by Sasha Medly
And then it happened.
He was up, throwing on his jacket, and walking out.
“One of these days they’re going to ding you for that shit,” said Adam, a clerk from the cubicle next to him.
“I’m 9 to 5, it’s 5,” he said with a shrug.
“Nobody leaves work perfectly on time.”
“Well, there’s no one quite like me, is there?”
He was winking back at him as his back pushed the door and he turned in one fluid motion out into the fading sunlight of the end of the day. He took a massive breath in through his nostrils, smelling the beginning of spring in the form of blossoming flowers. The sun was still up and warming everything it touched. There was still a slight chill in the air but it was masked by the warmth from the sky. It was a perfect night to hit the dirt.
He got into his car, the only nice one in the lot. It was a gift from his mother when he turned 18 and he kept it in pristine shape ever since, this time on his own dime from winnings in the pit. He listened to the engine purr as he turned it on and the sounds of Led Zeppelin came through the speakers, exactly where his CD had left off when he came to work. He smirked and sped off down the road, swerving past the poor, mindless souls of the other nine-to-fivers who went home on Fridays with only white wine and a pizza dinner to look forward to.
#
He was in his favorite flannel. He wore it every Friday night. It was lucky. It got him seconds on the bull and nights with the first beautiful woman he could find in the bar afterwards. It was just tight enough to his skin that the press of his muscles showed through. He kept the top two buttons popped open to hint at the beginning lines and valleys of his chest below, some dark chest hair lingered there. His black riding pants hugged his hips perfectly. And the black belt with the silver buckle of a snake was always perfectly polished and sitting flush to his hip bones. His boots clicked on the wood of the bar like thunder. He tipped his hat to Alphonso.
“You were almost late, I was getting worried,” the bartender said, pulling out a tank of beer, head still intact.
“You know I’m the most punctual man you’ll ever meet, in all things,” he said with a quirk of his eyebrow. “I never come late.”
Alphonso rolled his eyes and moved to help out one of the regulars who spilled his Bloody Mary right over the side of the bar with a wet crash. Hunter smiled and took a massive swig of the beer, swallowing it down and feeling like a man in the desert at the oasis for the first time. If he was a superhero, beer would be his recharge, like the sun to Superman.
He looked up at the TV and aimlessly watched the high school football game that managed to be important enough for the 6 o’clock news and he took drink after drink. Plenty of riders out there condemned any kind of substance use, alcohol, pills, even a damn cigarette. But as far as Hunter was concerned if God wanted him to stop he would have been struck by lightning by now. So he downed the rest of his beer, threw some cash on the bar, and tipped his hat to Alphonso on the way out of the door to the waiting pen.
The smell of dirt and hay and the matted fur of the bull filled his nostrils and he couldn’t help but smile as he walked over to the others riders, making eye contact with each one of them. He shook hands and patted backs and laughed as he dropped into his seat, waiting to begin.
#
Rachel was sure it had been Hunter. She hadn’t seen him in years but she’d recognize that smile anywhere. She saw it enough times in the photos she still kept in her room and the few dreams she had over the years where his face shined. She felt her own turn red. She heard he stayed around town, working on his ranch when he wasn’t shoved into a suit, pretending to be a responsible 9-to-5 business man. She also heard his name constantly when it came to the bull riding arena every weekend.
He was large. His silhouette filled out an impressive amount of space and cut an intimidating shadow across the area he stood. His jaw was sharp as he turned and she got a full image of his profile. His laugh was booming and commanded the attention of everyone in the room.
Her heart seemed to jump right up and into her throat when she realized it was him she was looking at. Everything behind her bellybutton bottomed out and was replaced with butterflies.
She hadn’t wanted to go out to the rodeo that night. But Laura and Hannah insisted. They were visiting Texas for the first time, they wanted to the full experience: sloppy beer, Mexican street food, and some good old fashioned, beautiful cowboys to watch get dirty as they wrestled with animals. She’d finally broken down and offered to take them to a rodeo in her home town that she’d been dragged to on holidays as a kid.
And then there he was. It was like a strange sort of fate.
She’d dreamed of him, once or twice. They were random dreams she assumed were just mish mashed memories in her head getting sorted. He was always more handsome in her mind than she ever remembered him in life. But now, with him right there as he was, she realized her mind wasn’t wrong at all.
“Girls are too gross to kiss,” he said once when they were watching some Disney movie and he gagged at the sight of the princess and prince sealing their happy ending at the end.
“If anyone is gross, it’s boys,” she said. “Especially you.”
That mentality changed quickly when puberty settled in. She reached that age faster than him, as most girls did. It didn’t keep her from seeing her friend for exactly what he was, however, a budding male. All their times playing together in the backyard and running around the playground together or getting ice cream suddenly transformed into different visions. She imagined them walking to the ice cream parlor holding hands, or their tickle fights ending in kisses.
