Dirty Cowboy

by Alycia Taylor

  I took a quick shower and then dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved blue t-shirt. Then before I left, I straightened up the apartment and changed the sheets on my bed. I hadn’t spent much time in the apartment between checking on my parents and being at Alexa’s dad’s house, so I hadn’t had a lot of time to really clean up. I hated for her to think I was a pig though and I hadn’t changed the sheets for over a week.

  When the apartment was clean I left so that I could stop by and see how my parents were doing on my way. When I got to their house, they were both in the kitchen, cooking dinner together. I think the fact that they are still legitimately crazy about each other will be one of the things that will ultimately save them from this tragedy.

  “Hi guys, how are you?”

  “Hello son,” My father said. He was chopping up vegetables for stir-fry.

  “Hi sweetheart,” my mother said, kissing me on the cheek. “Have you eaten?”

  “Not yet, but Alexa and I are going out tonight so we’ll probably just pick something up.” I noticed the exchange of looks between my parents and said, “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “That look.”

  “We don’t have a look sweetie.”

  “Yes you do…you did. Do you not like Alexa?”

  “Oh honey we love Alexa,” my mom said.

  “Okay, then what was the look?”

  “Nothing, really. Nothing bad. Your father and I were just talking earlier about how much more content you seem lately. We were wondering if it had anything to do with how much time you’ve been spending with Alexa.”

  “It does, actually,” I told them.

  My mother looked happy enough to bust as she said, “I couldn’t have hand-picked a better one for you.”

  “Me neither,” I told her, honestly.

  I only had a short visit with my parents, but since I go over every day, I guess that was okay. I left there and headed over to pick Alexa up. I was a little nervous about introducing her to Brock and the rest of the guys. It wasn’t Alexa I was worried about. I knew they would love her. Any man would be a fool not to. I was a little worried about mine and Brock’s friend, Jeff. He could be a lot of fun or he could be the biggest asshole you ever met. He was someone I’d known for a long time, so I was used to him. I always wondered how other people took him though. Like Brock, he knew all my dirty little secrets. I was pretty confident that Brock knew better than to blurt them all out to my new girlfriend. I wasn’t so sure about Jeff.

  When I knocked and Alexa opened the door, I wanted to forget the whole going out for a drink thing and just jump straight to the part where we mess up my new clean sheets. She was wearing a jean skirt that stopped mid-thigh with a pair of ankle high cowboy boots and a thin, see-through blouse with one of those camisole things women wore. She looked hot and I wanted to eat her up right there.

  “Wow, you look…” Her dad walked by just then. “So pretty,” I said. Pretty didn’t cover it, but I wasn’t going to say “hot” or “edible” in front of her dad.

  “Thank you,” she said, “So do you.”

  “I look pretty?”

  She laughed, “Beautiful,” she said.

  “Oh well, that’s better. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah.” she grabbed her purse and yelled good-bye to her dad. When we got to the car I stopped and looked around to make sure he wasn’t lurking and then I said, “You don’t look pretty.” She looked surprised that I would say that and a little hurt. “You look so incredibly hot that I can hardly stand to keep my hands off of you.”

  She blushed. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I just didn’t want to say that in front of your dad.”

  With a giggle she said, “Yeah, maybe not such a good idea, but I liked hearing it.”

  We were meeting the guys at a club that was eighteen and over. Alexa had to get a red wrist band and I got a green one on the way in. That way they knew who they could serve alcohol to. The place was crowded and I had to let my eyes adjust to the light before I finally spotted my friends at a booth over in the corner. There was a small dance floor and the music was kind of loud. As we made our way over I asked her, “Are you sure that you want to stay here? It’s kind of loud and crowded.”

  “Are you trying to get out of introducing me to your friends now?” she asked, jokingly.

  “Of course not,” I told her. “You make me look so good that I’d have to be crazy to not want people to know you’re with me.”

