I could only gape at him for a moment. “Come on, now,” I said. “You know it’s my turn to go home with the hotter one.”
“She’s not the hotter one,” Brent said, and okay, I could kind of see where he was coming from. The other girl did have better legs and better curves, but the one in the pink top, I just had to go home with her. I felt drawn to her, with that strange, mysterious attraction that only hits once in a while. There was no way I was going to let Brent go home with her.
But I had a plan, which was a good thing because knowing him, he probably had one, too.
“Here’s a little twist,” I said to the girls when they finally paused in their dancing to look expectantly over at us. “Brent and I were just talking about the bull, and we were thinking about starting a little friendly competition. How does that sound?”
Beside me, I could hear him groan. When I shot him a grin, he practically glared daggers at me, but I knew the girls must have thought he was just putting it on for effect.
“Maybe we should try it, too,” Pink Shirt said, grinning over at her friend. “I mean, we won’t go on the highest setting or anything like that. We’re not cowboys like you.” She giggled. Then, in a flash, she reached out and snatched my hat straight off my head and ran toward the other end of the bar, where the mechanical bull was waiting.
She hopped on, and the bull started moving. I had to admit, she did a pretty good job riding. And, she looked hot, gyrating her hips in an attempt to keep her balance and grinning like this was the best thing she’d ever done.
Maybe it was. I couldn’t know.
Her friend chickened out, but it was enough to make Brent go next, before me. I could barely peel my eyes away from Pink Shirt, who sidled close to me and leaned against my arm. She still wore my hat, cocked down at a rakish angle over her eyes.
The crowd cheered Brent on, and he got a decent time of six seconds, which was way longer than he’d gotten the last time we’d tried riding this thing. I started to feel nervous for the first time, but I couldn’t let that show.
I shook of
f my worries, snagged my hat back, and stepped forward. It was most likely going to get ugly, but I didn’t have much to lose. Nothing other than my dignity and for the chance of taking home the pretty girl in the pink top? I could live without it for a little while.
“You sure about this kid?” Mickey, the barkeep, asked dubiously as I hopped up on the bull.
“Oh yeah,” I told him. “And make sure you’ve got her cranked up high. I want her to put up a good fight tonight, just like a real bull.”
Mickey raised an eyebrow at me, but then he shrugged and adjusted the knobs. I sent one last grin toward the girl I was going home with that night — because I was for sure going home with her — and then prepared for the battle.
There was a rhythm to riding the bull. That was the trick. You just had to find that rhythm and you were golden.
And that night, I found the rhythm. The crowd cheered me on within moments. I sat firmly on the leather saddle. There was no way I was getting bucked off anytime soon. Hell, I might even try going one-handed, like all the pros did.
In fact, I didn’t know why I had never tried to be a professional bull-rider. I could make good money doing that kind of thing, and I’d get to travel outside of White Bluff, going all around Montana or, if I was lucky, all around the country. Rodeos were becoming popular again, and maybe that was where I could find my ticket out of here.
Except that I did know why I’d never gone pro. I could hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head again: “You stupid boy, always such a fucking dreamer. Can’t you just focus on the real world for a minute? You know as well as I do that you’re just going to be another good-for-nothing rat with a slut for a wife and an addiction to drugs.”
I got so caught up in my thoughts that I forgot what I was doing. For a second, I swear the smoke in the bar blended with the smoke in that living room in my memory, and I thought the old man might come after me.
The lapse in concentration was enough to get me thrown, and I landed hard on the mats, the air knocked out of my lungs as the bull continued to careen in circles above me. Slowly, the sounds of the bar came drifting back in through the mist in my mind.
“Dude, are you okay?” Brent asked, sounding worried.
“Hey, give him a bit of space,” Mickey said.
But I shook my head and sat up. “Nah, I’m fine,” I heard myself say as I glanced around, dizzy. That hadn’t gone nearly as well as I’d hoped it would.
“You were amazing!” Pink Shirt cried out, her voice far too loud for the pounding in my head.
I grimaced, the thrill of everything gone now that I was thinking about my father. If anyone was a good-for-nothing son of a bitch, it was surely him, but the town had never seen that side of him.
I pushed myself to my feet. Pink Shirt tried to help me, but I shook her hands off. “I’m good, but thanks.” The room was spinning a little too much. All I needed was to barf on the pretty girl and really fuck up my chances of anything happening. Not that there was a chance after busting my face in front of her.
“Dude, are you okay?” Brent asked again, sounding even more concerned.
“I’m fine,” I said gruffly. Despite the pain in my ribs and across my back, I wasn’t really lying. I could still breathe, and it didn’t feel like anything was broken.
I ducked between the ropes at the edge of the bull’s arena and couldn’t hide a wince as it pulled at the bruised bits. Pink Shirt was back on my arm. “Why don’t I take care of you someplace private?” she asked, her voice sultry. “I could play nurse, and-”