by Liora Blake
“Same goes for Voodoo Doughnut. As does a day doing my work with my hands and my fingers doing what they should. A new tattoo. Panda videos. Lots of things make me happy.”
Teagan closes any further conversation by tossing a bag of Chex Mix into my lap, then busies herself by peeling the label back on her beer bottle. When I sink my hand into the bag, I think of Braden, the look on his face if he could see me now with my fingers wrapped around a handful of this additive-laden snack mix. It wouldn’t make it to my mouth, I’m guessing.
Braden has been on my mind constantly, but no more so than today. Today, he was with me nonstop, which was nice, but made the urge to call him harder to fight. Even after passing on the reality show, I still don’t know where I’ll go next or if where I end up will be a place that can include Braden. Until I know that, reaching out would merely cause us both more hurt.
Teagan and I both look toward the front door when we hear it open. Colin strides in, takes one look at the dwindling bottle of Bird Dog on the coffee table and the adjacent bucket of beers on ice, then observes Teagan and me in repose holding our beers.
“Boilermakers? You girls are speaking my language today.” He pours a shot and clears it, uses the bottle opener on his key chain to crack a beer, and then drops onto the couch between us. I wait until he’s midway through his second gulp of beer.
“You had sex in my bathroom.”
“Jesus!” Colin sputters through a mouthful of beer, eyes wide. He somehow manages to avoid dribbling any on himself or my couch but wipes his mouth with a shirtsleeve anyway. He sends a beseeching look Teagan’s way. “Really?”
She shrugs, a tiny smile playing across her lips and a gleam in her eye that’s all for him, one he can’t help but give in to.
Oh, man. There it is. The good stuff.
I miss that more than ever now.
After dinner, we each pour a little more whiskey into our highball glasses and proceed to laze about on the furniture, all of us stuffed with greasy Mexican food. Jaxon returns from the side yard after tossing our takeout containers into the trash.
He closes the slider door behind him, beelines into the living room, and stands in front of the coffee table, eyeing our slothful group before clapping his hands together a few times.
“All right, look alive, you lazy louts. We need to brainstorm.”
The sharp sound doesn’t particularly rouse any of us, but he does have our attention, so we all send him confused and tipsy looks. He snaps his fingers.
“Amber needs a new thing. What is it? We know her best, so let’s throw out ideas. Teagan, what should Amber do next?” He points at Teagan, who is slumped against Colin’s shoulder. “Say the first thing that comes to mind. Go!”
“Uh …”
“Not an answer,” Jaxon snaps. “Colin! Now you.”
Colin tips his beer bottle toward Jaxon. “Nurse. Teacher. Doctor. President of the United States. Stripper. Porn—”
Colin squeals like a little girl when I pinch the skin on his forearm, hard enough I nearly break the skin, and we exchange scowls.
“No.” Jaxon starts to pace the length of the room. “All require a college degree. Even the stripping would be better served if she at least enrolled in college.”
I watch Jaxon dizzily and realize I should have known this was coming. Jaxon is the worst drinker ever, not because he’s a mean drunk or a sloppy drunk, but because he’s the opposite. If he drinks enough, he goes straight from tipsy to hyperfocused, becoming more driven than he is even when sober—and far more difficult to keep up with.
I raise my hand slowly, waiting until Jaxon pauses pacing long enough to notice me. He sighs. “Yes, Amber.”
“Do I get a turn? You didn’t call on me, so I’m not sure. It’s my life, but maybe I’m just supposed to take orders with my blow-up-doll personality?”
He claps his hands together again. “No time for passive-aggressive bullshit, doll. Do you have an idea or not? What do you want to do?”
I can feel everyone’s focus on me, but instead of wilting under the scrutiny, the attention does what it always has. It makes me bolder.
“I want another TV show.”
“Good,” Jaxon says. “What kind of show?”
Colin pipes up. “The kind she should’ve had all along. The kind like the one she just filmed and those morons at Afield passed on.”
