Mucking
"WE NEED TO HAVE a talk."
After breakfasting, showering, and packing up Ryan and Amelia to go back to Santa Barbara, Amelia pulled me aside. Then she pushed me outside the ranch house and started walking with me, leaving Ryan and Will talking in the house.
"I know what you're going to say—" I started, but she interrupted me.
"And that is?"
"That I'm crazy for what I'm doing with Will."
She rolled her eyes. "Girl, I knew you were crazy a long time ago. This new crazy, though, is for what you are not doing with Will."
We walked past the corrals and headed to the path that wended its way to the bluff and the beach. "There's not much that I am not doing with Will," I said, joking.
But she was serious. "Marie. You are my best friend. You saved my life. Multiple times. I feel like I need to do the same for you."
"What are you talking about?"
"You're not opening your heart up to him." I spluttered, thinking that she was sounding like that old Madonna song, but she kept going, giving me The Hand. "You’re the most caring person I know. You teach preschool and you help kids and you want to be a counselor and you give me your time and you care about the environment and baby polar bears and all sorts of causes. But you don't take yourself on as a cause."
"Yes I do," I started, "I totally defend myself."
"You do," she agreed easily, "but you don't let yourself get in deep. When was the last time you were in a real relationship?"
I couldn't remember. I shook my head at her, but she continued.
"You have this big, tall, hunk of a cowboy, who looks at you as if he sees you, only you, and no one else but you on the entire goddamn planet, and as far as I can tell, he respects you, he pays attention to you, he makes sure that you are taken care of, and he buys you candy and fucking dances with you the way you’ve never been danced with. And you're questioning it because it's new and that's normal.
"You're the life of the party, always having fun, always making sure that others have fun. But as a friend, I want you to think about whether you are willing to go deeper than you ever have before. You're the caring party girl that I know and love, but you don't let anyone in. When are you going to do something for yourself? And I don't just mean get laid. Though, the fact that he is phenomenal in bed says something . . ." She gave me a knowing smile. "But I digress. I want you to think about really letting him care for you, not just with sex, but with everything. Sure, he's the silent type, but there's something burning under that Marlboro Man exterior, and based on what you tell me, he shows it with his actions, not with his mouth."
"His mouth is pretty good," I muttered, kicking at the dust in the trail. We were almost to the bluff where you could see the ocean.
"But that's it, see? You're not letting it be beyond sex. You care about everyone else and your heart is huge. But your heart needs to open up for you and see what it's like to let him in. Because it's obvious, to me, at least, that he's wonderful for you. There's no bullshit with him. He just wants you and he shows it."
I didn't have a response to this. I wasn't sure that she was right, but since she normally was, I wanted to listen to her.
Then I whispered, "He quit chewing tobacco for me." We stopped walking. We had reached the bluff and watched the waves crash on the shore.
I continued, "But he's not going to change his politics."
She shook her head and sighed. "You both care so much about the fucking labels and what ideology you’re adopting that you aren't paying enough attention to the stuff that matters. The stuff beyond the label bullshit. Outside last night, looking up at the stars? In the grand scheme of things, we are all the same."
"You borrowed my Deepak Chopra?"
"And I'm not returning it."
I turned to her and gave her a hug and kissed the top of her head. "I'll think about it."
She nodded and we looked at the ocean for a while. And then we hiked back to the compound.
Once we got there, she got in the car to go. Will came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek, which I thought was sweet. Then Ryan gave me a big hug and shook hands with Will and invited us to visit his beach house.
After their car disappeared down the dirt road, Will gave me a quick but very public kiss and then left in his truck, Trixie in the back, to survey his land or wrestle a cow or something. I went back to the bunkhouse, where I'd spent very little time in the past few days.
Stephanie and Janine were both in there, so as usual there was no privacy. Janine asked me how my date went with Will, which meant that now Stephanie knew about it as well.
I'd barely thought about the repercussions of Will and me hooking up on the relationships with the rest of the staff.
