To All the Cowboys I've Loved Before

by D. R. Graham

  “I never said you weren’t smart enough, zvezda moya. That isn’t why I was against Stanford.” He sighs and looks at me with pride. “It was selfish of me, but I knew once my little girl left home you wouldn’t be back. And I wasn’t ready for you to go. I’m glad you did, though. Just like your mother, you take risks. You work hard. And when you set your mind to it, you can do anything. Whatever it is that has got you down, I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to sort it out. But if you need my help, just ask. You will always be my myshka, no matter how far away you are.”

  Aw, man, now I’m crying again. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Chapter 26

  Easton

  There’s a rainstorm on the horizon and coming this way. I’m taping my arm, not that I feel like riding. But the payout at the Madera rodeo is good relative to the competition. Plus, I was already registered and didn’t want to lose the entrance fee. And there’s an off chance Della might show up since it’s only two and a half hours from Palo Alto. My knee isn’t in great shape. Hopefully, if I wear a brace it will be stable enough to ride—and more importantly, stable enough to land after the ride.

  When Chuck finally pulls into the participants’ lot and parks next to my truck, my heart rate speeds up in the hope that Della made the trip with him. Unfortunately, nobody else gets out of the truck. Disappointment hits me like a sack of feed, but it’s probably better if we don’t see each other. Better for her, since she specifically asked me not to contact her. Not better for me. I’m dying. A constant battle is going on inside me between the need to reach out to her and honoring her request for space. I’d like to try to make it work long-distance, if that’s what she wants. I just don’t want to hold her back or screw anything up for her.

  “Haaaavieeee.” Chuck wanders over and shakes my hand. “We miss you back at the house. How’s it going, buddy?”

  I glance over at his truck again, hoping Della really did come with him and I just didn’t see her. Nope. “I’ve been better. How’s Della?”

  Chuck sits on my lawn chair and tips his hat back to relax. “She hasn’t eaten anything more than toast since you left, she flunked a few assignments, and she cries herself to sleep every night. Other than that she’s awesome.”

  “Shit.” My heart sinks.

  “Don’t worry about it, man. It’s her first break up. It’s hitting her hard, but she’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t want her to get over it. I want to figure out a way to be with her.” After tightening the straps on my knee brace I hop off my tailgate and pace to vent my frustration.

  A group of five barrel racing competitors walk by on their way to the arena. One stops. It’s Tracy. “Hey, Havie. I didn’t know you were going to be here.” She frowns as she gives me the once over. “You seem tense. Everything all right?”

  “Yup,” I say to keep it short and blow her off.

  She looks over at Chuck, who was never her favorite person, and she purposely doesn’t say hi to him before she focuses back on me. “Is Della here?”

  “Yeah.” Normally, I wouldn’t lie about something like that, but I want Tracy to leave me alone. “She’s in the stands.”

  Chuck scratches his head as the slow wheels in his brain turn.

  “Cool,” Tracy says. “Maybe I’ll run into her before I race. Good luck.”

  “You too,” I mumble as I buckle my chaps.

  She struts away. Hard to tell if it’s for my benefit or Chuck’s.

  “Daaaaaamn,” he says as his eyes follow the sway of her hips. “I always loved that girl. Is it weird that the fact she still hates me is giving me a boner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she get even hotter?” He stands and makes a show of watching her walk away.

  “She’s exactly the same as she’s always been. And so are you, obviously. You better watch yourself.”

  “Tracy wouldn’t give me the time of day.” He slaps my back and hops up to sit on my tailgate. “What do you care anyway?”

  “I’m not talking about Tracy. I’m talking about the girl you live with. She thinks she’s helping you become a better person, but you and I both know that isn’t what you’re really doing. You need to stay inline or you’ll be sorry. You hear me?”

  The grin falls off his face as I stare him down. He probably deserves a shot to the head just for considering it. Since he hasn’t actually tried to make a play at Della, I leave it at a warning.

  He stands, genuinely offended. “You think I’m trying to move in on Della?”

