by Kate Sheperd
Then again, maybe Charlie could give me a woman’s perspective…
But no. Especially not after what had just happened.
Our hands brushed when we went to put up our harnesses. I didn’t think anything about that. But the way she blushed…I’m not sure what it was, but that was the first time I’d actually seen her as a woman. It left me wondering what it would be like to touch a woman again. To touch her.
I tried to push those thoughts out of my head. It was just loneliness talking. I made my way back up to the house. Maybe Ruth had cooled off enough to talk by now. I hoped so.
I found her in the living room. She was curled up on the corner of the couch asleep. Her book had fallen to her lap. I had to smile. Seeing her like that, it was easy to believe that things were still the way they had been. Or at least that they could be again. I eased myself down next to her and let my hand rest on her shoulder, trying not to wake her.
It only lasted a few minutes. She began to stretch and then tensed as she felt my hand on her shoulder. She looked at it pointedly and then at me. I removed it reluctantly, and we sat in awkward silence for a few minutes.
“I was hopin’ we could talk,” I finally said to her.
“About?” she said icily, drawing herself up until she managed to somehow look imposing even with her legs curled up underneath her.
“This mornin’,” I said. “I feel like we left a few things unresolved and I just—“
“Don’t you have some work to do?” she snapped.
“Nothin’ that can’t wait ‘til tomorrow.” I tried to take her hand, but she pulled away. I hesitated before speaking again. “Ruth, I—“
“Oh, will you just go?” she shouted. “Go! Get out. Get the hell out of my sight!”
I hesitated another moment. I opened my mouth to speak again, but she was having none of it.
“Go!”
Well, that was that. I threw up my hands before getting up and heading for the front door without another word. Not that I could have gotten one in edgewise. My boots kicked up clouds of dust as I headed across the driveway digging my keys out of my pocket. I hopped into my brown Chevy truck and headed for Bobby’s Watering Hole.
It’s where I usually go when she gets like this. I can blow off some steam, and on the off chance she cools down and calls me I can usually find a ride back home. And in the much more likely event that she doesn’t cool down, the Star Motel is right across the street. I guess I could go home and sleep on the couch, but it just seems a little too cliché.
I made my way into Bobby’s and sat at the bar.
“Uh oh,” said Shelly. “Don’t usually see you in here this early. Everything ok?” she asked, handing me a Budweiser without me even having to order it.
Shelly is the bartender at Bobby’s most days. And nights for that matter. Sweet girl, has a husband who works up at the mills and two kids cute as buttons.
“Yeah,” I lied, even though she and I both know it isn’t or I wouldn’t be here. “How’s the family?”
“Good,” she said with a smile. “Johnny got promoted, Gracie lost a tooth, and Samuel starts kindergarten in a few weeks. Can’t complain.”
“Good to hear,” I told her, saluting with my beer bottle and taking a swig. She didn’t ask about Ruth because she knew damn well that’s why I was there.
She gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and went back to her work without a word, for which I was grateful. I didn’t really feel like talking about it now the way I’d wanted to talk about it earlier. Which was unfortunate for me, because just then Carl made his way up to the bar and sat down next to me. Don’t get me wrong, Carl is a great friend. Which, at the moment, was exactly what I wanted to avoid. He would know something was wrong and he wouldn’t leave until we had talked it out. Oh well.
“Hey, Carl,” I greeted him.
“Howdy,” he replied with a grin. “How ya been?”
“Oh, ya know,” I said.
The grin had already dropped from his face. Christ, he catches on quick.
“Uh oh,” he said. Then, raising his voice, “Hey, Shelly! Two more!” he shouted as he held up two fingers. He polished off his beer and lowered his voice again as he said, “Tell me what’s up, man.”
“Ah, it’s nothin’,” I said, still trying to weasel my way out of talking.
“Bullshit,” he said, crossing his arms. I sighed.
“Fine,” I told him. I know when I’m beat.
Shelly brought back two Budweisers and left us. Carl pushed one toward me and took one for himself before settling back and waiting for me to talk. I figured I might as well not put off the inevitable.
“It’s Ruth,” I told him.
To which he snorted and told me, “No shit, Sherlock.”
“Well I don’t know what ya expect me to tell ya,” I said, exasperated. “It’s Ruth. It’s always Ruth. What else do you want me to say?”
“Bad one, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling more defeated than I had in a long time. “Yeah, it was a big one.”
Carl nodded. “What’d y’all fight about?”
“Honestly?” I said, “I’m not even sure. I said I was gonna get to work and she lost it. Threw the coffee pot at me.” I tried to laugh, but it sounded weak even to me.
“You think maybe she was jealous of you goin’ out on the ranch with that woman Charlotte?” he said as he elbowed me.
I actually did laugh at that. “Just let Charlie hear you call her ‘that woman.’ She’ll kick your ass.”
“Hey, just askin’,” he said jokingly, holding his hands up. “Some women might take exception to a man lettin’ a woman do a man’s work. Might think he had his reasons, if you know what I mean.”
“Carl, Charlie can work circles around you and half the men I’ve hired. And besides that, it was Ruth’s idea to hire her to begin with. So can it.”
