Chapter Fourteen
I WAS CERTAIN that by now Mike had told half the shopping mall in my hometown that “M-m-m-my sister is gonna get m-m-m-m-married!” This would mean that within an hour or two, the entire state would probably know. It would all be very real in no time. The guy behind the Subway counter would hear the news first, followed by the sweet high school girl at Candy Craze, who probably knew my sister from high school, so she’d call her mom, who’d probably been a patient of my dad’s at some point, and who likely knew my mom. And the gal at the cosmetics counter in Dillards, who sold my grandmother Estée Lauder foundation once a month—she’d soon know, too. And so would all the security guards and janitors on-site—they would all hear the news within the hour, though very few of them would likely care. But everyone would know: this was a fact. To Mike, news—any news at all—was meant to be shared. And if he could be the first person to spread the word, the happier he’d be. Thank God he didn’t have a cell phone, or he would have already called the local radio station and asked that they announce it during the rush hour drive.
That was one of Mike’s tactics. He loved being the bearer of any kind of news.
But I couldn’t allow myself to worry about that. Still lying on the ground, half tingly, half stunned, I held my left hand in front of my face and lightly spread my fingers, examining what Marlboro Man had given me that morning. I couldn’t have chosen a more beautiful ring, or a ring that was a more fitting symbol of my relationship with Marlboro Man. It was unadorned, uncontrived, consisting only of a delicate gold band and a lovely diamond that stood up high—almost proudly—on its supportive prongs. It was a ring chosen by a man who, from day one, had always let me know exactly how he felt. The ring was a perfect extension of that: strong, straightforward, solid, direct. I liked seeing it on my finger. I felt good knowing it was there.
My stomach, though, was in knots. I was engaged. Engaged. I was ill-prepared for how weird it felt. Why hadn’t I ever heard of this strange sensation before? Why hadn’t anyone told me? I felt simultaneously grown up, excited, shocked, scared, matronly, weird, and happy—a strange combination for a weekday morning. I was engaged—holy moly. My other hand picked up the receiver of the phone, and without thinking, I dialed my little sister.
“Hi,” I said when Betsy picked up the phone. It hadn’t been ten minutes since we’d hung up from our last conversation.
“Hey,” she replied.
“Uh, I just wanted to tell you”—my heart began to race—“that I’m, like…engaged.”
What seemed like hours of silence passed.
“Bullcrap,” Betsy finally exclaimed. Then she repeated: “Bullcrap.”
“Not bullcrap,” I answered. “He just asked me to marry him. I’m engaged, Bets!”
“What?” Betsy shrieked. “Oh my God…” Her voice began to crack. Seconds later, she was crying.
A lump formed in my throat, too. I immediately understood where her tears were coming from. I felt it all, too. It was bittersweet. Things would change. Tears welled up in my eyes. My nose began to sting.
“Don’t cry, you butthead.” I laughed through my tears.
She laughed it off, too, sobbing harder, totally unable to suppress the tears. “Can I be your maid of honor?”
This was too much for me. “I can’t talk anymore,” I managed to squeak through my lips. I hung up on Betsy and lay there, blubbering on my floor.
The phone rang again almost immediately. It was Mike, calling from a pay phone in the mall. Oh Lord, I thought. He probably has a whole roll of quarters.
“Hey!” Mike shouted. I heard shoppers in the background.
“Hey, Mike,” I answered, wiping tears from my face.
His voice was playful. “I heard s-s-s-somethin’ about s-s-s-someone today….” He burst out in mischievous laughter.
I played along. “Oh yeah, Mike? What’s that?”
“I heard…that…s-s-s-someone I know is gettin’ m-m-m-m-married!” He shrieked and cackled as only Mike can.
“Now, Mike,” I began. “You haven’t told anyone…have you?”
He didn’t respond.
“Mike?” I pressed.
Finally, he replied, “I…don’t…think so.”
“Mike…,” I teased. “Remember, you promised you wouldn’t tell anyone!”
“I h-h-h-have to go,” Mike said. And with that, he hung up and went about his business.
Yep, it was sure to be in that evening’s paper…figuratively speaking.
I spent the next couple of hours preemptively informing the rest of my immediate family that I, their daughter/sister/granddaughter, would be marrying a cowboy from the next county. I was met with very little resistance—other than a couple of “Oh, Jesus”remarks from my oldest brother, who, as I once had, believed that life outside a big city wasn’t worth living. By and large, my family approved. They obviously knew how crazy I was about Marlboro Man; they’d hardly seen me since we’d gotten together. The glaring precariousness of my own parents’ marriage loomed large. It was a nasty, dark thundercloud, threatening to move in on my perfect spring day. But I tried to ignore it, at least for now, and enjoy this moment.
