by C. M. Lally
“Yeah, thanks for not killing us. My fans and I appreciate it, but I had faith in you all along.” He walks to the back of the trailer and starts setting the wheel chocks in place. I stand there dumbfounded at his words. No one has ever been that certain of me. Ever. Hell, I wasn’t sure I could drive and park this bad boy. I’m getting the full experience of being on my own, and I love every minute of being here with Brax.
Chapter 12 – Braxton
NOA HELPS ME UNHITCH the trailer before she goes inside and settles down on the computer to catch up on her records review. The Harkins’ roll in honking at me as I talk to Bill. Sounds like he and the crew got stuck in the storm that came through, as well, and had to park the rigs for the night. Now we’re at least ten hours behind on set up, but we’ve been here before. We’ll catch up if everyone pulls their weight.
I point to the back corner lot for Virgil to head toward, and I watch him and his wife head in that direction. I catch up to them just as they turn the engine off, so I grab their chock blocks and get them nestled against the tires tightly. Virgil pulls the king pin out and unhitches the fifth wheel.
“Bill says we’re a few hours behind on setting up with that storm last night. Can you come and help?” He nods and adjusts his hat on his head. The heat of the day and no wind blowing is wearing on him by the looks of the sweat staining his shirt.
We both head over to the gym and therapy area where the roadies are piecing together the metal trusses for the tent canopy. After a few hours of back-breaking lifting and hauling everything to where it belongs, this tent is ready to go. Noa can keep her appointments starting tomorrow morning.
We all walk outside for a water break and hear Bill announcing through a megaphone that many hands have made work lighter, and it’s time to rest for the day. The crowd cheers and claps loudly. Family, our bond— it’s what makes it all come together. That was as good of a workout as any that I could have planned for myself. Even Virgil looks like he could sleep for a week after all that lifting.
I walk him back to his trailer and his beloved wife, Hazel, who has a casserole and peach pie ready for him to devour. She fawn’s all over him, setting him down in his chair and removing his hat. He doesn’t have to lift a finger. She’s a southern lady and knows the way to her man’s heart.
I see he’s in good hands, but before I can take my leave, she taps on my arm. “And why are you trying to leave without your supper?” She hands me a small casserole dish, wrapped in a kitchen towel, and then on top of that, she places a plate wrapped in aluminum foil. I can smell the fresh peaches and sugar through the thickly wrapped foil. “Take this for you and your new bunkmate. She looks like she could eat some more calories.”
She smiles wide before pushing on my arm toward the door. “Shoo now. Hurry, before it gets cold.” I raise my eyebrows at her when looking back over my shoulder. She’s waving her hands at me to get along, and I pick up my pace.
“Yes, ma’am.” Knowing Hazel, she’ll chase me with a broom all the way to my front door to make sure I get there.
I enter the door, and Noa is still at the table with her laptop glowing. Diagrams of a male forward-facing, from behind and at both sides are on the screen with multiple red x’s marked to show injury. She looks up to see me staring and lowers her laptop screen to hide the view.
“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to pry. It just caught my eye when I came in.” I set the casserole dish on the stove top and place the pie slices in the microwave for safekeeping; we’ll enjoy those later.
“What are you sneaking in over there? I can smell it, so stop trying to hide it.” She laughs as she unfolds her legs from underneath the bench seating and walks to the stove. She curiously lifts up one corner of the towel and inhales deeply: stuffed peppers. Her stomach growls loudly as she stares at the brightly-colored sweet peppers oozing with melted Cheddar cheese. “Please tell me it’s dinner time, and this is for us because I’m starving.”
She glances at the clock on the wall for verification. Her eyes are bright with anticipation of my response. I walk into the bathroom and splash some cold water on my face, building some suspense that I’ll probably regret later.
When I walk into the kitchen, still silent while drying my face with a towel, I see she’s pulling plates out of the cabinet. She already has two glasses of ice water and silverware settings on the table.
“Yes, it’s dinner time, and yes, it’s for us. Compliments of the Harkins’.” She claps her hands excitedly and releases a small child-like squeal.
“I love stuffed peppers, but my mom hates them. She’s allergic, so we never get to eat them.” She removes the towel and grabs a spatula to start serving two onto each plate. “They aren’t a California favorite with all of the meat, carbs, and cheese, as you can imagine, I never get to eat them.”
“You’re a deprived woman. I’m still trying to figure out what you survive on.” I set across from her and take a sip of my water while she slices through her first pepper. A cloud of steam floats in the small space between us, releasing the tangy sweetness of beef, garlic and tomato sauce. Her fork disappears between her lips and a slight groan escapes as she chews.
“Heaven,” she says as her eyelids flutter. I can’t look at her anymore because my shorts are tenting under the table. I pray I don’t drop anything or need to get up, so I dig into my dinner with the gusto of a starving man.
“Were you able to get caught up on your records review for your appointments tomorrow?” I grab a napkin from the holder for myself and hand one to her.
“Yes. Some of the injuries are not always consistent with the rider’s skills, so some of them are confusing, but I’ll get clarification tomorrow. I did make notes to ask about certain things.”