“Alright, man,” he said. “Alright.”
We sat in silence sipping our beers for a few minutes. I thought maybe he was actually going to drop it when he spoke up again.
“This have anything to do with Colton?” he asked.
My jaw tensed up as I fought the urge to clock him right in the jaw. He didn’t deserve that. He was just a concerned friend trying to help. And what’s more, he was probably right. Even so, it still took me a couple minutes to cool down. And God bless him, he gave me those couple minutes to cool down, without pushing the issue.
“Yeah,” I finally said. “I think it probably does.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder for a moment before speaking.
“Buck,” he finally said. “It is a terrible thing to lose a baby. It is even worse when that baby is stillborn.” I had to fight back tears as he spoke. “But you can’t spend the rest of your life grieving,” he continued. “You gotta let go. How long has it been?”
I didn’t reply.
“Buck. How long has it been?”
“Three years,” I replied. My voice was a hell of a lot raspier than I would have liked. “Three years this September.”
He nodded. He knew that already, of course. He had just wanted me to say it.
“Buck, three years is long enough to grieve. Y’all need to move on, live your lives.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
“Have y’all thought about..I dunno…tryin’ again?”
I snorted at that. “Carl, she ain’t let me touch her in three years.”
“Ah. Right. Ok.”
We drank the rest of our beers in silence.
*****
I arrived to work a little early, and decided to go on up to the stables. It was still predawn, no light in the sky. Normally I don’t get here this early. There’s a good bit of construction on the highway and it usually takes me a good hour to hour and a half longer to get here. Might as well get Winchester saddled. I could go and check on the cattle in the back forty and maybe get some of yesterday’s work done while I was at it, as long as I could
find a lantern or a flashlight to light my way.
And that was exactly what I was trying to do when I tripped. I wasn’t prepared for it and I went down hard. I cried out as the ground bit sharply into my knees, and more sharply into my unprotected palms.
“Charlie?” a voice slurred from the darkness.
“Ahhggh, Jesus! What the…Buck?” I said, flabbergasted.
“I think you kicked me,” he slurred.
“Kicked you, my ass,” I said under my breath. “I tripped over you,” I said a little more loudly. “What the hell are you doing out here?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, giggling. “I am out here.”
“Christ almighty,” I mumbled to myself, as I got up and made my way toward him.
“Here,” I said. “Let me help you.” I knelt down beside his dark form, but I still couldn’t see well enough to tell where I should even try to grab to help him up. “Actually, you know what? Hold on.”
I got up and began searching for a lantern. I found one not far from us, managed to light it, and made my way back to him. I knelt beside him again. He seemed to be…asleep.
“Hey,” I said, shaking his shoulder. “Hey.”
“Oh, hey,” he said blearily, opening his eyes. “I dreamed you kicked me.”
I stared at him as he broke out into a grin. “Right…”
“Ok, well,” he said with a shrug, still grinning, “Let’s get Winchester and Jasper saddled up.”
“Yeah, no,” I said. “You need to go to bed.”
“Oh. Oh, but…Ruth has the bed. I can’t take the bed. Ruth has it. Ruth has the bed. Can’t take it,” he said, shaking his head vigorously.
“Right…well, you still need to lay down. Let’s get you to the house.”
I managed to somehow get him hauled up and get my shoulder under his arm.
“Come on,” I said, hauling toward the doors of the stable.
“Wait,” he said. “Wait, wait. I needed to tell you something.”
“It can wait,” I said, trying to pull him closer to the doors.
“No,” he said, as he pulled away from me. “It can’t wait.”
I was afraid that he was going to fall, but instead he stumbled to a post and leaned against it.
“Come here,” he said. “Please.”
I walked over to him and waited, not sure what to expect. And then he wrapped me in his arms. Pretty much the last thing I would have expected. He held me for a long moment before whispering, “Charlie…I need you.”
I remained still, unsure of what to say or do. After a brief moment, he pulled away, and I thought that he was done. Until he grasped my face in his hands and kissed me right on the mouth. And I couldn’t help but to kiss him back with abandon. It was over all too soon.
“I just needed you to know that,” he said, pulling away. He tried to walk off toward the house, but he kept stumbling and almost falling.
“Here,” I said, putting my shoulder back under his arm. “Let me help.”
I helped him up the front steps. Thankfully, the door was unlocked. I didn’t know where his keys were, but my guess was that they were probably with his truck. More than likely he had left it at the bar and gotten a ride home.
I helped him inside, laid him on the couch, and covered him with an afghan that was lying across the back of the couch. Then I let myself out and saddled up Winchester. I still had a job to do.
Once I’d fed the cattle on the back forty, I rode around the perimeter looking for places where the fence needed mending. Not all of the perimeter, mind you. That would have taken days on horseback. But I did as much as I could before the sun started to set. I did not allow myself to think about the events of the morning.
When I made it back to the stable, no one was around. Buck’s pickup wasn’t in the drive. Either he hadn’t gotten it back yet, or he’d gone out again. I decided it was none of my business. I hopped in my truck and headed home.