“But something was wrong with it,” Jaxon muses. “That’s why they passed. We have to come up with a better hook. Maybe the hunting platform isn’t enough anymore. Maybe viewers want something else.”
We all go silent, lost in our own thoughts, but my heart is beating hard enough to make my hands shake a little. I scan the room around me, taking it all in. Trey’s furniture, the mounts on the wall, the fitness supplements piled up on the kitchen counters, and even my talented friends.
Be one hundred percent of who you are.
“A lifestyle show,” I say. “My lifestyle. All of it. Hunting, working out, staying in shape, the people I know, everything.”
My eyes cross the room to Jaxon, who’s come to a halt with his back to me. He turns slowly on one heel. A smile crawls across his face.
Teagan fumbles around to drag her phone out of her pocket.
“Make it a Web-based show. Screw trying to find a channel for it. Make your own. That art collective I work with? They just started filming long-form profiles on all of their members.” She tosses her phone my way and I scroll through the site, clicking on one of the videos.
Colin cranes to look over my shoulder, eventually pointing at the screen. “These are shot on pretty basic action cams. It wouldn’t take much to get you set up to shoot your own show. You did a decent job with your solo hunt footage, so if we spend a little more time together, we can easily get you to where you need to be.”
Jaxon hums in thought for a moment. “Endorsers love it when they aren’t cluttered in with all the brand noise on TV. Maybe we’ve been too focused on cable. Maybe the new Amber Regan brand is a little more niche.” He sends me a frank look.
“It will take a while to get something like this up to full speed. You’ll need another income. We can try to pick up some new endorsements in the meantime, but that will be a long shot right now.”
Braden pries his way into my head again, complete with his regular-job-ordinary-life speech. I’d cast it off at the time because anything regular or ordinary felt like failure. Now I can see I don’t have to accept it as a failure; I could choose it as a way to have everything I ever wanted. My show, done my way. A full life. One that could include Braden, if I can show him my truth.
I give Jaxon a grin. “I started at Dollar General; I can go back to Dollar General. Lots of people have regular jobs.”
(Braden)
“Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.”
—JOHN MUIR
Just before hitting send on my reports to Tobias, I offer up a thank-you to the tech gods. An agreeable, supplicant, polite thank-you that is absent of any cuss words. Because showing up here at four a.m. to bang my reports out at the last minute was a risk, and had anything gone wrong, I would have had to call Tobias and ask for an extension. Since I’m still on thin ice with him, acting like a flake would not be a smart move.
I’d taken this past weekend to make a quick trip out to Kansas so I could help Garrett on his newly purchased farm. After just two days of Garrett running my ass ragged, I was ready to come home to my cushy job. While I always understood that farming is a challenging, backbreaking way of life, just a few days working as Garrett’s lowly minion proved that I didn’t know the half of it. I rolled into Hotchkiss last night too late and too tired to do anything but eat dinner and crash. But the trip was worth it, no matter how early I had to get up this morning. Garrett is on track for the next phase in his life, he has Cara back, and most important, he’s happy. As for me, seeing Garrett settled put a few things into perspective, and my long drive home offered plenty of time to think.
The truth was, I’d fallen for Amber. Hard. Fallen so hard that it was easy to become a vindictive asshole when things ended. Because when you love someone and they choose something or someone else over you, it fucking hurts. When Laurel left, I did the same thing, acted out in the same snarling ways.
But loving and losing Amber was worse. With Laurel, I never once wanted her back, which probably says a lot about how little I had invested in that relationship. Amber, though … Amber I wanted back. I still want her back. I want to love her and take care of her, have her give the same to me. I want to be there when she eventually does fill a Colorado elk tag, help her pack it out, then take her home and put her in a warm bath like I did a few months ago. I want to do that same thing every single archery season for as long as we can both make it out into the field.
