Cowboy Professor_A Western Romance Love Story

by Ivy Jordan

  “We’ll be sad to see you go, Gains,” Chief said. He leaned forward a little, shifting his ass back in his seat. “Not a lot of men have your work ethic.”

  “All of the SEALs do,” I replied. That earned me a smile and a little chuckle.

  “They have to,” he said. He shook his head. “You know, we could use you up here. Probably could use you to train some of the new recruits.”

  “I wouldn’t suit the job,” I said. “Honestly, I think I’d work ‘em too hard. I’m too used to what the SEALs could handle.”

  “These men aren’t that,” he agreed. “Still. You don’t have another tour? You’d think they’d want you back.”

  I shook my head and adjusted my cap. “No, I don’t think they would. Best they see me off now. Besides, I have things to be doing. A life to get on with.” That was a lie. I had no life—I was the type who joined the military to make something of myself. Now I faced the realization that the military made up all of who I was, and my identity outside of it was faded at best. I didn’t know what to do. But I knew I couldn’t stay here.

  Chief rolled his tongue in his mouth, and I suspected he had dip under his lip. We weren’t supposed to do it, but I wasn’t about to rat him out. “You know,” he said, “a lot of you SEALs, you get the wrong idea about things that happen.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “You go out, something happens to you, you misconstrue it. Get it all backwards from what actually took place.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said.

  Chief leaned back in his chair, looking at me from over the tops of his glasses. “Uh-huh. Bet you don’t.” He ran a hand over his hair—it was too short to run a hand through it—and swallowed. “I’m saying it isn’t your fault, what happened with James.”

  I pulled forward in my chair and started to stand. “I should get back to the barracks,” I managed. I didn’t want to talk about this, and I certainly didn’t want to try and ration through it with a man who I’d only seen screaming at new recruits.

  “If you say so,” Chief muttered. He didn’t look angry or suspicious; I half expected him to bitch at me for blowing off his statement, but instead, he shrugged. “It was good serving with you, Gains. You let me know if you ever want to come back.”

  I paused before I left. “Thank you,” I said. “But honestly, Chief, I think all I want to do is go back home.”

  I walked back through the camp to get to the barracks. Recruits were running left and right with their freshly shaven heads like newly mowed grass. I could tell it had just happened because they stopped and looked at themselves in every reflective surface and had their hands on top of their heads whenever they got the chance. After they’d gotten their heads shaved but before they’d gotten their caps. This was a truly new group.

  I remembered it all too well, when this was new. Before this had become my entire world for six years, I’d had one foot back in Austin. Back with my girlfriend, Stacy, and back with what I had left of a family. A job, a life. It had fallen away damn quickly. While I took a shower and got the last few things I owned put in a bag, I thought about whether or not to worry about Stacy.

  She wouldn’t be in Austin, anyway. Six years had passed; she’d either be dead from a drug overdose or in some other city. She never could sit still for long.

  I lay down in bed and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the other people in the barracks talk over one another, like Boy Scouts on a camp trip unable to shut up and go to bed because of all their excitement. That would wear off soon and give way to exhaustion, relief at the awful mattress on their backs. I closed my eyes.

  I wouldn’t need to see Stacy. She wouldn’t be in town. If she was, I wouldn’t run into her. In any case, I prayed to anything that was listening that I could avoid her. I’d survived bombings, I’d survived gunfire, but I didn’t know if I could survive another round with Stacy Black.

  Chapter Two

  QUINN

  “Thanks, Ms. Rodgers. I feel better already,” my patient said. I held the door open for him and gave him a smile.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Can I count on seeing you back next week?”

  “Yeah, same time next week,” he said. Then he went off, and I closed the door.

  That was my last appointment of the week. I sat down on the couch that my patients usually sat on and pressed my fingers to my temples. This had been a particularly exhausting week, and my weeks were already exhausting. Being a psychiatrist meant listening to a lot of people’s problems, and while I mostly didn’t mind, there were some days that it did tend to grate on me.

  Someone knocked on my office door. “Quinn?”

  I looked up and furrowed my brow. It sounded like my aunt, and I had been meaning to talk to her anyway. “It’s unlocked,” I called, and sat up a little. It seemed my unwinding would have to wait. I glanced at the automatic kettle sitting on the table across from the couch. Sometimes after work, I would stay in my office for a little while, have a cup of tea, and listen to some of the relaxing music I had on hand for clients. I didn’t have a psychiatrist, didn’t need one, but I did need to unwind.

  My aunt, Janet, opened the door. She looked around the corner to see me sitting on the couch. “Is the psychiatrist late?” she joked.

  I rolled my eyes a little and sat up. “Ugh. It was a long week.”

  “Have you been doing well?”

  “Of course, of course.” Overall, things were fine. One rough week didn’t mean a bad life, that was for sure. I wasn’t prone to making the sorts of mistakes that might land me in a position to say otherwise. “How have you been?”

