by S Doyle
Victory turned to confusion.
“I don’t understand. We live together. We hang out together. We feel like a real couple. Didn’t you have fun on graduation night?”
“I did. I had fun.”
It was the truth. Being around Ellie was as much fun as I had ever had being with anyone else. Partly because I knew her so well. Because she knew me so well. We had all this shorthand for speaking that it made being around her so easy.
“Then I don’t get it. We like each other. We have fun together. We’re attracted to each other, but I’m not supposed to want anything else or think about anything else?”
“Look, I know all of this is super confusing. Because everything you said is true. But you have to believe me when I tell you if we add sex to that mix, it’s going to be even harder. Because this has to end, Ellie. You and me.”
Her face fell a little at that. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. We went into this as an arrangement. A temporary one. We didn’t really get married. Can you say now you want to spend the rest of your life with me? Only me and that’s it, even though you’ve never had sex with another guy, never seriously dated anyone else?”
She was thoughtful for a moment and I thought that was a good sign. She was actually listening to me.
“You didn’t want to marry me,” she said. “You didn’t plan to spend your life with me either.”
“No,” I said quietly. Truthfully. “I didn’t. I wanted to help you. I succeeded. We succeeded. Circumstances changed, and I’m trying my best to continue on. But if I take your virginity, if we start sleeping together… then it’s like we’ll have this weird marriage in which neither one of us had a choice. Then if one or the other wants to walk away…”
“Ugh! Why do you have to make sex seem so complicated? You banged some chick in Missoula and it wasn’t a big deal.”
Shari? Sherry? Something like that.
“I don’t even remember her name. Yes, sex can be simple and uncomplicated. It wouldn’t be that way between us, because we care about each other. I think you know that. The other night was… intense.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You think I’m being really immature about this.”
“I hate to remind you, but you are in fact a virgin. I’m not saying you’re a kid, but your sexual experience is nonexistent. You have to take my word about this.”
“And you’re really okay with me losing my virginity to someone else?”
No. No, I wasn’t. “I’m a guy, Ellie. Cut me some slack with that question.”
“Fine.”
“We good?”
“We’re… okay.”
“I’ll take that.” I stood up, then chucked her a little on the shoulder. See, I thought, a couple of buddies. “It’s just a few more years. We’ve got this.”
I left the barn and made my way back to Wyatt and tried not to think about how long three years actually was.
“I’ve got this,” I told myself.
Too bad I didn’t believe me even a little bit.
Five
Ellie
July
I was rolling my cart down the supermarket aisle when Bobby MacPherson turned the corner coming toward me. Normally I would have kept moving forward, head straight, not saying a word, but I figured we were cool now so I had to at least be friendly.
“Hey Bobby.”
He smiled and came over to me, a small cart hanging from his arm. “Hey Ellie, what’s up?”
“Nothing much.”
Nothing at all really. Since graduation it had been all work and no fun. Jake and I were managing, but it was there. Between us now. This weird thing. A mutual attraction we were not going to act on for good reasons.
We were both trying to pretend it wasn’t there. That wasn’t working either.
“What about you?” I asked him.
“Helping my mom out. I don’t know if you heard. They are officially getting divorced.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“For her it does. That’s why I’m trying to help out. Make things easier for her.” He lifted the basket of food.
“That’s nice of you.” Bobby MacPherson and nice. Two words I would not normally put together. “Are you still heading to school next month?”
I knew Bobby was planning to go to University of Montana. It was where most of the kids in my class who were going to college were going.
For the first time, I found myself a little jealous. The idea of getting away from home. Being some place new and different. Right now it was very appealing.
“I’m not sure. Might have to put things off a semester. We’ll see.”
“Oh, that sucks.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Well, good luck. With everything.”
He gave a chin nod and I started to roll forward.
“Hey can I ask you something?”
I stopped. “Sure.”
“What is the deal with you and Jake?”
It was weird, but I got this horrible feeling in my stomach even thinking about what we were. “No deal. Same as always. We couldn’t get divorced because of the storm…”
“No, sure. It’s a money thing. But at Pete’s on graduation night… I don’t know, I thought maybe things were different between you two.”
They were. They were totally different. Not in a good way either.
“Nope. Nothing different.” Then I said it. The dreaded line everybody who has ever been in this situation really hates to say, but sort of has to say. “We’re just friends.”
“Cool,” he said as if he liked my answer. “I wasn’t trying to pry or anything. Curious is all.”
“Sure. I understand. Jake and I are weird.”
He smiled. “A little bit. Anyway, see you around.”
“Yep.”
I finished my shopping and as I was checking out I thought about what Bobby said. Or didn’t say about what he thought was going on between Jake and me on graduation night. Or as I liked to refer to it, the most embarrassing moment of my life.
Granted I was only eighteen, but it ranked.
Then I thought about why Bobby cared. Jake thought he had a thing for me. Maybe that was his subtle way of asking if I still considered myself single even though I was married.