All her friends around her became boy crazed. They talked about the football players or the swimmers or any guy who looked like he was even remotely about to lose his baby fat. She wasn’t blind to them either, they stirred feelings and blushes as well. But Hunter was something else entirely. It was the difference between catching the eye of a cute boy in the mall and imagining your wedding.
It was ridiculous, in hindsight.
“That’s so cliche,” her roommate, Betty, said when they decided to play a drinking game to get to know each other one night. It was the first time she ever tried alcohol and felt nothing but burning at the back of her throat and a bad taste in her mouth.
“Cliche?”
“Falling for your childhood best friend?”
“It’s whatever now. He went off to do school somewhere else and I haven’t heard from him,” she said, bitterly, taking another quick drink of the amber liquid in her hand. “I had to delete him off Facebook because I was sick of seeing him in pictures with bimbos all over him.”
“Your jealousy is adorable.”
“He hasn’t tried to talk to me at all. Not once. I’m not going to try now.”
“And you shouldn’t. You’re in college girl. There’s guys literally everywhere to take your mind off that douchebag. We’ll find you someone to fuck away all those issues.”
The problem was, she never found herself able to get passed that point. She kissed plenty of guys from parties or on dates that Betty helped her set up. She even let their hands start to trail over her as they sat together on a couch or a bed and let their lips and tongues mesh together over the sounds of heavy breathing and moans. But she couldn’t move beyond that. The second she felt foreign skin on her own beneath her shirt or dipping just below her waistband she recoiled. She couldn’t stop it. It was a kneejerk reaction she couldn’t kick, and it had cost her several near moments where she would have sealed the deal with a very frustrated boy.
She lied and told Betty she slept with them. Just to avoid turning red as a beet and being embarrassed for her virginal inability to get anywhere with a guy. One thing was for sure, however, it certainly did take her mind off of Hunter and his escapades in his own college experience.
She let it go for a while, until she was staring at him in that bar, dressed to ride a bull. She tried not to shiver.<
br />
#
Watching Hunter ride a bull was just as invigorating as she imagined it would be, leading up to his ride. Several riders went before him as warm-ups but when his name was called the crowd roared and several women let out shrill cheers. She pushed down the old, boiling feelings she remember from the days of desperately stalking his social media for evidence of a girl in his life.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the incomparable Hunter,” the announcer said as the countdown started for the bull to be released.
5…
4…
3…
2….
1…
She watched in slow motion as the gate was released and Hunter and the bull burst into the dirt of the arena together, bucking wildly. One hand gripped tightly on the neck of the bull, the other waved in the air. Even from afar she could see the smirk on his face as his body seemed to move with the bull’s jerks, keeping him steady on its back. Whoops and cheers came from the crowd as he lasted another ten seconds or so before releasing his hand and tumbling off. He stood up to more cheers, brushing off the fine dust from the arena floor and giving a tip of his hat and a wink to the crowd. He’d lasted double the time of the men who had gone before him and the triumph showed on his face from even her seat in the arena.
She needed to talk to him. She decided it then. She wasn’t sure about what or to what end, but the more the woman around her screeched to get his attention, the braver she felt. She wasn’t going to let another bimbo who didn’t know a thing about him butt into more pictures and cling to him like some over sexualized koala.
She got up out of her seat quickly and moved towards the entrance where the riders came and went from the arena from with the utmost determination in her blood. Maybe it had been the drink she’d had right before coming out to watch, but she wasn’t going to complain about the burst of courage if it finally got her what she wanted.
#
It felt like every time before and Hunter relished in the heavy beating of his heart as he trotted off the field, kicking up dust and dirt behind him. He could always see it in the eyes before he got on. The bulls knew who was in charge and how it was going to go. They’d put on a show but, in the end, humans were the top of the food chain and Hunter was on top of all of them. He felt the heat between his legs, through the leather of his riding pants. His hands felt the pulse of the bull in the neck. They were a work of nature and he lauded himself in his ability to tame them.
The sounds of cheers and the screams of women were just a bonus. Extra music to his ears as he headed off, smelling of dust and his own sweat mixed in with the earthy scent of the bull’s thick, matted fur.
“Good show kid,” he nodded to the bull, now calm, as he was lead out as well.
He laughed and took the steps two at a time as he went up and out of the arena to a sea of people waiting for him with congratulations, offers of rounds of shots, and plenty of woman shoving their perky, pushed up breasts in his direction. Normally, this was his time to pick what he wanted, take the shots he liked, pick the girl with the most beautiful face.
But something was different today. His eyes found hers.
