by Roxie Noir
“Lula-Mae, calm down,” Jackson says, his hand on my shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine, but you gotta button your pants.”
I zip and button quickly, my hands shaking, and Jackson tucks his dick back in.
“Everyone please remain calm,” a voice crackles through a megaphone.
I can feel the tears rising in my eyes, my hands shaking.
Jackson actually grins at me.
“You never been at a party that got busted up before?” he asks.
I shake my head no. I feel like I can barely breathe, my chest tight with panic as everything just spins and spins.
He jumps over the side of his truck, then offers me his hand. It’s slightly sticky and I blush, but I take it.
“They’re just gonna tell us not to be here,” he says. “It’s fine.”
I jump over the side of the truck and we walk a few steps before there’s a spotlight on us.
It pauses and I squint, trying to see who’s behind it.
Then a voice says, “Lula-Mae Guthrie?”
Everything lurches. My chest tightens.
I’m going to be flipping burgers forever.
“I’m sorry!” I say, bordering on hysterical.
“God almighty, what are you doing here?” the voice asks, and I recognize Phil Warren, a family friend.
I’m trembling like a leaf, and this is where I break. I cover my face with my hands and start sobbing.
“I’m sorry!” I get out between sobs, gasping for air. “Please don’t tell my parents. Please, god, don’t tell my parents.”
“Lula-Mae, are you all right?”
He sounds worried, not mad, but my face is hot and covered in tears and snot and I just sniffle and nod, an absolute mess.
“You been drinking?” he asks, but it’s obvious he knows the answer.
“A little,” I whisper.
Phil sighs.
“All right, come on,” he says.
I walk toward him, leaving Jackson standing there in the field. I’m too embarrassed to even look back at him.
Phil lets me sober up at the station for a while and then takes me home. By some miracle, he promises never to tell my parents as long as he doesn’t catch me partying like that again.
He doesn’t, because that’s the last time it happens. In August I leave for college and only ever visit Lawton again, and I never go to another bonfire party.
I major in photography and have a 3.9 GPA, almost perfect. I lose my virginity to a nice guy from Louisiana. Whenever I’m not studying I’m working, and by the end of four years, I’ve got enough saved to move to New York City and leave Texas behind forever.
I get an apartment in Brooklyn and I hustle my tail off, stringing together enough freelance jobs to pay the rent.
Through it all, I almost manage to forget the time I got wasted and almost had unprotected sex with Jackson Cody.
4
Jackson
Present Day
After breakfast we walk back into the gravel parking lot that connects Sookie’s Diner to the Prairie Motel. Across the street is the Oklahoma fairgrounds, where we’re gonna be for the next seven days. All I can see from here is the front ticket office, done up Old West style, and over it the arc of the Ferris wheel.
In the distance, to the right, is the arena. My belly tightens in excitement.
That’s my stomping ground.
“Y’all let us know if you need anything,” Wayne says. “You doing anything before the opening ceremonies tonight?”
“I’m going to walk around and get a feel for the place,” Bruce says, glancing over at the fairgrounds. “Start talking to some people, that kind of thing.”
Wayne looks at Mae.
“I need to set up my equipment and make sure everything made it here in one piece,” she says. “And I think I need a nap if I want to stay awake tonight.”
Wayne and Darlene both nod politely.
We all shake hands. Bruce, Wayne, and Darlene start to drift off, but Mae and I stand there for another moment. She’s looking across the street at the fairgrounds, and I’m just looking at her. Thinking of her voice saying Come on, Jackson, and getting a half-chub just from that.
“Need any company during that nap?” I ask, and paste on my most charming grin.
Hell, it worked last time.
Mae’s gaze flicks to me and holds mine steady for a moment. Then she laughs.
“I nap alone,” she says, and she says it almost like I was joking.
“You know the saying,” I tell her.
She raises her eyebrows just a little.
“Save a horse, ride a cowboy?”
Mae bursts out laughing.
“Wow,” she says. “You really do live up to your reputation.”
“I had to work pretty hard to get it,” I say.
“Does that work?” she asks. “The ‘save a horse’ thing?”
“You have no idea,” I say.
Usually, I don’t even have to try that hard.
“You want to know the secret?” I ask.
I take a step closer to her, my thumbs tucked into my belt. She doesn’t back away.
“Is the secret rodeo groupies?” she asks.
“If you’re gonna be here, you should learn the lingo, darlin’,” I say. “The buckle bunnies line up for me because women talk, and word’s gotten around about me.”
She frowns slightly.
“Buckle what?” she asks, ignoring the important part of the sentence.
“Buckle bunnies,” I say.
She shrugs.
“That’s what you call rodeo groupies?” she asks, and I nod.
“Rodeo winners get buckles, and bunnies get what’s underneath. It’s debatable which prize is better.”
She lifts her eyebrows again, and her eyes crinkle a little like she’s trying not to smile.
“I should write that down. It’s colorful,” she says.
She’s acting like I’m not hitting on her at all, completely ignoring my advances.
It’s driving me crazy.
“I’ll take a raincheck for that nap, then,” I say.
