Page 12 of The Pieces We've Lost

The boys kept talking about their schedules. Jake was competing in a couple days, and Mikey had ridden early in the week, during the first group. He made it to the semifinals round for bull riding so he had been hanging out the past few days.

I tried my best to be present in their conversation, but all I could think about was that girl. I had so many questions. Where did she go? Why did she react the way she did? Was it something I did? I remembered the way her eyes softened for a moment as she looked at me, like the way the sky clears up after a storm. But that was before I fucked it up and they went back to the icy glare I earned when she ran into me.

I thought about what it would be like to brush the curls out of her face, to really look into those baby-blue eyes and then to—What am I thinking? I just met this girl. Met was an overstatement, actually. I hadn’t even gotten her name. The chances of me seeing her again in this city were slim to none. I needed to focus on roping and not on the way my name would sound coming off her lips.

“Carson, are you even listening?” Mikey punched me in the arm.

“Ow! What?” I snapped out of my daydream about the girl.

“Brother, you were the one who wanted to talk about something else and you aren’t even paying attention?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

“Sorry, I was just thinking,” I muttered.

“Well, stop thinking and start listening. Anyway, what we were saying was that when you and Reid win this whole thing, we need to truly celebrate. I’m talkin’ abigcelebration. Maybe we hit up the strip clubs when we get to Vegas,” Mikey droned on, talking about things I didn’t care about.

We talked for a couple more hours, about rodeo and work, andnotabout the mysterious blue-eyed girl, before we decided to call it a night and go back to our trailers.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ellison

Irushed away from the cowboy right as he started to apologize. Before I took off, I had taken a moment to look at him. A few pieces of his chestnut-brown hair curled out of his baseball cap, and his eyes, kind of a hazel color with blue mixed in, had looked into mine with fascination and intrigue. He looked nice and was probably a decent person, but it was too late, the damage was already done. I’d acted like a complete and utter bitch, but it was for the best.

I had far too much baggage to explain to a complete stranger about how and why he caught me off guard when he simply uttered the words baby blue. I hadn’t heard those words spoken together in fifteen years. Not since I heard my dad call my mom that name for the very last time. I couldn’t even listen to the George Strait song he got it from. It was too painful, and I had to skip it every time.

I quickly found Isabelle at a corner table with some friends she was catching up with. I hated to take her away from her night out, but I wasn’t in the mood to stay.

“Is, we need to go,” I said, giving an apologetic look to her friends.

“Oh, is everything okay?” she asked.

“Everything’s fine, I just want to get out of here.” I would explain everything to her later. Right now, I was determined to leave so I wouldn’t have to potentially run into Mr. Resistol or Deer-In-The-Headlights dude again.

“Okay. Bye, guys! I’ll see you later.” She waved at her friends and followed me out to the car.

Since Isa was driving, I knew she only had one drink. Usually I was the designated driver, but tonight was the exception.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?” Isa looked over at me as she turned onto the main road to head out of town.

“I love you, but going out is always a shitshow,” I admitted. “There was an incident involving someone trying to get me to put on his cowboy hat.”

“Oh, God. Please don’t tell me you punched him or something.”

Isa knew how I could get sometimes when a man went too far. There had been way too many times I left a bar with bruised knuckles. Honestly, I was a little shocked the cops had never been called on me. Probably because the men I punched knew they were in the wrong. Besides, I wasn’t just going around punching men like Rocky. I had my reasons for doing it.

“No, of course not. I just told him off,” I defended myself. “Then I ran into someone.”

“Who? Wait, was it one of your exes?” Now she was intrigued.

“No, nothing like that. I mean Iliterallyran into someone. I don’t know who he was. But he said somethingthat completely threw me off,” I explained. “He was like, ‘baby blue. Like the George Strait song.’” I mimicked his voice the best I could, even though it came off more as mocking him.

“What! Ellie, that’s cute! And you wanted to leave after that?” Isa had always been a hopeless romantic, constantly thinking about “meet cutes”—or whatever they called them in the romance novels she was always reading.

She tried to get me to read one of them once, saying it might help with my unrealistic standards for men. I read it, but I didn’t think men like that even existed. There was no way a real man actually thought the way fictional ones did.

I was fairly certain men either thought about nothing or the most random shit. They didn’t think about the way “the sunlight reflected in a woman’s eyes like the light hitting a pool of water perfectly at sunset.” No, they were thinking about how your ass looked like a peach in the jeans that perfectly hugged your hips, but in a less eloquent way.

Realistically, if a man spoke to me in the way some fictional men spoke to their fictional women, they would have a fist to their nose before they could get another word out.

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