Her Four Cowboys

“Luce,” I said, the words coming out sounding thin and strangled, “that night that you were talking about earlier? When we all drank way too much Coors Light and got sick?”

“Yeah, I remember,” she said, raising her eyebrow as she looked at me.

“Well, I don’t know if you remember that a couple nights later, when we took our last final and Aaron bought us a case of actual Budweisers to celebrate, and we took them out into the field.”

“Yeah, I remember,” she said, smiling at the memory. “We took turns choosing songs to play and drinking.”

“Yeah,” I said, my heart beating so quickly that I was afraid it would run away with me. “Well, I don’t know if you remember, but I tried to kiss you that night.”

She stared at me, her mouth dropping open. “I… I don’t remember.”

“You bent forward at the last minute, and I just let it go. I didn’t try to kiss you again. I figured it didn’t really matter at that point.”

She looked between the two of us as if she was trying to grasp for a reason that I had brought that up now.

“My point is,” I said, finding a firmer and more certain tone, “that I’ve always felt you were… special. You’re my best friend, and you always have been, but there’s always been a sense of something else there, and I’ve never really been able to shake it.”

She bit down on her lip, hard, and looked down at her knee so that she didn’t have to face me straight on. It made my throat hurt a little bit to see the way she turned away from me and swallowed hard, clearly thinking things through.

“I know that we didn’t really keep in touch all that much over the years, but ever since you came back into town, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. I haven’t been able to stop seeing you when I close my eyes, and I haven’t been able to forget that kiss on Christmas Eve. You’re still my best friend, but I haven’t spoken to you because I realized that I haven’t known how to tell you that I want more.”

She looked back up at me, her green eyes glowing with a warmth that I’d rarely seen there.

“Penny for your thoughts, Lu,” I said, reaching forward and running my thumb over her shoulder the way I had when we were teenagers and she would confide in me about her fears of not getting her scholarships, or not getting into school, or not passing her tests. I’d done my best to infuse as much feeling as possible into the touch, even if she hadn’t been able to understand that at the time.

She looked down at my hand, reaching up and covering it with her own. For a second, I was afraid that she was going to remove it from her shoulder… but then, she wrapped her thumb around my palm, and wove our fingers together in a tight grasp.

“I’ve always thought the same of you,” she said, sending my heart spinning off into orbit. “At the time, I don’t think I considered you as a romantic interest because for some strange reason, my mind just said that what we had was untouchable. But I can’t deny that since I’ve come home, I’ve thought a lot about you too, and what you mean to me.”

It took all my self-restraint not to burst into a smile at the words. Hearing what she’d said felt a bit like the gift that I’d been waiting for my entire life, since the moment I’d looked at her as a twelve-year-old and realized I thought of her as more than just the scrawny girl who could outride me, someone who’d grown up with me into one of the most remarkable people that I’d ever gotten to know.

She continued to hold my hand, giving me a soft smile as we sat in the quiet together.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting, but then she turned to look at Andy, folding one leg over the other and tilting it to the side. She let go of my hand, and I finally turned to take in my brother’s face.

My stomach twisted as I took in the disappointment that lay behind his eyes. It was faint, given how hard he’d tried to bolster the mask that he’d held in place.

“Again,” she said, her voice soft, “not that I’m not happy that you’re here to witness all of this, but I’m a little confused as to the why.”

“That’s what we needed to discuss with you,” I chimed in, and as she whipped her head back to look at me, I nodded at my brother.

“The thing is,” he said, sighing a little bit, “I’ve realized that I’ve been having some feelings for you too. I mean, I was stricken by you when I saw you, but I wasn’t expecting to feel so much for you until that kiss on New Year’s Eve.”