  She grabbed my hand and when we walked up to the table all eyes were on her. “Hey! You made it!” Brock said, “I thought you were going to flake again.”

  “I tried,” I said, “Alexa wouldn’t let me.”

  Jeff, the asshole that he is reached his hand out to Alexa and said, “Well hello there, beautiful. Where have you been all my life?”

  She laughed, but I already wanted to kick his ass. “Alexa, this is Brock, Russ, Danielle, Mike and the creepy pervert here is Jeff.”

  “Hi,” she said, as we slid into the booth. I put her on the side furthest away from the asshole.

  Alexa and I ordered a drink and then Brock said, “When’s the next fight?”

  “In a few days,” I told him. “I’ll leave you guys some tickets again up front if you text me and let me know how many.”

  Danielle, Mike’s girlfriend and also someone I’d known most of my life said, “Ian, how are you’re your parents doing?” She’s a sweet girl, and it was a nice thing for her to ask, but I didn’t really want to talk about that right now.

  “They’re doing alright,” I told her. It was mostly true, they were getting better. I had my doubts that they’d ever really be “okay” again. “Thanks for asking,” I said. She smiled and then looked at Alexa and said, “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from here,” Alexa said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I’ve been away at college for about a year.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought since I’d not seen you around before…”

  “It’s okay,” Alexa told her. “Emma was my best friend, so I’ve known her family a long time.” I could tell by Alexa’s face that she was like me; she didn’t want to talk about any more of that tonight. I looked at Mike and said, “How’s the job coming?” Mike had just gotten hired on as a security officer at the mall. It was funny, if you knew Mike and his history. I wasn’t going to bring that up, being reluctant to share my own.

  “It’s good,” he said. “I deal with a lot of little shit heads, but it’s inside where it’s nice and cool and the pay is good. I can’t complain. Well, I can I guess, but no one listens. I chased some punk all the way from one end of the mall to the other because I saw him palm a bracelet. He ditched it somewhere before I caught him and his parents are saying now that I was “harassing” their baby. Sickening.”

  “At least you didn’t have to work the mall back when we were in high school,” Brock said with a laugh.

  “Hell, I’d have quit on my first day. They didn’t have mall security then, did they? If they did, I don’t remember seeing them.”

  “Why don’t you ask Ian,” Jeff said. Damn him. This was exactly the sort of thing I didn’t want them bringing up.

  Alexa looked at me. I could see her looking at me in my peripheral vision but I was staring at Jeff. I was trying to convey to him with my eyes that I really didn’t want him to go there.

  “Yeah Ian…that’s right man,” Russ said, getting in on the conversation. “You would know.” Russ and Jeff are best friends and have been since kindergarten. I would say their like one mind, but together, I think they’d only be able to come up with one. I could still see Alexa out of the corner of my eye. She looked curious now, but she wasn’t saying anything.

  “Ancient history,” I said. “Who cares about any of that anymore? So Brock, did you sign up for that amateur tournament I told you about? Wasn’t the orientation last week?”

  “It was and I did. I have to say that when I went in for
the orientation, there were some big assed sons of bitches there. I hope they don’t all look like that, they’ll kill me.”

  “Ah, it’s not always about who has the bigger muscles,” I said. “But…if you want to purse this you’ll need to get really serious about bulking up.”

  “Well, that’s something Ian knows about too,” Jeff said. “I’ll bet he could hook you up with something that will bulk you up right quick.”

  I was staring him down now and I could tell that Brock had picked up on my angst. He tried to steer him clear of it too. “I’ll do alright I think. I don’t need bulk, I got skills.”

  I laughed at that and tried to keep my focus on Brock and keep Alexa’s off of Jeff. I had my hand on her leg and I was tapping my fingers in time to the music. If Jeff opened his mouth again, I was going to ask her to dance.

  “So what do you do, Alexa?” Jeff asked her. That was good, steer the conversation her way. She could hold her own and I seriously doubted that she had any skeletons in the closet.

