Page 4 of Not Our First Rodeo
Cooper: Did you leave?
Cooper: I’m assuming you left.
Cooper: We shared a womb and you couldn’t even say goodbye. Smh.
Then another that just came in.
Cooper: Seriously, are you alive?
I let out a sigh and rub a hand down my face. God, he’s exhausting.
Beau: I’m with Elsie.
A text bubble pops up as he types, then disappears, then pops up again.
I chew my lip. I probably shouldn’t have told him that, but I blame my sleep- and sex-addled brain. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a good night of either.
Cooper: You sure that’s a good idea?
I let my head slide across the pillow, eyes landing on Elsie, who’s still sound asleep next to me. Just the sight of her makes the breath catch in my lungs. She’s so stunning in the mornings, when she’s messy and sleepy and carefree. She’s so rarely carefree. She’s a planner, and she likes everything to go the way she envisioned. She likes order.
And this last year has been anything but orderly.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen her like this. For the last year, even while she slept, her brow was wrinkled, her face pinched. In pain. In worry. In grief, most of all.
A matching grief pricks at my chest, but I push it down. I don’t want to let it in right now. Not when I finally have my wife in our bed again.
My fingers move over the keyboard.
Beau: Best idea I’ve had in months.
The entire town knows that Elsie and I have been split up for months, but Cooper is the only person I’ve really confided in. He alone has experienced my grief, has kept me busy, and he hasn’t allowed me to slow down enough to crash out. I know he’s going to have opinions about me hopping back into bed withElsie without trying to work through our issues, but I can’t bring myself to care just yet.
To him, this might seem like a mistake. To me, it’s the first step forward.
Discarding my phone on the nightstand, I let my eyes trail over her for another moment.
Plaid flannel sheets pool over creamy skin, and I itch to pull them away, to explore her again like I did last night. Last night was perfect, and a rush of heat slams through me when I notice the mustache burn on her neck, the fingerprint-sized marks on her hips where I lifted her to meet my thrusts.
I’m just caveman enough to want to take her back to that bar like this and show that blond city boy with the brand-new six-hundred-dollar boots and perfectly gelled hair who she belongs to. I’ve never felt overly possessive before, but when I saw him touching her last night, something in me snapped.
Just the memory of what happened between us almost makes me wake her up in my favorite way, but I hold myself back. As much as I want a repeat of last night, I want to take care of her more. She’s spent so much of her life taking care of herself, and taking over that job has always been my favorite way of showing her how much she means to me.
So as much as I want to stay in this bed with her for the rest of the day, I force myself to push the blankets off and slide off the mattress. I’m determined to make this the perfect first morning back at home. I have to hold back a hiss when my feet hit the icy wood floors. My clothes got discarded somewhere, my pants in a pile at the foot of the bed, my shirt hanging from the bedside lamp.
I tug my shirt over my head and allow myself one last glance at Elsie, pale blond hair draped over both our pillows, thick, barely visible lashes fanning over her rosy cheeks. She looks so small and fragile in our bed. I always used to think she was so strong,so unbreakable. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. Beneath her strength and resilience is a fragility, one I should have done a better job of protecting. It makes that ache return to my chest. I have to physically rub it away, feeling my heart pound beneath the pads of my fingers.
I’m so focused on her that I almost don’t notice how vacant the wall above our bed is. Before, there were two paintings. Portraits we did of each other at one of those paint and sip parties back when we lived in our tiny apartment in Utah. Neither were masterpieces, but Elsie’s portrait of me was especially bad. I remember her face scrunched up, brows knit together as she tried to paint me, her wine sitting untouched beside her. Mine was gone, and the buzz from it made my hands sloppy. Still, my portrait of her somehow came out better. It wasn’t that surprising, since I’ve always been artistic, and to that point, all of Elsie’s creativity had been channeled into dance. But still, we took them home that evening, had a few more glasses of wine, and hung them up on the wall, which caused our grumpy neighbor to pound on the door of our apartment and threaten to call the cops if we didn’t stop that “wretched banging.”
It was a different scene hanging them on the wall in this house. I’d stood on the bed, adjusting them to make sure they were straight while Elsie stood at the other end of the room, shaking her head because I wouldn’t allow her to help. Even now, I can still hear what she said.
I’m pregnant, not an invalid, Beau.
She was smiling, hands propped on her hips—ones she swore were already expanding—looking so radiant that I’d ended up putting the paintings down and lifting her against the wall and showing her that I knew exactly how much she could take.
The absence of the paintings now, memories haunting me everywhere I look, makes that ache in my chest spread,threatening to consume me. But I shove it down, spin on my heel, and leave the bedroom and the memories behind.
I’ve always loved this house. Even as a kid, when someone else owned it, and even more so since we bought it and started making improvements. It’s a cabin that used to be much more rustic than it is now, with a wraparound porch and a metal roof that sounds hypnotic when it rains. In the summer, you can look out the windows and see the wildflowers growing up in every direction in the tall grasses. In the winter, you can see snow for miles. And no matter the season, you can stand on the porch and look at the wide blue sky stretching out as far as the eye can see.
