Page 13 of Cowboy

I nod before Bull turns and walks away again, leaving me next to the baby clothes rack. My heart drops to my feet as a sense of aloneness washes over me, and the hollowness in my belly is not from a lack of food.

A few days later, I meet Rita at the Busy Bean Café even though I’m not on the schedule to work. She likes to claim the peach plush couch as her place to think, and we need to brainstorm. I only have a couple of days left on my rental and no future place rented. Rita suggested I move in with her, and it isn’t a bad idea—roommates again—but it also doesn’t seem ideal. Rita and I are both set in our ways a bit, and I can’t lasso her with my condition or my future child. I need to find a place of my own.

However, we are sidetracked and scrolling the internet on her laptop for other things.

“I can’t believe I’m looking at these,” I say, staring at the white crib and baby bedding printed with sweet tiny ducks. “Who’d have thought? Me. Pregnant at my age.”

“You’re what?” The shout is enough to snap the chalkboard beams overhead, and Rita and I both jump at the strong male voice coming from before me. I look up and lock eyes with Bull.

“Hello, handsome,” Rita mutters beside me.

“I . . .” I don’t know what to say, as the heated seductive stares he’s given me in the past have morphed into a tempestuous storm.

“Start talking,” he demands. If his tone wasn’t so growly, it’d be sexy, but he has every right to be upset.

“I just . . .” My eyes shift to Zara working the counter today. I’ve already told both my bosses about my condition, hoping for their sympathy for my situation and some continued compassion for my working here. I don’t want to give up the job, and they’ve both been tremendously understanding.

Zara walks around the counter and crosses to us. “There’s a nice bench out on the lawn facing the river. Why don’t you two go there to talk?”

Rita pats my leg as I glance back at Bull. Zara is right. Bull and I need to step outside as several patrons are staring at us, curious about the wreck of a woman who can hardly make coffee and the steaming bull upset with her.

I can’t run off to the restroom like I did the other day. With shaky legs and a weak stomach, I stand. As I pass Zara, she reaches for my wrist and squeezes.

“When I told Dave about my situation”—Zara had a baby but didn’t know how to find Dave—“we were sitting on that bench, and things worked out for us. Maybe it will bring you good luck, too.”

As I trudge outside, I am not feeling fortunate. The Busy Bean is located on the Winooski River. When we reach the bench facing the water, we sit in silence for a few minutes, watching the ripples race before us. It’s the very end of April, and a beautiful spring day with a mild temperature. And I hate that I’m considering the weather because I don’t know where to start.

“Scarlett, just tell me everything,” Bull says as if reading my thoughts. Taking a deep breath, I dive into the highlights, explaining my job loss and my husband’s infidelity. As I’m on a roll, I add in my parents’ disappointment.

“They act like it’s my fault that my husband slipped his raisin into someone else’s cookie.”

Bull bitterly chuckles. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means I’m a failure in their eyes, Bull, even though he’s the one who stepped out on me. I didn’t do all that a woman should do. Work, wife, motherhood—”

“Yeah, sweetheart, let’s jump ahead to that last point.” I have to admit every time he calls me sweetheart, I melt a little bit, and a part of my soul dies because of what I need to explain.

“The issue is, I’m pregnant now.”

He sits up a little straighter next to me, and his chest heaves. Hope fills his eyes. “Is it mine?”

My voice falters as what I have to say next might crush him. I close my eyes, shutting out the river. “I don’t know who the father is yet.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know yet?” Bull’s voice is steady but stern.

“According to the doctor’s estimation a few days ago, I’m six to seven weeks along. Considering how close we did what we did to my leaving my husband, it could be his.” I swallow the lump in my throat at the possibility I could be pregnant from Shelton, and I don’t want it to be his baby.

“You fucked your husband.” The incredulous sharpness of his tone isn’t unwarranted, but it still unsettles me.

“Yes, I fucked my husband.” Shame fills me at the admission, which is disconcerting on a multitude of levels. A wife should have sex with her husband, and in turn, a husband should have sex with only his wife, not a twenty-three-year-old med student. That same husband should love his wife, not decide he wants to do right by the pregnant girl and marry her when he’s still married to someone else. What about doing right by me, his wife?

Bull stands upright, walking in a small circle before turning back to me and waiting on more details. I can’t look at him and glance back at the river as tears fill my eyes.

“Shelton and I had been . . . estranged a bit, but I didn’t recognize how distant we’d become. The night before I left, we’d had sex for the first time in weeks. I thought it was the start of us reconnecting as though we’d just had a little blip in syncing our lives. I had no idea he’d been using his stethoscope with a med student. None.”

Bull nods.

“I’d lost my job the next day, and when I went to him, hoping he’d console me, I found him with his student. He blurted out the truth. She was pregnant with this child, and he was going to marry her. I was such a fool, Bull. When Rita called me later that day, I was packing with no idea where I was going. Then I ended up here, and one week later . . .”