Forty
FORTY
Tag
H ours later, I strode out to the quiet barn.
I wanted to check on Tillie and the foal, but I knew they were fine. It was my excuse to escape the suffocating confines of my quiet bedroom, to escape the dreams I knew would find me there. So much brewed in me. Like a swelling storm, I felt my insides shifting, lifting—a growing surge of something. Good or bad I couldn’t tell.
My heart ached for paper. It was infuriating.
Maybe that was the real reason I came to the barn. Writing stopped helping me. A few years ago, I’d heard some psychology guru say talk therapy helped people like me. Since I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I spent weeks writing down my story. I thought maybe getting it “out” would help.
It didn’t.
I had the notion to start a fire and burn the damn thing.
An orange glow of a cigarette lit in the dark.
Cooper.
My voice was low. “What’re you doin’ up right now?”
“I could ask you the same question.” He leaned against the outside wall of the barn. The orange disappeared as he flicked ashes.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He quietly chuckled. “You’ve barely been in the house twenty minutes.”
I scoffed, annoyed he might have seen Bea and I go in together. “You standin’ watch or something?”
“No. Just been up a while myself.”
“Alright, well, I’m gonna check on the foal.”
I continued past him, but stopped abruptly when he spoke again. “You’re gonna regret what you’re doing, Sammy.”
Gravel crunched as I spun toward him. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“Her.”
Ice flowed through my veins, my movements slowing. Had he said anything else, I would’ve been able to keep walking. But I stopped, needing to hear what he had to say.
Before I could respond, he kept on. “It’s fun to pretend we have something in common with them, but we don’t. Not just her. All of them.” He took a draw of his cigarette. “Those people don’t know what it’s like to be us.”
“They’re not bad people.”
He huffed a laugh. “I didn’t say that.”
“What are you sayin’ then? I don’t get it.”
“I’m saying we’re the bad people.”
My throat tightened. “I’m not the one with a court date in a few months.”
Cooper just shrugged. “We were sitting there on the porch, laughing, stuffing ourselves to the gills, listening to Bea play—damn she’s good, by the way—and you know what it reminded me of?”
My jaw clenched, worried about where he was going with this. “What?”
“The whole time, I kept thinking about that night we had burgers and Sl?—”
“Stop.” I cussed and jammed a hand into my hair. We didn’t talk about that. We never talked about what happened. How could he even bring it up? I hissed, “Don’t say another word. ”
He laughed like it was funny to him. “I didn’t know you were still in denial.”
“I’m not in denial, but if you utter that name I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.” Immediately, I was shaking. How could Cooper broach the topic so casually? I wanted him out of here, off my ranch if he was going to be an idiot.
“Afraid a mere mention is going to conjure him up?” He chuckled again. “That’s pathetic.”
My fists clenched by my side.
“You need to let me finish, because I got something to say about Bea.”
My jaw tightened.
“Tonight reminded me of that night. Everything we felt was a lie. Except…this time…we’re the ones who are going to ruin lives.”
“ How could you say that?” I felt like I was going to be sick.
His eyes found mine in the moonlight. “Are you serious? You used to be the more intuitive between the two of us.”
“Just tell me what you mean.”
“Alright, let me spell it out for you. Here’s a probable scenario. You get involved with her, do long distance for a while. You fall in love, she moves in. Then…slowly she realizes you triple check your locks at night. She notices you doubt and scrutinize everything she says because you don’t trust her. You fly into a rage every time you feel stressed. Then she realizes you’re so mentally unstable you can’t hold a job unless you’re your own boss, which is why you are still the captain of a ranch that can’t put food on the table. She realizes you have dreams that make you shake and throw up every morning before your first sip of coffee. You slip back into substance abuse, because you can’t help it. And as much as you love her, you hate her…because every damn time you take her to bed”—his voice cracked—“all you feel is blind rage.”
I couldn’t respond even if I wanted to. His scenario was a convoluted blend of his reality and mine. Line for line, I didn't know which one of us he was describing.
“Then she realizes your depressive episodes are so bad you can’t get out of bed, you can’t talk to her, can’t even look her in the face when she calls your name. She thinks you don’t love her anymore. So she packs up, takes the kids, leaves you. She’s got her bags packed, but she’s also got a shit ton of baggage now, thanks to you.”
All of my fears, spoken.
“Or, maybe she stays, but you leave. You finally pull the trigger or walk into oblivion.”
“You gotta stop, Cooper.” My voice was weaker than I meant for it to be.
“You know I’m right though.”
I sucked at the air, willing my lungs to expand.
A thread of emotions, of tears, laced his words. “We’re too broken for them, Tag.”
“I—I don’t wanna believe that.”
He huffed and quietly looked at the ground for a couple beats. He quickly swiped the back of his wrist over his face. “Yeah, well, neither do I.”
In the dark, there was a quick whip of movement as Cooper lifted the sleeve of his long t-shirt. The orange glow disappeared with his quiet grunt of pain. His shoe shifted in the gravel as he hissed a breath.
Did he just….
I clutched a hand over my stomach. Holy shit.
He rolled his sleeve down and disappeared back into the barn without a word.
I retreated to Tillie’s stall. For the second time in one night, I wept in silence.
This time for my brother.
For me.
And for all the things we might never have.
The rodeo was one night, long drive. I had to leave early.
I was going alone.
I tiptoed down the hallway, careful not to make a single sound. I didn’t want Bea to wake up and come to say goodbye. Cooper’s words blared in my head on repeat leaving me angry and flustered. The ground beneath my feet wobbled, and I worried that I’d find myself swept away in currents of the past.
No, I didn’t want to see her. Not like this.
As I readied the horses, a sweat broke over my brow. I wrestled with what Cooper had said, what Bea had said. One night filled my head with extremes so conflicting I felt dizzy trying to understand them both.
In a last ditch effort to find peace, I tucked my journals into my duffle bag, afraid of what would happen if I opened them but desperate enough to try anything.
All day, need built in me until I burst through the doors of the semi and plopped down in the passenger’s seat. Before I could talk myself out of it, my shaky hands reached for words. I unzipped my duffle bag and pulled out the notebooks and pen.
It was like a homecoming.
For hours, I wrestled. Can pain coexist with love?
In some ways, Cooper was right—I was too broken for Bea. Ruining her life because of my pain was my biggest fear. But then, what about love? Didn’t it have power? I’d already felt the effects of Bea’s love seeping into every starving corner of my life. I wanted to try. I wanted to learn love. I wanted to give Bea everything—the pieces of me, if she’d take them.
Even the rain worked in synchrony with the sun.
Once upon a time, I told Bea I didn’t believe in miracles. I thought they only existed for people like her. But there, writing in my journal, I realized it wasn’t true. The universe had brought Bea to me—twice. Two times her light had forged into my darkness. Two times she had reached down and grabbed my hand when I was drowning.
How?
My answer poured over the pages, my tears mingling with the ink.
“If anything can conjure up the miraculous, it’s love.”
Two times her love had changed my life .
And I loved her—with everything in my chest, I loved her.
When my hand was aching and my neck hurt from leaning over my lap, I closed the first notebook and opened the second—the black leather one.
My story.
I scribbled onto the next empty page: Part Two.