Page 48 of Sexting the Cowboy
My heart flutters. I want to tell her. Just thinking about Brick makes me feel like a schoolgirl with a crush. But I can’t. Not until the rodeo is over.
“No, nothing new.”
“It’s the new guy, isn’t it?”
I close my eyes and just breathe. “It’s too new to talk about.”
She gasps, and Jaden breezes back in with the swagger of a man who secured two crates of ice and four bottles of water. “What’s too new?” he asks cheerfully, then does a double take at the wrist. “Wait. Did the camera hurt you again?”
Mac’s eyes go wide for a second, and then she smiles. “Something like that.”
Jaden turns to me, eyebrows arched at maximum tease. “Or is ‘too new’ Annie’s new guy she’s been texting when she thinks I’m not paying attention?”
Mac swings her gaze to me so fast she might sprain a different joint. My mouth opens, and a laugh comes out that sounds a little feral. “My nothing is nothing compared to Mac hooking up last night,” I say, as if pointing the spotlight across the stage will redirect the audience.
“Whoa,” Jaden says, delighted and betrayed. “Everyone’s dating except me.”
“We’re not dating,” Mac protests. “We’re two consenting adults who happen to have compatible…schedules.”
Jaden clutches his chest. “Oh, the romance of it all. My poor, lonely, saintly heart.”
“You’re fine,” I say, tossing him a roll of gauze like a rock at his head. He catches it one-handed. “You flirted with Blaze yesterday for ten minutes and almost fell off your own shoes. You’re doing just fine.”
He catches the gauze without missing a beat. “That was medical appreciation. Completely professional. I was inspecting her hydration status.”
“Uh-huh,” Mac says, grinning. She nudges my shoulder with hers. “Can’t believe you broke doctor-patient confidentiality just to get the heat off yourself.”
“This is a medic tent,” I say, deadpan. “There are no walls. What makes you think confidentiality exists here?”
“Cold,” she says, eyes bright. “But fair.”
Jaden points at the wrap on her wrist. “You going to be okay with that?”
“Yeah. Doc fixed me. Again.”
“You’re welcome,” I say.
She lifts her camera bag with her good arm, tests the weight with a satisfying tug, and then leans across the counter to peck my cheek. “Thanks, Annie.”
“Any time. Go film pretty people doing stupid things. I’ll be here to patch them after.”
Mac rolls her eyes and backs out, still smiling. The tent feels warmer once she leaves, like she took some of the breeze with her. I catch my reflection in the glossy edge of the sharps container and see I’m smiling too. It’s not just her joy. It’s the stupid, bubbling fizz in my chest that won’t settle, no matter how many Ace wraps I line up in perfect little rows.
Jaden doesn’t push. He leans on the counter, tapping the table with two fingers to a rhythm only he knows, and begins one of his glorious monologues like a magician pulling scarves from his sleeve. “Speaking of stupid things, the taco truck out by the north gate? I could write poetry about their carnitas. And—this is the important part—they have an entire gluten-free menu that doesn’t taste like sadness.”
“Miracle,” I say, grateful for how quickly he can tip the tent back onto the rails.
“You think I’m joking,” he says. “But I’m not. Utah is like,congratulations, here’s a salad with croutons and a side of bread. And I’m like, I would simply like to be alive, thanks but no thanks.”
I laugh, the sound easing every knot in my shoulders by a degree. “Go on.”
On he goes. He always does when I need it, providing the perfect background noise that is joyful and harmless and entirely about something that isn’t a man with a hat and a mouth I can’t stop thinking about. Jaden waxes poetic about a churro that, he swears, changed his life.
Between stories, my phone buzzes again. I don’t read it right away. I let Jaden talk about freshly made corn tortillas that were better than sex. I nod in all the right places and make faces whenhe insists I need to branch out beyond my usual roasted chicken and rice bowl.
Buzz.
Finally, I sneak a look when he turns to the cooler to rearrange the ice blocks for the seventy-ninth time.
