Page 16 of Sexting the Cowboy
We eat more fries. Jaden tells me a story about the volunteer EMT who kept offering life advice to his patients and then went ghost-white at the sight of a paper cut. We laugh more than the stories warrant because the laughing is the point.
Two whiskeys and half a field of fries later, my edges are soft enough that I almost forget I hate this town in the summer. Jaden stands, points to the hallway by the jukebox. “Bathroom. Don’t get adopted by any more cowboys while I’m gone.”
“I’ll screen them for rabies first.”
He disappears into the narrow corridor painted with old concert posters. I pick through the fries for the crispy ends, the ones that taste most like the fryer. I check my phone out of habit—two emails from the clinic account, one from a supplier asking about reorders, one from a patient rebooking for next month. I flag both and tuck the phone face down.
The shadow falls over me before I clock the boots.
It’s Belt Buckle, returned and heavy with the confidence of a man who believes the world is here to furnish him with stories where he’s the hero. He plants a palm on the table and leans over into my slice of air.
“You sure about that drink?” he asks, breath a slur of beer and bravado.
“Positive,” I say without looking up. I reach for a fry I don’t want and lift it to my mouth with calm I don’t feel. The shape of his hand on my table irritates me more than it should.
“Come on,” he says, closer now, bending at the waist like he’s stage-whispering secrets. “We’re just saying hi. My buddy over there says he knows your ex. Figured we could all get acquainted.”
I set the fry down. “You’re blocking my view of the television.”
“You’re pretending you don’t like us,” he says, laughing, and it isn’t the laugh of a man who can read a room. “That’s cute.”
What flicks in me is small but sharp. It’s not fear. It’s not even anger. It’s a click. A tired, decisive click that says no.
I keep my voice pleasant. “Hey. Look at me.”
He blinks and does.
I smile, sweet as cinnamon. Then I pick up my steak knife, feel the weight of it settle into my hand, and drive the point into the table between his splayed fingers. The wood gives with a startled, satisfying thunk, and the metal sings. He jerks his hand back on instinct, eyes going wide like I just taught him fire was real.
The room doesn’t go silent. Bars in real life don’t do that. But the noise around us shifts, the way wind changes before a storm. His buddy, the tall one, snorts an “oh, damn” that’s half laugh, half warning.
I leave my hand on the knife handle, not tight, just there, and tilt my head. “I’m a doctor,” I say, as pleasant as can be. “Next time you bother me, this knife goes into something vital.”
His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He looks at the knife, looks at me, looks back at the knife like he can’t reconcile the sparkle of the bar lights on the blade with the woman who didn’t blink putting it there.
His friend recovers first. “Hey, man,” he says, low and conciliatory, fingers catching Belt Buckle’s elbow. “Let’s go outside. We got a shift in the morning.”
Belt Buckle stares another second, trying to decide if he’s the kind of guy who backs down or the kind who doesn’t. Survival instinct wins. “Psycho,” he mutters, but his hand is already off my table, his body already backing away, his ego already crafting a version of this where he was very polite and I overreacted.
As they peel off, Jaden reappears at the end of the booth, clapping slow with a grin stretched ear to ear. “Dr. Pearl, paging Dr. Pearl to the Badass Department.”
I slide the knife out of the wood and lay it neatly beside my plate. There’s an indentation, shallow and clean. The table has seen worse. “I didn’t even nick him. I should get points for restraint.”
“Ten out of ten. No notes.” He glances toward the door where the men reassemble with two more of their friends. “You wanna dip?”
“God, yes.”
We settle the bill. The bartender gives me a little salute with her chin that says she saw and approved. Outside, the night is thicker than it should be, the heat trapped between buildings and buzzing with whatever bars do to oxygen. Streetlights dangle halos over parked trucks. Tires crackle on gravel in the lot behind the building.
Jaden hooks a thumb toward my block. “I’ll walk you. It’s not far.”
“I can make it.”
“I know. I’m still walking you.”
“I’m fine,” I say again, stubborn and stupid, and I hear it as I say it. The tired in my bones is not the kind that wants company. It’s the kind that wants to shut the door and lean on it, forehead against cool wood, and breathe until the ghosts get bored and wander off.
Jaden reads my face like a chart. He nods. “Text me when you’re inside.”
