Chapter Twenty-Five
Trethan
It was a pretty good crowd at the Roasted Bison that night. Not too rowdy, but still a fun group. It was nice to be there on a good night, when I hadn’t been there in a while. I glanced over at Brent. And, it was a good night for one last guys’ night. At least for now.
“Come on, don’t give me that look,” he said, making a face at me. He flagged down the bartender. “Another shot for my friend here.”
Mandy raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Mandy, do I look drunk yet?” I asked, spreading my arms to either side. “I haven’t flirted with a single lady tonight. And, there are some fine-looking ones in here, I’ll have you know.”
She snorted. “Sure, I guess that’s true,” she said, pouring another shot of whiskey. “We’ll know you’re really drunk when you walk over to that table in the corner and convince them to let you join their bachelorette party as the on-call stripper or whatever.”
I chuckled and knocked back the shot. “Sorry,” I told Brent. “It’s just hard to think of this as anything other than your send-off. And, we’ve had some good times here.”
“I’m glad we’re doing one last night out,” he said. “I wasn’t sure about it at first, but, man, I’m actually going to miss this place.” He paused. “Kind of different now, though. What with me sticking to beers and you sticking to one woman. How are things going with you and Vanessa, anyway?”
“Probably better than you with just beers,” I quipped. Then, I immediately felt bad. “Shit, was that too soon? I probably shouldn’t joke about that.”
“Relax, man, it’s cool,” he said. He shrugged. “Like I said when I was still in rehab, things are difficult, and I know they are always going to be, in some ways. But I’m working through things.”
I was silent for a long moment, still feeling awkward. But finally, I managed to forge ahead. “Things with Vanessa are going really great,” I told him. I frowned. “With the exception of the fact that John still doesn’t know that we’re together again.”
Brent winced. “Bet neither of you is really looking forward to that conversation,” he said.
“No, and that’s why we keep putting it off,” I admitted. “I mean, it’s not like Vanessa and I have really talked about what we’re doing, either. We haven’t put a label on things.” I shrugged. “But I don’t think we’re just fucking. We’re at least good friends who are fucking. I think.”
I didn’t want to get into things any deeper than that, even though I was starting to realize that I might still have feelings for Vanessa — feelings that I’d long ago tried to bury.
Brent laughed. “Good friends who are fucking,” he repeated. “Well, as long as you’re both happy, who cares?”
“Yeah, that’s what I figure,” I said. I sighed. “I just wish I could come up with some way to help her get the money that she needs for her gallery. Otherwise, she said that she’s thinking of leaving White Bluff at the end of the summer to take a job with an established gallery. I can’t blame her because I can only imagine what it must be like to be sitting there twiddling her thumbs, college degree in pocket, and just hanging around her dad’s ranch. I remember all the dreams she had when we were teenagers.”
“But you don’t want to lose her again,” he surmised.
“I don’t want to lose her again,” I agreed.
“You could always go with her, you know?” Brent mused. “If she left at the end of the summer, you could leave here, as well. Might do you some good to get out of town for a bit.”
“But there’s the ranch,” I said. “I owe it to John to stick around. And what’s more, I kind of owe it to myself. I like working at the Lazy J. It’s the first place that’s ever felt like home for me. John’s been like the father I never had, and when I’m working there, it just feels like I’m doing the work that I was made for. Like there’s no more perfect place for me in the whole world.”
“Fair enough,” Brent said. “But is it worth staying around the Lazy J if it means you lose Vanessa in the process?”
“You’re talking like she and I are already getting married or something,” I said, more because I didn’t know what to say in response to that question than out of any other feelings.
Brent, always a good friend, held up both hands. “Hey, I’m not trying to stick my nose into your relationship,” he said. “It was just a thought.”
Before I could say anything in answer, someone tapped me hard on the shoulder. “Hey,” a guy said gruffly behind me.
I turned around slowly, wondering if the guy, whoever it was, was looking for a fight. Must be, I thought, as I saw that it was Mike standing there. I sneered at him. “Need me to punch you out again?” I asked him.
“Trethan, what the hell?” Brent asked under his breath, grabbing my arm as I hopped off my stool.
I shook him off. “I beat this fucker on the mechanical bull a few weeks ago,” I told Brent. “We bet a hundred bucks on the outcome of it, but you know what? When the time came to pay up, the dude just ran away.”
“I’m here now though, aren’t I?” Mike snarled. “Come on, double or nothing. Let’s go.”
I laughed in his face. “Double or nothing?” I asked incredulously. “You could barely handle me last time, and we didn’t even start out on the most difficult speed. Maybe you should get one of the tourists to take you up on that bet, only after you’ve paid me what you owe me.”
“I said, double or nothing!” he said, starting to look agitated.
The crowd had gone silent, watching the two of us, and I played into it a little. “I’m not the only one who remembers this, am I?” I called out. “This good-for-nothing thinks he can just come in here and start throwing around his words, as though deals don’t mean anything to him! But that’s not the kind of town we have here in White Bluff, is it?”
There was a chorus of “no” around the place.