“Well, some of the riders weren’t always bull riders. They may have started out with something else, like Jimmy Swan, for instance. He joined us a calf roper, then moved up to steer wrestling, but has improved enough and wanted to become a bull rider, his current classification.”
“So tell me about calf ropers’ injuries. I’m trying to picture it based on last week’s experience, but no one got hurt in that event.” Her face is serious. This is Noa; curious and determined do her job correctly. She pulls a set of readers down from her hair that I didn’t notice before and flipped up her laptop screen. “For instance, how does one crack a patella on bareback riding?”
“Some injuries can’t be explained. Life happens. The body weakens in certain areas. It could be from their rodeo job, or maybe they fractured it earlier on playing soccer with their kids, who knows. It probably worsened during their ride while controlling the horse with their knees and cracked.”
“So, that’s your response. Life happened?” She narrows her eyes at me, not ready to believe my reasoning. Her eyes are larger than normal looking at them through the lens of her glasses. She’s searching for some bigger cause, and I know it’s her doctor training to question and research why, but sometimes there isn’t an answer. Life happens.
“Yes, that’s my honest opinion. We can’t see what’s going on inside our bodies. We can only react to it once it gives us the sign of pain. Not everyone stops doing what’s causing the pain the minute it presents itself. These are cowboys; tough, manly men who persist through pain that would break most people. They won’t stop until something stops them, which unfortunately is usually an injury.”
“Is that what you do?” Her gaze sears me, making me want to spill all of my secrets.
“I push myself to a point.” I hold back my first response, knowing I’m not a true cowboy. I’m just a hack who got lucky with learning to ride.
“What point? How deep is your pain threshold?” For some reason, I get the feeling that she’s no longer talking about the rodeo and the injuries that it brings. She’s digging for some metaphoric insight into my inner being.
I clear our dishes from the table, placing them in the sink and running some water over them to soak. She opens the microwave and removes
the foil from the plate, heating the slices for a few seconds. Warm pie; it’s a bribe to keep spilling my story.
“My mind is always assessing the situation. Do I continue and pray I’ll be able to move later? Does this affect my ability to ride? Will this hurt my chances at the title? Everything I do is for that title.” I bite into the peach pie, savoring the sugar and mix of warm cinnamon and nutmeg on my tongue.
“I thought everything you did was for your son.” She sets her fork down, resting the tines on the edge of the plate and listens to me intently between bites like my answer is going to solve world hunger.
“Ultimately that is the goal. Winning the title solves all of my problems and gets me custody of my son. So my pain threshold hasn’t been reached until I don’t reach my goals; that’s my measure. Until then, I can take anything that life wants to throw at me as long as it doesn’t mess with my title.”
She nods her head, accepting my answer and finishes her pie in silence. No more questions come from that sharp mind of hers.
“Sorry if that got a little deeper than you intended,” I apologize, not sure what else to say to fill the silence that lies heavy between us. My belly is full, my body is relaxed, and my brain is content with our conversation. Noa is very easy to talk to, and yet I have to remind myself that she’s off-limits.
“No worries. It’s refreshing to have normal dinner conversation.”
I raise my eyebrows to her. “That’s normal dinner conversation?”
“Yeah, for me.” She chuckles under her breath, a full smile on her face. “Normally I eat alone, but when I am lucky enough to dine with a dinner partner, I’m inundated with tales of six-figure bank accounts, stock investment achievements, or real estate portfolios to impress me. Fake conversations with fake men don’t impress me much.”
”Ouch. I’ll remember to always keep it real with you.” She gazes out the window before replying.
“Please do. I think that’s all anyone ever wants.” She’s lost in her thoughts as I clear the last remaining plate and forks from the table.
“Is that all?” She turns her face toward mine, a question forming on her lips.
“All what?” Confusion rules her expression.
“Is that all you want? Just for people to be real with you?”
“It seems reasonable enough, don’t you think?” She powers down her laptop and removes the thumb drive that holds the medical records collected by the PBR.
“I honestly don’t know. Women seem more complicated than that.” She twists her lips thinking about what I said.
“No, I get it, really I do,” she sighs, flipping the thumb drive over and over in her palm. “I’ve seen women bend over backward to confuse men. They twist them up into tiny knots until they can’t be unraveled. The men don’t know what hit them or where to go from there, especially in a new relationship. They walk on eggshells. It irritates me because those are the men in the dating pool who are now afraid of commitment. No wonder the divorce rate in this country is more than fifty percent.”
“Wow, you do get it. There needs to be a master class for dating adults to learn not to play games with each other?”
“Well, now that’d be difficult because sometimes games are fun. It’s the art of flirting. It helps to gauge interest and availability. Take that away, and the fun goes away.”
“Sometimes the fun needs to go away,” I mutter under my breath thinking back to the fun I had with Rowan’s mom all those years ago. That fun never should have started; it was the beginning of my misery.
“Is that experience mumbling?” Damn, she heard that, and in true Noa fashion, she commented on it.
“That’s a hard lesson learned.” I walk away from her, not wanting to share that part of my life with her. Or anyone here on the circuit for that matter.
“Want to talk about it? I promise I’m a good listener.” Her face is as emotionless as a piece of paper. I have no doubt she’s a good listener. I just don’t share well with others.
