Chapter 11 #2
“You absolutely have a look.” He comes in and sits on the edge of the desk, close enough that I can smell his cologne. “Want to talk about it?”
Yes. No. Maybe.
“It’s nothing. Just thinking about money, the bar, and what happens at the end of the six months.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of thinking for a Thursday night.”
“I’m good at overthinking.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You know you don’t have to figure it all out today, right?”
“I know, but my brain doesn’t work that way.”
“Well, then maybe we need to get your brain to shut up for a while.” He grins. “Tomorrow night, be prepared.”
“Wait, prepared for what?”
“Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.”
“Wyatt.”
“Trust me. You’ll like it, or you’ll hate it, but either way, you’ll stop overthinking for a few hours.”
Friday night arrives, and The Rusty Spur is packed. I’m starting to understand the rhythm now. Fridays are always busy, but the last Friday of the month is really crowded.
“Payday,” Dolly explains.
I’m behind the bar helping pour drinks when Presley bounces over, her eyes glimmering with excitement she can barely contain.
“What?” I ask suspiciously.
“Nothing. Just excited about tonight.”
“Why? What’s tonight?”
“You’ll see.” She looks at Wyatt across the bar, and they both grin.
I don’t like this at all.
“Oh, you’ll like it,” Presley says, “or you’ll hate it, but it’ll be memorable.”
Around eight o’clock, I understand what they mean.
A truck pulls up outside, and through the window, I watch two big guys start unloading something large and mechanical-looking.
“What is that?” I ask as they maneuver it toward the door.
Dolly appears beside me, grinning too. “Well, that, sugar, is Tommy’s mechanical bull.”
“And before you ask, yes,” Wyatt says, appearing on my other side, “I arranged this.”
“Why would you arrange for a mechanical bull?”
“Well, because,” Wyatt says, “you need to have more fun.”
“I have plenty of fun. Without a bull involved.”
“When’s the last time you did something completely ridiculous?”
I open my mouth to answer and realize that I can’t.
When was the last time?
In Atlanta, everything I did was calculated, controlled, and appropriate. Even my fun was carefully curated. Tasteful gallery openings, charity events, and brunches at the right restaurants.
“Exactly,” Wyatt says, reading my silence. “So tonight, you’re going to do something totally ridiculous.”
“I am not getting on that thing.”
“We’ll see.”
The mechanical bull gets set up in the corner where they’ve pushed back tables and laid down thick padding. Tommy, the operator, is a guy who looks to be in his forties and has a handlebar mustache and the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for rodeo announcers.
“Who’s first?” he calls out.
Immediately, three guys volunteer.
I watch from the safety of the bar as customer after customer climbs on. Most last less than thirty seconds. A few make it to forty-five, and everyone ends up on the mat, laughing.
It actually looks a little fun, in a terrifying, potentially humiliating kind of way.
“Your turn,” Presley says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Come on!”
“Presley, I’m thirty-four years old. I’m not riding a mechanical bull in front of half of Copper Creek.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have dignity.”
“Boring,” someone yells from the crowd, and I realize half the bar is now listening to this conversation.
“Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor!” The chant starts somewhere and spreads like wildfire through The Rusty Spur.
I look at Wyatt, who’s watching me with an expression of pure challenge.
“Scared,” he mouths.
That does it.
“Fine,” I announce loudly. “Fine. But when I break something, you’re all witnesses.” I point my finger at everyone.
The bar erupts in cheers and applause.
I make my way to the bull on shaky legs. This is absolutely insane. I’m wearing dark jeans and a black fitted T-shirt I bought at the local clothing store that seemed professional enough for bar work, but definitely was not designed for mechanical bull riding.
Tommy helps me climb on. Up close, the thing is much bigger and more menacing.
“First time, I assume?” he asks.
“That obvious?”
“You’ve got the look. Don’t worry. I’ll start easy. Just grip tight with your thighs, hold on with one or both hands, your choice, and try to move with it instead of fighting it.”
“I’ve never ridden anything in my life. Like, not even a horse.”
“Well, then today’s your lucky day,” he grins. “Ready?”
I grip the handle with both hands, and I don’t care if it’s proper technique. I just want to survive. I’m not ready to die yet.
The bull starts moving, slowly at first, a gentle rocking motion.
Okay. I can do this. This isn’t that hard.
Then it speeds up.
