Luke
I’d traveled this stretch of I-9 so many times I could do it with my eyes closed.
When you ride the rodeo circuit, you spend about eight seconds a week on the back of a bull if you’re lucky, and the rest of the time getting to the next ride.
I usually came out in the top two or three at most events, which meant a trophy I didn’t give a shit about and a few hundred dollars in prize money.
Take the top spot and they tossed in a silver belt buckle with a cowboy riding a bull or a bronco on it. I had a fucking glove box full of the damn things. Try paying your rent with a silver belt buckle.
The only one I gave two shits about was the one I was wearing when I was gored. I had earned it two years ago from the National Rodeo Association for being the top bull rider on the Texas circuit.
It wasn’t worth much monetarily, but it had sentimental value to me. I took great pride in being the top bull rider that year; and not because it got me laid a lot by the cowgirls who kept up with such things.
It was proof that I hadn’t wasted my time. And even though I barely earned enough to keep gas in the tank and food in my belly, I wouldn’t trade my time on the circuit for anything.
When I started riding professionally six years ago, I had dreams of becoming the next Ty Murray, really the only guy ever to make a decent living as a rodeo rider. I quickly learned that I was no Ty Murray, but it was too late to turn back by then. I was addicted. I had bull riding shooting through my veins like a drug addict had heroin. I lived for those eight seconds of hanging on for dear life.
Now, with this gash in my side, I wondered if I’d ever climb back on a bull again. Over the years, I had suffered more concussions that most NFL players and had broken more bones than Evel Knievel. But I’d never given a moment’s thought to quitting. At least not before now. My brain was telling me it was time to hang up my spurs, but my heart was screaming bullshit. I reckoned all I could do was just wait and see which part of me won out.
“This looks like a great place to get food poisoning,” Shelby said as she pulled into the lot, gravel crunching under the big tires. Mel’s One Stop was a combination convenience store, greasy spoon diner, and ten-room motel.
The place looked like it had been there since Davy Crockett’s time, but I knew from experience that Mel’s had the best greasy hamburger in this part of Texas. I used to bang a waitress who worked there, a skinny gal with little tits and a tight box named Janine something or other. She’d give me free food and I’d give it to her hard and fast in the men’s room. We both considered it a fair trade.
“It’s a great place to get lots of things,” I said as she parked us among the few pickups already in the gravel lot. I unbuckled the seat belt and held onto the door to slide out of the truck. I held on to the door for a moment till I got my sea legs.
I was a little wobbly at first, but I felt better than I had felt in a long time. Just getting out of that hospital seemed to do me a world of good. By the time Shelby came around the truck to see if I needed help, I had slammed the door and was managing to walk pretty well on my own.
“Hang on and let me help you,” she said, clutching my arm. The moment her fingers touched my skin I felt little sparks shoot through my body like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket. I started to pull away and tell her I could do it myself, but I liked the way her hands felt on my arm.
“I’m just a little wobbly,” I said, lying now so she wouldn’t let go of me. I sniffed the air between us. She smelled of shampoo and soap, with just a hint of sweat. I used to spend hours licking the sweat off her naked body, like a kid licking an ice cream cone. The thought made my cock twitch a little. I quickly pushed the thought out of my mind. I wasn’t wearing underwear and the last thing I needed was to walk into a truck stop with my big old pecker sticking out.
She opened the door and led me inside. We were greeted by stale air and the smell of grease. There were three cowboys at the counter, being served by an older waitress who told us to sit anywhere. Shelby led me to the farthest booth from the door and helped me get situated. She slid into the booth across from me and picked up the menu, which was just a half sheet of laminated paper with the choices written out in red magic marker.
“Well, apparently, they only serve burgers and fries,” she said, a little condescendingly, like she expected the place to have fucking lobster and caviar on the menu. She held out the menu so I could see it. “What’ll it be? A single, double, or a Mel’s Special?”
“What’s a Mel’s Special?” I asked.
She read from the menu. “Three hamburger patties, three slices of American cheese, one fried egg, three strips of bacon, jalapeno peppers, lettuce, tomato, pickle… and a complimentary call to 911 after your heart seizes up.”
The goofy look on her pretty face made me smile. I said, “I’ll just have a single with fries and a Coke.”
The waitress came over to take our order, then returned a minute later with two Cokes. She gave me a funny look, probably wondering where I had stolen the hospital scrubs from. Clearly, I was not a medical professional.