  “Oh, I’ve been alright,” Janet said. “I wanted to stop by and check on you here since you’re on my way home.” Janet worked as a secretary at a local bank and had been for years. Austin was hardly a small town, but she came from a small town and brought that sense of job loyalty with her.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. It was a little bit of a lie. I would rather have been alone. But I didn’t mind Janet, and I knew that she had troubles of her own, especially dealing with my cousin Stacy like she had to. It couldn’t be easy on her. I thought sometimes of asking if she wanted to see me, but it was a terrible idea to see therapists that were in your family. Conflicts of interest came up.

  “You know, I read an article on the internet this morning,” Janet said. She was always talking about some article she’d read on the front page of the default page on her internet browser. She was terribly sweet with how she used the internet and how little she filtered through information. “It said that more and more women are becoming psychiatrists now.”

  I gestured around me. “Well, wouldn’t you know it.” It was a huge point of pride for me that I’d managed to get a job doing the one thing I loved the most. It took a lot of hard work and tedious hours at university, and sometimes I wondered if I would have been better off marrying rich. But coming into my office every day and making a difference in the life of at least one person was enough to convince me that I’d made the right decision.

  “I think that a lot of them get into it for the money,” Janet said, as though telling me a horrible secret. She glanced over her shoulder. The only other people in this building were a shitty real estate agent and some travel agency that barely paid rent every month.

  “A lot of them do,” I agreed. “And then they realize that it sucks when you don’t want to do it, and then they quit. And you can’t really get any other kind of job with a psychology degree.”

  “Is that what you got? A psychology degree?”

  “Yeah. Texas has it set up so you can be a psychologist and write prescriptions. So I’m technically a psychiatrist,” I said. “Or at least, I get paid as a psychiatrist. And I don’t have to try and worm my way into any of these psychiatry offices. They’re so selective.”

  “Oh, I bet you could get into them,” Janet said, waving her hand to emphasize how smart she thought I was. Compared to her daughter, maybe, but
not compared to some of the people in Austin.

  “Thanks,” I offered. “I like doing what I do now, though. I help people, or, I try to. I feel like I am. That’s what I want to do first: help people. If they need medication after that, then I’ll prescribe it, but it’s a last resort for me.” Some people who had life-threatening disorders needed medication without much question, but most people could get away with lifestyle changes and someone to talk to.

  “Oh, you know, I think Stacy could really use someone like that,” Janet spoke and then tilted her head down, as if ashamed that she’d even brought her daughter up. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have a daughter and have what had happened, happen.

  I didn’t say anything, unsure of what exactly to say that wouldn’t be out of line or inappropriate. I wished I had made that cup of tea so I could sip. Anything to divert my attention from the awkwardness that hung in the air—or rather, that had been hanging in the air for ages whenever the name ‘Stacy’ came up.

  “She won’t, um, she won’t, though,” Janet clarified. I knew that she was doing it as a reassurance. I wouldn’t have to deal with Stacy and her set of issues. Janet wouldn’t have to face me knowing that I knew the extent of the problem. I liked to help people, though, and Stacy could be reconciled with in my opinion. Still, she didn’t say why she definitively stated that Stacy wouldn’t be getting help. I knew better than to pry.

  “Do you have any plans for this weekend?” I asked instead, hoping to change the topic.

  The effect was immediate. Janet’s face lit up like she was relieved at the change of pace. “Oh, yes! Actually, tomorrow, Saturday, we were thinking about having a little welcome home party for Sawyer. It’s kind of a surprise. We know he’s coming, but I don’t think he knows there’s going to be a party. Just a little thing in the backyard.”

  I raised my eyebrows a little. “You’re not upset with him?”

  “Upset?” Janet shook her head. “Maybe we were once. For a little bit there we were angry with everybody. Stacy, Sawyer… after everything that happened, it seemed everyone was a little bit to blame. But Sawyer got his head on straight. He joined the military and served well. From what I can tell, he’s back to being himself. Me and your uncle, we never could hate him. Especially not with his dad being the way he is…”

  I should have expected Janet to talk on and on. I loved her dearly, but she wasn’t the best possible person to have stop by my office before leaving work on a Friday. I wanted nothing more than to go home, although I was glad to hear that Sawyer was doing well. I’d only heard about him, bits and pieces from Janet and my Uncle Jesse. They spoke highly of him until shit had hit the fan with Stacy. But they stayed in touch with him and bragged about his accomplishments like they were their own. His dad, though, was a meaner person from what I understood.

  Part of me wanted to sit him down on the psychologist’s bench. There was always a part of me that wanted to do that with people I met. Now that I had the means to probe the inner workings of a person’s brain, I wanted to do it with everyone. Not everyone wanted to be psychoanalyzed. My best friend said so all the time. We’d have a conversation, and she’d proclaim, ‘Stop psychoanalyzing me!’

  “You can come if you want,” Janet said. I perked up, realizing that I’d tuned out of the conversation a little bit to drift into my own mind. It was something I tended to do: turn over the situation again and again. Sometimes I came to conclusions that made no sense because I decontextualized conversations from their happening.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t be! It’s a family event; you’re family.” I got the feeling from her tone that Stacy wasn’t going to be there and Janet was once again reaching towards me to fill the role of ‘daughter.’ If she were my patient, I would have asked her about the implications of that.

  As it stood, I only nodded. “Yeah, sure. I have nothing to do tomorrow. How long do you think it’ll last?”

