Page 86 of Sexting the Cowboy
Correction: Iwasa dumbass.
Life is too short. It’s too short to keep pretending I’m noble when I’m just chicken. I am older. That just means I’m experienced.
I’m not dead yet. And I’m not dying tonight.
The horn comes, and I roll. Tuck, chin down, meat not bone. My shirt snags on the tip of the horn, but I slide down the bull’s back like a kid on a hill and miss the worst of his anger by a hair and aprayer and a gymnastics coach I never thanked enough. I hit the dirt the way you want to hit dirt, and then I run.
The pickup man puts himself between me and the animal like he’s still earning his buckle. The bullfighter throws his body and takes up the empty space in the bull’s vision. I’m out under the rail before fear remembers what it wanted to do to me.
Ford is there with his headset and his face like a spreadsheet on fire. “What are you doing?” he yells over the din. “Get back in there! You can still win this! The clock?—”
“I don’t care,” I say, and I mean it so deep it scares me. I’m not saying it to spite him. It’s just the honest truth. “I just don’t care about that anymore, Ford. I’m out.”
“Brick,” he pleads, jogging sideways to keep up with me, because I’m not walking to the locker room. I’m moving toward my trailer like a man who decided he’s done pretending to be other people’s idea of brave. “You can’t—this is—people will say?—”
“Let them. They were going to anyway.”
“What am I supposed to tell the committee? The sponsors? The?—”
“Tell them I remembered who I was,” I say, and for once in our long friendship, he has no dart to throw and no joke to sand the edge. He stops in the middle of the lane and watches me go.
I head for my trailer. My shoulder protests with every step, which is fine; it should. Pain is the bill you pay when you ignore what a woman with a stethoscope tells you. The bell in my head is quiet now. I’m not healed.
But this isn’t about that.
I’m going to find her. I’m going to tell her the truth before my courage gets petty. I’m going to make it right before the angle of the world stops favoring the brave.
If she tells me to leave, I’ll leave. If she tells me to stay, I’ll stay. If she tells me we need to learn a new map neither of us has read before, I’ll try to figure that out too. Whatever she wants.
But first, I have to talk to my kids.
27
ANNIE
By noon,I feel like a wind-up toy that’s run down to a random tick.
The medic tent is too much. Everything is grating, even the things I usually find soothing—the soft rip of tape, the clean click of a sharps container, Jaden’s habit of narrating our stock counts so he remembers what we need. We’ve been on this fairground long enough that the rhythm should make me numb. Instead, it makes me tired in the marrow.
“Hydration station refilled,” Jaden announces, setting a fresh jug on the corner table and writing a cheerfulWATER IS FREEin block letters on a new sheet of cardstock because the old one looked “sad.” “And I negotiated two extra bags of ice from the lemonade stand with charm and slander.”
“Whose reputation did you destroy on my behalf?” I ask without looking up.
“Mine. I told the guy I’d become a regular customer for life if he helped me keep people alive today. He said that seemed like a conflict of interest. I said, welcome to healthcare.”
I snort. The sound comes out brittle around the edges. We’ve been busy all day—people in, people out, a parade of small emergencies and a few honest ones, heat-sick toddlers, cowboys pretending a gash is a scratch, anxious moms, bored dads. It’s as if everyone thought that since the festival is ending, they should get checked out for free, just in case.
“No, Mrs. Douglas, what we do is included in the price of your ticket,” I tell them on repeat.
The sweet old lady huffs frustratedly, then says, “Well, you deserve something for all your hard work.”
“It was just a splinter?—”
“Here you go, dear.” She tries to press a twenty into my palm. “For your troubles.”
“I can’t take that.”
“Sure, you can.” She glances at Jaden. “I’m sure your boss won’t mind.”
