Hey Peach,
I’m in New Mexico. Weather’s perfect. Remember when we joked about getting lost in the desert? I have Saran wrap with me just in case I need to use condensation to be able to hydrate. You should be proud of me. Could have ridden better but doing good. Be home when I can. Give love to our families.
Cowboy
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THERE HAD BEEN OTHERS, always a beautiful picture and a brief message, in the beginning some little anecdote reminding her of a memory they’d shared. She’d kept each one of them tied with a ribbon under her bed, cherishing each careless pen stroke.
Four years after the first postcard, he came home to bury his dad, lost to a heart attack. At the funeral, she held his hand and cried for both of them, for his parents were truly like her own. After the service, he pulled away from her again, both physically and emotionally, and she knew it meant good-bye again. Another form of Sean-inflicted pain, but she was used to it by then, or at least she tried to convince herself of that. After that day, the post cards tapered off, and in that year, she only received four. Each one a simple "Hope you're well," no signature.
Almost a year to the date from losing his dad, his mom died. She waited for him to show up, and when she heard his truck roar to a stop, she rushed out the door to see him, heart in her throat and a tear-soaked face. She came to a stop ten feet from him, her eyes resting on the long-legged blonde on his arm. She was so preoccupied with the girl on Sean’s arm that she didn’t notice the hulk of tattooed man who got out from the back seat.
"Sean?"
Sean just stood there, looking at her and taking her in from top to bottom, while she raked the sight of him in. Memorizing every single minute change, the haggardness that had not been there before, the tightness of his eyes, the weathered look his skin now had from being in the sun so often.
"Sean?" the blonde asked mockingly. "Ev, who is this girl?"
Ev? What?
The man slammed the back door to the pickup, stepped up to Sean’s side, and said, breaking the awkward and tense silence, “Alright, brother. Let’s get inside and see what’s what.”
Sean visibly shook himself and stepped away from both women, following the huge man up the pathway to the front door of the ranch foreman’s house.
The blonde reached out a perfectly manicured hand as Sean walked away and introduced herself. "Hey, girl! My name is Courtney Kincade, Ev's girlfriend. I just realized who you are! That sweet little neighbor girl who followed him around in high school; uh, Candy or something like that, right?"
Katherine looked up at Sean, but he was long gone. She turned her attention to the other woman, still not taking her hand in introduction. “Why do you call him Ev?”
“Well, goodness, honey, it’s what all of his close friends call him. You must not know this, but his last name is Everett.”
The condescending tone rubbed an already emotionally raw Katherine exactly the wrong way, and she spoke through clenched teeth with barely contained rage in response. “Since I have known Sean Carter Everett since the day I was born and we spent the entirety of his high school career in a very serious relationship, yes, I would say that I do know what his last name is. And my name is Katherine, not Candy.” And with that, Katherine spun on her heel and stomped back down the path that lead to the main house.
In the days leading up to the funeral, Courtney never left his side. Sometimes, Katy would catch him looking at her and their eyes would meet and hold, but as soon as Courtney noticed, she would draw his attention away.
The man who came with them was evidently Courtney’s older brother and Sean’s best friend, and he was funny and flirtatious and made her feel, if not better, then at least distracted from this new nightmarish reality where the man she loved more than her own soul was in love with and in a relationship with some blonde tart wearing designer jeans and boots.
An already devastating occasion became a million times worse when she couldn’t connect with Sean at any point during his stay and he left without saying so much as hello or good-bye to her.
The day after they left, Katherine was walking through the house and heard her parents talking. Planning to pay them no mind, she involuntarily came to a halt when she heard his name.
"I just don't understand Sean, Daniel," her mother was saying. "He never said anything to us, but that Courtney girl told me he was planning on buying her an engagement ring soon, said they’ve already been window shopping. I swear I don't understand how Sean can still look at our baby girl with his heart in his eyes if he's getting married to someone else."
She had meant to silently continue to her room, but when her mom said that, the instinctive and painful gasp that escaped her was impossible to control.
"Oh God,” her mom said as she caught sight of Katherine. “Baby, I am so sorry."
As her mother rose from the couch and walked toward her with pity all over her face, Katherine did the only thing she could think of. She ran and her thoughts raced alongside her.
Married.
Married?
He was marrying her?
I felt sick.
I was going to vomit.
Nothing, not even him walking away, had caused this kind of pain. I couldn’t believe this. A part of me had always believed that he was coming home to me but here it was. He was marrying another woman and I had to accept that he was never going to be mine again, and God nothing, absolutely nothing, had ever brought me to my knees like this before.
The knot in my throat was suffocating me and I was sure that I was going to die this time. He was slowly killing me from the inside out and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I couldn’t even justify my own damn broken heart. I was gutted and had not the first right to feel this way.
What was I even mourning?
We had been apart longer than we were ever together and I had been without him for the entirety of my adult life. There was nothing there to be upset about, regardless of how much my heart wanted to disagree with me. The truth of the matter was that he could have been hers for all of the years he had been gone, he hadn’t made me a single promise, I had assumed that his affection had been a sign that he still had feelings for me but the words were never used. I had assumed everything.
Those fragments of her heart that she was desperately holding together through sheer willpower alone crumbled and fell, leaving devastation in its wake. Realistically, she knew they would never be together again. He had made that all too clear when he left. But even after that and all the years since, she could never stop her broken heart from hoping, from wishing, from waiting. That was done. She had clung to hopes and broken dreams, but the actuality was that the love of her life belonged to another woman. A woman who would be sharing his name soon. And that woman was not her.