough of a reason to have one though—thinking that you might want one.