by S Doyle
“Yep.”
We took care of emptying the truck and went about the rest of our day.
Later that night I was sitting on the couch thinking about what I wanted to watch for TV when Jake came in and sat in the chair closer to the TV. It had been his turn to clean up from dinner.
“What are we watching?”
“There’s this new show on Netflix that’s supposed to be awesome.”
He nodded his chin as if that was fine by him. I started the show, and as the opening credits came on I couldn’t not say what I had been choking down my throat all afternoon.
“So Carol seemed nice.”
“Hmm.”
See, that was how it started. A hum. A small sound that acknowledged what I said was true without actually agreeing with me.
“Pretty, too. Definitely your type.”
“I don’t have a type,” he grumbled.
“You so have a type, Jake.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m just saying it’s okay to admit you thought she was attractive.”
“Ellie, what’s this about?”
Right. Another excellent strategy. Make this about me. I’m thick. I’m stupid. I didn’t see what I clearly saw.
I stood then and faced him. “Can we not do that thing?”
He sighed. “What thing?”
“The thing where we lie to each other.”
“I’m not…” He stopped himself. “She was cute.”
Cute. The word felt like this little pinprick. It hurt, but it wasn’t so bad.
What I didn’t know was that pinprick was going to turn into a gutting. But that would come later.
The key to this moment was understanding guy speak.
If he’d said she was hot, well, hot meant a girl was hot, but you didn’t particularly think you had a shot with her. There weren’t many girls Jake didn’t have a shot with, but still.
Hot could also mean she was blatantly sexual. Sometimes with blatant sexuality, men liked to look at it but it didn’t necessarily mean they wanted to hit that. For some the blatant sexuality was actually a turnoff to guys who preferred their women a little more demure.
Jake didn’t say Carol was hot.
If Jake had said she was attractive…he would have never said that. Attractive was too clinical of a word for him. And beautiful was too over the top.
(See, this is me not remembering the time he once casually referred to me as beautiful.)
No, Jake said Carol was cute.
Cute to Jake meant he thought she was hot and that he had a shot. That she wasn’t just some sex object, but rather someone worth getting to know. To see if his attraction for her was something he wanted to pursue.
Carol was cute.
At least he hadn’t lied to me.
“I totally agree.”
“Can we stop talking about this?”
“You bet.” I walked back to the couch and grabbed the remote. I tossed it to him and smiled when it landed on his lap hard when he wasn’t expecting it. “I changed my mind. I think I’m going to head up early. I’m really tired.”
“I thought you wanted to watch this show on Netflix.”
“You go ahead, I’ll catch up. Night Jake.”
“Night Ellie.”
I was rubbing down Petunia in the barn when I heard them. Sure enough, two days later Carol had made good on her promise to return, and Jake offered to take her out for a ride around the property.
They both, of course, asked me to come.
Because I was the cool marriage of convenience wife, I said no.
I had to, right? I had to let him have this. He’d said we couldn’t be a thing. He’d said it would hurt too much later when it all ended. Which meant I was free to pursue other relationships, so he was too.
I was doing the upright thing. I was doing the fair thing.
I hated every minute of it. I was jealous as shit and mad at him for making me feel this way. But I couldn’t deny him this opportunity.
They were coming back down around the pen, laughing about something. I cut Petunia’s grooming short and walked her back to her stall with a silent promise to make up for my halfhearted attempt later this week.
I didn’t want to have to deal with them. I didn’t want to see the mutual attraction thing going on. I didn’t want to hear anything that would be really awful.
As I made my way out of the barn I could see them dismounting. Jake was helping her off Isabella, but it was clear to see Carol knew what she was doing on a horse. No jerking, no sudden movements.
Then I looked at Jake and what I saw there nearly ended me. He was smiling. Really smiling for the first time in… I couldn’t remember when. He looked so free and easy, it was only then I saw how much the tension between the two of us impacted him. Like around me he was constantly holding in his breath and sucking in his gut and now, with Carol, he was finally able to breathe.
I had done that to him. I had made him tight and cautious because I had done this stupid thing and kissed him.
I looked away. It hurt too much. I made my way inside and I didn’t look back at them again.
We were eating dinner and it was awful. I had been sullen and bitchy all night and he wasn’t calling me out for it at all. He was simply dealing with my mood like it didn’t bother him. Quietly eating the food I made for him without comment.
“So are you going to ask her out? Or should I say have you asked her out already?”
I heard his fork clank against his plate. With a little more force than if he’d placed it down.
I had to know. I couldn’t stand around waiting to see something or hear something or suddenly have him announce her to me as his girlfriend. This wasn’t like Janet. Janet was a known commodity. They had been dating before our marriage. Before we were anything.
Carol was new. A brand new person he met, who he thought was cute, who he spent two days hanging out with on my ranch.