  “I’m still in school,” she said.

  “Oh, a smart girl,” he said. “Good for you. I should a went to school…or I should a become a fighter like Ian. Then I could say screw my scholarship and make a ton of money anyways.” I wanted to punch him in the face. Alexa looked at me and still smiling she said, “What is he talking about?”

  I tried to smile too but I was pissed, “They’re all under the impression that I’m a UFC fighter and I’m making bank,” I told her. She had her brow furrowed and I knew that wasn’t what she was asking. Jeff knew it too and for whatever reason, he was all over me tonight.

  “Ian gave his scholarship up. Did he tell you that? He was a smart little nerd until what was it, sophomore year?”

  “Alexa doesn’t want to hear all this old stuff, Jeff. Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  “It’s okay,” she said, “I’d like to hear more about you when you were young.” She was being genuine and I felt like an even bigger ass hole for wanting her not to know.

  “I thought you two knew each other for years,” Danielle said, confused about why Alexa didn’t know more about me. This shit was getting out of hand fast and Alexa was going to have more questions than I was prepared to answer.

  “You want to dance?” I asked her. There was a Tu Pac song playing overhead. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “No thanks.” She turned back to Danielle and said, “I knew his family well. Ian wasn’t around much when I was there.”

  “You must not have gone over much on Sundays,” Jeff said.

  “Drop it Jeff, now!” I snapped too quickly and too loudly. That just made Alexa more curious.

  “Why? What happened on Sundays?” she asked.

  “Visiting day,” Jeff said. I was picturing him with no front teeth after I knocked them both out. He was already ugly; it might actually help his look. Alexa turned to me and said, “What’s he talking about?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We can talk about it later. Besides, Jeff never knows what the hell he’s talking about.”

  “Aw, come on Ian. It’s fun stuff. She has a sense of humor, right? Why are you so uptight all of a sudden?”

  “I’m not uptight and none of that was fun.”

  “None of what, Ian?” Alexa asked again. Her voice was low and her questions were meant only for me, but Jeff kept answering them. “Visiting day, where?” she asked.

  “County lock-up for disorderly juveniles,” Jeff said. “Ian was a guest there.”

  “You were in jail?” she whispered that.

  “It wasn’t really jail,” I said.

  Jeff laughed and looked at Russ. “You remember that nice buzz cut he was sporting when he got out, that was priceless.”

  Alexa was still looking at me. I finally said, “I spent a couple of weeks in juvenile hall. I got caught shoplifting because these shit heads all took off and left me holding the bag.”

  “Hey, we came and visited you,” Mike said, laughing. “And don’t act all innocent, it was your idea.”

  “Yeah, you wanted to see who could take the most stuff in the shortest amount of time, remember?” Jeff said. “All I had on me was a Mars bar, man. I wasn’t going’ down for a Mars bar. What was it you had on you…like over five hundred dollars in merchandise?”

  I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even look at Alexa’s face. The worst was yet to come though when Russ said, “Leave him alone, man. He had to pay for his Roids somehow.” Mother fucker!

  Brock, thinking he was helping said, “Come on guys, leave him alone. Seriously, out of all of us, who turned out to be the most successful so far?”

  “True that,” Jeff said. “Like I said, proof that you don’t need no stinkin’ school and no stinkin’ scholarship to make the bank. Maybe if someone would have expelled me…”

  “Shut up Jeff! Just shut the fuck up!” I looked at Alexa and said, “Let’s dance.”

  She didn’t look like she wanted to, but she got up and went with me to the dance floor. The song was slow and she slipped her arms around my neck and I put mine around her waist and pulled her into me. Her posture was stiff and I could tell she was bothered by what had been said at the table. Hoping to make it better I said, “I really wasn’t a delinquent. I just made some bad choices…all of which I paid for.” She just nodded and we finished the rest of our dance in silence. When the song was over I said, “Do you want to go home?” she looked upset.

