Shelby
Cody was sitting at the kitchen table when I came back downstairs. He was finishing off one of his famous bologna, cheese, dill pickle, mustard, and potato chip sandwiches, and drinking a tall glass of iced tea.
“He okay?” he asked as I stuffed the bloody bandages into the trash can and went to the sink to wash my hands.
“I think he will be if we can keep him off the back of a damn bull,” I said, shaking my head. “I swear, I will never see the attraction in bull riding. It’s just insanely dangerous. I hope this convinces him to give it up for good.”
“It’s what he does, Shelby,” Cody said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It’s who he is. I guarantee you that soon as he’s healed, he’ll be out there in the corral looking for something to ride.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” I said. I opened the fridge and took down a glass from the cupboard. I dropped in a few ice cubes, then filled the glass with sweet tea and moved to sit down across the table from Cody.
“If you have anything to say about it?” Cody probed his back teeth with his tongue and gave me a hard look. “Since when do you have any say in what Luke does or does not do? You haven’t seen him in six years.”
I took a sip of tea and shrugged my eyebrows. “I don’t have a say, necessarily. But he almost died and I intend to remind him of that until he gets it through his thick head that riding bulls is gonna be the death of him.” I glanced out the open kitchen door. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy’s already gone back to work,” Cody said, leaning into the table and cocking his head at me. He stared at me for a moment, like he was trying to see through me.
“What?” I asked.
“What did you do, Shelby?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
He lifted his chin to look me in the eye. “What happened last night?”
I tried to feign ignorance, but it was no use. Cody had always been able to work the truth out of me.
I said, “We were in a motel, all right. Is that okay with you? We are consenting adults, you know. What we do is none of your business.”
Cody spread out his big hands like he was releasing a pair of doves into the air. “I don’t give a good goddamn that you two are fucking again, Shelby,” he growled. “What I care about is the fact that Luke hasn’t been home ten minutes and you’re already back trying to control his life.”
“That’s bullshit,” I snapped, giving him a hard frown. “I’m just trying to keep him safe.”
“No, Shelby, you’re not. You’re doing exactly what you did six years ago, and if you’re not careful, things are gonna end up the same way and you won’t see him for another six years. Maybe more this time.”
I blinked at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You wanted to go to A&M and Luke wanted to ride the rodeo circuit,” Cody said, leaning back and folding his arms over his chest. “You pestered the living hell out of him. You wanted him to move to College Station and enroll in classes and play house with you.”
“I did not.” Yes, I did, but I didn’t want to admit it to him.
“You harped on the boy until he was almost ready to do it, too,” Cody said, head bobbing. “He came to me and said he was gonna give it a try just to make you happy. Fuck, Shelby, the boy barely graduated high school and you wanted him to apply to A&M? He wasn’t gonna get into A&M. And if he had, he would have been miserable because he put his dreams on hold for you.”
“He could have gone to the community college there,” I said. “Or the tech school. He could have made something of himself and be earning a good living now.”
“Doing what? Working as a mechanic at the Ford dealership? Or crawling under houses running fucking sewer pipes? Do you seriously think that would have made him happy?”
“I would have made him happy,” I said, though it didn’t come out as convincing as I’d hoped. “Besides, if he had come away with me he wouldn’t be upstairs right now with a big gash in his side.”
“No, he’d probably be somewhere working his ass off at some shit job he hated just to pay you child support.”
“You’re such an asshole,” I said, gritting my teeth, trying not to cry.
“And you’re such a selfish little girl.”
“Fuck you, Cody.”
“Fuck you, Shelby.”
I clenched my jaws and looked away from him. I wiped my eyes with the tips of my fingers and shook my head. “I can’t believe you’re acting like this. Such an asshole.”
Cody huffed a heavy sigh and flattened his palms on the table like he was bracing himself against a stiff wind. He said, “I’m gonna tell you something, Shelby, and I know you’re gonna be pissed, but you need to know the truth.”
“What truth?” I asked, dreading his answer, though I didn’t know why.
“He was gonna go with you,” Cody said quietly. “He came to me and said he was gonna forget about riding bulls so he could go to College Station with you.”
I blinked at him through the tears. “He was?”
“Yes, he was.”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t know why, but my hands were starting to shake. I wrapped my fingers around the tea glass to keep them still. “What did you tell him?”
Cody looked me in the eye. “I told him he was a goddamn fool if he was gonna put his dreams on hold to help you chase yours.”
My jaw fell open. “You what?”
“I told him that if he went with you to College Station, he would be miserable. And he would have made you miserable. I told him the best thing he could do was to pack up his shit and hit the circuit and let you go to college.”
“What… how dare you…”
“I knew y’all loved each other, but your dreams were set too far apart. You were chasing different stars, Shelby, in different parts of the sky. And it wasn’t fair for you to expect him to put his dreams on hold just because you didn’t want to be alone.”
“Oh my god…” I said, putting my hands to my cheeks. “What gave you the right? How dare you interfere in my life?”
“I told you that you were gonna be pissed,” Cody said with a shrug. He popped the last bite of sandwich into his mouth and chewed for a moment, then drained the tea glass to wash it down. He got up from the table to set his dishes in the sink.
“Don’t you leave,” I said, seething at him. My face must have been red as a beet because I could feel the blood pumping through my brain. “I’m not done talking to you yet.”
“Well, I’m done talking to you,” Cody said. He dug two fingers into the pocket of his shirt and brought out a slip of paper and handed it to me.
“What is this?” I asked, opening the paper which had a name and phone number on it.
“That guy called yesterday,” Cody said. “About a job you applied for before you came home.”
“Oh my god,” I muttered, recognizing the name as the corporate recruiter from Monsanto I’d met with a few months before. Monsanto was the largest producer of seeds in the country. Working in their research lab was my dream job. The job was in Houston, three hours away.
“Don’t do it again, Shelby,” Cody said as he plucked his dusty hat off the rack by the back door and set it on his head. “Don’t try to make him choose your dream over his. This time, you might not get him back.”