Just a Cowboy

“What does?”

“Doing something again. Accomplishing something. Spending all my time riding buses and hiding in motel rooms…well, that’s just not me. I like to be busy.”

“So do I, which is why I took on this house. I grew up next door, and the people who owned it were like grandparents to me. When I came back for their funerals, it just killed me to see how the place was falling apart. And then I moved back and I figured it would be a great way to keep myself busy between stints on the range.”

“There’s plenty to do here,” she agreed.

He locked up the house behind them, and she walked next door with him. Already she’d gotten used to the fact that he insisted on making her lunch if she was going to help him with the repairs.

She liked it. There was an easiness in Hank’s manner that appealed to her even more than his rugged good looks. He might limp, he might look as if pain never left him, but he was still easy to be with, as if he was comfortable with who he was. Which was more than she could say.

Oh, don’t go there again, she told herself. But her thoughts refused to listen to reason. Somehow, sitting across a table from Hank while they ate tuna sandwiches, having spent the morning working with him, made him feel like an intimate. Closer than her girlfriends during the years of her marriage.

She had the worst urge to tell him about all the nagging self-doubts and criticisms she kept leveling at herself, even though she knew she was probably being too harsh.

But considering the mess her life had turned into, being harsh with herself didn’t seem all that extreme.

“I was an idiot,” she announced.

“What makes you say that?” His gray eyes were steady, not quite smiling, as he looked at her over his sandwich.

“Oh, I’ve had a lot of time to think about the last eight years. I made a lot of mistakes.”

“Mistakes,” he said, “are only bad if we don’t learn from them.”

“Right. I tell myself that all the time. I’ve got a lot to learn from.”

“We all do.”

It wasn’t a question, and she appreciated that. Since the first night, he’d been awfully careful about not questioning her about anything that wasn’t immediately in front of them. Maybe he was respecting her privacy, or maybe he didn’t want to know. Either way, she liked that he didn’t push her to places she didn’t want to go.

But now she felt like talking a bit. It had been a long time since she had felt she could confide in anyone. And Hank seemed safe, both from his manner and the fact that she wouldn’t be here long.

“You know,” she remarked, “it’s sad, but I didn’t even feel like I could trust my girlfriends with the things I was dealing with and trying to sort out.”

“Then they couldn’t have been good friends.”