  “No,” she said. “It’s early yet.” That wasn’t the reply I was hoping for. It was early. Early enough for Jeff to have enough time to ruin all of my chances with this girl that I was becoming very attached to. We went back over to the table and there was a fresh drink in each of our spots. Jeff said, “I felt bad for giving you a hard time, drink up.” We thanked him, but he couldn’t leave it at that, as usual. “The truth is, Ian is my hero,” he said, looking at Alexa. “When we were freshmen, he wanted to wrestle. We’d all wrestled in middle school, but high school was a different story. These guys were serious and they were huge and we were just puny little runts.”

  Alexa looked at me and smiled, “I can’t picture you puny,” she said. I knew what was coming when Russ opened his mouth, “He wasn’t that way for long. All he needed was a little bit of chemical persuasion.”

  She didn’t bother looking at me that time. She had put together his earlier comment about the Roids with the chemical persuasion…I could see it in her eyes. She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. It was stupid of me not to just tell her all of this before she met these guys. It probably would have been less shocking that way.

  “What did you gain that first year, Ian? Wasn’t it something like fifty pounds?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this shit,” I told him again. My tone was more firm and they still didn’t get it.

  “Remember when coach asked him how he was bulking up so fast and he said that he just ate a lot while he was studying?” Mike asked. He and Jeff laughed and then Jeff said, “Yeah, but he was winning matches so coach didn’t really care what the answer was. Hell, he probably would have even supplied them if Ian ran out.”

  Alexa was quietly sipping her drink. These idiots went on about my shady past for another half hour before they got tired of it and started razzing someone else. The damage was done though; I could see it in Alexa’s pretty green eyes. Later on in the evening Russ got on a tangent again and went on about how I didn’t give a shit that they expelled me and how jealous he was because he had to go to school and I got to work out every day. It just got worse and worse.

  Chapter Eight

  Ian

  After a few more drinks, they all decided they wanted to go get something to eat. I tried to beg off, but I got the feeling Alexa was suddenly avoiding being alone with me. She wasn’t really saying anything, to anyone, but when I said I thought we’d pass she said, “Do I get a vote?”

  “Of course,” I told her. “I’m sorry, you didn’t say anything so I thought
you didn’t want to go.”

  “I’m kind of hungry,” she said.

  “Okay, we’ll go.”

  Danielle was their designated driver so she drove all of those shitheads and Alexa hadn’t drank anything stronger than Pepsi, so she drove us. We met up at a little café outside of town that we used to go to a lot when we were teenagers and hanging out way too late on the streets. It was a place that stirred up a lot of memories for me because there was a while there that I didn’t really have a permanent place to live. During that time, the owner here would let me come in at night and sweep floors and clean windows, stuff like that in exchange for food. Brock knew a lot of that and Jeff knew some. I was afraid that being there would just give them more fodder to make Alexa think the worst of me. I can already tell that the respect she held for me was waning. She had driven all the way out here without saying a single word to me unless I asked her a question and then all I got was a one word answer.

  When we drove up in front of the café and she started to jump out of the car I said, “Hey wait a sec, please. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing,” she said. It was reminiscent of the night Kristie text me.

  “Alexa, I can tell that something’s wrong. Tell me what it is, please. Stop saying “nothing” when it is very obviously, “something.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m just hungry.” Her voice was terse and impatient with me.

  “My friends can be assholes sometimes…” I started. I know that was a good example of me trying to put the responsibility I should be taking off on someone else…but I was desperate.

  “They’ve been nice to me. I’m just hungry, Ian, really.”

  She started to reach for the door handle again and I reached for her. She flinched. She fucking flinched like my touch was taboo or something. “That’s it, Alexa…what the hell is it?” I sounded pissed, but I was just frustrated. I had a pretty good idea what it was, but I wanted her to tell me. I didn’t want to put ideas in her head.

  “Don’t talk to me like that, please.” She said that nicely, but that fire was raging behind those green eyes.