“I’m gonna take a shower. The truck is unhitched if you need to run any errands. We can go to the grocery store later if you want?” Her face deflates when I shut her down her therapy session, but I know she’ll try again. Her elongated, heavy sigh and the thump of her feet on the hardwood floor back to the room tell me volumes. She’s frustrated and wants me to know it, but she’s not going to push me.
The hot water in the shower eases my tired muscles, but not my burdened mind.
Fuck. I hate it when people are upset, especially if it’s something I did to make them that way. I know exactly what I’ll get if I unroll my story and lay out all of my problems at her feet. One. She’s going to show me pity, and I don’t want it. And two, she’s going to offer me advice, and I don’t want that either. Women always want to fix everything, and some things just can’t be fixed with a vague suggestion. Trust me, I know, or I would have thought of it already.
I punch the fiberglass wall with my fist, leaving a small star crack and knocking Noa’s shampoo off the corner shelf. It thumps to the floor of the shower, and when I bend down to pick it up, my elbow hits the wall again, causing a shooting pain to tingle and race up my arm.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” I shout, not caring who hears me.
I turn the shower off and step out onto the rug, hitting the exhaust fan to remove the steam from the room. A light knock raps on the door.
“Are you okay?” Her strangled voice comes through the door, and I feel bad. She’s upset with me, but not enough to not show concern. She’s too good to be true. Another woman would have told me to fuck off by now.
“I’m fine. I hit my elbow on the side of the shower, that’s all.”
Her steps go down the hallway and into the kitchen instead of back into her room.
I grab my phone from the back of the toilet and parade through the trailer in my wet towel all the way to my room.
Chapter 13 – Noa
I MAKE IT ALL THE WAY through the grocery store and the ride home without mentioning our previous conversation. The need to know his past is burning a hole in my mind. He’s like a good book that you can’t put down. You want to keep flipping the pages, but Braxton’s pages are all blank. I know very little about his story, and what I do know wouldn’t fill one measly page.
I’m ready for my appointments tomorrow, and I can hear Braxton watching TV. I’m restless, and I hate this feeling. If I were home, I’d probably be knee-deep into peeling old, yellowed wallpaper from the grandma’s kitchen or pulling up the worn linoleum and doing my best to avoid asbestos. I need some laughter.
I pick up my phone and dial Myla, who picks up on the first ring. “Hello, is this my bestest friend in the whole world calling?”
“Hello back to you, my bestest friend ever. How the hell have you been?”
“Aww, you know me. Busier than a one-armed man in a paper hanging contest.” That’s Myla. She was born in Ohio, and has some of the craziest sayings I’ve ever heard— but she can always make me laugh.
“Wow. That busy, huh? Do you have some time to spare for your runaway best friend or do I need to make an appointment?”
“I’ve always got time for you. So, how’s the rodeo and that hot man you’re shacking up with?”
“We are not shacking up together. Correct your terminology. We are sharing a camper until mine is ready.”
“Yep, just like I said shacking up.”
“Stop it.”
“Just calling it as I see it. Anything happen yet? Come on; give me something to enhance my non-existent life.”
“He’s my patient, Myla.”
“So, something did happen. Giiiiiiive me deets. Please?”
“How do you know something happened?”
“Ha! So something did happen?”
“Stop. I can hang up on you.”
“But you won’t, because you miss me.”
“Now that is something I will confirm. Tell me, have you been keeping busy, or wallowing in self-pity with your
best friend gone?”
“Both. I’ve been sewing like a seamstress on a mission from God, and then I wallow in my self-induced pity when I realize I have no one to show my efforts to or try them on. It’s depressing.”
“Well, how about Monty? She loves trying on clothes.”
“Ha. Umm, I hate to break it to you, but your sister is a snob. She’ll only wear Balenciaga or Alexander McQueen from the New York runways. My creative style is more Target on steroids and protein.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Sorry, Love. You’re making outfits for your low-budget western film. Damn though. I’d love to have seen Monty sporting a pair of chaps.”
“Yeah, well, unless they come with Swarovski Crystals and Louboutin boots to match, it’s not going to happen.”
I sigh just thinking about the harassing photos I could have teased her with. All my implicit threats of giving familial pics to the stalkerazzi will never see the light of day.
“Penny for your thoughts, because I know your phone data costs more than mine.”
“Shit. Sorry. I got lost in thinking that only my evil side misses home.”
“That tells me your good side is having a great time, then. Good for you. It’s well deserved.”
“Speaking of well deserved, weren’t you going to come see me one of these weekends? You know I won’t be able to last a month without chattering like a loon to you in person.”
“Yes, dear. I have a plane ticket landing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in two weeks, and reservations at the Ambassador Hotel. Want to come and sleep in a normal-sized room for a few nights with me? I’ve got a suite with two beds.”
“Wow. Look how far I’ve sunk when a full-sized room is a bribe. Of course, I do. We’ll have a slumber party and talk all night.”
“Speaking of which, has he found out yet?”
“Found out what?”
“About the moaning and groaning when you sleep.”
“Yes, I told him. It was no big deal.”