by Claire Adams
Garrett lifted the cooler from under the tree and carried it over to the fire pit we had made. Unfortunately, I had the water plug open to drain some of the water out and it poured all over Garrett. His boxers were already wet, but then his shirt got soaked as well. It wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if Garrett was already dry, but since he had already had such a wet evening, the moment was beyond funny to me.
I couldn’t help laughing, but I stopped briefly when I saw the serious look on his face. Then without hesitating, Garrett pulled his shirt off and set it next to his jeans by the fire.
“I’m not taking my boxers off,” he said matter-of-factly as he sat down and started to look through the cooler.
Garrett had the body of a man I had always dreamed of being with. His chiseled chest and abs were something I had only fantasized about in a man I slept with. Normally the men I ended up with were nerdy businessmen who were slightly overweight with pasty white skin. But Garrett was none of those things. Garrett was tanned, toned, and ripped like a body builder. I couldn’t help but stare at him as he went to work on the dinner. Each muscle flexed and relaxed with his movements and my mind drifted to imagining what he would feel like hovering over me.
“You sure you don’t want to take those wet boxers off? You don’t want to catch a cold.” I joked. “Didn’t you bring other clothes with you?”
“Nope; I didn’t figure I’d need them.”
“So what’s in your bag?”
“A book and my journal.”
I couldn’t have heard him correctly. Did Garrett really just tell me he had a journal? All I could think about were the frilly, pink journals I used to write in when I was a kid. I stopped writing in my journal when I was a teenager and I hadn’t ever met a man who kept a journal.
“Journal?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow.
“Don’t start judging me, young lady. I’m just writing down interesting things that happen along my journey so I can remember them. Maybe someday even write a book.”
His response made me feel stupid for judging him. Of course journals weren’t just for teenage girls. In fact, I was pretty impressed with his plans to write a book someday. It took a lot of hard work to write a book and Garrett had proved he was more than willing to work hard; I had seen it for myself on the farm over the last few months.
I knew there was more to Garrett than met the eye. He was handsome and well spoken. He was kind and hard working. Garrett Reynolds seemed to be an almost perfect representation of a man and I needed to figure out his flaws. Certainly he had some deep dark secret that he was running away from or he was hiding something that he didn’t want me to know.
“I’m sorry, that’s really cool. I’ve thought about writing a non-fiction book for women in business, but I just never get around to it. I probably won’t ever do it. I think writing a book is a lot like dreaming of running my own business; I’ll never do either one of those things.”
“What would it be about?”
“I was thinking it would be something about how to manage the climb without losing yourself. I felt like I lost myself. It wasn’t fun for me when I finally got fired. It was actually a relief when they gave me a severance package and said my position was being downsized. I probably never would have left my job. I would have diligently worked there and climbed up the ladder and then moved onto the next ladder to climb; even though I wasn’t very happy at all.”
“It’s good you left then. And why don’t you start writing your book tonight? What do you want your readers to feel when they read your book?” Garrett asked as he ripped a piece of paper out of his journal and started to write down what I was saying.
At first I didn’t want to answer him. I was content to just move on with our conversation and wait for the dinner to be done. But the way he looked at me had me realizing that he wasn’t about to just let me move on with the conversation. Garrett was waiting for me to give him an answer and he looked like he would have waited for hours if I had made him.
“I want them to feel more confident in their skin. Maybe inspired to lead the way they want to lead, instead of feeling like they have to lead the same way men do.”
“This is good stuff. What will your first chapter be about?” Garrett asked enthusiastically.
“I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Well, we are thinking about it right now. What do you want the first words your readers see of yours to be about?”
“Um, maybe about job interviews. I think many women believe you have to dress like a man or dress like a slut and there is so much more to what to wear. And there’s so much more to what to say and do when you’re in the interview. Did you know that most women don’t ask questions of their prospective employer? How do you really know if you want to work at a company without asking them questions?”
Garrett diligently wrote down what I was saying and I felt motivated to keep talking about my book idea. It was so nice to have someone sitting with me who was listening to me and my ideas. Not only was Garrett listening, but he was literally taking notes and encouraging me. Even my own friends from New York seemed to be so wrapped up in their own lives that they hardly ever took the time to have a real conversation with me. It was nice to have an encouraging conversation about some of my goals.
“What about once they get hired? What should women know then?” Garrett asked.
“They need to know how to make friends without seeming like a push over, or someone who doesn’t work very hard. They need to know which type of friends to gravitate toward and which ones to stay away from.”
“Explain that more,” Garrett asked as he continued to take notes.
“What I mean is that many women are afraid to have friends in the office when they start getting important jobs. Although the male co-workers all have friends in the office, as a woman I felt like I was being judged every time I stopped to talk to one of my female co-workers. But also there are women you should avoid in a workplace setting. The ones who cause drama and sleep around aren’t the ones a woman should befriend.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Men would see a couple women talking and make comments that we were gossiping or something else like that. It never occurred to them that we might actually be having a conversation, just like normal friends do. They also assumed any woman who was friends with a woman who slept around was also that sort of woman.”