  I nod once and then lift my foot to wrap my boot ties.

  His mouth drops open as he shakes his head in disbelief. “Wow. I admit I can be an asshole sometimes, but I can’t believe you’d think I’d try to steal your girl.” Just like that, his short fuse is lit and he kicks over an empty feed bucket. Then he spins around and points at me. “I’ve been there for her, man. As a friend. And maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t got a lot of friends.” He holds up one finger at a time to count them off. “Her, BJ, and you. At least I thought we were friends.” His voice cracks from emotion, and out of frustration, he makes a motion as if he’s going to throw his water bottle on the grass. But then he doesn’t. Instead, he just walks away.

  Holy shit. That’s a first. Maybe Della really has made progress with his humanity makeover. That was the realest thing I’ve ever heard him say. And he controlled his temper. I watch him sulk off like a sad penguin and actually feel bad for jumping down his throat. Maybe I was wrong.

  Chapter 27

  Della

  I climb the bleachers and find my seat as the first bareback bronc cowboy nods to open the gate. There is a fairly big crowd here, considering a thunderstorm is closing in—and I suddenly wish I brought a jacket. The first rider holds on for all eight seconds but then falls off awkwardly afterward. It looks like he hurt his collarbone based on how he’s cradling his arm.

  Easton is scheduled to ride third. As he climbs up and gets ready I try to catch his attention with my burning stare, but he’s focused, and all the way on the other side of the arena. Neither he nor Chuck knows I’m here because I changed my mind a thousand times. I finally settled on coming because the bottom line is I want to see Easton. Maybe hug him. Possibly kiss him. Definitely tell him that I’m willing to also drop out of school if that’s what it would take for a relationship with him to work. He would never let me, of course. But I want him to know that I don’t care if we live four hours apart or across the planet from each other. I wrote out what I plan to say to him, practiced it, and ran it by my sister. She thinks it’s sweet, but she’s not convinced that a long-distance relationship can work. In my opinion we have to at least try. If it doesn’t work, I’ll be crushed again, but at least I’ll know that I tried everything humanly possible and didn’t quit at the first sign of adversity. I really wouldn’t be happy with a life that didn’t include him. Hopefully he feels the same way.

  Oh shoot. No, no, no. My breath catches in my chest as Easton gets bucked off right out of the chute—head over heels, flying through the air bucked. After what feels like an abnormally long time, he lands hard and the horse kicks him in the shoulder. The entire crowd lets out a collective gasp. My hands fly to my mouth as I stand and wait for him to move, but he doesn’t. The arena cowboys run across the thick dirt and crouch next to Easton. They ask him questions, but I can’t tell if he’s responding.

  Eventually, to everyone’s relief, he rolls to his hands and knees and then takes his time to get up. Two cowboys help him to the gate, carrying most of his weight by his belt so he doesn’t have to put pressure on his leg with the bad knee. I don’t know what to do. My heart is telling me to run to the backfield and make sure he’s okay. My head is telling me that he’s all right and he doesn’t need someone nervously hovering and making things worse. Chuck looks concerned, but he’s next to ride, so he climbs into the chute.

  After Chuck successfully completes his ride, I make my way through the crowd towards the medical ten
t and peer in the open door flap. A guy who’s maybe a doctor or a physio is examining Easton’s shoulder, so I hang back and loiter in the area that’s technically only for participants, surrounded by a bunch of cowboys. A bunch of bull riders to be specific. An intense mixture of excitement and apprehension buzzes off them. I bought proper cowboy boots, so I don’t feel quite as out of place at a rodeo anymore. Who am I kidding? Everyone here can still tell I’m a poser.

  Now Easton is lying on a treatment bed. The medical guy is testing the stability of his knee. Whoa. I turn my head as the first bull ride starts. From this perspective, on the ground, and right up against the fence, it’s even crazier. How do they convince their bodies to do that? Oh, my goodness. He was launched against the fence. What a horrific noise that makes. Eek. The bull is charging him but gets distracted and lifts a bull fighter up in the air instead, spinning him like a propeller. Idiotic. Why does everyone in the ring look like these near death experiences are fun?