“Ellie…”
“I want to know. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I’m not saying anything. Although it seems to me she was awfully sure that our marriage wasn’t a real one when she came out to the ranch to meet you. It’s one thing to hear a rumor in town and just take it for granted that you know the situation on the ground.”
“Ellie...”
“Just tell me. Have you asked her out yet?”
“I haven’t.”
I nodded.
Then it came. The knife slash right up the middle.
“Yet.”
“Hookay.”
Slowly I got up and took my plate to the sink. Gingerly, as if I really had been cut with a sharp knife. Fuck this hurt. I had never experienced anything quite like it. Then suddenly I was numb and I wasn’t feeling anything at all.
I rinsed my plate off but I knew I had to get out of there. Knew I couldn’t look at him again. Except it was my turn to do the dishes. Fuck the dishes.
“I’ll clean up later. I’m going to go take a shower.”
“Ellie…” He was up and out of his chair. I could hear the scrape of it as he bounced up and reached out to grab my arm. “Listen to me.”
I tried to pull my arm back. I didn’t want him to touch me, but he wouldn’t let go. It’s like he wasn’t done with whatever awful thing he wanted to say to me.
“I heard what you said. We don’t have to talk about this. You’re free to date whoever you want. I am too, for that matter.”
“Just… I know this is weird. I know things haven’t been… easy… between us. But I’m thinking this might actually help. If we stay in this kind of rut, then it’s only going to get harder… you know what I’m saying? But if we snap this… thing… and I take Carol out, it could be better. It could normalize things. Like how we used to be.”
He was rambling, and I didn’t get much, but what I did get was that he thought taking Carol out was not only a great idea for him. But for me too. That I should fully support him because it was going to make things easier be
tween us.
That’s how he was justifying this.
He used the word snap. It was a good word. To snap something was to break something. That was exactly how I felt.
Broken.
In a way it was like when he’d rejected me. That had hurt too, but this went deeper. This wasn’t him rejecting me to spare me what he thought would be pain later on down the road. This was him moving on from me. Moving on from us.
No, that wasn’t fair either. There had never really been an us. There had just been a me wanting him and him not wanting to want me back.
Now he wanted Carol instead. Somebody should have explained to me how much this could hurt.
I nodded. “Good point. You’re right. This probably a really good idea. For us.”
His expression was nearly desperate.
“You see that, don’t you?”
“Sure, Jake. I’m good. You can let go.”
He dropped his hand as if he hadn’t realized he had it wrapped around my arm the whole time.
“I’m still going to go take a shower. Long day today. Leave everything by the sink and I’ll do the dishes later.”
“I can do the dishes…”
“No,” I snapped. Because that was him feeling guilty and I wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t have his guilt or his pity. “It’s my turn to do the dishes and I’ll do them. I just want a damn shower first. Is that too much to ask?”
“No,” he said.
“Fine. Good.” I started to leave the kitchen, but I stopped myself as something occurred to me. “The rules are the same, Jake.”
“What do you—”
“The rules,” I said. “She doesn’t get to stay the night in this house. I don’t want to… wake up in the morning and run into her.”
His expression tightened. “Jesus, Ellie, as if I would…”
“Just promise me.”
The muscle in his jaw flexed. “I promise.”
Seven
Jake
October
It was freeing. Being with Carol was like being released from a cage I hadn’t known I had locked myself into. This was what it was like to have simple feelings. This was what it was like to act on them.
It had been so damn long I had forgotten.
She had come out to the farm again for another ride. I asked her if she wanted to get lunch in town. She said yes. So easy. Like riding a bike.
We were having lunch at Frank’s, not in the booth where I usually sat with Ellie, but another one along a different wall. Kathy may or may not have given me an odd look when she turned the corner and realized I wasn’t here with Ellie.
Another positive thing about Carol. She was the statement Ellie had wanted to make to everyone. She was the signal that said to all the citizens of Riverbend that our marriage was still platonic and in name only.
That I had never taken advantage of Ellie and that I still wasn’t.
Carol was two years older than me, a professional working vet, and exactly the type of woman I had always imagined I would be with.
Okay, so maybe I did have a type.
Anyway, we fit better than Ellie and I did in many different ways, and it was easy for anyone looking at us to see that.
This way all the gossip about me and Ellie could be shut down once and for all. Yep. This was a win-win for everyone all the way around.
“Uh hello, Jake?”
I focused my attention on Carol. “I’m sorry, I drifted there. What did you ask?”
“How long have you been doing the insemination program?”
“The last four years. I had to convince Sam first. Ellie’s father. He was pretty old school about things. Thought that cows bred from insemination couldn’t possibly taste as good as cows that came from Mother Nature.”
She laughed, maybe a little too much, and put her hand on mine. “That is so funny.”
Was it? It didn’t matter. She could touch me all she wanted. No harm, no foul. No guilt.
No. Fucking. Guilt.
It was heavenly.
“Anyway, we’ve been expanding the program each year. This year in particular because we took such a loss with the storm, wanted to get the most bang for the buck in bull sperm.”