This beautiful, extraordinary moment.
EARLY THE next morning, I was driving westward toward the ranch. Marlboro Man had called the night before—a rare evening we’d spent apart—and had asked me to come out early.
I’d just turned onto the highway that led out of my hometown when my car phone rang. It was dewy outside, foggy. “Hurry up,” Marlboro Man’s voice playfully commanded. “I want to see my future wife.” My stomach lurched. Wife. It would take me a while to get used to that word.
“I’m coming,” I announced. “Hold your horses!” We hung up, and I giggled. Hold your horses. Heh-heh. I had a lifetime of these jokes ahead. This was going to be loads of fun.
He met me at my car, wearing jeans, boots, and a soft, worn denim shirt. I climbed out of the car and stepped right into his arms. It was just after 8:00 A.M., and within seconds we were leaning against my car, sharing a passionate, steamy kiss. Leave it to Marlboro Man to make 8:00 A.M. an acceptable time to make out. I never would have known this if I hadn’t met him.
“So…what are we gonna do today?” I asked, trying to remember what day it was.
“Oh, I thought we’d drive around for a while…,” he said, his arms still grasping my waist, “and talk about where we might want to live.” I’d heard him mention before, in passing, that someday he wanted to move to a different spot on the ranch, but I’d never paid much attention to it. I’d never really cared much where he lived, just as long as he took his Wranglers with me. “I want it to be your decision, too.”
We spent the morning driving, my Marlboro Man and me. We drove around the hidden places and the far reaches of his family’s ranch: through rippling creeks, across innumerable cattle guards, over this hill, past that thicket of trees—all of this in search of the ideal spot for us to start our life together. Marlboro Man liked the house in which he’d been living, but it was far removed from the heart of the ranch, and he’d always planned to set up a more permanent spot somewhere. That we were now engaged to be married made it the perfect time to make the transition.
I’d always liked his house; it was rustic and unadorned, yet beautiful in its simplicity. I could live there. Or I could live in another house. Or I could live in his pickup, or in his barn, or in a teepee in a pasture…as long as he was there. But he wanted to drive and look together, so we drove. And we looked. And we held hands. And we talked. And somewhere along the way, in the bright morning sunshine, Marlboro Man stopped his pickup under the shade of a tree, crossed the great divide between our leather bucket seats, and grabbed me in a sexy, warm embrace. And we sat there and kissed, like two teenagers parked at a drive-in. A 1958 drive-in, though. Before the sexual revolution. Before Cinemax, though my mind remained very much in the 1990s. It was hard to practice restraint in the pickup that morning. There was nobody around to see us.
We did practice restraint, though, ending our make-out fest within minutes instead of hours, which would have been my choice. But we had a lifetime ahead. Things to do. Cattle guards to cross. So we continued our drive, checking out some of the more obvious locations we might one day call our home. We started at the Home Place—the quaint, modest homestead where his grandfather used to live back when he was a newly married rancher just beginning to raise a family. The well-maintained road on which we drove wasn’t always there, Marlboro Man told me, and when any amount of rain would fall, his grandmother would find herself trapped at the Home Place for days because of the roaring, impassable creek. His grandmother had been a town girl much like me, Marlboro Man said, and had resisted living on the ranch at the beginning. But because she wanted to marry his grandfather, she’d bitten the bullet and made the move.
“How sweet,” I remarked. “Did she eventually wind up liking it?”
“Well, she tried to,” he said. “But the first time she got on a horse my grandpa made the mistake of laughing at her,” Marlboro Man explained. “She got off and said that was the last time she was ever riding a horse.” Marlboro Man chuckled his signature chuckle.
“Oh,” I said, smiling nervously. “Well, how long did it take her to get used to it?”
“Well, she never really did,” Marlboro Man said. “They eventually bought a house and moved to town.” He chuckled again.
I looked out the window, twirling my hair. Something about the Home Place didn’t seem like the best fit.
We continued our drive, not making any permanent decisions that day about where we’d live. We’d been engaged less than twenty-four hours, after all; there was no huge rush. When we finally returned to his house, we curled up on his couch and watched a movie. Gone With the Wind, of all things. He was a fan. And as I lay there that afternoon and watched the South crumble around Scarlett O’Hara’s knees for what had to have been the 304th time in my life, I touched the arms that held me so sweetly and securely…and I sighed contentedly, wondering how on earth I’d ever found this person.