  “Not too long,” Janet said. “A few hours, probably. If you could bring a side or a dessert, that’d be lovely. Have you met Sawyer?”

  I twisted my mouth to the side in thought. I’d certainly heard of him. “I don’t know. Maybe in passing at some point, or on Stacy’s social media. Face doesn’t come to the name, though.”

  “Well, in any case, you can meet him tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see a friendly face after being gone so long. Can you believe it’s been six years?” Janet shook her head.

  “Yeah, that is a while.” When Sawyer had left, I was merely dreaming of becoming a psychologist. Or, at least, I’d only just signed up to take the classes required. Now I had a degree, a license, and a business. I wondered what had changed about him; I wouldn’t know, I supposed, since I didn’t know him very well to begin with.

  “Usually they come home on shore leave, and he stayed,” Janet mused. She shook her head. “Well, no matter. He’s coming home tomorrow, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “I’ll be there,” I assured her. With that, we said our goodbyes, and she made her way out of my office. I decided to stay a moment, not really ready to go back to the loudness of my house and face the rest of the evening.

  I didn’t know what to expect when I saw Sawyer. Now that I’d been thinking about it for a while, I could remember something. I silhouette, sort of, a muscly figure with dark hair and bright eyes. I could remember a smile. Mostly I associated him with Stacy, though I was certain that they’d broken up. How they hadn’t broken up before was beyond me. From what little I could glean of a memory from Sawyer—and I wasn’t honestly sure that I wasn’t imagining things because I didn’t remember—he didn’t seem the sort to get involved with the nonsense Stacy got herself involved with.

  So I couldn’t remember him, but I had the opportunity to get to know him better. I leaned back in my chair a bit and turned on the automatic tea kettle. I looked forward to the opportunity.

  Chapter Three

  SAWYER

  I drove up to the airport a good three hours before my flight. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t seem to pass out in my seat. It wasn’t a very long flight from where I was to Austin, and I probably could have driven it—in fact, part of me would have preferred that to leaving my truck in the parking garage at the airport. But my mother had bought the ticket before I really had much say in anything.

  When I got off the plane and made my way down to baggage claim, I could see her scarlet-red, roller-curled hair before I even saw her face. She’d come to pick me up; part of me had expected to get a taxi. I worried about whether she’d gone to any trouble. When she turned to face me, her face lit up into a smile. She looked a little older, she dyed her hair to keep out the gray, but the wrinkles around her mouth from years of smiling were more pronounced. Still, there was no denying the happiness in her eyes.

  “Sawyer! Oh, Sawyer, you’re home!” She threw her arms around me and pulled me down in a vicelike grip.

  “Hey, Mom. Hey.” I returned her hug and attempted to straighten myself, not wanting to make too big a scene at the airport. I’d missed her; at least a part of me had. The SEALs didn’t want me to miss anyone, let alone the comfort Mom brought; it was difficult for me to reconcile that with seeing her now.

  “Oh, my baby boy. Look at you; you’re so strong!” She squeezed my arm, and I couldn’t help but redden.

  “Mom,” I insisted, and I couldn’t help but notice how childish I sounded, protesting her affection in the airport. It made me grin to think after a few seconds we’d already devolved to the days that I told her to drop me off away from the school. Six years later, and she still didn’t seem to know how to separate me from being her little boy.

  “Did you have a good flight? Did you get any sleep?” she parroted motherly questions at me while we walked together to the car.

  I answered her patiently. Yes, I’d had a good flight, no, I hadn’t slept, but there wasn’t any need. Yes, I’d gotten all my things. No, I had
n’t eaten lunch. I supposed that a part of her wanted to keep asking questions so that she wouldn’t have to face any horrifying thing that I might say about my experience. Of course, I had no intention of burdening my mother with that sort of problem.

  It wasn’t until we got into the car that I posed the question: “Where’s Dad?”

  Mom’s smile faltered, fingers still around the key. I’d asked the forbidden question, the one that always hung in the air but dared not be spoken out loud. “He had to do some things at the house, honey,” she explained to me. She started to back out of her parking space. “Neighbors said they’d file a complaint if we didn’t trim up the tree in the backyard, so he’s doing that before they can get a word in with the committee.”

  Our neighborhood didn’t have a committee of that sort. I knew that she was lying; Dad had skipped out as he always did. I knew in my gut that he’d always be disappointed in me, but a part of me had hoped that after all of these years working and training and doing good by myself and the family, he’d be alright with me. No such luck.

  Still, I enjoyed the ride home. I was home, after all. I remembered my conversation with John and how unsure I’d been about where I was supposed to go. I forgot, sometimes, that I had a home here. Even if I’d made mistakes in the past, these people would still be here for me. Now at least I could relax, take a break, and maybe get a good sleep in a bed that didn’t smell like Febreze and shoeshine.

  When we reached the house, a strange feeling of déjà vu settled over me. I began to feel that there had never been any war, and I had never gone anywhere. I merely had a long, disturbing dream, and now I’d woken up again. The house remained unchanged, save for a few decorations swapped out for others. I walked up to the front door with my mother; my luggage could wait a little while.