Mae glances behind me at something, and suddenly I have a bad feeling.
“Jackson,” says Darlene’s voice. “A word?”
“Nice meeting you,” Mae says, and nods at Darlene. “See you around.”
She walks toward the motel, that same look of amusement in her eyes. I watch her walk for a moment, then take a deep breath and turn toward Darlene.
Even though I’m a good eight inches taller than her, I’ve got the sense to keep my mouth shut.
“How stupid are you?” she hisses.
Not stupid enough to answer that question.
“It’s bad enough that your bed might as well be a revolving door of hussies,” she says. “But, hand to God, Jackson, you will not ruin this article for Pioneer Days.”
I smile and spread my hands.
“Come on, Darlene—”
She puts up a hand to stop me.
“Don’t you come on, Darlene me, Jackson. I’m old enough to be your mother and it don’t work on me. But you keep trying to get into that girl’s pants, that is what this story is gonna be about. It ain’t gonna be about rodeo, or bull riding, or the long proud western traditions of this great country. It’s gonna be about a pervert in a cowboy hat botherin’ a nice young woman, you mark my words.”
“I was just having a little fun,” I say.
“Don’t,” Darlene says. “You want to be a big star, Jackson Cody? You want your name in lights and a line of cowboy boots? Then don’t let them write a story about how you hounded a photographer to sleep with you from the moment you met her.”
“She ain’t even the writer,” I say, but I know it’s a losing battle.
“You think he won’t find out?” Darlene says. “That man finds stories for a living, and I guarantee a rodeo star sniffing at that girl’s panties like a hound dog on the scent is a story.”
She looks at me, iron in her eyes, and I know she’s goddamn right.
I watch the news, I read the paper and the glossies sometimes. There’s nothing they like better than tearing someone down. If I keep hitting on Mae, that’s the headline.
I glance at her form, almost to the motel.
She turned me down anyway, I think.
“That’s not the story that Pioneer Days needs written about it,” Darlene says.
Right. It’s not just about me.
“All right,” I say. “I’ll try to behave.”
I sneak another glance after Mae, just as she turns the corner.
Behaving ain’t gonna be easy.
“Bed the bunnies and ride the bulls, Jackson,” she says, squeezing my shoulder in an almost-motherly fashion, though my mother would never say that. “And you leave Mae Guthrie alone.”
I nod once, and Darlene turns around and marches off, probably to order someone else around.
I hate it when she’s right.
Still, I think about the way Mae’s hips move and roll, the sweep of her neck as she looks around. For a moment I think about her hips in my hands, peach wine on her breath as she straddled me that summer night.
She looked a little different back then. She was younger, not so self-assured, and drunk as all get out, but I’ll be damned if I don’t still think about it. Hell, I went back to Buck’s house with the worst case of blue balls I’ve ever had, and I still jerk off thinking about it sometimes.
And now, Lula-Mae Guthrie is practically next door and I can’t have her.
It’s gonna be a rough couple days.
5
Mae
Good Lord, he’s charming.
I don’t look back even once as I cross the parking lot, but I’d swear I can feel his eyes on me as I walk. They’re like a hot breeze slipping through my clothes and caressing me, even though it’s downright chilly in Oklahoma in November. I’m starting to understand what all the buckle bunnies see in him.
I smile as I unlock my motel room door, because buckle bunnies is a pretty good phrase.
I don’t even turn the lights on in the room, just flop face-down on the bed in the dark and inhale the scent of cheap laundry detergent.
At least it smells like detergent and not something else, I think. I wouldn’t want to take a black light to this room.
I wrinkle my nose and roll over on the bed, so at least my face isn’t pressed into the probably-gross comforter, and I try to make a mental list of everything I need to do before tonight.
Instead I think about Jackson, offering to keep me company during my nap. I don’t think I’ve ever been propositioned that boldly by someone who wasn’t wild-eyed and shouting on the subway, and I’ve definitely never wanted to take someone up on it before.
There’s something magnetic about Jackson, and I can’t even put my finger on it. He’s unbelievably good looking, sure, but I’ve met good-looking men before. Is it the way that he’s beyond confident, like he knows you’re going to wind up in bed with him, it’s just a matter of when?
Is it the way that somehow, he talks to me like I’m the only other person in the world?
Whatever it is, it’s working, because instead of doing my job, I’m lying on this bed thinking about Jackson. At least there’s good news: he definitely doesn’t remember me. Otherwise, why not bring it up when we were alone?
You’re not eighteen anymore, I remind myself. You’re not a drunk virgin just out of high school, even if he kind of makes you feel that way.
For one thing, you’ve touched several penises since then. Including poor Andrew’s.
Andrew was a guy on my freshman hall, and even now, when I think about him I feel guilty. We hooked up about a month into my freshman year of college.
He was the first guy I got with after my disaster night with Jackson, and I’ll just say that when I first saw him naked I was... expecting more.
Turns out Andrew was a little above average, actually. Not that I got to see him naked again after that night. Guys don’t like it when you look at their erections, make a face, and say oh in a disappointed voice.
