As a man sings about how all he needs in life are his whiskey, his chili, and his woman (most likely listed in order of importance); I wish I still wore a watch. Taking my phone out to check the time would be too obvious, but I bet I could check a watch without any of them noticing.
Stupid technology.
“So, how’s work going?” Sherry shouts at me over the insufferably loud country music. Her narrowed brown eyes say, You said you would try to have fun. So try!
Sherry’s friends, who look just like Sherry (long, shiny hair; perfect skin; thin enough that I keep having to resist shoving sandwiches in their general direction), whip out their phones as soon as Sherry mentions “work”. Clearly, they don’t care about offending Sherry with their lack of attention.
I do, though. Sherry and I have been best friends ever since we worked at the library together, before I quit to freelance full-time, and she quit to get married and start popping out babies.
Even with an army of children, Sherry still manages to have a more active social life than I do. She dragged me out with her gaggle of other young, beauty-pageant-ready mothers and insisted I stay until at least ten.
“Work’s been good,” I answer Sherry.
A blonde member of the gaggle—I think her name is Lou-Ann or Mary-Lou or something of that ilk—lifts her eyes from her phone to look at me. “I still don’t get what exactly it is you do, Annabelle. You write … but you don’t write books, right?”
Her voice has that Western twang that some Cheyenne residents have. “No,” I answer. “I write for a bunch of different individual clients.”
“How do you find ‘em?” Lou asks (I know there’s a “Lou” in there somewhere, so that’s what I’m calling her for now).
“Online, mostly, and sometimes referrals from other clients I’ve worked with.”
“Like on the computer?” Lou wrinkles her nose. “But what do you write?”
“Blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts—whatever the client needs.” Lou looks at me like I’ve started speaking a different language. But she’s being nice, so I go on. “Actually, right now I’m working on—”
“Guys!” another one of Sherry’s friends interrupts. This one’s a brunette with big blue eyes. Maddy. I’m 89% sure that’s her name. “Let’s do shots!” She says this as though it is the most original and intriguing idea anyone has ever had.
That is also exactly how her suggestion is received by the other women sitting in our circular booth. They whoop and holler, and before I know, it a shot of something blue is sitting in front of me.
Generally, I don’t do shots. I enjoy decent beer and whiskey but have never seen the point of forcing liquor down my throat.
I realize when I squint that I can see the time in the corner of the sports game playing on the television behind the bar (I’m sure Sherry would know what kind of sport it is). It’s a few minutes after nine.
Accepting that I’m stuck here for another hour, I drink the blue stuff back. It tastes how a moist towelette would taste if it decided to procreate with a bag of Skittles. I take a large gulp of my beer to drown out the sickening sweetness.
A middle-aged man in a red flannel shirt and a black cowboy hat steps up to a microphone near the bar. Please don’t let it be karaoke night, I pray. It’s bad enough hearing the booze-soaked country songs through the radio—I don’t think I could survive the amateur version.
“I just wanted to let y’all know that we’re startin’ Bessie up for the night,” the man in the flannel says. “Come on over and try your luck!”
“Bessie!” Maddy shouts. I’m not sure she knows how to operate at a lower decibel. “Oh my God, you guys, we have to ride her!”
“Who the hell’s Bessie?” I ask.
“The mechanical bull!” Lou says. I vaguely noticed the bull when we came inside, but it kind of blended into all the animal heads, antique guns, and other honkytonk bullshit that fills this bar. “And since this is your first time at here at Cowboy South, Annabelle, that means you’ve got to go first!”
I can feel the blood drain from my face. “I, uh … no. No, thanks. One of you guys should go.”
“Why not?” Maddy asks. “Are you scared?”
I grit my teeth. “Of course not.”
“Not drunk enough?” another member of the gaggle asks. “Because we can fix that!”
She shoves another one of the blue shots in my direction. I look at all of their expectant faces. From the seat next to me, Sherry lets me know with her eyes that she won’t hate me if I refuse the challenge.
I drink down the second shot and stand. I’m stuck here for another forty minutes—what else am I going to do? Explain to Lou how Twitter works? The girls applaud as I walk away from the booth.
I approach the man in the flannel, who’s now standing in front of a black box with buttons on top—that’s probably what controls the bull. And in the center of a big, red padded circle is my nemesis: Bessie.
The man smiles wide at me. “You going first, little lady?”
I roll my eyes. Nothing about me has been “little” since I hit puberty. I give him a silent nod and do my best to negotiate climbing on the bull around the fact that I’m wearing a dress and not pants. I eventually succeed and give another nod to the mechanical bull operator.