“This stuff is really good Sarah. You need to write a book for sure,” he said and handed me the piece of paper he had taken notes on for me. “Women in business need a book like this.”
Garrett was sweet, but what did he really know about business or women in the workplace? Of course, I wasn’t going to say anything to him; but Garrett was a ranch hand, he clearly didn’t understand what women dealt with in a corporate working environment. I doubted anyone would even buy such a book, if I ever took the trouble to write it.
“Thank you and thanks for humoring me for a little bit. It was fun.”
“By the way, I saw you in a pretty manly suit in that photo at your parent’s house; was that when you first started working?”
“Yes, that was when I got my first office. Obviously, I needed some fashion help. That’s certainly something I’d want to talk with women about. They should dress as fashionably as they want in their careers and not worry about it. Men wear the suits they want to wear and they don’t think twice if the women in the office with be offended by their outfits. Yet as a woman, we have to worry if our skirt is long enough, our breasts are hidden enough, and if the men will be able to concentrate on their work with me around.”
“Write it down,” Garrett said with a smile as he handed me his pen. “If you don’t write it down when you think of it, your ideas tend to lose their passion.”
Garrett spoke with such authority on the subject of writing that I almost wanted to believe him. But he had a way about him in most everything he did and it always seemed to show him in a good
light. Even when he had talked about being bitten by a pig, he ended up coming out of the story even more irresistible than he had been before I heard it.
“You seem knowledgeable about writing; have you written anything before?”
He hesitated and seemed to look up into the night air for an answer before he responded. It was odd that he had to think so hard on if he had written anything before, but I waited patiently for him to answer me.
“Just when I was younger. But I really loved it and I thought this trip would be a good time to get back into it.”
“You know, I hardly know anything about you. Tell me more about Wyoming.”
“Wyoming?” Garrett said with a puzzled look on his face.
My gut clenched at his response. He had clearly told me before that he was from Wyoming, yet he didn’t seem to recognize the state at all as I asked him. I tried not to let all the alarms in my mind get set off; he could have simply forgot that he had told me about that part of his life. But something did seem off about the way he didn’t recognize the state.
“Yes, isn’t that where you said you were from?”
“Oh, oh, yes, Wyoming. I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you right the first time. It’s very beautiful in Wyoming. A really peaceful place to grow up.”
“Did you live in the city?”
“Um, well, yeah, it was pretty much the city. Not a big city though, but we didn’t live on a ranch like this.”
“Are your parent’s still alive?” I asked him.
Again Garrett paused for an extended period of time before he answered me. My gut was screaming at me by that point. I knew he was lying to me. Obviously, I had no idea why he was lying or what exactly it was that he was hiding, but I knew enough to not be happy.
What had started as a fun evening of flirting and excitement was turning into a huge disappointment for me. I couldn’t flirt with or sleep with a man who was so obviously lying right to my face. I wanted to believe there was another reason for his awkwardness though. I kept pushing forward in hopes that something about our conversation would reveal who Garrett truly was and why I felt like he was keeping things from me.
“Um, no, they passed away.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Okay, enough about my sad life. Let’s talk about these hot dogs I’m cooking right now. Don’t they look like the most amazing hot dogs in the world?”
At first I wanted to protest his change in subject, but then I realized it wasn’t useful to me at all. Garrett didn’t trust me—that was clear. Whatever it was that was going on in his past, he wasn’t interested in sharing it with me. The longer I thought about it, the more I realized he couldn’t be hiding anything that was all that horrible—he just couldn’t. Garrett was a decent man who worked hard, was polite, and seemed very genuine most of the time. Whatever he was hiding, had to come out sooner or later.
“They look pretty normal to me,” I teased.
“Just wait until you taste them. These are the number-one, best-in-the-world hot dogs. Plus, they were cooked by this five star camping chef.”
Garrett made me laugh; he almost always made me laugh at least a little bit. It was fun being around him and I was sad that he would most likely be moving on soon. The more time I spent with him the more I was sure he would want to move on soon. Being a ranch hand certainly didn’t seem to fit him very well, but he did do a good job of it.
Maybe he was running away from a past job, or girlfriend. Perhaps he had even committed some sort of crime; I just wasn’t sure. But I felt safe with him and I didn’t feel like he lied or was deceitful in our day-to-day conversations; only about his past. So for the time being, I tried to forget about my gut and what it was saying to me, instead I decided to just enjoy the moment with a friend. That was all Garrett was and that was all he had to be, a nice friend who worked on my parents ranch.
“Mmmm, you’re right, these are the best hot dogs I’ve ever tasted,” I joked.
“I know. I know. Can Buckjoy have one?”
“Well, he’s not supposed to, but I’m sure he’ll love it. Go ahead and give him one.”
