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Chapter Four

Dallas

Competition day always starts early for me.

I’ve got to get a workout in. There’s a tiny, sad gym in the motel with weights, and I use those until the mildew in the walls begins to smell a bit strong.

It’s not the nicest place. I can afford better, but it’s one of those things – why?

I’ve made a lot of money in the circuit.

My winnings total over a million dollars, but someday I’ll have to use that money for something.

To buy land, to buy a house.

This intangible fantasy of getting what my dad has.

Though part of me lives in abject fear of that.

I’ve never had a relationship. Not a deep one.

I had a girlfriend in high school, which came to its natural conclusion at graduation.

She went off to college across the country, and I went to the University of Oregon for a year.

I just felt like I didn’t know what I wanted enough to be there. Then I decided to pursue bull riding .

It was a miracle that I graduated high school, much less getting into college, honestly.

My education was so interrupted all my life.

I moved around a lot, I didn’t have any support, and honestly, I didn’t take it very seriously.

It seemed pointless. Futile, even. I knew as a kid that I wasn’t college-bound.

In fact, I had a hard time imagining making it to adulthood. Life with Bennett changed that.

When I found my dad, the whole world opened up to me.

But the problem is, I’m still carrying a lot of baggage, and none of it’s his fault.

I know he feels terrible about it. He didn’t know about me for the first fifteen years of my life.

His relationship with my biological mother was something he always regretted.

The way that ended, the way that he lost touch with her, all of it.

It’s crazy to me to think that by the time my dad was my age he was a dad, even if he didn’t know he was a dad.

I remember getting to be about my mom’s age when she had me.

Sixteen, fuck. It gave me a lot more sympathy for her than I ever had at any other point in my life.

Honestly, I just always thought that she should’ve sucked it up and raised me.

Taken care of me, because anything would be better than bouncing around foster care.

But I know differently than that now. I know that, because the greatest failures in Sarah’s life were really the system having custody of her.

Her mother put her in the most dangerous situation she could have.

She created all these problems that Sarah is still dealing with.

So yeah, I no longer come down on the side that parents should try to keep their kids no matter what.

But man, when I was young, I was sure angry about it. I felt like she gave up on me.

Maybe part of me still does. There’s got to be some reason I’m out here doing this, instead of following in my dad’s footsteps .

I could be a veterinarian.

That would be respectable.

I guess I still could if I want to spend all that time in school.

I have the money. I’m running along the highway, and I increase my pace as I turn around, heading back toward the motel.

Sarah is safely locked in the room, and I want to take her to get some breakfast before we head over to the Expo.

I like to spend the day getting myself totally familiarized with the surroundings – even though it’s day three of the rodeo, I need to do my walk-through.

Need to let the place sink into my bones.

I’m superstitious.

Hell, anyone who does this ought to be.

You’re at the mercy of fate. Of an animal who genuinely doesn’t care if you live or die, and whose life wouldn’t change if you did die. I find that reassuring in some ways. Maybe reassuring is the wrong word. It reminds me of how small I am, though. How much I don’t matter.

I try not to carry around too much main character energy.

That just puts a whole lot of pressure on everything you do, when in reality, all the little choices that you make on a given day don’t matter all that much.

Just don’t go around hurting other people, that’s what I figure.

There’s no cosmic deity who gives a shit as to whether or not I take a left or right on my run this morning.

I knew people who thought like that in high school. Who thought that they needed to consult God about every single thing they did, from what they were going to have for breakfast in the morning to who they were going to take to prom.

Maybe it’s my background, but I figure God is a little bit too busy to weigh in on your prom date. I’ve seen what real problems look like.

My lungs are burning by the time I make it back to the motel room, and I’m sweating. I pull my shirt off right as I walk in, and glance around the room, not seeing Sarah anywhere.

I hear the shower running, and I grimace.

Because I really need the shower. I’m disgusting.

I have a low tolerance for that, and I draw that back to a childhood that carries traces of neglect.

Sometimes the water wasn’t turned on, so it wasn’t like I could have a bath every day.

