Torch

by Roxie Noir

  I hear the camera click again, and Crash Junction swings his head around to look me dead in the eyes. Bulls aren’t very smart, but I’d swear that this one knows what we’re saying about him, and he wants me to try riding him just as bad as I do.

  Riding Crash Junction is dicey as hell. No one’s ever stayed on him for the full eight seconds, which means no one’s ever scored many points from riding him.

  After that eight-second mark, there’s a total of one hundred points for the taking: fifty based on how well the rider rides, and fifty based on how hard the bull makes the ride. The tougher the bull, the higher the score.

  Anyone who can stay on Crash Junction for the full eight seconds and doesn’t fuck up his other rides is practically guaranteed to win Pioneer Days.

  I want it to be me so bad I can taste it.

  “And you think you can ride him?” Bruce asks.

  “I know I can ride him,” I say. “The second I get on him, he’s met his match. Nobody bucks like Crash here, but nobody rides like me.”

  It’s not bragging if it’s true.

  “What’s your strategy?” Bruce asks.

  “Stay on,” I say.

  He raises his eyebrows, but I just shrug.

  “It’s all practice,” I say. “Ride until the body knows exactly what it’s doing, because out there, with the clock going and the crowd shouting, you can’t think of a single thing besides stay on.”

  I glance at Mae, and she’s staring at me instead of the camera for once. We lock eyes, and after a moment, she lowers her gaze and my heartbeat speeds up a little.

  “Which one of these was sired by Kill Switch?” Bruce asks, and I point down the stables to Hopalong, who isn’t quite as good as his daddy was.

  The three of us drift that way. Bruce asks a couple more questions, and we chat for a bit until he looks at his watch.

  “Rodeo starts in ten minutes, and I’ve got a few things I’d like to ask the veterinarian,” he says, and holds out his hand. I shake it.

  “See you back out there,” I say.

  “I’m going to take a few more shots,” Mae says. “The light in here is tricky.”

  Bruce walks away. We both watch him go and then look at each other. I feel like her sky blue eyes are piercing right through my skull and into my brain, wreaking havoc.

  Being around Mae makes something deep and primal come alive inside me. When she’s around, I feel like a caveman. I want to pick up giant rocks and throw them just so she can see. I want to wrestle saber tooth tigers to keep her safe, and then I want to take her home and make her mine.

  I want to hear her shout my name.

  Fuck, just the thought is getting me hard again.

  “Last night—” I start.

  “Don’t,” Mae says, holding up one hand.

  We’re silent for a moment, the bulls and horses making faint noises all around us.

  Mae points back where we were.

  “Stand back where you were, by Crash, and look at him.”

  I do as she says.

  “Tilt your hat back so I can see your face,” she says.

  I make a clicking noise at Crash Junction and he swings his head my way again, his eyes on me.

  No one says anything for a long time, until I finally speak up.

  “I was going to apologize,” I say, still looking at the bull.

  She doesn’t answer right away.

  “You were?” Mae asks, her voice a little flat.

  I push forward.

  “Yeah. For trying to get into your pants,” I say.

  No response. The shutter clicks.

  “And for interfering with your work,” I say. “I’d be bothered as hell if some asshole kept dogging me.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “If you get closer, is he gonna hurt you?” she asks.

  I look at Crash. He might try.

  I step forward so we’re almost face-to-face, his horns on either side of my head.

  “You don’t have to get that close,” Mae says, moving to one side and snapping away furiously.

  “He’s good right now,” I say. “Besides, what kind of cowboy would I be if I were afraid of some bull in the stable?”

  I reach out and grab his horn with my right hand, looking right into his eyes. Between Mae right there and this animal in front of me, my veins are buzzing with electricity. I feel like I might jump out of my skin at any second, but I stand still while Mae gets her shot.

  At last, she lowers her camera.

  “Okay, you’re making me nervous,” she says.

  I take a step away from Crash Junction. The stables are empty except for the two of us, our voices swallowed by wood and hay and the soft snorting of the animals.

  “Thanks for the apology,” she finally says. “Raylan won’t even look at me. Is that just because I told everyone he’s got a small penis, or did something else happen?”

  “I talked to him after you left,” I say.

  “You talked,” she says.

  “We exchanged words,” I say. “You handled him better than I did.”

  “I’ve known plenty of country-fried assholes just like him,” she says, then looks at me. “Sorry.”

  I laugh.

  “Sounds like a menu item at Golden Corral,” I say. “I didn’t know you cursed, Miss Guthrie.”

  She lets that one pass.

  “I curse when it’s called for,” she says, putting the lens cap on her camera and slinging it back over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I know all the bad words.”

  “You never did tell me where you’re from,” I say, still pretending I don’t know.

  “Brooklyn,” she says.

  “Not where you live now,” I say. “Where you’re from. Where you grew up. You didn’t get that twang in Brooklyn.”

  Mae makes a face, scrunching her nose and looking away, and it’s so cute I smile at her.

  “You can hear it?” she asks.

  “Sure can.”

  She sighs.