I try to move with it, as Tommy said, but the bull has other ideas. It rocks back and forth, then starts to spin. My grip is so tight that my knuckles are white, and I can hear people cheering, but it sounds far away because my focus is on not being thrown off this thing.
The bull bucks harder.
My grip slips.
I’m weightless.
For one terrifying split second, I’m airborne—and then I’m being caught mid-fall by a pair of strong arms.
Wyatt.
He’s holding me against his chest, one arm under my knees, one behind my back, and he’s looking down at me with an intensity that makes the rest of the bar fade into background noise.
This man somehow made it across the room and over a barricade to catch me in midair.
“I’ve got you,” he says, his voice low and rough.
“You always do,” I reply breathlessly, immediately regretting the words that fell out of my mouth.
I don’t know why I said that.
The Rusty Spur is cheering and whistling, but I barely hear it. Wyatt’s arms are solid around me. His face is inches from mine, and time seems to have slowed down to a crawl.
“That was maybe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, and there’s something in his expression that makes my stomach twist.
“I lasted, what, ten seconds?”
“Fifteen. I counted.”
“Still pathetic.”
“Still brave.” His thumb brushes against my ribs where he’s holding me, and I feel the touch everywhere. “You could have said no,” he adds. “But you didn’t.”
“I’m starting to think saying no to you is impossible.”
Something flashes in his eyes. Someone whistles, loud and pointed, and reality crashes back.
Wyatt sets me down carefully, but his hands linger on my waist for a beat longer than necessary.
Dolly shows up beside us with two shot glasses.
“You earned this.”
“I don’t drink whiskey.”
“Well, you do tonight. You just rode a mechanical bull in a honky-tonk. That requires whiskey.”
She hands one to Wyatt, too.
“For both of you. For courage.”
We take the shots together. Mine burns going down, and I cough, which makes everyone laugh, but Wyatt’s hand finds the small of my back, steadying me.
And somehow, that feels like it burns more.
* * *
The silver Audi pulls into the parking lot of The Rusty Spur on a Tuesday afternoon, looking as out of place as I did two months ago.
I'm behind the bar, restocking glasses, when I see it through the window. And when the doors open and Cynthia steps out, followed by Archie, my stomach drops to my boots.
Thank goodness Wyatt isn’t here. I don’t think he’d like either one of them very much.
They pick their way across the gravel as if it might damage their shoes. Cynthia wears a cream silk blouse and tailored pants, her blonde hair blown out to perfection. Archie wears the navy blazer he always wears on weekends, the one that costs more than most people's rent.
They look like an advertisement for the life I used to live.
The door swings open, and Cynthia's face cycles through about four expressions—confusion, horror, amusement, and something that settles into pitying concern.
"Oh, Eleanor." She rushes toward me, arms outstretched. "Oh, honey. It's worse than I thought."
"What are you doing here?"
"We came to rescue you, of course." She pulls back and holds me at arm's length, examining me like I'm a patient. "Look at you. You're wearing flannel. And are those cowboy boots?"
"They're comfortable,” I say, looking down at my feet.
"They're tragic." She glances around the bar—at the mounted deer heads, the neon signs, the disco ball, the mechanical bull in the corner. "This place is... It's very... rustic."
"It's a honky-tonk."
"I don't even know what that means."
Archie has been standing by the door, surveying the room with the expression he usually reserves for opposing counsel's weak arguments. Now he approaches, hands in his pockets, shaking his head slowly.
"Eleanor, we need to talk."
"About what?"
"About this." He gestures vaguely at everything. "About the fact that you've been stuck in this backwater town for two months and haven't once asked me to look into breaking the will."
"Because I don't want to break the will."
He laughs as if I've made a joke. "Right. You want to spend six months running a bar in—where even are we? I couldn't find this place on GPS. I had to ask a man on a tractor for directions."
"Copper Creek. It's called Copper Creek."
"It's called nowhere." He pulls out a chair and sits without being invited, crossing his ankle over his knee. “Listen, I’ve done some preliminary research. The terms of this will are unusual, but they’re not ironclad.
We could argue undue influence or diminished capacity—your great-aunt was clearly not thinking straight when she wrote this. "
"Mavis was perfectly lucid."
"She left you a bar, Eleanor. A bar in the middle of the mountains with a—" he squints at the corner "—is that a mechanical bull?"
"Yes."
"She left you a bar with a mechanical bull and expected you to run it for six months. That's not the decision of a sound mind. That's a cruel joke."
Something hot flares in my chest. "It wasn't a joke. It was a gift."