“So, how have you been?” I asked after taking a long sip of the Coke. It felt good going down my throat, which was still scratchy and sore from the breathing tube they’d shoved down it a week before. I let my eyes drift around her face. She was even prettier now than she was the last time I’d seen her.
“Better than you,” she said, giving me the look. You know, the look: the look a woman gives a man when she’s pissed about something, and then gets even more pissed that the man has no idea what she was pissed about in the first place.
She said, “You look like shit.”
“Well, darlin’, I happen to feel a little like shit at the moment,” I said. I held my side and leaned over the table. “You wanna tell me what you’re so mad about? I mean, Jesus, I haven’t seen you in six years and rather than being glad to see me, you’re acting like you’re ready to bite my head off.”
She folded her arms over her big boobs and glared at me. “You know very well why I’m mad at you.”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am, I very well do not. Last time I saw you, things were fine between us. I haven’t talked to you in six years. What the hell did I do to piss you off?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Maybe that’s why I’m pissed.”
I fell back in the seat and blew out a long sigh. Goddammit, trying to understand a woman was like trying to play piano with your toes: it was possible, but only a few people could do it and I wasn’t one of them.
“Shelby, please, before I die, tell me what that means.”
She huffed at me. She looked like she was ready to jerk me across the table and mop up the floor with me. In my weakened condition, there would not have been much I could have done to stop her.
The waitress brought our burgers over and set them in front of us. After a week of shitty hospital food, I thought the burgers smelled and looked delicious, but Shelby looked at hers like it was a trough of pig slop. I picked up the ketchup and squirted it all over my fries.
“When did you get so fuckin’ snotty?” I asked, picking up three fries and swirling them through the ketchup before shoving them into my mouth.
“I’m not snotty,” she said, picking up a limp fry and turning up her nose at it.
“You are, too, snotty,” I said. “You act like you’re too goddamn good to eat a greasy spoon hamburger.”
“Maybe I am,” she said with a shrug. She had removed the bun from her plate and set it aside. She had a knife and fork in her hands and was cutting up the hamburger patty and the slice of tomato in an equal number of bites. She stabbed a piece of tomato, then a piece of burger, and stuck them between her teeth. She didn’t let her lips touch the fork, like she was afraid of catching anthrax or something. She chewed and stared at me.
I picked up the burger and took a huge bite. My guts were growling like a den of lions. It might have been my imagination, but as soon as the first bite slid down my gullet, the pain in my side started to ease. I sighed as I chewed, thinking I might just live after all.
“Why didn’t you ever call me?” Shelby asked as she picked up her Coke and brought the straw to her lips. I watched her lips close around the straw, then her tongue slid slowly around her lips to clean them off. Goddamn if she still wasn’t the sexiest little gal in the whole state of Texas. I felt my old pecker chubbing up a bit, just knowing she was sitting across the table from me.
“Why didn’t I ever call you?” I asked. “Well, honestly, I figured you were too busy with school and I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Oh bullshit,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Why didn’t you ever call me?” I asked, knocking that ball back into her court. “I mean, they must have had phones at that fancy cow college you went to. If you wanted to talk so goddamn bad you should have picked up the phone.”
Her cheeks flushed and I knew I’d crossed a line. She still had the knife and fork in her hands. She aimed the knife at me like she was gearing up to throw it.
“I would have called you if I’d known how,” she said. “You were always on the road. Nobody knew how to get hold of you, not even Cody. He said you didn’t even had a cell phone.”
“Cellphones cost money,” I said, chomping off another big bite of the burger and chewing through the words. “I did good most weeks to have money for gas and food. I couldn’t pay for a goddamn cellphone.”
“You could have borrowed someone’s phone,” she said, shaking her head. She stabbed another bite of tomato and hamburger and waved them at me. “You should have called me.”
“Okay, Shelby, I should have called you,” I said with a defeated sigh. “I was just always on the road, traveling from one town to the next, trying to make a name for myself. I mean, I asked Cody for your number and he said he’d get it for me, but he never did.”
“Oh, so it’s Cody’s fault that you’re a selfish asshole,” she said, rolling her eyes again. I swear, she was making me dizzy with all that eye rolling.
“No, goddammit, it’s not Cody’s fault,” I said. “And who says I’m a selfish asshole?”
