Page 67 of Colt
And suddenly, with him, I feel terrified. Just really terrified. For the first time in a couple of weeks, I excuse myself to go home. I need distance. A break. My own bed.
He fires up a group text, with Dallas and Sarah, Gentry and Lily and me.
Everyone free to go to the saloon tomorrow night? I’m feeling adventurous.
There’s a round of enthusiastic agreements. I give it a thumbs up, because I’m feeling a little bit muted, even in the text conversation. Tomorrow we’re going to go out and pretend that nothing’s going on. It’s important, I know it is.
But for some reason, it mainly feels like the beginning of the end.
Chapter Thirteen
Colt
I can’t stop thinking about how distant Allison seemed after the lake yesterday. I also don’t like how empty my bed was last night, I don’t like how empty it was this morning, and I don’t like drinking coffee by myself. I know she has a shift at the store today, but I still think she should’ve stayed with me. She’s done it other nights when she had work.
I hear myself in my own head. I’m whiny, and I’m pouting. I haven’t been this bad since… Well, I was going to say early on in the injury, but really, it’s just been since I’ve been sharing space with her. Everything has felt more doable. Everything has felt easier.
Going out tonight doesn’t feel easy. For a number of reasons. One of them being that Allison and I have to pretend that nothing is happening. Because I can’t even imagine the trauma if our small town found out what we were doing. Much less the issues that it would create in the family. It’s not even fun to imagine as a bit. It’s just a horror.
But I’m also not looking forward to tonight because this is me, stepping out as healed as I am, as healed as I’m not, I’m so used to just being… The version of myself that I was. I guess I’m still him in a lot of ways. I still feel ambition. The desire to go back to the rodeo, to ride. Though there is a dark cloud over that. The anxiety that I feel when I think about the accident. Yeah. I need to deal with that. I need to see a therapist, probably. Weird realization to have as I’m getting ready to go out to a bar.
Or maybe it’s not. I don’t want to be my dad. I don’t know my dad’s life story, honestly. I don’t know that I need to. He definitely doesn’t seem like a man who has ever healed from a single thing. Maybe he’s just a narcissist. Maybe he just runs around hurting people because. Or maybe it’s because there were things that were done to him that were wrong too. And he’s just paying it forward. I feel like you actually have to do some work to not pay your hurt forward. As epiphanies go, I don’t necessarily find this to be a welcome one. But it makes me feel like this pursuit of not being my father might be winnable in ways I hadn’t realized. Because I can make a choice. Because I can take steps, action toward not being him.
Maybe I should talk to Allison about that. About the fact that I need to see a therapist.
I look at myself in the mirror. Me from a couple of months ago would’ve thought that this was weak. Admitting that I need some help. I don’t see it that way now. It’s like something has shifted inside of me.
It’s not weak to ask for help.
Strong people do it.
I saw my injured body as something weak, something wrong, but my body is strong. It survived. It’s like this, in a way that I would describe as being not perfect, but it’s mine. Maybe I’ll never be able to do everything that I could before. I can have sexwith Allison. Give her pleasure. I can go to the lake. I can go out to a bar.
I’m alive.
And that’s something to be grateful for. Bodies are difficult. They can turn on you. Disease can eat them from the inside.
But mine saved me. I swallow hard, and walk out of the bathroom, head into the living room. I put on one boot. I get up on my crutches. I text Allison.
You almost ready?
Yes.
She comes to the door two minutes later, wearing a white sundress that makes me want to thump my foot and howl like a cartoon wolf. I’m never going to be able to be normal about her again. She’s so sexy. I’ve always thought so. But I could put that away. I could minimize it. I can’t now. Now every time I look at her, I’m going to be looking right through whatever she’s wearing. I’m going to have a detailed impression of her gorgeous body burned into my mind. I am so, so profoundly screwed.
“You look great,” I say, my voice sounding rougher than I intended it to.
“So do you,” she says.
I think I look ridiculous. With my cut-up jeans and my giant brace. My black T-shirt and my black cowboy hat, like I’m still some kind of bad son of a bitch.
But it’s nice of her to say.
I’ve never had a fragile ego. It’s always been very, very healthy. But it’s taken a little bit of a beating the last month and a half.
And anyway, it means something different to hear it from her.
“Let’s go,” she says.