When I got to my house, I hung my keys by the door and headed to the bathroom to start a bath in the claw foot tub. I needed to unwind. I left it running while I went to the kitchen and grabbed myself a beer. I set it on the vanity next to the tub as I pulled off my boots, undressed, and unbraided my hair. Some people say I have beautiful hair. It’s naturally red and hangs down to my waist. Sometimes I agree with them. Other times I just think it’s a pain in the ass.
I climbed into the tub and leaned back into the welcoming warm water. I savored it as I scrubbed away the day’s dirt from my skin. But the one thing I couldn’t scrub away was the feeling of his kiss. I touched my fingers to my lips and closed my eyes.
*****
The next few months at work felt like something from the twilight zone. I don’t know if he didn’t remember what had happened that day, or if he pretended not to, but neither of us mentioned it. There were times I could swear I felt his eyes on me, but when I looked he would be absorbed in something else entirely. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. I was torn.
I didn’t know what he and Ruth fought about, but I knew that he loved her and I knew that whatever it was, it broke his heart. So in that way, I was glad that he ignored anything that there might be between us. I wished that they could work out whatever it was and be happy.
But on the other hand, there was a part of me that longed for him to acknowledge it, just once. For him to take me in his arms again, kiss me again…or at the very least admit that he once had. I knew that part of me was selfish, and I told it to shut up every time it came around. But I still couldn’t help feeling that way. I decided that I had to keep it to myself, no matter what.
And for those few months, life went on, more or less, as always.
It was in January that everything changed. We had to go out to the north perimeter to mend the fence. Buck had just bought a new four-wheeler back in November, so there was no point in dragging the horses out all that way in the cold. We made it up there fine, but the snowstorm hit when we were halfway through with mending the fence. We finished as quickly as we could and headed back to the four-wheeler. My heart sank as I listened to it cough and sputter as Buck tried to start it. I held my breath as he tried it again and again. But it still didn’t start. Buck swore as he stood and kicked one of the tires.
There was no way we could hike all the way back to the house. We’d more than likely freeze before we even made it close. I could already feel the bite of the cold growing sharper through my clothes and gloves. I rubbed my hands together in a futile effort to generate warmth while Buck continued to swear under his breath. Finally he managed to compose himself with what I could tell was a great deal of effort.
“Come on,” he said, as he trudged away from the fence and toward the woods that dominated the northern side of the property. “We’ll have to head for the cabin.”
I struggled to keep up as I tried to figure out what he was talking about. After a moment it came to me. He’d shown me the place when I had first come to work here, but truth be told, I had forgotten it existed. I didn’t think I’d ever been back there since that first tour of the property. It was a dump of place, and I’m pretty sure it only managed to remain standing out of sheer stubbornness. But as they say, any port in a storm. It beat the hell out of freezing to death.
We trudged through the snow wordlessly for a while before I finally asked, “How much farther?”
“I dunno,” he panted, his breath coming out in a white plume. “Maybe a mile. It’s hard to say.”
“Damn,” I said. Neither of us said another word as we continued to make our way through the storm.
Finally, after several minutes, I could make out the outline of the cabin through the snow.
“About damn time,” I said, my teeth clicking together.
“You said it,” he replied. His teeth were chattering just as badly as mine were.
As soon as we had shut the door against the storm Buck went to work coaxing a fire to life in the fireplace. I took stock of the place as he went about his wo
rk. It was in even worse repair than I remembered. But it was still standing and that was all that mattered. I still couldn’t stop shivering. The inside of the cabin was just as brutally cold as the storm outside.
On the bright side, Buck had finally gotten the fire built up into a healthy blaze.
“Here, come here,” he said. He had dragged what appeared to be every blanket in the place in front of the fire and he had them all draped across his shoulders as he held one side of the blankets open, inviting me in. I hesitated. I knew I needed the warmth, but…
He seemed to sense my hesitation and lowered his arm, turning with a shrug to look into the fire. He looked almost hurt, but I told myself that was stupid. And I was being stupid, I realized. I needed the warmth. We both did. Not a damn thing wrong with trying to survive. I stripped off my coat, boots, and gloves as he had done and nestled my way under the blanket with him.
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that my feelings for him would have the decency to put themselves on hold, given our situation. Well, let me tell you, that is not what happened. The minute his arm was around me, it seemed like I was feeling about a thousand things at once. But for the first time in months I wasn’t the least bit conflicted. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me and kiss the hell out of me, and I wanted him to do it now.
What I wouldn’t have given to be able to know what he was thinking right then. His arm tightened around me just the slightest bit and I tensed. I couldn’t take much more of this. I tilted my head up to look at him and found him staring at me intently and my breath caught in my throat. We locked eyes and suddenly not a single place in me felt even the slightest bit cold.
I’m not even sure who kissed who. I just know that in an instant my lips were pressed against his and everything else was instantly a thousand miles away. Nothing else mattered. The kiss lasted forever, and it still wasn’t long enough. I was trembling by the time he pulled away, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the cold.
His eyes were almost feverish. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing. Instead he kissed me again, wrapping his fingers through my hair as he did. And I kissed him back for everything I was worth. My fingers seemed to work of their own accord, undoing the buttons of his shirt.