He turns on his microphone. “All right, all right! We’ve got our first rider. I forgot to ask you your name, darlin’.” He gives another wide grin. “So how about we just call you Marilyn?”
I’ve already rolled my eyes once at the man—I shouldn’t risk doing it a second time. He’s the one who’ll be controlling the bull, after all.
Besides, he’s not the first one to make the Marilyn Monroe comparison. It’s a fate that befalls all curvy blondes, although people usually add “crossed with a sexy librarian” for me, thanks to the glasses.
Suddenly a spotlight’s shining in my eyes, and I can hear the operator calling, “Get ready, get set, go!”
Before I have a split second to get my bearings, my ass goes flying off of Bessie, my face pressed into the red cushion on the floor. I curse myself for not removing my glasses beforehand and pray they’re not broken. After a few seconds of blindly searching, I finally retrieve them. I quickly pull my skirt over my legs (something I probably should have done sooner) and get up, not at all gracefully.
“Aw, better luck next time, little lady,” the operator says.
I give him that second eye-roll I wanted to give him earlier and head back toward my booth. Sherry looks at me with concern, “Are you all right, Belle?”
“Yeah, that looked bad,” Lou says.
I nod, blushing slightly. “Nothing’s broken. But I’m pretty sure I was right—Bessie and I are definitely not a soulmate match.”
“But you’ve barely gotten to know her,” a man’s voice says behind me. “Won’t you give her another chance?”
I turn and have to work at not gasping. Like the mechanical bull operator, he’s wearing a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat. That’s kind of the uniform in a place like this. But this man’s flannel doesn’t cover a bulging belly—he looks like he’s in terrific shape. His skin is honey-brown from the sun and he has what looks like light brown hair under his hat. What makes his face are his eyes—they’re bright blue with little yellow stars around his pupils.
He’s the sort of guy who always comes by to hit on Sherry or one of her other friends when Sherry manages to drag me out of the house. Sherry always immediately tells these gentlemen callers that she’s married—the others usually flirt a little first, especially if the man in question is as handsome as this one. But he’s not looking at Sherry or any of the other women sitting at the table—he’s looking at me.
“Bessie’s the one who pushed me away,” I reply. “And I’m pretty sure she would do the exact same thing if I tried again.”
“Relationships take work,” he says with a slightly crooked smile that makes him look even cuter. “You’ve just gotta learn how to give Bessie what she needs. I could give you a few pointers if you want.”
I notice that his accent isn’t Western. It’s a down-home Southern accent, like buttermilk.
I look over my shoulder at the others. They’re all smiling encouragingly. Lou flashes me a thumbs-up. I really need to learn to be nicer to Sherry’s friends. They’re good people, at the end of the day.
“Yeah, all right,” I reply.
He leads me to a two-person table at the other side of the bar. We sit down and he extends his hand across the table. “I just realized I never introduced myself. I’m Jesse Adams.”
I shake his hand and am surprised by its roughness. “Annabelle Stevens. Now tell me everything you know about mechanical bulls.”
He laughs and proceeds to do just that. I thought he was just feeding me a line before, but he actually seems to know a lot about how not to get thrown off a mechanical bull. After about ten minutes I stop him. “Okay, okay. So, my feet are more important than the hand holding onto the bull?”
He nodded. “You should hold the handle with your dominant hand, and hold it tight, but no, that’s not gonna keep you on the bull. You’ve gotta dig your feet into the sides of the bull, and hug him with your legs.”
I want to hug you with my legs, I think, then blush. Luckily, I don’t think he can tell in the bar’s soft lighting. “And while I’m holding the handle with one hand, I hold the other one up in the air for balance?”
“You catch on fast, Annabelle.”
“You know, I always thought people put one hand up on mechanical bulls to look cool—I didn’t think it actually served a purpose.”
“Staying on that bull is an art,” Jesse says. “And I think you are ready to become an artist.” Without another word he stands, grabs my hand, and leads me back into Bessie’s clutches. “My friend, Annabelle, here would like to give Bessie a second try,” he tells the operator.
The operator raises his eyebrows. “You sure, darlin’?” he asks.
I’m not, but I get back on the bull anyway. It’s not like this would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done because of a cute guy.
Hell, it’s not even the third stupidest.
The bull starts up and somehow Jesse’s advice reaches up through my nervousness. I shift my weight subtly back and forth and squeeze my feet into Bessie’s sides. I feel like an idiot with my left hand up in the air, but it really does help me keep my balance.
When I feel myself beginning to lose balance, I jump off the bull like Jesse told me to do. I land on my feet on the red mat and turn to smile at Jesse. He puts his hands up to his mouth and whistles. I can hear loud applause coming from Sherry & Co.’s booth as well.
