40. Nathan
40
NATHAN
“If I’d known you were going to be in a pissy mood the entire day, I wouldn’t have taken you up on your offer to help,” Cassandra says.
We’re in the calving barn, doing some maintenance on it and making sure it’s ready for calving season. Cassandra wants to install some type of heating system and we’ve been talking through the options all morning. Well, she’s been talking, and I’ve been giving her one-word answers, like an asshole.
“Well, Riley and Cameron were busy so I’m all you got. Are we done here?”
My older sister whirls around to face me and hits me with her “I’m basically your mom” stare.
“Nathan Sebastian Booth, you tell me what the deal is right now, or I’m not letting you stay at the ranch another night.”
“You can’t kick me out of my childhood home, Cass. And don’t use my middle name.”
“Watch me.”
I sigh and scrub my hand across my face. It’s been about a week since I left Star Mountain, and while I’ve trained with Bally a few times at a local barn, I’ve mostly just been sitting around the ranch, alternating between acting like a dick to my siblings and moping. It hasn’t made me feel any better, but I can’t seem to stop. I was itching for something to do when I woke up this morning, which is why I told Cass I’d help her around the ranch today. I thought work would be a distraction, but I’ve been thinking about Candice all day regardless of the task at hand.
“The deal is that I have to compete again in a week and I’m nowhere near ready. The deal is that my career hangs by a thread and depends on a magazine article.”
Cass just rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “You’re such a drama queen, Nate. You can still win with a bad reputation.”
“But I can’t get the endorsements I need to support our family! And the Wilsons,” I blurt out in an exasperated tone. But I know that no one will understand my frustration better than Cass. She feels as responsible for the family as I do.
“Whoa, slow down. Why do you suddenly need to support the Wilsons? And it’s not like we’re starving over here.”
I briefly explain the situation at Star Mountain, and how I’ve been donating to it every week, and plan to keep supporting it in the future.
“Okay,” Cassandra says. “I understand wanting to help your friends, Nate. But it sounds like you’ve done more than enough for them.”
“I don’t want them to work themselves to the bone every day for the rest of their lives. I want them to have a chance to rest.”
I say them, but I’m really thinking about Candice, working from dawn to dusk seven days a week, every week since her grandparents died.
Never taking a moment for herself.
Never getting to go to Paris.
“They’ll get there,” Cass reassures me. “You helped out with social media as much as possible and the magazine article will bring them even more publicity.”
I nod, but it doesn’t feel like enough. It won’t feel like enough until Candice has the money to buy every damn horse in the state of Montana if she wants.
“And we’re fine. I promise you, Nate.”
“No, you’re not.”
“We are,” Cass insists. “We used the money you injected into this place to pay off the mortgage and the loans Dad took out, and now we’re actually making a small profit. We’re not yet millionaires, but when have any of us wanted to be?”
“I still need to be able to bail you out if need be,” I say stubbornly. “I’ve got savings, but I’m trying to be financially smart about this. I can’t just quit my job at the age of thirty.”
“Come with me to the office right now and I’ll let you look at the accounts, and the books. If you still think we need your bail out money, fine, go spend every day competing until you’re ancient. But I promise you, things are okay.”
I follow Cass back to the house and the attached office, where she slams the accounting books in front of me and brings up the ranch’s bank accounts online. I look them over, though I admittedly feel a bit out of my depth with some of the accounting. I have an accountant who deals with things for me, and Cassandra has always been the sibling who’s good at math.
“Things look good,” I say. “You’ve even got some reserves.”
“We do,” she says proudly, spinning around in the cracked leather office chair. “And we’re going to keep doing well because I know what I’m doing.”
“I know you do,” I say, feeling guilty. “I never meant to imply that you didn’t. It’s just—I’m responsible for this place just as much as you are. I want to make enough money so that you can all rely on me for the rest of your lives. I don’t want to be like Dad.” I spit out the last word, feeling the vile taste of it on my tongue.
“Something tells me we’ll be trying our hardest not to be like him for our entire lives.”
“Yeah,” I say, sighing.
“Seriously, though, compete or don’t compete. Do endorsements and photoshoots and social media, or don’t. We’ll be fine either way. Just do what makes you happy.”
“Sure, yeah, I’ll think about it,” I say, trying to appease her.
“There’s something else going on, though, right?” Cass spins around to face me and starts tapping the end of her pencil against the open accounting book, like a teacher waiting for an answer. “Last time you were here, there was a tall blonde with you. This time, you’re alone.”
“Christ Cass, you can’t let me get away with anything, can you?”
“No,” she says. “I can’t. Because I know you. You might be happy to take risks in the saddle, but with women, you run at the first sign of danger, without looking back. You’re afraid to get too involved.”