But that isn’t going to happen. I’d let her go too easily. Even if we view the idea of what makes for a rewarding life differently, I didn’t do enough to see if we could make it work somehow. And finally admitting all that to myself has helped, in almost the same way it did when I was in Oregon and my mom called out my feelings for Amber. In both instances, everything became easier when I owned the truth. The almighty power of acceptance or some shit, I guess, because it’s less difficult now to focus on my life and my work, just as I’ve done this morning.
After sending my reports to the printer, I lean back in my chair and watch the ancient contraption slowly crank out the reports. But they are printing—no error lights, no paper jambs, no ink running low—so I must be doing something right.
A bell dings. It takes me a second to remember the little bell that sits on the reception station, there for those days when there are public hours but I also have work to do in my office. That way anyone who comes in to find an empty front desk can feel as if help is just a bell ring away. Today, though, I do not have public office hours. But since I arrived at the crack of dawn, I didn’t think to lock the front door behind me.
The bell dings again.
I cast a look down at my clothes, the ones I wore all day yesterday and put back on this morning after dragging my ass out of bed. My ancient Oregon Ducks tee isn’t exactly work wear, but I have an extra uniform shirt stashed in a desk drawer, so I dig it out and start to put it on over my T-shirt. Per our employee manual, we’re required to wear uniform shirts tucked in, so I unbuckle my belt and open my pants up to tuck it in.
Ding.
Jesus.
Ding-ding-ding.
“Be right there!” I call out, biting my tongue to keep from saying anything more colorful. The bell then starts to ding nonstop.
Fucking hell. My pants are only half-closed, but I manage to get my zipper up just as I storm into the main office.
Where Amber is standing, continuing to ding the fucking bell with a goofy grin on her face. Her eyes then dart to where my hands are on my still-undone belt. The grin fades from her face, and she stares at my hands.
“Please tell me you were back there polishing your crystal ball. Because if I interrupted another woman doing the polishing, that’s going to make my trip out here a real bust.”
“Neither,” I manage, croaking until I clear my throat. “I was working. Alone. The office isn’t open today, so I just had a T-shirt on. I had to put on a uniform shirt.”
Amber’s features relax. She’s dressed in a black hoodie and some faded jeans with a hole in one knee that looks earned instead of designed, and a pair of brown lace-up work boots. Her hair is in a loose side braid, and she’s tugged on an obviously well-loved Rangers ball cap. A white three-ring binder is in her hand, which she now holds up.
“I need to show you something.”
Before I can say “what?” or, you know, ask what the hell it is she’s doing here, Amber is headed down the hall and into my office.
Christ. I know how this scene ends because this is where we started. Been there and done that. And even if my heart believes going there again sounds like a good way to make it stop hurting, my brain knows that won’t help me move on. Even so, I follow her anyway.
My stupid heart sinks when I don’t find her sitting on my desk, but standing awkwardly against the wall across from my desk. I clear her without pausing and sit down in my desk chair. Amber clasps the binder to her chest but doesn’t say anything—she simply stares at me. I raise my brows. She blinks and smiles sheepishly.
“Sorry. Seeing you again distracted me for a second. I missed looking at you.”
Fuck me. I’m unable to come up with even a smart-ass remark because all I want is to tell her how much I missed everything about her. Amber thrusts her binder forward.
“I’m here because I want to show you this.”
My brow furrows up. “You came here from Texas to show me a binder? You could have mailed it. Saved yourself the travel money. And the time.”
The dynamic that’s always defined us creeps up with my dry sarcasm and her responding smirk, and it feels like whatever time was lost between us is nothing but old news. Once again, I’m the big oaf who likes telling her how it is, and she’s the beautiful woman who loves pushing my buttons. Amber lurches up from the wall and begins my way. My heart starts to pound, and when she’s near enough that a rush of strawberry hits my nose, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, reopening them just as Amber hops up on my desk. She shimmies around a bit to get comfortable, and all I want to do is grab her by the hips and make her stop.
She flips open the binder, shielding the contents from my view.