I still can’t believe I did that. God, I was such a jerk, and I didn’t even mean to be. It’s been five years and I still feel awful, though I’m sure Andrew is doing fine.
I take a deep breath and put one arm over my face, willing myself not to fall asleep before I can at least check my equipment and take a shower.
Just don’t sleep with him, I think. That’s all there is to it.
By tonight, I’m sure there will be crowds of buckle bunnies eager to take him to bed, at least if what I’ve been reading about Jackson is even half-true. I probably won’t even talk to him one-on-one again.
He was probably just hitting on you out of habit, I think. He sees a woman alone and tries to get her into bed.
Like when you get tapped on the knee and kick. It’s just a reflex.
The thought is mostly comforting, if a little disappointing.
I yawn and kick my shoes off, pulling my feet onto the bed and rolling onto my side. Just resting for five more minutes.
I wake up to my phone ringing in my pocket, and I jerk upright with no idea where I am or what’s going on. The afternoon light is slicing through the small gap in the curtains, and I’m so disoriented I almost don’t know which way is up.
But I pull out my phone anyway. It’s Bruce.
“Afternoon, Mae,” he says. “Sorry if I woke you.”
I clear my throat, rub my eyes with one hand, and try to get a grip. I hardly ever take naps, because whenever I do, I’m just out of it for the rest of the day.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Did you want to talk about tonight?”
“I’d like to convene in my motel room in about thirty minutes, if that works for you,” he says.
A panic hammer hits me right in the chest, and I scan the room for a clock, because I don’t have a clue what time it is.
“Thirty minutes sounds great,” I lie.
“Excellent,” he says. “I made some good contacts today, and I’m looking forward to working on this assignment with you.”
“Same,” I say.
Well, except instead of doing something, I fell asleep by accident for several hours. But otherwise, same.
We hang up. I leap off the bed, hit the lights, and race into the shower.
Thirty-five minutes later I’m dressed in a different black t-shirt, jeans, and a jacket. My hair is dried, and I’ve got a camera and lens suitable to medium-distance action shots.
Sure, my motel room looks like a tornado hit it and I nearly pulled out a chunk of hair trying to blow it dry as fast as possible, but nobody needs to know about that part. They just need to know that Mae Guthrie, consummate professional photographer, is on the job.
Bruce’s door is slightly open, and he leaves it that way after I come inside. I’m confused for a moment, but then I realize: he’s a middle-aged man and I’m a young woman. The open door means that anyone can walk by at any time and see that all we’re doing is talking.
It’s smart. It makes me relax a little, and it makes me appreciate Bruce.
“So the trick of this assignment,” he says, sitting in an ugly wooden chair opposite me, “is that it needs to combine a couple of things. It needs to be a story about the sport of rodeo, of course, but it’s also a snapshot of rodeo culture as it exists right now, as well as a biographical piece on Jackson Cody.”
“Piece of cake,” I say dryly. It gets a smile from Bruce.
“After Larry’s appendix burst, I actually went through the portfolios of several photographers,” Bruce says. “You had the shortest resume but the best photos.”
“Thank you,” I say, sitting up a little straighter.
On the inside, I’m jumping up and down and pumping my fists.
“In particular, you had a series of photos of high school football players in your hometown, and there was one that stuck with me. It’s in the locker room, and
the quarterback and a few other players are standing there, after a game, pads still on. They’d just won, and they’re laughing. There’s one locker open in the background, and inside it there’s a Whataburger uniform, because one of the players had rushed to the game from his shift.”
I just nod. Bruce McMurtry is a well-known sports journalist, and he’s telling me why I got picked for the assignment that could change my life.
“That picture is what I’m looking for from this,” he says. “That juxtaposition of life at the rodeo for these people, especially for Jackson, and life outside the rodeo. People come here for a reason, for fun or escape or just diversion, and I want your photos to make it exactly clear to the reader what it offers them.”
I almost ask him if he’d also like me to lasso the moon while I’m at it, but I don’t. I just nod again.
“I grew up around this kind of thing,” I say. “I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for. Tonight’s all about the spectacle of rodeo. Rhinestones, glitter, big American flags, all that. It’s also about figuring out lenses and shutter speeds.”
“Perfect,” he says, and stands. “I think this is going to turn out beautifully.”
We walk to the arena, chatting about our plans in bursts and snippets.
But inside, I think I’m about ready to explode with a combination of pride and nervousness.
This is my big break, my one shot, and I’m going to nail it.
6
Jackson
Raylan hands me the flask back, and I swish it from side to side, frowning at him.
“You’re gonna drink me out of house and home,” I tell him, tilting the flask up. I take the last swallow of whiskey and let it settle in my belly before I put the flask back in my pocket.
“What, out of that trailer in your momma’s back yard?” he asks.
“Don’t knock it,” I say.
Raylan and I have been traveling from rodeo to rodeo together for a couple years now, ever since Buck left. He probably knows more about me than anyone alive except maybe my mother. Hell, we even slept in the same bed more often than not for a while since it was all we could afford.
