Page 69 of Last Chance Cowboy
They got rid of every last ounce of trash, took the lean-to down, and made sure the fire was completely stamped out. Then, they left that space behind. He noticed Cara lingering as they left.
“What?”
“We did it. I mean, I did it. I spent the night out in the wilderness. And it didn’t kill me. I’m not sure that I’m eager to repeat it. But I really feel like I accomplished something. I didn’t let it become the horse that bit me on the shoulder.”
He chuckled. “All right. I see where you’re going with that.”
“That’s been such a big deal for me. Being afraid of horses. I’ve been working on it, but by myself, which wasn’t as effective as this.So thank you.”
“Maybe I’ll teach you to ride?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Or at least, we need to get out on a clear night so I can show you how to find your way with the stars.”
“That might be the thing that gets me more lost. You said that’s easier than getting more found.”
He nodded. “I did.”
He didn’t want this to be the end. He didn’t want this to be the last thing that he did with her. Maybe last night, maybe telling her about his past, maybe that had been either a last-ditch effort to explain himself or push her away.
He wasn’t really sure.
It would be nice if she were completely freaked out, wouldn’t speak to him, couldn’t even look at him, because she knew about the darkness of his past, because that would clarify things. It would make it all easy.
But she didn’t seem freaked out. She seemed like she felt sorry for him, which was its own difficult thing to bear, but he also couldn’t blame her.
It was tragic.
And very few people had experienced something like it. He knew that. He was in the wrong one percent. He was in the one percent of experiencing life’s tragic bullshit.
Not a self-pitying observation, just a fact. If she hadn’t wanted to deal with somebody like that, he wouldn’t have been angry.
He would’ve been relieved.
“All right. It’s up to you to lead us back. Use your compass just like you did yesterday. You know which directions you came, and that means you know how to find your way back.”
They began to make their way out of the woods, and she was a confident and competent leader who only had to be redirected a couple of times. Mostly, she did great. And given how challenging this was, he was thoroughly impressed.
He had that same feeling again. Like there was a wall between the two of them, the same feeling that he had with everybody else, so it shouldn’t feel notable.
But it did. It felt notable, and he wanted to knock it over.
He wanted to take that and smash it.
It was so long to get back to the truck, and by the time they got back there, he was starving. “You know what,” he said. “We oughta get a burger in town.”
“Yes,” she said, relief in her voice.
It felt like they had left some things behind in the woods. Some heavy things.
Her doubt, her fear of the wilderness, of life, his confessions about his past, all of that was there. It felt like the truck was getting lighter the farther away they got from it. “You did it,” he said.
“I did,” she said. “Thank you.”
There was a little tiny burger shack, Barney’s, out on the edge of Mustang River, in the older part of town. It had been there since the 1950s, and it still served hamburgers, French fries, and milkshakes exclusively. The best in town, in his opinion.
And he had some opinions about hamburgers.
