gotten that bad.” Her eyebrows angled together in a genuinely sympathetic expression that made me uncomfortable.
I shot back some beer, then changed the subject to steer her away from the topic of my mom’s health. “You took first place again.”
“Yes, I did.” She paused for a second, aware that I had purposefully avoided the other conversation. After some contemplation she must have decided to let me get away with it. “Did you see my run?”
“Yup. It was good. It could have been better though.”
She propped her right hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. “Really? What do you think I did wrong?”
“Harley dropped his shoulder at the first barrel.”
“Oh, and you’re an expert on barrel racing now?”
I chuckled. “You know how much rodeo I’ve watched in my life.” I flicked the beer cap into the cooler. “You don’t have to take my advice if you don’t want to. I don’t care.”
Her expression changed again and she raised her eyebrow as if she thought I was being rude. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“You ain’t old enough to drink.”
She made a sweeping gesture with her arm to remind me where we were. “The drinking age in Alberta is eighteen.”
I tipped the bottle back and drank almost half. She stared at me, still waiting for me to offer. “What?” I asked.
“What do you mean what? I turned eighteen last month. You and Cole ate some of the cake my mom made. Remember?”
I remembered the cake, but I didn’t remember it was for her birthday. Even if I did know it was for her birthday, I would have sworn she was no more than sixteen. I didn’t care enough to argue with her, though, so I reached into the cooler and handed her a beer.
“Thanks.” She sat down beside me on the tailgate, eager to give it a go. I watched as she unsuccessfully tried to twist the cap off. She struggled with it for a while then, in frustration, handed it to me to do it for her.
“I thought barrel racers were supposed to be highly toned athletes.” I grinned to tease her as I popped the cap off and gave the bottle back to her.
She made a mocking expression to let me know she didn’t find my joke particularly funny. Then her gaze shifted to my mouth. She squished up her nose in disgust and asked, “How do you drink with tobacco in your mouth?”
“Practice,” I said, then tipped the bottle back to prove it.
About as impressed with my tobacco chewing as my mom was, she said, “Nice,” in a sarcastic tone. She stared at her beer bottle for a while as if she was building up the courage. After a quick breath she took a swig. It was obvious from the way her face twisted that she didn’t like the taste. She tried another sip and gagged as if she wanted to spit it out.
I laughed. “You want me to finish that?”
She gladly handed it to me. “It tastes like piss.”
“You have to drink enough to forget about how bad it tastes. Eventually, if you drink more, you start to forget about how bad everything else is too.”
She shuddered and cringed, still disgusted.
My attention shifted to Tawnie Lang, the barrel racer with the white horse and the tight ass. She was exiting the grandstand with all the other spectators. As she passed by, she removed the sky blue hat that matched the colour of her eyes and ran her fingers through her long blonde hair. It was about then that I decided it wouldn’t be so bad if we stayed one more night. I finished my beer and watched her walk towards her horse trailer.
“Oh my God. Stop drooling at the new girl,” Shae-Lynn mumbled.
I turned my head to spit tobacco juice on the grass. “I wasn’t drooling at nothing and she’s not new. I remember her from the junior circuit.”
“Oh.” Shae-Lynn glanced over her shoulder in a casual way to check Tawnie out. “Where’s she been since?”
I shrugged, wondering the same thing, then started on her beer. The cherry flavour of her lipgloss on the mouth of the bottle balanced out the horrible flavour of the tobacco that was getting washed down my throat.
Shae-Lynn faced me again and asked, “Why don’t you ask her out?”
“Who says I want to?”
“It’s obvious. You’ve been staring at her all weekend.”
I looked over at Tawnie, then back at Shae-Lynn. “I don’t date girls on the circuit.”
“Wouldn’t you make an exception for the right girl?”
I shrugged noncommittally. It wasn’t likely. I couldn’t imagine myself being interested in dating anyone, especially someone who didn’t live in the same city as I did. Shae-Lynn stopped asking questions and we sat quietly for a long time. The colours of the sky changed and deepened as the sun got lower. I watched the spectators file out of the grandstand. Shae-Lynn seemed to be staring at her fingernails, thinking.
She sighed. “You sure don’t talk all that much since what happened to your dad.”
That change in topic came out of nowhere, and it caught me off guard since everyone else on the circuit acted as if they would rather cut out their tongue than talk to Cole or me about our dad. “I’m talking to you right now, ain’t I?”
“Sort of. Not really.” She swung her feet back and forth. “Do you think it might help if you talked about what happened?”
“Help what?”
“You.”
“I don’t need help,” I said, but it came out less convincing than I meant it to.
“You haven’t ridden since it happened.”
Uncomfortable with the fact that she could obviously see right through me, I spit on the grass and opened another beer to ignore her statement.
She watched me for a while, then said, “The sooner you get back on a bull, the better.”
I exhaled and scratched the back of my neck. I’d been thinking about officially leaving rodeo, but hadn’t even told Cole yet. Since she was hell bent on talking about my issues, I decided to practice telling her to test how Cole might react. “I’m thinking about retiring.”
“What? Why? You’re ranked number one.” She nearly shrieked — confirmation that Cole was going to lose his shit when I told him.
“I don’t want to still be doing this when I’m fifty years old. I’d rather get out now and finish university while I’m still young.”
“You can do both. The season doesn’t interfere with classes.”
“I also have to work and take care of my mom.”
She nodded as if she understood that part. She also frowned because she knew as well as I did that I was grasping for excuses. Unfortunately, instead of letting it go, she pressed on, “That’s nice of you to take care of your mom, but you don’t need to stop riding. You shouldn’t quit because your dad’s wreck spooked you.”
Frustrated that she was forcing me to go to an emotional place I didn’t want to visit, I threw the empties in the cooler. “I’m not spooked. I just don’t want to waste my life touring around shit-hole towns with a bunch of hicks abusing my body and killing my liver just to end up dead in the ring one day.”
“What happened to your dad was a fluke accident. The best way to get over the fear is to get back on.”
“Listen, Shae-Lynn, I ain’t scared. And I ain’t interested in talking about it with you.”
Not impressed with my harsh tone, she hopped off the tailgate and