  “I grew up in West Texas,” she says. “The accent is gone most of the time, but get me around a bunch of cowboys and it comes back full force. Next thing I know I sound like I’m driving a rusted-out pickup truck with a shotgun in my lap and a dog in the back.”

  I whistle.

  “That’s pretty serious,” I say. “You’re not so bad as all that just yet. Just the pickup.”

  “I’ll have the gun and the dog by the time the rodeo’s over,” she says.

  We look at each other for a long moment, alone with the animals. I have to fight the urge to grab her and kiss her, to run my hands down her body.

  “We should get,” she says after a minute. Then she turns and walks out.

  We walk back out of the stables and meet Bruce, then head to the arena and they split off. I spend the afternoon pretending to watch cowboys rope steers, but really, I’m watching Mae at the edge of the arena no matter how hard I try to stop.

  I should stay away. I know it, but I can’t. We’re working together, for one thing. I’m going to be seeing plenty of her for the next three days at least, so we might as well be cordial.

  Across the arena, a cowboy comes up to her and says something. I think it’s Clay. She listens for a moment, then smiles politely and nods, and he walks off. I wish I knew what he’d said, but it’s probably none of my business.

  When it’s over, I walk to the motel aimlessly, wanting to watch TV or something to get my mind off everything. The longer I’m around her, the more I can’t help but remember those few minutes in the back of my truck, Mae straddling me, her hips moving—

  Fuck, I’m hard again. It’s getting to be a permanent condition these days, an itch that nothing else is gonna scratch.

  There’s your problem, I think. You’ve got to be forthright. Tell her you remember.

  Start over from the beginning.

  It’s an idea, but I don’t know if it’s a good one. Maybe Mae doesn’t want to remember and I should just pretend
that we met yesterday.

  I don’t know how much longer I can pussyfoot around this, though.

  Take the bull by the horns, Jackson.

  Ain’t that what you do?

  I pull out my truck keys. Then I drive to the nearest liquor store to see if I can’t find some peach-flavored Boone’s Farm.

  11

  Mae

  Operation stop wanting to sleep with Jackson is not going well.

  When I woke up this morning, between finally getting enough sleep and giving myself a pep talk, I thought I was almost there. Just because he’s hot and has that smile doesn’t mean I have to actually want to sleep with him.

  I started my day with a new goal: appreciate Jackson Cody from afar. Yes, he’s very pleasing to look at, so why ruin it by torturing myself with something I can’t have?

  It lasted about two hours. Then he apologized and took the bull by the horns — literally — and I failed miserably at appreciating from afar, because there’s something raw and primitive about a man who’s that confident, that unafraid of a challenge.

  The worst part of all might be that I broke my vibrator a month ago, and I still don’t have a new one.

  After the stables, he stands across the arena and watches the ropers while I shoot them, and then after the rodeo he disappears.

  That’s a good thing, I tell myself. He’s probably off drinking with his buddies again, getting some buckle bunny tail.

  I force myself to remember the night before, that girl on his lap, making out with him sloppily.

  See? I think. Ew.

  Bruce and I have dinner, and then I head back to my room and load the day’s pictures onto my laptop and dive in.

  Just as I get to the series of Jackson and the bull, shot in the low light of the stables, there’s a knock on my door, even though it’s almost nine at night. Probably Bruce. I rub my eyes, getting sore from a whole day of looking at things, and walk to my door.

  Jackson Cody is standing there, smiling down at me. My heart bangs against my ribcage, because no man has a right to look this good in just a work shirt, jeans, and boots.

  “Evenin’,” he says, and holds up a bottle of wine wrapped in a paper bag, the two flimsy plastic cups from his own motel room balanced upside-down on top of it.

  “I don’t even drink,” I say, looking at the bottle. It’s the first thing I think of.

  As much as that deep, needy part of me wants to invite him in, I can’t. Nobody can see Jackson Cody going into my motel room. It’s extraordinarily bad form to sleep with the people you’re hired to shoot, especially when the whole article is focused on them.

  He looks down at the bottle.

  “Whoops,” he says, and pulls the bag off, crumpling it in his other hand.

  It’s a bottle of peach-flavored Boone’s Farm Wine Drink. They changed the packaging, but as soon as I read it, my heart lurches.

  I look from the bottle to Jackson, then back at the bottle.

  “What the hell?” I finally ask, my voice a whisper.

  “I want to start over,” he says.

  I cross my arms and glare.

  “Not like that,” he says. “I just want to talk. Clear the air, get both of us on the same page.”

  I’m just staring at the bottle of wine.

  “When did you remember?” I ask, my voice low.

  “The moment you opened your mouth,” he says.

  “You remembered this whole time?” I hiss.

  A car pulls into the parking lot behind him, its headlights washing over us for a quick moment.

  “Lula-Mae, I just want to talk. I swear,” he says.

  “You can’t come in,” I say. “Everyone will know, and then they’ll talk. And don’t call me that.”

  “Can we talk somewhere else?” he asks.

  I take a deep breath. He’s probably right. We’ll just get everything out in the open, and then I can go back to pretending I don’t want to sleep with him.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “You know the west gate to the arena?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Meet me there in five minutes,” he says. “Give me a head start.”