“How bad was it? The storm?”
I had a flash of stumbling upon Ellie in the snow. Not awake. Nearly frozen to death. I forced it out of my head.
“Bad. It was bad.”
She made a noise that I guess was supposed to be sympathy. Like she understood when she couldn’t possibly. But it wasn’t like I was going to touch on my relationship with Ellie with the woman I was currently on a date with.
“What about you? How long are you in town for?”
She shrugged. “I’m helping my aunt out for a while. But probably not too long. Eventually I have get back to work.”
“Where do you call home?”
She smiled and did her head tilt thing. I knew she traveled with her job a lot. She was essentially a contracted vet who could work anywhere in the country. Small rural communities mostly, where large animal vets were needed desperately.
“I have an apartment in Denver, but I’m rarely there. I should give it up, while I’m with this job, but it’s the thought of moving everything into storage until I finally settle on a place that bothers me. I like my stuff. Even though I only get to see it occasionally, I like knowing it’s there.”
“I hear you.”
Carol talking about her stuff made me think of the scales. The scales I had given Ellie for her birthday that had sat on the kitchen counter ever since. Five and five. For months now.
After I had given them to her, when she’d recorded her first ten day, she used to change them every day.
Right was the good side, she’d explained. Left was the bad side.
She had nines and eights. She had twos and threes. She once told me day one of her period was a guaranteed four and the day could only get worse from there.
Information I hadn’t wanted at the time, but I made a mental note when the right side was below five to be a little more sympathetic.
Then after the kiss, it stopped. Five. Always five.
“This is fun, being out with you,” Carol said with a shy smile.
She had no idea. This was sheer and utter bliss. I wasn’t thinking about anything beyond her pretty hair, her pretty face, her pretty lips.
“Soooo… can I ask about your marriage?”
I tightened a little bit. “What do you want to know?”
“You’re really married, but not married?”
“Platonic. Platonic I think is the word you’re looking for. And yes. Ellie and I are… friends.”
I paused. Why did I pause?
“That’s got to be tough. For you I mean. For her too, when you think about it. And it’s really okay that we’re out like this? I don’t want to cause any kind of trouble for you.”
“No trouble at all.”
She smiled then. “Okay. Then this is the part where I say I like you, Jake Talley. You intrigue me.”
“Can I take you out for dinner then?”
Her smile flashed even brighter. “That would be a definite yes. I have to confess it’s been a really long time since I’ve done anything like this. I broke up with my boyfriend over a year ago. Let’s just say that trying to meet new people when I’m only in a place for a few weeks at a time is a… challenge. You know what I mean?”
It took me a second to process what she said. She broke up with her boyfriend a year ago. She hadn’t been on a date since.
Which probably meant she was as hard up as I was.
“I’m sorry,” she chuckled and then reached for my hand again. I liked that she kept touching me. “Oh my gosh, did that seem forward of me? I didn’t mean to be so…blunt.”
“No, that’s fine. I get where you’re going.”
See? This was even better. Carol was NOT a virgin. She was like an anti-virgin. A sexy mature woman who I think was telling me I could tap that if
I wanted to.
A man, who had been trapped like I had been in the stickiest situation imaginable for months, couldn’t have dreamed a better solution to the problem than Carol.
“You’re honest,” I said. “I like that. I’m looking forward to getting to know you. Taking our time.”
I turned my hand and our fingers linked together. I didn’t think about how odd it looked. I was making sure I was on full charm.
She smiled. “Time, huh? Let me guess, you’re a guy who wants to be wooed.”
I smiled at the word. “I do like to be wooed. Possibly even seduced.”
“Seduced? Oh, now I get it. You don’t put out for just anyone.”
“Only when I like someone.”
It was the truth. Carol wasn’t going stay in town permanently, but she was going to be here for a while. So this wasn’t like my one-and-done weekend to Missoula. This could be a nice little affair for a couple of weeks. If that was going to be the case, we didn’t have to rush anything.
“Okay. Fair enough. I like that you want to take things slow. It’s very old fashioned of you.”
“Not too slow,” I said. “I don’t want you to think I’m a tease.”
“Thank God!”
We finished our lunch and I gave her a small peck on the cheek. Again, no need to rush anything. I told her I would need to check and see what the best night was for dinner. She was heading back to her aunt’s. It occurred to me I hadn’t thought to ask who that was. A town this small and I probably knew the woman.
I needed to head over to the post office before heading back to the ranch, so I left the truck at Frank’s and walked on foot.
I opened the door and grimaced when I saw Bobby. I wasn’t even really sure why. He’d done the solid thing and had apologized to Ellie. I even knew about the issues with his parents. Still, it had been the language he’d used when I had talked to him last year. The way Bobby had talked about me screwing Ellie.
I felt it. In my bones. That’s who Bobby was. The civil Bobby, the one who apologized and offered to buy beers—that Bobby had an agenda.