  As they try unsuccessfully to coax the bull to leave the arena, I turn back to check on Easton. He’s gone. How did I miss him leave? I wander around the grounds to look for him as the crowd cheers for the bulls. Mmm. Mini donut food truck.

  Even though I haven’t talked to Easton yet, he obviously wasn’t injured that badly and just being in his general vicinity makes me feel better. My appetite is back. I buy enough donuts to share with him, hoping it will cheer him up after getting bucked off. But I still can’t find him as heavy rain drops start to fall. Rushing to avoid the downpour, I head towards the parking lot to check if he went back to his truck to change.

  I spot him in the distance. So sexy. Wait. No. He’s getting in the cab. I break into a sprint to cross the field, but he’s already backed out. Shoot. In an attempt to get my phone out of my purse, while running, I end up dropping the entire bag of donuts which roll across the wet grass. I’m about to dial his number when a voice speaks up beside me, “Don’t take it personally, Della. They all get pissy and want to be alone when they shit the bed and get hurt.”

  “Tracy?” I’m confused. She’s dressed in a pink shirt and white cowboy hat, staring at me amusedly. And Easton is getting away. What is she doing here? “Hi. I didn’t know you competed in rodeo.”

  “Barrel racing.” She ducks under the pop-up canopy tent next to her truck to get out of the rain, then pulls a bottle of beer out of a cooler and holds it up to offer it to me. “I tried to find you to say hi but couldn’t see you in the crowd.”

  “No thank you,” I shake my head in response to the beer offering and also because I’m confused. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Easton told me.”

  What? “He knew I was here?”

  “Yeah, he said you were in the stands.” She takes a sip of her beer and studies my rain-soaked face as I attempt to assemble the pieces together. A burn flares across my chest and rushes up my neck to heat my cheeks. He knew I was here and took off without even saying hello? That is unnecessarily cruel. And embarrassing. I don’t want to cry in front of Tracy. But she must be able to tell I’m on the verge because she’s giving me a pity smile. Maybe it’s a smug smile, or a genuinely kind smile. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. I’m leaving.

  “Nice seeing you again,” I say quickly so my voice won’t break. “I have to go.”

  Chapter 28

  Easton

  Stuart left another message. He has some work for me in San Francisco. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to earn some quick cash modeling, it wouldn’t be enough to justify taking time away from the ranch. Right now I’m worth more if I stay here and work. Plus, we’re less than a week away from the bank’s deadline. I need to move the last hundred-thousand-dollars’ worth of cattle to auction on Wednesday and transfer the money by Friday. The only reason I’ve been avoiding calling Stuart back to turn down his offer is because it means talking about Della if I do, and I don’t think I’m emotionally strong enough to do that right now

  I climb up on the small wheel loader to get back to work. The engine clicks. Nothing happens. Try again. Nothing. Damn it.

  Seriously?

  Of course the tractor would choose now to breakdown. What’s one more kick to the nuts? I climb out on the hood and stomp my foot down, leaving a dent with the heel of my boot. Then do it again, and again. Good thing it was already beat up because I’ve got enough pent up frustration to do this all day. Piece of crap. Why does every single thing in my life turn to shit?

  I try to do the right thing. I work my ass off. And for what? Nothing. I want to switch feet and stomp again, but I can’t because my bum knee will give out. And the reminder that I need knee surgery at some point, which will lay me up and put me out of commission, pisses me off more. There’s no time for surgery. I don’t have time for anything, good or bad. Why is it that whenever I make progress with one thing in my life something else goes wrong? All of the successes I’ve ever achieved have been paid for with some sort of heartache. I’ve never complained. I’ve always just fought harder. The problem is I’m tired of fighting for every single damn thing only to end up right back where I started. I close my eyes and shout at the wind as I drive my heel into the hood again.

  “Everything all right?” Tracy asks as she leans out the open driver’s side window of her truck. I didn’t hear her drive up during my stomping fit.