He hadn’t thought about her since the last time they saw each other, just as school was starting for them both on opposite ends of the country. At some point he registered that she dropped completely from his friends list on social media and vaguely wondered about asking her about it before forgetting it entirely. Until now.
She wasn’t the nerdy girl he knew as a child. She’d been pretty then, every girl was pretty in some way. When she’d turned into a teenager he’d matured a little too late to care about her filling breasts and burgeoning curves. By the time that did matter, he was surrounded by women in school, throwing themselves at him for drinks and a peak at the muscles he’d spent months working on beneath his shirt.
And now here she was, in the full glory of womanhood, standing right in front of him. Staring at him. Her eyes had always been captivating, but now they were magnetic. He couldn’t stop. They were sharp and watching him. Her curves had reached their fullest potential and cut a silhouette in the room that would put ocean waves to shame. She’d let her hair grow long, far gone was the tomboyish short cut she used to wear, it was luscious and full now.
Everything about her was a woman.
In an instant, the spell was broken and she was surrounded by other woman, trying to get her attention. They were pretty, they were nice to look at. On any other day Hunter would have sprang into action with at least one of them. But today, all he wanted was just one thing.
She kept her eyes on him, even as she responded to her friends. The alluring gaze, the sexual prowess was faltering at their being interrupted but he couldn’t forget the shiver he felt seeing her for the first time, standing there. That was a feeling he wanted to chase as far as it would go. They were playmates once, but now they were both adults and he was pretty sure they wanted the same thing. He wasn’t going to let her friends get in the way of that.
He made his way straight over to her, everything else was white noise.
“Well, look what the fancy east coast college dragged in,” he said. She smiled, though a tinge of pink was blooming on the points of her womanly cheeks.
“And look what the bull let out of the arena,” she teased.
“I never lose.”
“So that attitude hasn’t changed at all then.”
It was so easy, how they slipped into their old ways of talking, of smiling. They’d always been witty with each other, it was a friendship based on teasing, on who could make the most insulting comment while smiling sweetly the entire time. Rachel always did seem to come out on top when it came to those games. He wasn’t ashamed to admit she was the smart one when it came to the two of them. But he was bigger now, bolder, more filled out. He knew his image alone could be enough to get her stumbling on her words if he played it right.
“I think I owe my oldest friend a drink,” he said.
“I think you do too.”
“The first time I bought one for someone else after a show.”
“I’m honored.”
Oh she had no idea what being honored was yet. He had to lay the groundwork, They’d sit, they’d chat, they’d have just enough to drink to get a pleasant buzz. He didn’t want this because she was drunk, he didn’t take advantage of women like that. They slept with him because they wanted to, and God he hoped she wanted to.
So they sat down for a drink.
#
“I never imagined you a businessman,” she said over the horizon of her whiskey sour. She watched him quirk an eyebrow.
“Don’t let it full you, this is my real work suit,” he said, gesturing down to the flannel, dusted over with dirt and dust from the arena.
“That seems more like it.”
“Couldn’t exactly escape dad’s hopes and dreams for me when he was fronting the college and apartment bills, though,” he said with a shrug, taking a sip of his tank of beer.
She watched the muscles in his neck work and the Adam’s Apple that punctuated his neck bounce as he swallowed it down. She tracked those tiny valleys and sharp shadows beneath sharp and well defined muscles there. Who would've thought that even his neck was incredibly irresistible. She imagined her mouth on it, her teeth sinking in, just slightly, his pulse beating beneath her tongue. She imagined tasting his sweet and evidence of dirt there. It was so real in her mind that her mouth began to water.
She realized she had missed an entire thirty seconds of what he’d been saying, staring at his neck like the biggest creep in the world. Maybe she’d come back in her next life as a vampire. He was smirking though, through his sentences. Her stares hadn’t gone unnoticed but he chose not to comment, content to just let her visual exploration continue. Perhaps he was watching her eyes, surely dilating. Maybe he was imagining the same thing on her skin. She hoped so.
“So tell me about you,” he said. “Doing anything I’d never imagine?”
>
Yeah, thinking about you naked. She didn’t even want to banish the thought. She was bad at hiding it. They were meant to be reacquainting themselves with each other and all she wanted was to be introduced to parts of him she never got to see because time was never on their side until now.
“Not much,” she said. “I’m not all that different.”
“Oh I doubt that,” he said.
She felt the heat of his gaze but it was a shiver that her body gave in response. She took a large sip of her drink to occupy her mouth while he did the same, with much surer eyes. She knew she needed to get out of there, but she had a choice. She could ask him to come with her and see what happened there. Or she could leave alone and once again spend the night with only her own hand and what her imagination could cook up about his body.