“Just everybody who’s ever known you,” she said, hands in the air, knife and fork waving like she was conducting some kind of greasy spoon orchestra. “You’ve always been a selfish asshole, Luke, ever since we were kids. And the sad thing was, me and Cody let you get by with it because we both loved you like a brother.”
I blinked at her for a moment. I had never thought of myself as selfish. Truth was, I’d never thought about myself as anything other than a good old boy from Texas who appreciated a good cold beer, a good hard ride, and a nice tight piece of pussy. What was selfish about that?
“So, you’re pissed at me because I haven’t called you since we both left home,” I said, nodding in slow comprehension. “Let me ask you something. Let’s say I had called you. Exactly what would you have expected me to say?”
It was her turn to look at me like a dog watching a ceiling fan. “What you do mean?”
“I mean, did you expect me to say that everything was good and I was just checking in? Or that I missed you so much that it hurt? Or that I lay in the back of my truck many nights staring up at the stars and wishing you was lying next to me?” I huffed and spread out my hands. “I mean, seriously, Shelby, what did you want me to say?”
“Well, all of that, I guess,” she said. All the air seemed to go out of her as she set back and put the knife and fork on the table. She had tears in her eyes. Goddammit, I hated it when a woman cried. She gazed into my eyes. “I reckon I wanted to just hear your voice.”
I felt like a shit heel. I reached across the table and held out my hand. She put her hand in mine and my fingers closed around hers. “I never stopped thinking about you, Shelby,” I said. “Not for one second. But the God’s honest truth is, you and me, as much fun as we had, we had different takes on life. You wanted to get an education and build yourself a career that didn’t include ranching and riding and shoveling shit. And I just wanted to ride bulls. I didn’t want to force my dreams on you and I knew you well enough to know that you’d never force your dreams on me. So… well, I just figured if it was meant to be we’d come back around to each other one day.”
She squeezed my hand. “And here we are.”
“And here we are.” I smiled and let my eyes go around her face. “And you ain’t changed a bit.”
“Oh bullshit,” she said, tugging her hand away. She picked up her Coke and sucked on the straw. My eyes watched her lips purse, watched her suck on the straw. It was the first time in my life that I had been jealous of a damn straw.
“I mean it,” I said, picking up my glass to toast her with it. “Shelby Cates is still the prettiest dang girl in the state of Texas. Period.”
“Well, I think you might have sustained one too many concussions,” she said. Her face went serious and she nodded at my side. “Seriously, how bad was it? And don’t give me that ‘I’ve had worse’ bullshit.”
“Well, I don’t really remember getting gored.” I leaned back and gently touched the bandage beneath the scrub shirt. “One minute I was on the back of the sumbitch and the next minute I was tossed in the air like a rag doll. Somebody said I came down on the bull’s horn and he flung me around till he got tired and then tossed me aside. One of the cowboys that visited me in the hospital said there was a YouTube video of it, but I ain’t seen it and have no desire to do so.” I took a sip of Coke and set the glass on the table. “I mean, why would anyone wanna see themselves getting gored by a damned old bull? Not me.”
“How bad was the damage?” she asked, a look of sadness in her pretty eyes.
“Well, it was considerable I guess,” I said. “Punctured my stomach, ruptured my spleen, cracked a few ribs.” I worked up a smile for her. “If you’ve never been gored, I do not recommend it. It can really fuck up your day.”
“So how did you bust your stitches?” she asked, arching her eyebrows and giving me that look she always gave when we were kids and she caught me doing something I should have, like jacking off in the bathroom to her Cosmo magazine when I was fourteen.
“Like the nurse said, I got up by myself to take a leak and passed out on the floor.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” she asked, eyes rolling yet again.
“I do not know,” I said, picking up the last chunk of my burger and stuffing it in my mouth. I smiled and chewed and smacked my lips. “You need to get your eyes checked. They seem to roll around an awful lot.”
“Only when I’m around you,” she said.
She picked up her fork and went back to work on her plate. I couldn’t help but stare and wonder where we would be today if I hadn’t gone off the ride the circuit and she hadn’t gone off to college.
Would we have had a future together?
If so, would we still be together today?
Shelby wasn’t the type to live on a ranch and pop out babies. And I wasn’t the type to stay in one place for too long. No sir, whatever water had gone under the bridge between us was probably water well served. I seriously doubted even Shelby would have put up with my shit for this long.