When he walked me to my car late that afternoon, minutes after Scarlett had declared that tomorrow is another day, Marlboro Man rested his hands lightly on my waist. He caressed my rib cage up and down, touching his forehead to mine and closing his eyes—as if he were recording the moment in his memory. And it tickled like crazy, his fingertips on my ribs, but I didn’t care; I was engaged to this man, I told myself, and there’ll likely be much rib caressing in the future. I needed to toughen up, to be able to withstand such displays of romance without my knees buckling beneath me and without my forgetting my mother’s maiden name and who my first grade teacher had been. Otherwise I had lots of years of trouble—and decreased productivity—ahead. So I stood there and took it, closing my eyes as well and trying with all my might to will away the ticklish sensations. They had no place here. Begone, Satan! Ree, hold strong.
My mind won, and we stood there and continued to thumb our nose at the reality that we were two separate bodies…and the western sun behind us changed from yellow to orange to pink to a brilliant, impossible red—the same color as the ever-burning fire between us.
On the drive home, my whole torso felt warm. Like when you’ve awakened from the most glorious dream you’ve ever had, and you’re still half-in, half-out, and you still feel the dream and it’s still real. I forced myself to think, to look around me, to take it all in. One day, I told myself as I drove down that rural county road, I’m going to be driving down a road like this to run to the grocery store in town…or pick up the mail on the highway…or take my kids to cello lessons.
Cello lessons? That would be possible, right? Or ballet? Surely there was an academy nearby.
We’d casually thrown some wedding dates around: August? September? October? After next summer, when the weather was cool again. When shipping season was over. When we could relax and celebrate and enjoy a nice, long honeymoon without the pressures of cattle work. Our wedding would likely be months and months away, which was fine with me. It would take me that long to address enough invitations for his side of the family, what with the cousins and uncles and aunts and extended relatives, who all seemed to live within a fifty-mile radius, who all would want to celebrate the first wedding in Marlboro Man’s immediate family—a family that had been rocked by the tragic death of the oldest son some ten years before. And it would take me that long to break away from my old life, to cut the cord between my former and future selves.
Meanwhile, word of our engagement had begun to spread through my hometown of 35,000, thanks in no small part to my brother Mike and his patented Bullhorn Policy of announcing our engagement at the mall—or over the telephone lines—the day before. My return to my hometown after living in Los Angeles had been somewhat noteworthy, since I’d always given off the air—sometimes obnoxiously so—of someone who thought she belonged in a larger, more cosmopolitan locale. The fact that I would now be hanging up my L.A.-acquired black pumps to move to an isolated ranch in the middle of nowhere was enough to raise a few eyebrows. I could almost hear the whispers through the grapevine.
“Ree? Is getting married?”
“Seriously? Ree’s marrying…a rancher?”
“She’s going to live in the country?”
“I can’t picture Ree…riding a horse.”
“She’s the last person I would ever imagine in the country.”
“Whatever happened to her boyfriend in California?”
Halfway through my trip, my car phone rang. It was my sister, Betsy, who’d been home visiting for the past twenty-four hours.
“Mom just saw Carolyn at the gift shop.” Betsy laughed. “She said she’d just heard about you getting engaged and she could not believe you were actually going to be living in the country….” We both laughed, knowing this was going to become a regular thing.
I couldn’t blame people for their doubts. The truth was, I still didn’t even know how I’d manage it. Country life? As much time as I’d spent at Marlboro Man’s house, the reality of a day-to-day rural existence was still a big unknown to me. I closed my eyes and tried to reconcile my future—a future in an as-yet-unidentified house, likely at the end of an as-yet-unidentified dusty gravel road far away from restaurants and shops and makeup counters—with my citified, pampered, self-absorbed existence. What would I do every day? What time would I have to get out of bed? Would there be hens involved? Though I’d dated Marlboro Man for some time, I’d never really spent the night with him…I’d never woken up to his schedule and watched how it all played out once his feet hit the floor. I couldn’t imagine what I’d do with him in the morning. Would I eat Grape-Nuts in front of him, or wait till he left for the office? Wait—there was no office. Would I go to work with him, or would I have to spend the day scrubbing clothes on the washboard…and hanging them on a clothesline? Where would Bounce come into play? If I sat still, my mind wandered. All the stereotypes I’d ever heard about country life swam around in my mind like a school of tiny fish. I was completely powerless to shake them.
