Page 22 of Colt
Yeah. I feel that.
And then I feel this cold, wrenching fear. I wasn’t aware of it fully at the time, but I feel it now. It’s bad enough that I could die.
I really feel the way he tore my midsection open right then. All the blood. God, there was so much blood.
Why is this all hitting me right now? I hate it.
I just want to be fine. I just want to be fine. I didn’t choose any of this.
You kind of did when you signed up to be a bull rider.
No. Pretty much everybody’s fine. It’s not like there’s a massive mortality rate being a bull rider. More fishermen die every year.
The ocean is a fuckton more dangerous. Still, I almost died in an arena. I almost died.
I almost died.
And what is this? What the fuck is this? Sitting on my couch and all this pain, feeling freaked out and sorry for myself? Worrying about whether or not I’m going to be able to pee on my own.
What is that, if not dying a little bit?
At least, some version of myself is dead. The one that did all this without thinking twice. My stepbrother goes off and fights wildfires, and that seems reasonable, to me because I’m a bull rider, after all.
And Allison is going to become a nurse.
We risk our lives, she’s going to get a job where she’s going to save them.
There is no metaphor in that. I’m a dumbass.
The minutes stretch by slowly. I just want her to come back so that I don’t have to sit here with my echoing thoughts. I’m rarely alone. On the rodeo circuit, I’m always surrounded by friends, fellow riders. At night, I usually have a woman in my bed. Women like a man who takes risks, and I am happy to have their admiration as a side effect of the job. When I’m home, I don’t go to bed alone if I don’t want to. There’s a roster of women I’ve known since high school who like to get it on now and then.It’s fun. I look down at my leg. If I were going to be with someone now, they’d have to do most of the work.
Well. My mouth still works just fine.
Pretty sure my cock is okay. That’s when I realize I haven’t had an erection in weeks, which is fucking odd. But nothing has felt all that sexy.
I go back to the moment when I got out of the truck. I felt a stirring of something then. When I was teasing Allison about sex tapes, and was close enough to smell the way her skin is scented like flowers.
But that is messed up, and I don’t even have pain meds as an excuse for that because I quit them cold turkey.
My front door opens, and Allison comes back in carrying a couple of canvas bags.
“I brought some Kombucha.”
“Oh,fuck me,” I say.
“I’m kidding. I brought Coke. But you have beer anyway.”
“I like a Coke with dinner,” I say, knowing that I sound a little bit whiny.
“I know you do,” she says. “I lived with you for almost three years, remember?”
Yeah. I do remember. And I know she’s not actually asking.
It’s a relief that she’s not being saccharine. I don’t think I can handle that. Because I feel fragile, which is ridiculous. I’m a lot of things, but fucking fragile isn’t one of them.
But all those memories are hovering so close to the surface, and I am just really grateful that she’s here. That I’m not by myself with my echoing thoughts. Because what a nightmare.
“Do you want to come into the kitchen while I cook?”