I told her, vaguely, that we had a good time and he wanted to date me. It seemed like she wanted to ask more but she didn't. We chatted about their weekends and then I left, needing some time to think. Since I usually fed off of the interactions with others, this was unusual, but I needed to think about what I was doing with Will.
It was just sex, right? We were so sexually compatible. He turned me on and I apparently turned him on. He was hot and seemingly constantly aroused. It was fun to be with him. It was fun to have sex with him. But we'd never be together, together, because we were too different.
And that was it.
Maybe.
Fuck.
What Amelia had said made me think. Having more than just sex with Will? I didn't know about that. I didn't know if I could show him all of me. I mean, while I was the type to organize a party, cheer up a friend, or start a Kickstarter project to get rid of the garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I didn't usually open up to people, especially guys. I think it had to do with how I grew up, moving around all the time, always moving onto the next person. If you got too close to someone, it hurt, because you had to say goodbye and maybe you'd never see them again. So it was safe to be friendly and have fun, but not fall very deep.
I’d dated all kinds of guys, but had been in very few relationships and the ones that I’d been in didn't last long. I never really let them know what I felt, but rather hid it under my party exterior.
Will seemed to dodge my image as a party girl and go right for the me underneath. He just decided that he liked me and that was it. His actions, after yelling at me when I bumped into him naked that first day, were all caring—taking me to Andersen's for vegan split pea soup, cleaning me up before sex, immediately introducing me to his mother when I complained about not having met her.
Why did I complain about not having met his parents if it was just sex?
So it boiled down to the fact that he was so vehemently anti-politically correct, while I, essentially, was politically correct in every possible way. And while this may seem like a stupid thing to worry about, because these beliefs were so central to both of us, it mattered at a basic level. I wanted to be tolerant of others, but I thought of his politics as that of the intolerant. How can you be tolerant of the intolerant?
I mean, you want people to agree with you. At least about the important stuff.
Right?
Fuck.
I didn't know what to think anymore. It was a lot simpler when I’d just decided to jump Will's bones and be done with it. Now that there was this possibility of more, I was scared.
Wanting to escape my thoughts, I wandered over to the barn and the corral to see what the wranglers were doing. Although I officially had the weekend off and could do whatever I wanted, I loved hanging around the horses.
Jimmy, the old wrangler, and Hector, the young wrangler were mucking out the corral, a daily activity. I grabbed a rake and helped them and they looked at me gratefully.
"Enjoying Headlands?" asked Jimmy, a guru with a drawl.
"I love it here. It's so beautiful and I love the work that the Program does for kids. I met Will's mom and dad and I am so glad that they opened the facility for others."
Jimmy paused for a moment in his mucking and turned and looked at me.
"Will likes you," he said.
"I don't know about that," I said, trying to be modest.
"I've known him since he was born. Never seen him take a woman to meet his parents."
Really?
"His parents are so nice."
Jimmy nodded.
"I just wish they wouldn't watch Fox News all the time," I said.
"They are the last of the old-fashioned California Republicans. Not this new stuff. Old style. Don't raise their taxes or tell 'em what to do on their land."
I raised an eyebrow. That was interesting. I’d assumed that his parents were the Fox News ultra-conservative.
Maybe I needed to just talk to them.
Was I being intolerant of them?
Hector came by with fresh hay after we had mucked out the corral and the stalls, and we fed the horses and made sure they had fresh water.
A fresh start.
And then it was time to get cleaned up for dinner.
In the chow hall, I sat next to Will, his leg pressed up against me again. He smelled clean and had just taken a shower. After dinner, he asked me to spend the night but I told him no because I wanted to stay in my bunk. I needed the space.
But in the middle of the night, after tossing and turning in my bottom bunk, I snuck out of the bunkhouse and knocked on Will's door in my jammies. He let me in and I tumbled into his arms. He kissed me deeply, took me upstairs to his room, and kept me awake for a while. I eventually fell asleep in his strong arms, tucked into him, under his quilt, in his whitewashed room, in his old-fashioned farmhouse that was starting to feel like home, and I slept very well.