I finally arrived back home and entered my house. Betsy had gone out with friends from high school, and when I walked into the kitchen I saw it—the elephant in the room: the door leading to the family room was closed; my parents were on the other side. The air was thick and suffocating. I could actually see, floating around my childhood home, what is normally invisible: tension, strife, conflict, pain. I realized I was a person split in two—giddy and fizzy and ecstatic about my future with Marlboro Man…and, simultaneously, devastated and filled with doom and dread over the knowledge my stable, normal, happy family life was coming apart before my eyes. How could this perfect, shiny house have spiraled downward into such a den of sadness? That it happened to coincide with my finding the greatest love of my life had to be a joke.
Dragging myself up to my bedroom, I kicked off my shoes and curled up on the soft chair next to my bed. I so wanted to leave, to avoid the whole godforsaken mess altogether. It was my parents’ problem, after all—not mine. I certainly had no power to reunite them. But instead of being liberated and resigned to that reality, all I could think about was how on earth I’d be able to negotiate the next several months of my engagement. I could see it all in front of me—a never-ending, schizophrenic cycle of euphoric highs from being with my beloved…and abysmal lows the second I walked back into my parents’ house. I wasn’t sure I had the intestinal fortitude to withstand the roller coaster.
That’s when my savior called. He called as he always did after we’d spent a day or evening together. He called to say good night…I had a good time today…what are you doing tomorrow…I love you. His calls were a panacea; they instantly lifted me, reassured me, healed me, made everything whole again. This call was no different.
“Hey, you,” he said, his voice reaching new heights of sexiness.
“Hey,” I said, quietly sighing.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Sitting here,” I answered, hearing the muffled voices of my parents through my upstairs bedroom floor. “And thinking…”
“What about?” he said.
“Oh, I was thinking…,” I began, hesitating for a moment. “That I think I want to elope.”
Marlboro Man laughed at first. But when he realized I wasn’t laughing, too, he stopped, and we both sat in silence.
YOU DO?” Marlboro Man responded. “You want to elope?”
“Well yeah…kinda,” I responded. “What do you think?”
“Well,” he began. “What brought this on?” He didn’t say it, but I knew he didn’t want to elope. He wanted to have a wedding. He wanted to celebrate.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I hesitated, not really knowing how I felt or what to say. “I was just thinking about it when you called.”
He paused for a moment. “You okay?” he asked. He’d detected the change in my voice, that a dark cloud had descended.
“Oh, I’m fine!” I reassured him. “I’m totally fine. I just…oh, I just thought it might be fun to run off together.”
But that wasn’t at all what I meant.
What I meant was that I didn’t want to have anything whatsoever to do with family celebrations, tensions, stress, or marital problems. I didn’t want to have to worry from one day to the next whether my folks were going to hold it together through the next several months of wedding preparations. I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I wanted to bail. I wanted it to go away.
But I didn’t say that; it was too much for that late-night phone call, too much for me to explain.
“Well, I’m open,” Marlboro Man responded, yawning through his words. “We can just figure it out tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I said, yawning in return. “Good night…”
I fell asleep on my comfortable chair, hugging Fox Johnson, a worn-out Steiff animal my parents had given me back when we were a happy, perfect family.
COME OUT today,” he said the next morning. “You can come help me finish burnin’.”
I smiled, knowing he didn’t need my help at all. But I loved it when he phrased it that way.
“Oh, okay!” I said, rubbing my eyes. “What should I wear?”
Marlboro Man laughed, probably wondering how many years would pass before I’d quit asking that question.
Controlled burning, or, simply, burnin’, as landowners usually call it, is usually done in the spring just as new grass growth would begin. Burning gets rid of the old, dead grass from the winter months and makes room for fresh, green grass to push through the ground more robustly. It also kills new weeds that have already popped up, since many weeds sprout first in early spring. Normally, burning is carried out from a Jeep or other open vehicle, the driver holding a torch out of the side, lighting grass as he goes. I’d seen Marlboro Man do it from afar but had never been up close and personal with the flames. Maybe he needs me to drive the Jeep! I thought. Or, better yet, man the torch! This could be really fun.
He asked me to meet him at the barn near his house, where his Jeep was parked. Just as I pulled up, I saw Marlboro Man exiting the barn…with two horses in hand. My stomach felt funny as I scrunched up my nose and mouthed the word crap. I wasn’t comfortable riding a horse, and like my parents’ marital problems, I’d been secretly hoping this whole “horse thing” would just up and magically disappear.