Mike swore angrily and reached into his jacket, coming out with an envelope. “There it is,” he said thrusting it at me. “Two hundred, all in good, crisp bills. I want a rematch, double or nothing.”
“How do I know you’re actually going to pay this time, though?” I asked. “It’s all well and good for you to come in here with an envelope full of cash, but unless I can trust you to actually fork over that cash when you lose, there’s no point in my getting up there on that bull.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave,” Mike said, enunciating the words carefully so that there could be no mistaking them. “If you win, I’ll give you the two hundred, and that’ll be the end of it. But if I win, then you’ll owe me two hundred.”
“That’s not how double or nothing works,” I said. “Not the brightest crayon in the box, huh?”
He scowled at me. “Call it whatever the fuck you want, then. Two hundred to the winner.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “And make no mistake — I’ve been practicing. I’m better than you might think.”
I snorted, but I was only half listening to his final words. Instead, I was trying to calculate how much I had in my bank account. I wouldn’t get the month’s pay for another couple days. And, it had been a bit of an expensive month for me, between taking Vanessa out to dinner a couple times and paying for fuel as we drove around, as well as all the basics like buying things for the house and a new pair of boots to wear around the ranch. I was pretty sure I didn’t have two hundred dollars in my account, much less two hundred dollars I could afford to lose on a bet.
But at the same time, I didn’t think I was going to lose.
Something inside me insisted it would be stupid to go along with the bet, especially since I had no idea how much practice Mike had been putting into his riding. For all I knew, he could be preparing to blow me out of the water.
But I didn’t think so. If he’d really been putting in as much training as he said he’d been, surely he wouldn’t have come back here just to bother me. It wasn’t as though he had any hope of regaining his pride, not in White Bluff.
“Let’s go,” I finally said, reaching out and shaking Mike’s hand, decision made.
“Trethan, really?” Brent hissed at me as Mike stalked over toward the bull and pulled himself heavily up onto its back.
I shook my head. “You didn’t see him last time,” I said. “It was abysmal.”
But even as the words left my mouth, I grimaced, noting that Mike was handling the bull a lot better this time. He must have been serious about practicing. It appeared to have paid off. I grimaced.
“You’ve got this,” Brent said confidently.
“Of course, I do,” I said flippantly, even though I wasn’t so sure.
Mike was far from graceful on the bull, but he held on for longer than I expected. The bull finally tossed him off, but not before he put up an impressive time. He strutted around the mat, proud as a peacock. A few people even cheered for him.
I wasted no time in approaching the bull, though, knowing that the sooner I got started, the less chance my nerves would overcome me.
I got on the bull and nodded over at Mickey, gritting my teeth as the thing sprang to life. For the first couple seconds, I thought I was definitely going to get thrown, embarrassingly quickly. The memory of Mike’s ride flashed in the back of my head. I tried to ignore it. I focused on how much was on the line with this ride and the fact that I didn’t have enough in my bank account to cover our bet.
The bull made a wild buck, and I barely clung to the thing, digging in with my fingers, my knees, my toes. It was barely enough to keep me seated there. And I could hear the collective gasp that went through the crowd. They knew as well as I did that I was close to falling.
But then, I suddenly thought of something else. That two hundred wasn’t a ton of money, but I’d told Vanessa I would help her any way that I could.
I had to stop thinking. I had to focus. I narrowed my eyes and found the rhythm, easily surpassing Mike’s time before I was thrown. I rolled through the fall and then popped back up, waving my hands to acknowledge the crowd’s cheers.
Mike looked apoplectic when I shot him a grin, but when I hopped out of the ring, he thrust out a hand, shaking mine with a firm grip before shoving his cash at me. “You got lucky this time,” he spat. But that was the only thing he said before stalking out of the Roasted Bison.
“So, drinks on you for the rest of the night?” Brent asked, a smirk on his face as he clapped me on the back.
I shook off my bad feelings about Mike and forced myself to laugh. “I’m not so sure about that,” I told Brent, the gears clicking in my head as I looked down at the envelope in my hand.
“Come on, man, share the wealth!”
“I plan to,” I said slowly. I looked over at him. “Do you think I could earn enough money doing things like that, betting on riding the bull against people, that I could help Vanessa fund her gallery?”
His eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
“I mean, people do it with pool, don’t they?” I asked.
“Well, yeah,” he said. He frowned. “But they don’t do things like that in White Bluff, Montana, do they? Maybe if you moved to a big city, you could give them a run for their money. But no one in here is going to go up against you, not after the performance that you just put on.”
I sighed and shook my head. “You’re probably right,” I said, taking one last glance back at the bull. “So, I guess drinks are on me tonight.”
I couldn’t quite quell the surge of bitterness inside me as I said the words. I wanted so badly to be able to help Vanessa, but at the same time, I knew that Brent was right. Unless I planned to move away from White Bluff, there was no way I’d be able to drum up enough bets to help her raise the thousands of dollars that she needed. And offering anything short of that would just feel like I was belittling her efforts, not understanding the full scope of the project.
I shook my head again and went to order another round of drinks.