Chapter 19 Jovie
“I’ve been meaning to ask, what kind of name is Jovie anyway?” Clay asked as we drove through the darkness of the ranch to our destination for the day.
It was 5:30 the next morning, and after a night of tossing and turning, I finally succumbed to sleep around 2, drifting in and out of consciousness as my mind reeled with thoughts of Nash. This morning, I was physically exhausted, sexually frustrated, and mentally strained. Patrick’s untimely calls and texts only added to my growing frustration, and I decided that I needed to call him and reaffirm my position on our breakup once again.
I chuckled, “My dad was big into pop-rock music. My sister’s name is Stevie after Stevie Nicks, and I’m Jovie after Bon Jovi.”
Clay wrinkled his nose, “I don’t know who either of those people are.”
“Oh, to be young again,” I laughed. “What about you? Wylie, Nash, Clay, where did those names come from?”
“All three are famous cowboys,” Clay beamed. “My mom was from San Angelo and grew up on a ranch, too. She’d always liked hearing about the old western, cowboy stories my grandpa would tell her and knew if she had kids, they'd somehow be related.
“Guess y’all were born for the ranch life then, huh?”
Clay smiled, “I never wanted to go away to college like Nash did. Wylie went to a trade school in San Angelo, but I think he always knew, being the oldest, he was going to be expected to take over Cameron ranch someday. I enjoy working on the ranch - animals, harvesting, machinery. There’s a lot of skill that goes into managing a ranch, and we deal with it all. You really must be a jack of all trades.”
“I’m seeing that now and you're right, there's a lot you must learn to work here. Why did Nash move back? He told me he worked for the city of Houston at one point?”
Clay cast me a sideways glance, then looked back at the road. “That’s kind of a long story. I know I told you that our mom died when I was only 12 and it was so lonely without her here. Wylie's coping mechanism was to run-through every woman in town, and Nash's was to stay away. Anyhow, I begged Nash to come back when he graduated three months later, but he’d already accepted a job with the city, so I dropped it. Even as a kid, I understood that he needed to have his own life. That summer before he started his job with the city, he came back for three months; however, he only lasted for one. His girlfriend bitched at him every day about coming back to the city. She’s the primary reason he stayed in Houston and worked for another three years.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend now, thank God. She was terrible, and I knew that even at 12 years old.”
“What happened between them?”
“Nash was enjoying his job with the city, but anytime he visited for holidays after mom died, he and I would ride around the property, and I could tell he missed being here. My dad never pressured him to move back or anything. One Christmas, he returned to Houston early from his planned visit home and found his girlfriend doing one of his coworkers in the apartment they shared together.”
“Shit.”
“He said he packed his stuff, paid out the rest of his lease, and moved back to the ranch permanently that night.”
That explains his disdain for ‘city women.’
“Hasn’t he dated since? Doesn’t he know that not all women are the same?”
“Oh yeah, he’s gone on some dates with women around here, nothing serious though. I think he knows in his heart not all women are the same, but anytime my dad needs him to go to Houston for sales or auctions, he sends Wylie because he knows it brings up bad memories for Nash.”
“Damn.”
“She wasn’t just anything to him, too. Nash had recently asked her dad to marry her. He didn’t realize until after the fact that she’d mostly been after the old ranch money she thought he would inherit when my dad died. Once she realized he was never going to be satisfied living in the city, she was over it.”
“That’s terrible.”
Clay nodded his head. “It messed him up good. I think the whole situation caused him to distrust his judgment of the women he dated and associate people from the city as unreliable.”
I nodded again as we continued to drive in silence while the sun slowly peeked over the horizon. There was so much I still didn’t understand about Nash, and I wondered if it was worth the effort to change the mind of someone convinced that they knew who I was. But something about him kept drawing me in, igniting a new fire within me—a fire set on proving Nash wrong.