When it came to horses, the problem wasn’t that I was afraid—not at all. I thought horses were beautiful, and I’d never been nervous around animals. The problem wasn’t my ability to get on or off the horse—this was one of the few things on the ranch in which a background in ballet was an asset. Neither did the smell bother me—I actually kind of liked it. My problem with horses had to do with the fact that any time the horse broke into a trot, my bottom wouldn’t stay in the saddle. No matter what level of instruction Marlboro Man gave me, no matter how many pointers, a horse trot for me meant a repeated and violent Slap! Slap! Slap! on the seat of my saddle. My feet were fine—they’d stay securely in the stirrups. But I just couldn’t figure out how to use the muscles in my legs correctly, and I hadn’t yet learned how to post. It was so unpleasant, the whole riding-a-horse business: my bottom would slap, my torso would stiffen, and I’d be sore for days—not to mention that I looked like a complete freak while riding—kind of like a tree trunk with red, stringy hair. Short of taking the rectal temperatures of cows, I’d never felt more out of place doing anything in my life.
All of this rushed to the surface when I saw Marlboro Man walking toward me with two of his horses, one of which was clearly meant for me. Where’s my Jeep? I thought. Where’s my torch? I don’t want a horse. My bottom can’t take it. Where’s my Jeep? I’d never wanted to drive a Jeep so much.
“Hey,” I said, walking toward him and smiling, trying to appear not only calm but also totally unconcerned about the reality that faced me. “Uh…I thought we were going burning.”
I clearly sounded out the g. It was a loud, clanging cymbal.
“Oh, we are,” he said, smiling. “But we’ve got to get to some areas the Jeep can’t reach.”
My stomach lurched. For more than a couple of seconds, I actually considered feigning illness so I wouldn’t have to go. What can I say? I wondered. That I feel like I’m going to throw up? Or should I just clutch my stomach, groan, then run behind the barn and make dramatic retching sounds? That could be highly effective. Marlboro Man will feel sorry for me and say, “It’s okay…you just go on up to my house and rest. I’ll be back later.” But I don’t think I can go through with it; vomiting is so embarrassing! And besides, if Marlboro Man thinks I vomited, I might not get a kiss today….
“Oh, okay,” I said, smiling again and trying to prevent my face from betraying the utter dread that plagued me. I hadn’t noticed, through all my inner torture and turmoil, that Marlboro Man and the horses had been walking closer to me. Before I knew it, Marlboro Man’s right arm was wrapped around my waist while his other hand held the reins of the two horses. In another instant, he pulled me toward him in a tight grip and leaned in for a sweet, tender kiss—a kiss he seemed to savor even after our lips parted.
“Good morning,” he said sweetly, grinning that magical grin.
My knees went weak. I wasn’t sure if it was the kiss itself…or the dread of riding.
We mounted our horses and began walking slowly up the hillside. When we reached the top, Marlboro Man pointed across a vast prairie. “See that thicket of trees over there?” he said. “That’s where we’re headed.” Almost immediately, he gave his horse a kick and began to trot across the flat plain. With no prompting from me at all, my horse followed suit. I braced myself, becoming stiff and rigid and resigning myself to looking like a freak in front of my love and also to at least a week of being too sore to move. I held on to the saddle, the reins, and my life as my horse took off in the same direction as Marlboro Man’s.
Not two minutes into our ride, my horse slightly faltered after stepping in a shallow hole. Having no experience with this kind of thing, I reacted, shrieking loudly and pulling wildly on my reins, simultaneously stiffening my body further. The combination didn’t suit my horse, who decided, understandably, that he pretty much didn’t want me on his back anymore. He began to buck, and my life flashed before my eyes—for the first time, I was deathly afraid of horses. I held on for dear life as the huge creature underneath me bounced and reared, but my body caught air, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d go flying.
In the distance, I heard Marlboro Man’s voice. “Pull up on the reins! Pull up! Pull up!” My body acted immediately—it was used to responding instantly to that voice, after all—and I pulled up tightly on the horse’s reins. This forced its head to an upright position, which made bucking virtually impossible for the horse. Problem was, I pulled up too tightly and quickly, and the horse reared up. I leaned forward and hugged the saddle, praying I wouldn’t fall off backward and sustain a massive head injury. I liked my head. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to it.