Now I like to be clean all the time, which is kind of a bummer given my chosen career.

There’s a lot of dust, a lot of sweat. I don’t mind it for a short amount of time, but that’s it. It’s probably a control thing, really.

Issues. They’re my generational wealth. The inheritance that I got from my mother.

I feel a little bit of guilt when I think about her.

Marnie . I know her name. I don’t really know what happened to her after she lost custody of me.

But I do know that she was a teenager. I do know that she didn’t have support, and while I know she also chose not to seek support from my dad, I can’t know for sure what all was going on with her when she made that decision.

Life is complicated. I’ve tried to be a little more understanding as the years have gone on.

The door to the bathroom opens, and Sarah emerges, dressed in a different outfit than the one she had on before.

A sundress with little yellow flowers. Her dark hair is wet, beginning to curl, and her cheeks are pink from the warm water.

It’s weird, cognitive dissonance. Because I know her.

I’ve known her in this capacity for a long time, even though there were years between. We were like siblings .

But now, when there’s a woman getting out of my shower, it’s usually because I had sex with her.

So, my body is reacting to this moment in weird ways, and it makes me feel astronomically guilty, because I also am so familiar with her background of abuse. The last thing that she needs is a guy thinking things about her when the situation isn’t sexual at all.

It feels like a violation of her, and I take that little, blooming feeling of tension in my stomach, and pick it off aggressively like I would pick a dead blossom off a plant in my stepmom’s flower bed.

“Morning,” I say.

“Morning,” she says, looking away from me, and I’m suddenly very conscious that I’m half dressed.

“I need a quick shower,” I say.

She nods. “Yeah.”

I grab my clothes out of my suitcase and head straight into the bathroom, closing the door and locking it behind me.

The water is warm instantly, because Sarah just used it, but I need cold water coming in from that run.

I spend the next five minutes standing underneath a punishing spray before soaping up, rinsing and getting out and dressed as quickly as possible.

When I come back out into the room, Sarah is folding the blankets on the floor. Something about that makes me smile. That she’s trying to make it easier for whoever has to clean up after we go.

“Breakfast?”

“Oh. Sure. Actually, if we could go to the diner that I work at, Daisy’s, that would be good.”

“Sure,” I say.

“I’m going to have to quit. I feel bad leaving them in the lurch, but my boss does know about Chris. I mean, not the whole story, but she knows that he’s been harassing me.”

“She won’t be surprised, then.”

“No. Also, if he shows up around there, they don’t let him stay. They can’t stop him from loitering across the street or anything like that, but they don’t let him into the diner.”

I nod, and we pack everything up in the motel room, loading it all into my truck and heading to the diner.

I’ve been to countless diners across the country, traveling with the rodeo.

This is the sort of place you find in Anytown, USA.

A vague 1950s flair, booths covered in thick red vinyl.

A bar with chrome stools. For lunch, they have hamburgers and milkshakes, for breakfast, bacon, eggs, and toast drowned in butter, which is exactly what I want out of the most important meal of the day.

We’re greeted by Sarah’s boss, who looks at me like I’m an alien, which makes me wonder more about her life here.

I guess she doesn’t bring men to breakfast here on a normal day.

What does a normal day look like for her?

I spent years with her, and now she’s a stranger who feels like home to my heart. But I don’t know what she likes for breakfast, or what kind of men – or women – she dates. I don’t know what her favorite foods are or where she likes to shop, or what music she likes.

“We have a table right in the corner,” the woman, who I assume is Daisy, says.

“Thank you,” says Sarah. She clears her throat. “This is my… My friend. Dallas. We were in care together.”

Daisy’s demeanor shifts. “Oh. Well, that’s… Nice to meet you.”

I nod. “Nice to meet you, too. ”

It’s funny. Because I don’t tell people about my time spent in foster care.

I have a family, and so when we talk about families, I just talk about mine like I was always there.

I don’t get into what happened before I found Bennett.

But I wonder if Sarah has to tell people because she still doesn’t have a family around her, and it raises questions.