“Two seconds to two minutes,” the operator said. “That’s got to be some kind of record. Well done, Marilyn!”
Jesse raises his hand to give me a high five after we return to our table. There wasn’t even a question of whether I would keep sitting with him, despite the fact that he’s already dispensed all that sweet mechanical bull knowledge he promised.
“So, you really seemed to know what you were talking about with that mechanical bull,” I say. “Do you ride horses?”
“Yes, ma’am. I think it’s riding bulls, though, that makes me so good with the mechanical ones.”
My brow furrows. “You’re … a bull-rider?”
There’s that crooked smile again. “What, don’t I look like one?” He tips his cowboy hat at me.
“This is a honkytonk bar,” I huff. “I’m a part of the 5% of this place not wearing a cowboy hat.”
“This ain’t really your scene, huh?” he asks.
I look down, unsure of how to answer. No, of course honkytonk bars are not my scene. In fact, I avoid them like the plague. But if I say that, he might stop smiling at me like that.
“It’s my first time at this particular one,” I say, searching the cluttered wall for something to talk about.
“Annabelle?” Jesse asks after a moment.
“Hang on,” I say, still staring at the wall. “I’m pretty sure that deer over there thinks I stole its soul.”
His gaze follows mine, then he chuckles and shakes his head. “Well,” he says.
A stuffed deer head on the wall thinks you stole its soul? THAT IS NOT A SEXY THING TO TALK TO THE SEXY COWBOY ABOUT, my mind screams at me.
“So, you’re here for the rodeo?” I ask.
“The Daddy of ‘em All,” he replied with a wistful expression. “Yep. It’s taken a long time, but I’ve finally made it to the CFD.”
I smile a little. I’ve always had all of zero interest in the Cheyenne Frontier Days. The main meaning it’s ever had for me is a week and a half in July when it’s noisy 24/7 and all the roads are blocked. I usually try to schedule a lot of work for myself around the rodeo so I have an excuse to stay hunkered down at my apartment. But it’s obviously important to Jesse, and I think that’s kind of sweet. “What events do you do?”
His face lights up. “Bronc riding—bareback and saddled—and bull riding.”
“Wow, so you’re the real deal. No fancy rope tricks for you.”
“Oh, I’ve done plenty of fancy rope tricks in my time.”
“How long have you been doing this?”
“Rodeo life? Since I was a kid. I couldn’t afford tickets to the rodeo back then, but I’d ride my horse Peanut as close as I could get. Eventually they offered me a job cleaning up after the animals, and I worked my way up from there. I started touring with the PRCA as soon as I graduated high school.”
“Where are you from?” I’ve never felt so thirsty to know more about a person.
“Slocomb, Alabama,” he replied. “It’s just a little farm town. Not a nice city like this.”
Even though I know Cheyenne is technically a city, it’s never felt that way to me. It’s still small enough that I know most everyone, or at least recognize their faces. There are too many people for it to be peaceful, but too few for anyone to be able to fade into the crowd.
“Where are you from?” he asks me.
“Here,” I reply. “Born and raised.”
“You grew up in Cheyenne, and yet that was your first time on a mechanical bull?”
I grin. “I’ve never even been on a horse.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Then what do you like?”
“Writing,” I answer instantly.
“What kind of writing?”
“Any kind,” I reply. “I mean, I guess I like writing stories best—that’s what I grew up doing. But mostly I just like getting better and better at using words, you know?”
“Not really.” His blue eyes shine at me. “But I like that you like it.”
“Well, I like that you like riding bulls.”
We smile at each other in silence for a few moments.
“Uh, Annabelle?” Sherry’s come to check up on me. She looks between Jesse and me. “We’re all heading home soon. Did you…?”
Sherry drove me here in her minivan.
“I could take you home, if you’d like,” Jesse says.
Sherry looks at me, asking if this is okay with her eyes.
“Thanks, Jesse,” I tell him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Sherry.”
Sherry looks between me and Jesse again. “Okay… Call me so I know you got home all right!”
She disappears through the door with the other Beauty Queen Mothers. “So,” Jesse says after they’ve gone. “You’ve never ridden a horse, huh?”
“Never,” I reply.
“Well,” he replies. There’s my friend Mr. Crooked Smile again. “Would you like to change that?”
“I … uh, what do you mean?”
He just keeps smiling at me. “How about we get outta here?”
I barely know this guy. Leaving a honkytonk bar with a handsome stranger is about as in character for me as … well, being in a honkytonk bar in the first place. But I’m not ready to say goodbye to Jesse. Not yet. I check to make sure my phone has plenty of battery left (10:37—take that, Sherry!) and nod. “Yeah, all right.”