Page 1 of His Cowboy Heart

I dreamed of being a cowboy when I was a young man.

Astride my horse, one hand on the reigns the other holding my hat, I galloped across a desert dreamland bathed in pale-blue moonlight.

Wind rushed against my skin.

My horse’s hooves thundered across the hard ground.

My adrenaline pulsed.

I smelled the leather of the saddle and felt the burn in my legs as we raced towards a switchback trail that climbed a steep cliff side.

Back and forth, we galloped upward; dust billowed all around us as we made our way towards the stars.

I felt unstoppable.

I felt alive.

But in every dream there was the rub, the tipping point where fantasy faded and reality whispered in my ear.

It’s not real. Prep school boys like you don’t gallop wild and free.

I snapped awake, my pulse hammering only to find the night stars of my dream replaced by the white ceiling of my New York City bedroom. Disappointed, my excitement dissolved replaced by a dull and constant anxiety.

I felt trapped by my life as Troy Van Rossum, son of Marjorie, and stepson to a line of billionaires. My mother married up and often.

My destiny was an expensive black suit and a corner office on Wall Street not riding on the back of a beautiful black stallion out west. I belonged in my prep school blazer and tie reciting Latin and hanging out with the rugby team pretending to fit in with the crowd. Marjorie insisted we vacation in places like the Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons. I knew nothing about horses and I didn’t even own a real cowboy hat.

I was just a teenage boy with no power over my future.

I hated that moment of clarity. It was like falling off a cliff and hitting the ground face first, hard and fast.

Bam. Welcome to your life Troy.

I was destined to be a suit not a cowboy.

But if my future was set in stone, why did I feel most alive pretending to be a cowboy in my dreams?

I grew up. I tried to forget I wanted more for my life. Then Marjorie shipped me off to spend the summer in Salishan, WA.

I was eighteen years old.

That was the summer I met Shea Marie O’Toole and everything changed.

Falling in love with Shea was the real life rush I had never known existed.

When Shea’s lips pressed against mine, I felt a surge of passion wilder and stronger than I’d ever imagined. When our bodies found each other in the dark, I pulsed with power and longing deep in my core.

Shea Marie was all I ever wanted.

From the moment we met, she belonged to me and I to her.

And then it was over.

I stopped dreaming when I lost Shea Marie.

I closed my eyes at night and there was nothing for me but darkness. Darkness and regret sitting on my chest like a cold stone making it hard for me to breathe. Eventually a dreamless sleep would find me.

I felt trapped and stunted. My body and mind ached for release. As the years passed, I searched for peace in the bodies of other women. For a while, I searched for peace in the bottom of a whiskey glass.

Eventually my heart hardened and I no longer tormented myself with the why of my loss. I accepted Shea’s absence the same way I knew the sun would rise over Manhattan every morning. I replaced my questions with routine. I met a girl. I worked in Midtown. I cheered for the Yankees and complained about the humidity and the gentrification of Brooklyn like a born and bred New Yorker.

Over ten years, I forgot Shea Marie, or maybe I just got better at believing my own bullshit.

And then one night my dreams returned.

They just came back a little too late.

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