“I’m not going to do the reality show.”
Relief rushes through me, hard and fast, replaced by hope that I know I shouldn’t latch on to. “Good. I know it’s not my business, but I’m glad.”
She shakes her head. “It is your business. Or at least I want it to be.”
Amber sighs. “You were right about everything. The two clowns who run the studio came to Austin and implied I have the personality of a blow-up doll … but with a good rack. And this was their approach to get me to sign with them. I’d hate to know what they’d say if they didn’t want me.”
“They what?” My body rises up from the chair a few inches as if these pricks are in the room with us and I can take them by the throat the way I want to. Amber waves a hand in the air.
“Don’t make me repeat it. All that matters is that I passed, and they, along with their porkpie hats, are back in LA.”
She takes a deep breath and turns her binder around. My eyes drop and zero in on a picture of Amber standing in her backyard, looking pared down but more beautiful than ever.
“I have a new plan. This”—she points toward the photo—“is a working pitch book for the new Web-based show I want to create. One that reflects my lifestyle and my perspective, but updated. I’ll still focus on outdoor sports, hunting and shooting mostly, but I want to branch out from there.”
She starts to flip through each page. First to a picture of her in a wintering cornfield, clad in a traditional olive-green shooting jacket with a twelve-gauge in her arms. The next is a shot of her and Trey out on his boat, lines cast, while they laugh their asses off. She turns another page. Amber and Trey again, but this time it looks like they’re at his furniture business, because industrial lathes and saws are in the background and Amber is watching Trey work on a sketch.
“I want to include segments on all the cool people I know, or the artists that hang out with Trey and Teagan.” Another page flip to a picture of Amber standing in a pigpen surrounded by piglets with Colin grinning side frame. “Even guys like Colin. Ranchers and farmers. Their stories, my stories, all through the filter of my brand.”
The next picture gets all of my attention. Along with my dick’s attention. She’s out for a trail run, dressed in skimpy workout gear, with sweat trailing down her neck and disappearing into the cleavage I missed more than I can stand at the moment. I must have let out a noise of some sort because Amber chuckles.
“Glad to hear I look good enough to sell the f
itness segments I have in mind.”
“Damn good,” I choke out, dragging my eyes away from the photo to look at the real-life Amber in front of me. Her cheeks are flushed bright pink and her eyes are lit up with excitement and focus. She’s proud of this—and she should be.
“This is amazing. This is the kind of show you deserve to have. This is you.”
Amber’s cheeks flare a shade darker and she averts her eyes from mine by looking at the wall behind me. “You told me not to settle, to be a hundred percent of who I am. That’s what this is.”
“I’m so fucking excited for you, sweetheart,” I whisper.
I spot a few tears brimming in the corners of her eyes, but she blinks them away before returning her gaze to me.
“I have one area I’m still struggling with.” She turns to the last page.
It’s a photo of her standing in her kitchen, flour dusted on her cheeks and her hair a little mussed as she pretends to look frazzled while reading a cookbook. She’s wearing a 1950s-housewife dress that’s so short her garter is visible, with red heels so high they make my mouth go dry.
“I want to do some cooking and food segments. While I’m not this bad in the kitchen, I could use someone to help me learn about, oh, I don’t know, making sauerkraut. Or energy bars. Or snack mix. Someone like you.” She grasps her binder to her chest. “Tell me what you think.”
I swallow thickly. “I think I was trying to get over you. And I think you’re making that impossible.”
“Good. Because I’m not over you. I don’t want to be. I want us.”
My heart starts to stagger about in my rib cage, like it wants to bust out of my chest and flop itself right at Amber’s feet. My brain, though, knows there are still valid reasons why we can’t be together. One of them is glaringly obvious.
“But you live in Texas,” I murmur.
“I’m also in between fixed gigs right now. So I could get a job at the Cabela’s in Grand Junction and work on the first few episodes around here so we can be together. That’s the beauty of what I want to create. It doesn’t have an address.”
