“I’m going for a ride,” I say, pushing past them, my shoulder bumping hard against Tex’s.
“Billy, don’t,” Seth calls after me. “You’ve been drinking.”
I don’t answer. I just keep walking, out the back door, into the cool night air.
The barn is a familiar sanctuary, the scent of hay and horsehide a comforting blanket. Whiskey Jack nickers softly as I enter, his big head turning toward me.
I don’t bother with a saddle. I just throw a bridle on, swing myself onto his bare back, and kick him into a trot.
The beer bottle is still in my hand. I take another drink as we move out into the open pasture, the moon lighting our way.
The world is a blur of dark grass and silver sky, and the alcohol is a warm buzz in my blood, a dulling agent for the sharp edges of my pain.
We pick up speed, the wind whipping through my hair, the powerful muscles of my horse beneath me. For a moment, I feel free. Untouchable.
Then Whiskey Jack stumbles. A gopher hole, maybe. The world tilts violently, and I’m flying.
I hit the ground with a hard thud, the air knocked out of my lungs. The beer bottle shatters somewhere nearby. I lie there fora second, the world spinning, staring up at the vast, indifferent sky.
I’m not hurt. Just tipsy, a little bruised. I try to sit up, and a searing pain rips through my chest.
It’s not real. I know it’s not real. It’s a phantom pain, a physical manifestation of the hole that’s been there for five years. But it feels real.
It feels like my heart is being torn in two. And that’s when the memory hits me, so vivid it’s like I’m living it all over again.
The wedding dress. It wasn’t white—she said white was for city girls who wanted to feel like princesses.
Hers was a simple, cream-colored sheath, made of soft linen that felt like water. It had delicate cap sleeves and the tiniest row of lace trim at the neckline, so subtle you had to be close to see it.
We picked it out together in a little shop in the city, her eyes shining with a light I’d never seen before. She’d twirled in front of the mirror, and I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
That same night, I couldn’t wait. I begged her to wear it for me, just once. I got us a room at a cheap motel on the edge of town. It had a vibrating bed and a neon sign that buzzed all night.
And she did wear the dress for me.
I remember the feel of the soft linen under my hands, the way the lace scratched against my palms. I remember unbuttoning it, one button at a time, my fingers shaking.
I remember fucking her in that dress, on that squeaky motel bed, watching her face as she fell apart for me. I remember the way she moaned my name, her voice raw and real, her hands clutching at my back.
She was mine. Completely, utterly mine.
I was so stupid. So fucking stupid. I thought that dress, that night, was a promise. I thought it was everything.
She was never going to marry me. It was all a game. A beautiful, heartbreaking lie.
A fat drop of rain lands on my cheek. Then another. And another. The sky opens up, a cold, relentless downpour soaking me to the bone in seconds.
I start to laugh. It’s a ridiculous, broken sound. Here I am, lying in the mud in the middle of my pasture, drunk and heartbroken over a memory. It’s so pathetic it’s funny.
I’m not sure when the laugh turns into sobs. It just happens. One minute I’m laughing at the absurdity of it all, and the next, I’m crying. Not quiet tears, but great, heaving sobs that wrack my whole body.
The rain washes over me, mixing with my tears, and I let it. I let the grief and the anger and the years of pain pour out of me, into the dark, wet earth.
I’m not strong.
I’m not tough.
I’m just a man who lost the only thing he ever wanted, and I don’t know how to get over it.
