Page 45 of Sexting the Cowboy
Experience is more valuable than being too dumb to know better. Tonight, it means shutting my mouth when my son lies to himself. It means catching Blaze’s eye and saying everything without saying a word. It means letting my other boys try to keep the peace too.
It means keeping my own secrets because the truth wouldn’t help anyone breathe.
I turn off the lamp and lie back, one forearm over my eyes, the AC grinding away in the window like a farm truck that refuses to die. Tomorrow, the crowd will want showmanship again, and I’ll give it to them. Tonight I try to sleep on a pillow that smells like a woman I like, and I tell myself the same thing I tell my kids when there’s no answer that fits in a sentence.
We’re here. We’ll see.
13
ANNIE
By midmorning,the fairground is a long bright hum, the kind that gets into your bones and vibrates there like a tuning fork. The sun is already high. The announcer is warming his vowels on sponsor names. Bulls are complaining like kings forced to wait. I can’t tell if they’re impatient to get this over with or impatient to get revenge on the riders by flopping them into the air.
I prop open the medic tent flap to catch the slowest, laziest breeze and try to pretend it’s air-conditioning. It isn’t.
Jaden sets two bottles of water on the counter like he’s presenting a fine wine. “For you, my queen of triage.”
“I’ll knight you later,” I say, twisting a cap and drinking half in one go. The cold aches behind my breastbone in the best way.
He glances at the clipboard, scans the morning schedule, then leans an elbow on the table with his casualtell me somethingstance. “So. On a scale from ‘I slept’ to ‘I made questionable life choices,’ how was your night?”
“Somewhere in the middle.” I pretend to focus on reorganizing the suture kits we already organized twice.
He smiles. “Middle, huh?”
“Mmhm.”
“You know I’ve got a refined ear for lying, right?”
“I know you have a refined ear for gossip.”
“Semantics.” He drags his finger across the condensation on his bottle until it squeaks. “You do look…lighter. Less murderous. More manslaughter-y.”
“Great. A step down the felony ladder.”
He laughs and turns when a volunteer sticks her head in to ask for Band-Aids for a kid who attempted heroics with a Ferris wheel bolt. Jaden handles it. I take another drink of water and let my mind drift where it wants, which is to my phone even though it’s face down on the counter and I promised myself I’d be a functioning adult until lunch.
Buzz.
It’s like Brick knows when I’m thinking about him. I don’t look for two seconds on principle, then give up and flip it over with my thumb.
You look like you hate the sun,he writes.
I glance out through the flap. Brick’s standing fifty feet away at the fence line, hat pushed back, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He isn’t watching me, not directly. He’s talking to a stock hand and laughing at something. But he knows exactly where I am. He has to. The text has me dead to rights.
I type without thinking.I do hate the sun. We’re not friends.
He answers fast.I can fix that. I’ve got shade and a bad sense of humor.
You’re insufferable. I feel my own mouth curve despite myself.
He adds,I’ve also got pink lemonade if that sweetens the pot.
I put the phone face down again because if I don’t, I’ll stand here grinning like an idiot until Jaden stages an intervention. My chest feels lighter. It shouldn’t. But it does.
I’m reaching for a roll of tape when I catch the smallest shift in the corner of my eye—Jaden stepping up to the sink, glancing down at the counter, not meaning to snoop but absolutely reading what’s visible on my unlocked screen before his eyes flick away. I move to cover it, but I’m a second too slow.
He goes very still, then says lightly, “I didn’t see anything.” Which is how he announces he saw something.
