it’s not for show. He was strong and in charge, assertive. He got exactly what he wanted. But he was also gentle and sweet. It was incredible.”
I didn’t go into all the details. There were some things I wanted to keep totally for myself. But I shared enough to make my sister swoon and fan herself. Even in the intensely cold air, Cecilia cocked her hip and fanned herself.
We were giddy as we headed back toward the fire, giggling with our heads close together. When we got back to the circle, we got our composure again but not before catching the attention of Rubin. He had finished the potatoes and was sitting on one of the stumps wrapped in a blanket, gripping a cup of coffee to get as much warmth from the steam on his face as he could.
He shot me a curious look. Then his eyes moved to Cecilia and over to me again. There were questions in that look but also something that said he was catching on, too. Maybe Sawyer and I hadn’t been as subtle as I’d hoped we had.
That immediately made me think of my father. I wondered how he might feel if he found out. It seemed extremely unlikely there would be a big happy moment of acceptance and him throwing his arms around Sawyer. I had my doubts my father would be pleased to know I was horsing around with the cattle boy.
Especially after he told me to avoid that specific thing when I was packing for the trip. This wasn’t about boys, he’d told me. It wasn’t about anything but the land. And I had gotten close to the land. Connected with it. Discovered what he had loved about it when he was younger. It just so happened I also got close to the cowboy who took care of the land and lived his life on horseback.
I wondered what Dad would think and imagined that was a conversation that wouldn’t go particularly well, but oddly, I didn’t feel worried or upset about it. I didn’t really care what my father thought. Hell, I didn’t really care what anybody thought.
This wasn’t about them. It wasn’t about my father and how he raised me. It wasn’t about my sister and the images she had of the perfect man and what it meant to find a good catch. It wasn’t about my cousin, Rubin, or any of the other people from California who might judge and look down on Sawyer even while wanting to play pretend alongside him.
This was about me and only me.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t caring about what anyone thought about my choices or what I was going to do next. I wasn’t trying to build myself up or mold myself into an image that would please arbitrary, shallow concepts of what people should be.
That was what I had done my entire life. There wasn’t a single moment of my life starting in those years just before becoming a teenager when I was truly and authentically me. I had spent all those years crafting the identity I wore like a heavy trench coat. It completely covered me up and smothered anything else that might exist.
In California, that was all people knew. It was all people cared to know. They were comfortable with what I put out into the world and satisfied that I was ticking all the boxes of these ridiculous ideals. That was the identity I thought everyone wanted me to be, regardless of what it did to my heart and my mind.
Now I wanted to hang that coat up, to uncover everything and just be myself. It sounded so simple, but in so many ways, it was a radical concept to me. Finally, I wasn’t framing everything around how people would see me or if I would be deemed fashionable, desirable, and acceptable.
I was just doing what my heart told me to. I was doing what felt right. That told me maybe this was who I was supposed to be all along. I never would have known it if it wasn’t for coming out here and experiencing it, being forced into the position of discovering these things about me. But now I had.
Sure, the horses were unexpected. So were the cows and the sweat and the outdoors. I was still getting used to the bunkhouse and the lack of luxuries. But I liked it. I loved sitting around the fire and the smell of burning