Page 72 of Sexting the Cowboy
I’m not sure if bypeopleshe means herself. I hope she means herself. I want her to mean herself so badly it makes me restless. “I will do my best.”
She nods once, satisfied in the way only a person who has decided to trust your choices can be. She turns back to her order, and I stand there for another breath just to remember what her voice sounds like when the room isn’t on fire.
The bell inside the bucket has become a tone I can live with. The floor mercifully stays where it’s supposed to. Annie hands me the ice pack without looking, and I put it on my shoulder because I like being obedient for once.
I tip two fingers at the woman who just gave me back my edges. “Twenty-four hours?”
“Minimum,” she says, not smiling, which is how I know she’s not bluffing.
“Minimum,” I echo.
I step out into the fairground light, blink against the gold, and see Ford twenty yards down the lane trying to decide whether to text a crisis or eat a corn dog about it. I catch up to him, walking steady, ice pack cold against the dent in my shoulder, and I carry with me the exact sound of her voice when she saidPeople need you.
So I’ll take the twenty-four hours she asked for and make it a promise instead of a leash. Twenty-four hours is a long time in my world to wait to ride. But I’ll do anything for that woman.
21
ANNIE
The clinic smellslike abandonment when I unlock the front door.
It’s not a dramatic smell. It’s not rot or mildew or something that requires a hazmat suit. It’s the quiet accumulation of days and dust, the stale breath of a place that expects people and didn’t get any. Staleness.
I wish things were stale. They’re anything but stale right now.
I step into the dim lobby, and the air hits my face in a damp sigh. The lights are off, the blinds are half-closed, and the sad ficus by the window has given up on impressing me—two crisp leaves on the floor like little green ears that didn’t want to hear bad news.
I lock the door behind me, check it twice, then stand with my hand still on the deadbolt, listening to the nothing of it all.
Three weeks. That’s how long I’ve been gone—how long Jaden and I have been posted in that medic tent instead of the business I’m trying to build. The cleaning crew didn’t bother coming during the closure. The AC didn’t run. The lobby holds a thinlayer of dust that glitters faintly under the streetlight slats on the blinds.
Or maybe the dust is in my head.
I leave my bag on the front desk, flip on the lights in sequence, and the clinic wakes up awkwardly. I thumb the AC down, and the first cough of cool air smells like library books for some reason.
Brick fell.
The thought haunts me.
The crowd shrieked—an animal noise that always makes me hate them a little. The moment I heard the shriek, I knew. I knew it was him, and I knew it was bad.
I ran out there, but then he disappeared under bodies and movement and the long, sickening roll of a stretcher wheel. So I ran back to my tent to prepare, because I knew his life was in my hands.
My stomach roils when I think about it.
I kept my voice steady in the tent because that’s what my voice was trained to do, because the job does not make room for your heart when someone else’s head is being stubborn. His eyes found me, and I watched the fog recede, inch by inch, and I listened to his stupid flirting because it meant he was in there, and it meant the bell in his head wasn’t so loud he couldn’t hear me. That realization was a lifeline to him and to me.
I kept my hands steady, and I patched him up. He smiled like a man on his best behavior, because it doesn’t come naturally to him. Then he left.
And then I remembered my period is late.
The back half of the clinic is darker. I fish the keys out of my pocket by feel and open the lab door. The room greets me in stainless steel and silence. A counter, small sink, point-of-care analyzer with a dust film you can write your name on, centrifuge with its lid cracked the way I left it (need to replace that), and a sharps container that looks both threatening and comforting. The fluorescent hum in here is different.
Pregnancy, serum. Two controls are still sealed in the side pocket. Three test cartridges left. I take one and set it on the tray. I sit on the stool and swab the crook of my elbow. The tourniquet snap is too loud in the quiet. I select a butterfly needle because I’m vain about my own veins and don’t want a bruise I can’t explain to Jaden.
The rest I do from muscle memory. I could recite the literature on hCG doubling times, thresholds, false positives. If I am pregnant, it’s extremely early, probably too early to tell. That’s not a comfort. Not when I need to know now.
He’s leaving in about a week.