“I asked her to be with me and she said no,” I say flatly. “She’s the one who didn’t want to be too involved with me . Our lifestyles don’t mesh well together.”
“Are you sure that’s true? Are you sure you’re not just taking the easy way out by putting all of the blame on her?” Cassandra doesn’t mince words, ever, and these hit me square in the chest, and piss me off.
I get out of my chair and open the office door.
“I’m done talking about this with you,” I say, not looking at her.
“Sure, sure,” she says. “You’ll forgive me by tomorrow and life will go on.”
I close the office door and head into the living room, where my brothers are eating lunch. Without saying a word, Riley passes me a plate and a beer, and turns the TV on. It should be a welcome reprieve from Cass hounding me, but her words are all I can think about as we watch the game my brother puts on.
In the evening, after I’m done helping my mom make dinner and Riley and Cameron are cleaning the kitchen, I head to bed early, determined to get a good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, I toss and turn, unable to get comfortable, my mind racing. I still can’t stop thinking about what Cassandra said to me, and as I turn her words over in my mind, I worry that she’s right—that I ran away when I should have stayed.
I sigh and get out of bed, rubbing a hand over my face. There’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep now, so I leave my room and wander aimlessly through the quiet house and into the kitchen. Maybe a snack will take my mind off things. My mom is sitting at the kitchen table, a crossword puzzle spread out in front of her, and a mug of tea at her elbow.
“Hey Ma,” I say.
“What are you doing up? I thought you went to sleep hours ago,” she says without looking up from her paper. She studies it for a moment longer and then fills in another answer.
“I went to bed but couldn’t get much sleep.” I grab a bowl and some cereal from the cabinet, and sit down across from her.
“That’s unlike you,” she says, looking up at me and setting her pen down. “What’s on your mind?”
While I chew, I think of what to say to her. It’s not that my mom and I aren’t close, it’s just that she and dad fought so much when I was little, that I learned to bury my problems down deep, so as not to bother her with them. She always had enough on her plate, with Riley and Cam misbehaving, and with my father cheating and starting fights, so I tried to be a good kid. Maybe I should blame her more for staying with him as long as she did, but I can’t find it in me to harbor any animosity towards her.
She was a good mom to me—kind, gentle, patient, present. She was all of the things our father never was.
“I worry that I’m like him. Like Dad,” I say. My mom just looks at me with an open expression on her face, encouraging me to keep going. “And I worry that I’m not,” I admit. “I worry that I wasted years of my life believing I was like a man who couldn’t commit to anything—to anyone—only to realize that I’ve got it all wrong. And where the hell does that leave me now?”
“You know, you’re the child I worry about the most, Natey?” my mom says after a moment.
I shake my head.
“It probably seems surprising. You’ve been so successful, and you’ve helped us out so much over the years. But you also keep everything inside. I can rely on Riley and Cam coming to me as soon as they have a problem. And I’ve gotten good at reading your sister’s moods. But with you, I always worry that there are things you aren’t telling me.” She smiles at me and pats my hand. “That alone makes you completely different from your father.”
“How?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“Because, you keep everything inside to avoid burdening others. You know how to be selfless—how to make things easier for people, even to your own detriment sometimes. Your father was selfish to his core. He cared about himself, first, in every possible way and in every situation. He couldn’t put our family first anymore than you could put us second. So you see, you’re nothing at all like him.”
I sit with what my mom has just told me for a moment, and then say, “But I’ve still wasted so much time believing that I’m fated to be like him and now that I’m realizing I’m not…I mean, where do I even go from here?”
“You’ve wasted nothing,” my mom says. “You are a good man. And the people who you’re close to know that, which is what really matters. Don’t beat yourself up over what you could have been doing. Decide what you want to do with yourself right now.” She laughs and shakes her head, her bangs swishing from side to side. “Listen to me, I sound like a corny self-help book or something.”
“It’d be a best seller though, Ma, I’m sure of it.”
“None of you are like him,” she says, her tone serious again. “I made sure of that. Just don’t hold too much of yourself back from people, Nate. They deserve to see all that you are.”
“Thanks, Ma.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Want me to help you finish that crossword?”
“Sure, sweetie.”
Together, we fill in the remaining spaces until it’s past one and my mom heads off to sleep. I stay in the kitchen, staring at the dregs of my soggy cereal and thinking about who, exactly, I want to be.
I know I don’t want to be the man from a few days ago—the one who offered Candice a relationship and in the same breath said I had to leave. I didn’t put a lick of thought into confessing what I felt for her. I acted the way she expected me to act—the way I expected me to act—and in doing so, I confirmed all her fears about me leaving.
I think I could be someone better.
I know, at least, that I’d like to try.