Garrett was so gentle with Buckjoy, it was exciting to see their bond growing. I had seen many men try to tame wild horses, but most didn’t have the patience to continue working with them. Even my own father struggled with training wild horses; that was why I always did it for him. Garrett stood next to the tall, black animal; he was barefoot and only wearing his boxer shorts, yet he looked so comfortable I had to snap a quick photo without him knowing.
Wild horses were plentiful in our area of the world. Much of the land in Montana wasn’t occupied at all, except by wild animals. We certainly couldn’t tame them all, but it was a fun project to work with them if they happened to hang around our land a lot. My father had gone to great lengths to work directly with the state conservation board to get approval to keep Buckjoy. Once the wild horses started hanging around our ranch, they had a hard time returning to their heard. It was an easy life at the ranch, water brought to them, food delivered every morning; wild horses liked that part of living with us. It was the saddling them up and taking them for rides that was the hard part.
Garrett’s hand gently stroked the animal and I saw how Buckjoy looked at him. The horse was totally and utterly Garrett’s; I’d have to break it to my father sooner or later, but that horse loved Garrett and it was clear. Buckjoy was calm and relaxed as Garrett pet him.
“I can’t believe he is a wild horse,” Garrett said as he gently pet the animal. “He seems to be perfectly comfortable and at home with us. It is like he was meant to be here with us at this very moment.”
“I think he just likes you,” I added. “He certainly doesn’t look that calm when he’s with me.”
“Maybe.”
We finished some more of the food that my mother had packed for us and then gathered the remainder of the meat and cooked it up and fed it to the horses. We still had plenty of snacks to tide us over to the next morning and it was likely that any raw meat would go bad with the small amount of ice that was left in the cooler.
“So you’re still set on this idea of us each sleeping in our own tent?” Garrett asked.
“I think I’ll survive alone.”
His ragging hard on had subsided but I still couldn’t help but glance in that direction as he stood near his tent. If Garrett hadn’t been blatantly lying to me or keeping secrets about his past, I might have considered having a fun naked night with him. But it was clear that he wasn’t being honest about his past and I was smart enough to stay away from men who weren’t honest.
I hadn’t always been smart enough to avoid dishonest men; it was something I learned in my time in New York City. It was also something I wanted to talk about in my book, if I ever actually got around to writing it. I pulled the pen out and wrote some notes quickly on the paper I still had from Garrett.
“Inspiration has struck again,” Garrett said as he walked toward me to see what I was writing.
“It’s no big deal. Just another idea for a chapter,” I said as I quickly folded the piece of paper and put it into my pocket.
I certainly didn’t need Garrett looking at my notes about liars. If he was lying to me, I wasn’t going to find it out by confronting him. If he wasn’t lying, he was at the very least keeping an aspect of his past a secret and to me that was just as bad as actually lying to someone. We were growing close and I had been honest with him about my life, way too honest; so I expected the same from him.
Quite frankly, I was over all men who lied and kept secrets. I didn’t have time for that in my life and I certainly wasn’t going to sleep with a man who was like that. It didn’t matter how attracted to him I was.
Back in New York, I had girlfriends that would have slept with just about any man they thought was attractive. To them, sex was just all fun and games. They figured if they had protection then it didn’t matter who they were sleeping with. But for me it was so different. I became emotionally in
vested in any man I slept with, even the ones I knew would be a short-lived situation. I tried not to get emotionally involved, but inevitable I always did and I always ended up dealing with some sort of broken heart in the end.
Garrett stood close to me and I felt his hand as it gently touched my arm. The electricity that shot between our two bodies wasn’t anything I could ignore. To be honest, I hadn’t remember having such pure excitement between a man and me in a very long time. Call it sexual attraction or whatever else you’d like but there was certainly an energy between the two of us that neither of us could deny.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Did you bring a sweatshirt or jacket?”
“Oh, man! No, I left it on my bed.”
I had purposely pulled out a sweatshirt because I knew I would get cold, but after my mom had come in to talk to me, I was distracted and forgot it. It was going to be a cold night in the lightweight sleeping bag I had with me and I knew it.
I hated that I had actually planned appropriately for the trip but then I stood there practically shivering because I had forgotten my warm sweatshirt. Up until that very moment, I hadn’t even realized I was cold, but once Garrett pointed it out to me, I couldn’t stop shivering as my mind fixated on the feeling of cold air as it brushed over my body.
It was odd to me that Garrett, who was standing in his boxers, wasn’t cold at all. He was barely dressed and had been soaked in the river, yet he seemed to be perfectly fine standing out in the cool night air.
“We could share a tent,” Garrett offered with a broad smile.
“We aren’t sharing a tent,” I rebuffed him.
My father would literally throw a fit if he found out I was sleeping in the same tent as Garrett. Not because he didn’t like the guy, but simply because I believed my father still didn’t fully understand that I slept with men. He still thought of me as his little girl and I knew that finding out I had slept in the same tent with Garrett would not have gone over well. Although, we were very far away from the ranch and it wasn’t likely anyone would ever know about it; unless Garrett or I told them.