I don’t know what I thought I was. Not that it mattered. My head was so mixed up about my feelings for Jake it was impossible to think about anyone else. Definitely not Bobby. Sure we were cool, on speaking terms, but I knew too much about what he was like with girls. He could have grown up some, but I just wasn’t interested in him that way.
Because he wasn’t Jake. Which was crushing. I couldn’t be with Jake, because Jake didn’t want me, even though he did. But I couldn’t think about other guys because they didn’t compare.
I was going to be a virgin forever. Worse, I still wasn’t getting the whole masturbating thing right. I had tried so many times since our kiss, because that kiss, once he’d kissed me back, had been super hot. Every time I thought about it I got aroused, but I just couldn’t get myself over the finish line.
You might think running a cattle ranch and keeping my hands off my best friend, who only now wasn’t, would be enough for any adult woman to handle.
But oh no, I was determined to have an orgasm.
Very determined. Because if this was it for me—if I was going to spend my life pining after a guy I couldn’t have—it was only fair that came with as many self-induced orgasms as a woman could handle.
Jake
I let the hot water hit my back and leaned my head forward on the cool tile. I had done some heavy lifting today, moving hay bales around the barn, and I felt it. I let the water do its thing and let my mind wander.
Except when I did that, it usually only ever wandered to one place.
Ellie.
We were off. I knew that. I had confused her and she wasn’t really sure where she stood with me. I don’t know if it was fair or not, but it’s how things stood. Eventually,
she would get over it.
Eventually, I would too. I had to believe I wasn’t going to spend the next three years on the edge of desire only to never fulfill it. At some point the wanting had to fade away.
Then I thought of the kiss. This was usually the part where I forced it out of my mind. Where I refused to dwell. But I was alone, in my shower, and my body needed… something.
All I had to do was remember how it felt to have her in my arms. I remembered grabbing her ass in that dress. That fucking simple but sexy dress. All her hair falling down around her back.
Helpless to stop myself, I wrapped my hand around my now-hard cock. Stroking myself hard while I thought about her.
I told myself I could replace with her with some actress. Scarlett Johansson. Charlize Theron. Blondes. I liked blondes and Ellie had honey brown hair.
Ellie’s hair. All down her back, her ass in my hand, her tongue in my mouth. It had been so fucking hot. Just a kiss, too.
I pumped myself faster. I needed this done. I need to come so I could stop thinking about her. Stop thinking about her like this. My balls got tight and I started snapping my hips as if I was actually fucking her. Then the punch came, the one that felt like it started in my lower back and ran down through my balls as my come shot out of me. So damn good.
This time I put both hands on the tile and rested my head again while I caught my breath. While I let myself feel my body. How good and sated it was. The guilt would come eventually. That I had done that, thinking about her. Wondering how it would feel if it was her hand.
Her mouth.
Her pussy.
Oh God.
I turned off the water, dried myself off, got dressed, and made my way downstairs where my wife was making us dinner. Some taco pie casserole recipe she found on Facebook she knew I would like.
Because she always knew what I liked. It was that simple with her.
“Hey,” I said.
She turned away from the pan she had on the stove and smiled.
“Hey, this is going to be so freaking good. You are going to cry.”
I thought about her smile. It was pretty. It would always be pretty. But it wasn’t the same. Not since I shut her down. Not since I drew a line between us and told her to stay on her side.
“Smells good,” I told her.
Then I let myself think it. Just for a second I let myself think, what if this really could be our life? What if we stayed married? What if we made it real? I could buy my land and we could add it to Long Valley Ranch.
Have kids, raise them together. Two best friends. Two lovers.
I waited for how it felt in my chest. I expected I would have a sense of claustrophobia. That I was putting myself in a situation I would never be able to get out of. That even if at some point I realized I was never going to love her like a husband should, I would never let myself leave because of how guilty I would feel doing that.
Hurting Ellie hurt me. I’d felt like crap after the kiss, because I knew even though she had eventually understood why I’d shut her down, I’d still hurt her. If we became lovers, if we tried to turn this into something real and it didn’t work, I would go to my grave never letting her know how I felt.
That wasn’t even considering her feelings. I showed up on a damn white horse and saved her from a foster home. Was it all those feelings of gratitude that had morphed into her thinking she wanted me like that? Hell, was it plain teenage horniness? She was a young woman. Living with me. Was it circumstances that made her believe she wanted me?
If I crossed the line, if I took her to bed, would she ever really know the difference between loving me or forever being grateful to me?
I didn’t consider myself much of a romantic, but I had to think it would suck if I knew deep in my gut that Ellie never truly loved me. That she couldn’t know if she loved me because she never had a chance to see what anything else was like.
I could see it there. Right in the middle of the damn kitchen floor. The line I had drawn between us. I could step over it, turn off the gas, take her hand and lead her upstairs. To my room. To my bed.
She wouldn’t say no. In fact she’d be happy. Excited.