  “Perfect,” I mumble and jump off the loader to lift the hood and figure out why it won’t start.

  “You sure? You sort of did a number on the hood. And since I’ve never, in all the years I’ve known you, seen you lose your cool, I’m going to assume things are not going that well for you right now.”

  There’s no way I’m going to talk to her about it, but I could really use her help. Her uncle trained her to be a mechanic and she knows more about engines than I do. As I stare blankly under the hood, she gets out of her truck and hops the fence to take a look.

  “Try to start it again. I want to hear what’s wrong.”

  Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, I climb into the cab. It makes the same dead clicking sound, which feels like poetic irony. She leans under the hood and signals with her arm for me to try it again. Despite my encouragement, when we were still in high school, she never got her mechanic’s ticket because she didn’t want to end up working as a grease monkey for the rest of her life. She’s also a qualified aesthetician, she completed a baker’s apprenticeship, and she’s a registered massage therapist, but she lasted less than a year in each of those professions. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. At least she has options. I just wasted five years focusing on one goal and still have nothing to show for it.

  After a few minutes of tinkering, she sends me to get the tool box out of the back of her truck. Then she ties her hair into a braid and leans over the engine. I sit on the fence and drink water as a truck flies down the gravel road and kicks up dust in its wake. The driver slows as the truck approaches us and then stops. “Wow. Lucky guy.” My dad’s friend Phil hangs out of the driver’s window. “When my mechanic bends over, all I see is crack,” he barks out in a chesty laugh.

  “Shut up, Phil,” Tracy hollers.

  “What? That’s supposed to be a compliment.”

  She pops her head up from under the hood. “That type of sexist remark is exactly why I’m not a mechanic. I’m a midwife.”

  “You’re a midwife this week.” He laughs. “What are you going to be next week? An astronaut?”

  She gives him the finger and then gets back to work.

  He winks at me, but I don’t encourage him because I need her to not get pissed off and leave. “By the way, kid. The auction on Wednesday is cancelled. You’re not going to be able to sell anything locally until the week after next at the earliest.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a damn scam. Someone, AKA a person who has a vested interest in the Lewis family forfeiting on the loan, made an anonymous tip to the town hall to complain that the electrical in the auction ha
ll isn’t up to code. They shut it down until the work is done to upgrade it.”

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Yup. I was just heading over to talk to your dad about how to come up with the rest of the money that’s owing to those bank cocksuckers. There’s another auction about three hours away, but it’s not until Saturday.”

  Tracy glances over at me nervously. Surprisingly, I don’t feel anything. Not shocked or angry or worried. Nothing. I must be too emotionally exhausted to care about another setback.

  Phil waits for me to respond. I just don’t have the energy. Eventually, he says he’ll see me at the house and drives off.

  Tracy wipes her hands on a rag before she closes the hood. “I can’t fix it right now. It needs a part. Good news, it’s an inexpensive part. Bad news, it needs to be ordered, so might take a few days to get here. I’ll order it for you and come by to put it in once it’s here.”

  I nod and stare out over the pasture. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. We don’t need a working loader if we don’t own a ranch. It’s hard to imagine not owning the land since all the memories of my mom are attached to it. It will kill my dad to leave here. Literally. He’ll give up and let the cancer take him. But me? I can start over somewhere else. Wherever Della is. Great, now I’m choked up again. I guess it means I’m not completely emotionally dead inside. Yet. I can’t give up. If my mom were alive, she would be devastated that we lost it to a greedy corporation with questionable ethics. Actually, she’d be livid. They’d have had to get past her shotgun before they removed her from the land. There’s got to be a way to save it, for her.

  “Havie?” Tracy waves her hands in front of my face to pull me out of my daze. “Do you want me to give you a lift back to the house?”

  Without answering, I hop off the fence and walk around to the front of her truck and slide into the passenger seat. “There must be a way to uncover the collusion between the bank and the commodities company,” I say to her as she slides in behind the wheel.