By the time the horse’s front legs hit the ground, my left leg was dangling out of its stirrup, even as all my dignity was dangling by a thread. Using my balletic agility, I quickly hopped off the horse, tripping and stumbling away the second my feet hit the ground. Instinctively, I began hurriedly walking away—from the horse, from the ranch, from the burning. I didn’t know where I was going—back to L.A., I figured, or maybe I’d go through with Chicago after all. I didn’t care; I just knew I had to keep walking. In the meantime, Marlboro Man had arrived at the scene and quickly calmed my horse, who by now was eating a leisurely morning snack of dead winter grass that had yet to be burned. The nag.
“You okay?” Marlboro Man called out. I didn’t answer. I just kept on walking, determined to get the hell out of Dodge.
It took him about five seconds to catch up with me; I wasn’t a very fast walker. “Hey,” he said, grabbing me around the waist and whipping me around so I was facing him. “Aww, it’s okay. It happens.”
I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted him to let go of me and I wanted to keep on walking. I wanted to walk back down the hillside, start my car, and get out of there. I didn’t know where I’d go, I just knew I wanted to go. I wanted away from all of it—riding horses, saddles, reins, bridles—I didn’t want it anymore. I hated everything on that ranch. It was all stupid, dumb…and stupid.
Wriggling loose of his consoling embrace, I squealed, “I seriously can’t do this!” My hands trembled wildly and my voice quivered. The tip of my nose began to sting, and tears welled up in my eyes. It wasn’t like me to display such hysteria in the presence of a man. But being driven to the brink of death had brought me to this place. I felt like a wild animal. I was powerless to restrain myself. “I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life!” I cried.
I turned to leave again but decided instead to give up, choosing to sit down on the ground and slump over in defeat. It was all so humiliating—not just my rigid, freakish riding style or my near collision with the ground, but also my crazy, emotional reaction after the fact. This wasn’t me. I was a strong, confident woman, for Lord’s sake; I don’t slump on the ground in the middle of a pasture and cry. What was I doing in a pasture, anyway? Knowing my luck, I was probably sitting on a pile of manure. But I couldn’t even walk anymore; my knees were even trembling by now, and I’d lost all feeling in my fingertips. My heart pounded in my cheeks.
If Marlboro Man had any sense, he would have taken the horses and gotten the hell out of there, leaving me, the hysterical female, sobbing on the ground by myself. She’s obviously in the throes of some hormonal fit, he probably thought. There’s nothing you can say to her when she gets like this. I don’t have time for this crap. She’s just gonna have to learn to deal with it if she’s going to marry me.
But he didn’t get the hell out of there. He didn’t leave me sobbing on the ground by myself. Instead he joined me on the grass, sitting beside me and putting his hand on my leg, reassuring me that this kind of thing happens, and there wasn’t anything I did wrong, even though he was probably lying.
“Now, did you really mean that about not wanting to do this the rest of your life?” he asked. That familiar, playful grin appeared in the corner of his mouth.
I blinked a couple of times and took a deep breath, smiling back at him and reassuring him with my eyes that no, I hadn’t meant it, but I did hate his horse. Then I took a deep breath, stood up, and dusted off my Anne Klein straight-leg jeans.
“Hey, we don’t have to do this now,” Marlboro Man said, standing back up. “I’ll just do it later.”
“No, I’m fine,” I answered, walking back toward my horse with newfound resolve.
I took another deep breath and climbed back on the horse. As Marlboro Man and I rode back toward the thicket of trees, I suddenly understood: if I was going to marry this man, if I was going to live on this isolated ranch, if I was going to survive without cappuccino and takeout food…I sure wasn’t going to let this horse beat me. I’d have to toughen up and face things.
As we rode, it became even more clear. I’d have to apply this same courage to all areas of my life—not just the practical, day-in and day-out activities of ranch life, but also the reality of my parents’ marital collapse and any other problems that would arise in the coming years. Suddenly, running off and getting married no longer seemed like the romantic adventure I was trying to convince myself it would be. suddenly I realized that if I did that, if I ran away and said “I do” in some dark, hidden corner of the world, I’d never be able to handle the rigors and stresses of country life. And that wouldn’t be fair to Marlboro Man…or myself.
As we started moving, I noticed that Marlboro Man was riding at my pace. “The horses need to be shod,” he said, grinning. “They didn’t need to trot today anyway.”
I glanced in his direction.
“So we’ll just go slow and easy,” he continued.
I looked toward the thicket of trees and took a deep, calming breath, grabbing on to the saddle horn so firmly my knuckles turned pasty white.