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“You’re making Dad worry!”
“I’m an adult! I can make my own decisions! And why are you freaking out so much?” There are tears in the girl’s eyes. “It’s not like you think!”
“I burst in to find you alone with my best friend, all sweaty and disheveled, and it’s not like I think? What, are you going to tell me you were doing yoga or something?”
I let out a long breath. “Something was happening in here, Danny. I’m not gonna lie to you. But I’m not taking advantage of her, and she’ll be the first one to agree. And this wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s been building for a very long time.”
“Bullshit. You’re too old for her. You’re gaslighting her, taking advantage of her naivety!”
I throw my hands up in the air, my frustration overwhelming. “I’m twenty-one. She’s nineteen. There’s no giant age gap here, Danny. She’s been looking at me forever, and I’ve been looking at her.”
“You’ve been ogling my sister?!” He grabs my shirt, furious.
I should have stuck with the assumption that he can’t be reasoned with right now and kept my mouth shut.
“I can’t believe you, brother,” June says, pushing past us, her words wavering. “You can’t be this controlling. I thought Jennings was your friend. I thought you would know you could trust him more than any random guy I could have liked. But I guess you’re blinded by your desire to play protector.”
She continues out. I want to hold her, to calm her down, but I got something rougher to deal with than an angry bull between me and her.
“What nonsense did you fill her head with, you scumbag?” Danny demands as soon as we’re alone.
“Seriously? Ten years of knowing me, and you think I’m that type of guy?”
“Only that type of guy would prey on my little sister.”
“And you can’t see her as more than your little sister. She’s a young woman.”
“She’s still a teenager!”
I don’t even know what to say to him. I shrug. “Technically? You’re right, I guess.”
“Danny? Danny, you’re up. Where the fuck are you?” Frank, the rodeo’s showrunner, calls out from the hall.
Danny seethes and glares at me as he grabs his hat. “I don’t want to see you here when I get back, Jennings. I don’t know what I might do to you.”
“Hopefully nothing, because I really do want you to calm down.”
He grunts, snapping away.
“Keep your head on straight, Danny. You’re dealing with a bull. Unlike this, that’s a real problem, not the imagined one you have in front of you.”
“Go fuck yourself, Jennings.”
My heart sinks as his anger goes on and on. Danny is usually chill. But he’s always had a need to prove his manhood. Being a big brother, I guess protecting his little sis is a huge deal for him.
I know he’s speaking in anger. He’s still my friend. I hope something calms him down.
Because really? That brief moment with June proved to me I can’t leave it as only a brief moment.
And I don’t want this nastiness to become soap opera shit we all have to navigate.
I follow Danny as he goes out, and he’s introduced over the PA. He climbs onto his bull, not showing the care I expect of him. Angry people make mistakes all the time.
He rides the bull out and it immediately starts bucking and swinging. Usually? Danny isn’t the best in the world, but he’s far from the worst. He’d hang on, make a show out of it, get the crowd going before taking his lumps.
There’s no showmanship this time. Any commands he’s giving the bull are as angry as anything else, and the bull isn’t appreciating his tone one bit. He’s furious, whipping to and fro. It looks nasty, I don’t think even I could stay on a bull with that bad of an attitude.
And then it happens.
Danny is thrown from the bull, the beast using its full strength.
My friend sails through the air.
He collides with a metal railing, spine first.
He collapses into the mud.
I cringe, and the crowd gasps.
I hop into the riding ring, wanting to check on Danny, but the bull is still angry and ready to charge. So instead I calm myself and try to calm the bull as well. I grew up on a ranch and still do some actual cowboy stuff sometimes when I’m at home. I almost speak cow, and I manage to corral the bull back into his pen.
All the while, I watch the scene.
Medics run out. June does too. Danny isn’t moving.
This is something that all of us risk. One nasty spill, one wrong landing, and it could all be over.
I’m shivering, hating that the fact that the last moments I may have spent with my friend were an idiotic fight over what should have been nothing.
And watching June?
I fear for her too. The hole in her soul that may come with losing a brother.