I could do that and potentially trap each of us into something that was no less than a life sentence.
“I need to head out to the barn for a second. Is that okay?”
“Sure. This thing needs to bake for another fifteen minutes. You’ve got time. Jake, everything okay? You’ve got an odd look on your face.”
I looked at her. I thought of how hard I’d come just thinking about kissing her.
I thought the line was so damn thin.
“Fine. I just need to leave.”
It probably sounded stupid and made no sense to her, but I knew if I didn’t walk out the back door….
If I didn’t head to the barn and take a few seconds to get myself under control…
I might cave.
I couldn’t do it. I had to be strong enough for both us. I walked outside, made my way to the barn, got to the center of it and I sunk down on my haunches. I counted it out. From a hundred down to one.
That’s how I would get through this, I realized. This wasn’t about me and what might happen to me if I crossed the line. This was about her. I had to protect Ellie. From myself. From herself. I had to be strong enough for her.
That, I thought I could do. That, I knew I could do.
Six
Ellie
September (Or as I came to know it… The month Carol came to town and ruined everything.)
You know how stuff can just happen to you one day? You’re going along with your life, and everything is fine if not great, but you’re still moving. One foot in front of the other.
My scales were constantly set to five and five. Nothing was either good or bad, they just were.
Jake and I were mostly doing okay. There was tension yes, but there wasn’t anger. At least not on my part. I don’t think on his part either.
Then one day I was pulling the truck into the portico next to the house and I noticed a strange car in the driveway. I made my way into the house, but it was empty. Out to the barn, but it too was empty. That was strange. Not that it was empty. Jake could be off anywhere doing anything, but if someone had come for a visit where would they go?
I wandered out from the barn down to the pen, and that’s when I saw them. Jake and a woman were standing on the fence, and Jake was pointing out various different calves.
She was young, thin, and blonde. Super blonde. His preferred type. And she appeared to be laughing at everything Jake said.
Jake was not that funny.
I put away the feeling in my chest and did the grown-up thing. I headed out to meet them. When they saw me they both hopped down off the fence. She was wearing dark skintight jeans that wouldn’t last a day working a ranch, these adorable cowboy boots, and some cool light coat I would have no idea where to even think about buying.
I hated her immediately.
“Hey, Ellie, we were just talking about you.”
Were they?
“Ellie, this is Carol. She’s a travel vet staying with her family in town for a while. Carol, this is Ellie.”
“His wife.” Okay. I know I said that too loudly. Then I tried to cover it up with a stupid joke. “Yep, the old ball and chain.”
“Hi Ellie.” Carol stretched out her hand, and so I had to take it. Shake it. Let it go. “I didn’t think you guys were really married.”
“We’re not,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “That’s just my little joke.”
“Yeah, it’s hysterical,” Jake said.
“I heard…” Carol said, “that Jake married you after your dad died to save you from having to go to a foster home.”
Yep. That was the story. Good old Jake.
“Which is very cool you would do that,” she told Jake. A soft smile playing around her lips.
Wow. This was happening. Actual flirting was happening in front of me.
&nb
sp; “So what brings you out to Long Valley?” I asked.
Did you hear in town there was a married but not really married hot guy out here and decide to give it a shot?
I, of course, did not ask her that question.
“Oh, I was at the Simmons ranch down in Colorado and heard about what Jake was doing with his different breeding techniques. I knew I was going to be in town and I couldn’t help myself. I’m sort of a geek about that kind of stuff.”
I nodded. Don Simmons was rancher in Colorado that Jake emailed frequently as the two men were both enthusiasts when it came to cow breeding.
“Don gave me his information and I emailed Jake to see if it was okay that I stop by to check out his operation.”
“I told you about this,” Jake said to me.
He told me about this? He told me Carol, the hot vet, was coming to the ranch to flirt with my husband?
I tried to think back. Then I remembered. A vet from Colorado was coming. He would have known she was a woman. He couldn’t have known how pretty she was.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked her.
“It’s really amazing. Especially knowing what you guys suffered last spring.”
“Yep, Jake has a really high birth rate on his insemination program. He knows how to work the ladies, if you know what I mean.”
Wow, another really bad joke.
“Well,” Carol coughed. “I don’t want to take up any more of your day. Thanks for letting me come check it out, Jake.”
“You said you wanted to ride out and see the property,” Jake reminded her.
She tilted her head and smiled at him. “Another time?”
“Sure.”
I wanted to vomit.
“Really nice meeting you, Ellie.”
I hope you fall into a ditch on your way home and die, bitch.
I, of course, did not say that. That was awful of me really. I wasn’t that person.
“You too, Carol. Definitely come back and Jake can show you the land and the full operation.”
“Great. See you both around.”
She left, her butt swinging from left to right as she did. I didn’t have it in me to look to see if Jake was watching her go. Instead I said, “I’ve got a bunch of supplies in the truck I’m going to need help with.”
