“Okay, enough about my sad life. Let’s talk about these hot dogs I’m cooking right now. Don’t they look like the most amazing hot dogs in the world?”
At first I wanted to protest his change in subject, but then I realized it wasn’t useful to me at all. Garrett didn’t trust me — that was clear. Whatever it was that was going on in his past, he wasn’t interested in sharing it with me. The longer I thought about it, the more I realized he couldn’t be hiding anything that was all that horrible — he just couldn’t. Garrett was a decent man who worked hard, was polite, and seemed very genuine most of the time. Whatever he was hiding, had to come out sooner or later.
“They look pretty normal to me,” I teased.
“Just wait until you taste them. These are the number-one, best-in-the-world hot dogs. Plus, they were cooked by this five-star camping chef.”
Garrett made me laugh; he almost always made me laugh at least a little bit. It was fun being around him and I was sad that he would most likely be moving on soon. The more time I spent with him the more I was sure he would want to move on soon. Being a ranch hand certainly didn’t seem to fit him very well, but he did do a good job of it.
Maybe he was running away from a past job, or girlfriend. Perhaps he had even committed some sort of crime; I just wasn’t sure. But I felt safe with him and I didn’t feel like he lied or was deceitful in our day-to-day conversations; only about his past. So, for the time being, I tried to forget about my gut and what it was saying to me, instead I decided to just enjoy the moment with a friend. That was all Garrett was and that was all he had to be, a nice friend who worked on my parents’ ranch.
“Mmmm, you’re right, these are the best hot dogs I’ve ever tasted,” I joked.
“I know. I know. Can Buckjoy have one?”
“Well, he’s not supposed to, but I’m sure he’ll love it. Go ahead and give him one.”
Garrett was so gentle with Buckjoy, it was exciting to see their bond growing. I had seen many men try to tame wild horses, but most didn’t have the patience to continue working with them. Even my own father struggled with training wild horses; that was why I always did it for him. Garrett stood next to the tall, black animal; he was barefoot and only wearing his boxer shorts, yet he looked so comfortable I had to snap a quick photo without him knowing.
Wild horses were plentiful in our area of the world. Much of the land in Montana wasn’t occupied at all, except by wild animals. We certainly couldn’t tame them all, but it was a fun project to work with them if they happened to hang around our land a lot. My father had gone to great lengths to work directly with the state conservation board to get approval to keep Buckjoy. Once the wild horses started hanging around our ranch, they had a hard time returning to their heard. It was an easy life at the ranch, water brought to them, food delivered every morning; wild horses liked that part of living with us. It was the saddling them up and taking them for rides that was the hard part.
Garrett’s hand gently stroked the animal and I saw how Buckjoy looked at him. The horse was totally and utterly Garrett’s; I’d have to break it to my father sooner or later, but that horse loved Garrett and it was clear. Buckjoy was calm and relaxed as Garrett pet him.
“I can’t believe he is a wild horse,” Garrett said as he gently pet the animal. “He seems to be perfectly comfortable and at home with us. It is like he was meant to be here with us at this very moment.”
“I think he just likes you,” I added. “He certainly doesn’t look that calm when he’s with me.”
“Maybe.”
We finished some more of the food that my mother had packed for us and then gathered the remainder of the meat and cooked it up and fed it to the horses. We still had plenty of snacks to tide us over to the next morning and it was likely that any raw meat would go bad with the small amount of ice that was left in the cooler.
“So you’re still set on this idea of us each sleeping in our own tent?” Garrett asked.
“I think I’ll survive alone.”
His raging hard on had subsided but I still couldn’t help but glance in that direction as he stood near his tent. If Garrett hadn’t been blatantly lying to me or keeping secrets about his past, I might have considered having a fun, naked night with him. But it was clear that he wasn’t being honest about his past and I was smart enough to stay away from men who weren’t honest.
I hadn’t always been smart enough to avoid dishonest men; it was something I learned in my time in New York City. It was also something I wanted to talk about in my book, if I ever actually got around to writing it. I pulled the pen out and wrote some notes quickly on the paper I still had from Garrett.
“Inspiration has struck again,” Garrett said as he walked toward me to see what I was writing.
“It’s no big deal. Just another idea for a chapter,” I said as I quickly folded the piece of paper and put it into my pocket.
I certainly didn’t need Garrett looking at my notes about liars. If he was lying to me, I wasn’t going to find it out by confronting him. If he wasn’t lying, he was at the very least keeping an aspect of his past a secret and to me that was just as bad as actually lying to someone. We were growing close and I had been honest with him about my life, way too honest; so, I expected the same from him.
Quite frankly, I was over all men who lied and kept secrets. I didn’t have time for that in my life and I certainly wasn’t going to sleep with a man who was like that. It didn’t matter how attracted to him I was.
Back in New York, I had girlfriends that would have slept with just about any man they thought was attractive. To them, sex was just all fun and games. They figured if they had protection then it didn’t matter who they were sleeping with. But for me it was so different. I became emotionally invested in any man I slept with, even the ones I knew would be a short-lived situation. I tried not to get emotionally involved, but inevitable I always did and I always ended up dealing with some sort of broken heart in the end.
&nbs
p; Garrett stood close to me and I felt his hand as it gently touched my arm. The electricity that shot between our two bodies wasn’t anything I could ignore. To be honest, I hadn’t remember having such pure excitement between a man and me in a very long time. Call it sexual attraction or whatever else you’d like but there was certainly an energy between the two of us that neither of us could deny.
“You’re cold,” he said. “Did you bring a sweatshirt or jacket?”
“Oh, man! No, I left it on my bed.”
I had purposely pulled out a sweatshirt because I knew I would get cold, but after my mom had come in to talk to me, I was distracted and forgot it. It was going to be a cold night in the lightweight sleeping bag I had with me and I knew it.