  He walks away and I close the door to my motel room, and then I just stand there for a minute, reevaluating everything that’s happened in the last two days.

  When he shook my hand at the breakfast table, he knew who I was. When he hit on me afterward, when he rescued my camera, when he invited me out drinking.

  He remembered me, drunk and horny in the back of his pickup, the whole time.

  I put on shoes and grab a jacket. I close my laptop and put my camera in its case, even though it feels weird not to take it with me.

  After exactly five minutes, I walk toward the arena. I try to look like I’m on official photography business, but I don’t know if anyone cares or not. Probably not. It’s dark out there except for the occasional street light. The sky is full of stars even though the carnival is in the lot next door.

  I round a corner and see a shape standing up against the gate. The shape’s holding a bottle of wine.

  “Ready to break some rules?” Jackson asks, a smile in his voice.

  I open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

  “If we get caught, I’ll say it was my idea to show you some good angles of the arena,” he says. “I’ll take all the blame.”

  I exhale and shrug, suddenly nervous. Jackson walks to the right and disappears behind the bleachers, walking to a gate locked with a combination lock. He enters three numbers and the lock clicks open.

  “They don’t change the locks too often,” he says, and opens the gate, letting me through first.

  I’m still on high alert, and I’m a thousand percent aware that I shouldn’t be here, doing this, alone with Jackson Cody. But I’m also not about to back out now.

  Just don’t get caught, I think. That’s all.

  It’s dark under the bleachers, and I follow his silhouette out, around the grandstands. We climb to the very top of the metal bleachers, in front of the press box, and then sit down and lean against the structure. Jackson sets the plastic cups on the metal bench in front of it and twists the top off the wine drink.

  “You want any?” he asks, pouring himself a few fingers.

  I sigh.

  Why the hell not? You’re already here.

  “Just a sip,” I say.

  He pours me half an inch, and we raise our glasses, touch them together, and I take a drink.

  It tastes like a Jolly Rancher, but worse and alcoholic.

  “Oh god,” I say, covering my mouth with one hand. “Wow.”

  Jackson’s also making a face and shaking his head.

  “Lord have mercy, this is bad,” he says.

  “How did I ever drink a whole bottle of that stuff?” I ask, scrutinizing the tiny bit in my glass. “It’s awful.”

  “You’re not the first eighteen year old to get tanked on this,” he says. “That’s more or less what they make it for.”

  I laugh, even as my chest tightens. I take a deep breath and steady myself.

  “So six years ago I got really drunk at a party and we... met,” I say.

  “That’s a fair summary,” he says. “We were teenagers then and we’re older and wiser now.”

  “We snuck into the grandstands and we’re drinking this,” I say. “I think we’re just older.”

  I turn the plastic cup in my fingers, nervous about what I’m going to ask next.

  “Did you tell anyone?” I ask quietly. I can’t look at him, only at the sandy arena below.

  “Not anybody here,” he says. “I bragged some back then. But I didn’t think you wanted anyone here knowing that about you.”

  “I didn’t,” I say, and I sigh with relief. “Thanks.”

  There’s a moment of silence.

  “I didn’t tell anyone either, for the record,” I say.

  “I wouldn’t have minded,” Jackson says. He’s leaning back against the wooden press bo
x, and he turns his head toward me. “It’d make everyone else jealous as hell if they knew I’d gotten with the hot photographer.”

  I blush, glad he can’t see it in the dark.

  “It’s not like any of you are wanting for company,” I say.

  “Men like a challenge,” he says. “After a little while, girls who fall into your lap are a little too easy. Most of the time. Present company excepted.”

  I laugh.

  “I was really drunk,” I say. The scent of the wine is making me feel like I’m back there again, breathless and horny and completely inexperienced.

  “I did notice that,” he says.

  “I’d just graduated high school,” I say, and I lean back against the press box, feet on the metal bench in front of me as I look down the dark stands into the even darker arena.

  “Would you believe that was the first real party I went to?”

  “I would absolutely believe that,” he says, keeping his face straight.

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “Was it that obvious?”

  “You didn’t seem like you’d had a lot of experience,” he says, a little more tactfully this time. “You got a little excited when the police showed up.”

  I cover my face with my hands, mortified.

  “I’d forgotten that part in my embarrassment about all the rest,” I say, my voice slightly muffled. “God, I was not very cool about that.”

  “Nope,” Jackson says.

  I take my hands off my face and lean forward, my plastic cup on the bench next to me. I look past the arena and out to the parking lot, cars shining in the mercury vapor lights.

  “I really thought I’d almost ruined my life,” I say, my voice low.

  “Because you were at a party that got busted?”

  I shake my head.

  “Because I lost control,” I say. “I got plastered and nearly had unprotected sex with someone I didn’t even know.”

  I swallow. Jackson’s quiet.

  “You remember the girl I was there with? Christy?”

  “She went off with Buck?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “She’s my age. Twenty-four. And she’s got three kids with three different dads. She works at Wal-Mart and lives with her parents.”

  I take a deep breath.