The Pioneer Woman Page 4

  “I ran over my dog today!” I blubbered and collapsed into another heap of impossible-to-corral tears. Marlboro Man was embracing me tightly now, knowing full well that his arms were the only offering he had for me at that moment. My face was buried in his neck and I continued to laugh, belting out an occasional “I’m sorry” between my sobs, hoping in vain that the laughter would eventually prevail. I wanted to continue, to tell him about J, to give him the complete story behind my unexpected outburst. But “I ran over my dog” was all I could muster. It was the easier thing to explain. Marlboro Man could understand that, wrap his brain around it. But the uninvited surfer newly-ex-boyfriend dangling at the airport? It was a little more information than I had the strength to share that night.

  He continued holding me in his kitchen until my chest stopped heaving and the wellspring of snot began to dry. I opened my eyes and found I was in a different country altogether, The Land of His Embrace. It was a peaceful, restful, safe place.

  Marlboro Man gave me one last comforting hug before our bodies finally separated, and he casually leaned against the counter. “Hey, if it makes you feel any better,” he said, “I’ve run over so many damn dogs out here, I can’t even begin to count them.”

  It was a much-needed—if unlikely—moment of perspective for me.

  WE SHARED a Marlboro Man–prepared meal of rib eye steaks, baked potatoes, and corn. I’d been a vegetarian for seven years before returning home to Oklahoma and hadn’t touched a speck of beef to my lips in ages, which made my first bite of the rib eye that much more life-altering. The stress of the day had melted away in Marlboro Man’s arms, and now that same man had just rescued me forever from a life without beef. Whatever happened between the cowboy and me, I told myself, I never wanted to be without steak again.

  We did the dishes and talked—about the cattle business, about my job back in L.A., about his local small town, about family. Then we adjourned to the sofa to watch an action movie, pausing occasionally to remind each other once again of the reason God invented lips. Curiously, though, while sexy and smoldering, Marlboro Man kept his heavy breathing to a minimum. This surprised me. He was not only masculine and manly, he lived in the middle of nowhere—one might expect that because of the dearth of women within a twenty-mile range, he’d be more susceptible than most to getting lost in a heated moment. But he wasn’t. He was a gentleman through and through—a sizzling specimen of a gentleman who was singlehandedly introducing me to a whole new universe of animal attraction, but a gentleman, nonetheless. And though my mercury was rising rapidly, his didn’t seem to be in any hurry.

  He walked me to my car as the final credits rolled, offering to follow me all the way home if I wanted. “Oh, no,” I said. “I can get home, no problem.” I’d lived in L.A. for years; it’s not like driving alone at night bothered me. I started my car and watched him walk back toward his front door, admiring every last thing about him. He turned around and waved, and as he walked inside I felt, more than ever, that I was in big trouble. What was I doing? Why was I here? I was getting ready to move to Chicago—home of the Cubs and Michigan Avenue and the Elevated Train. Why had I allowed myself to stick my toe in this water?

  And why did the water have to feel so, so good?

  I pulled out of Marlboro Man’s gravel driveway and turned right, onto the dirt road. Taking in a deep breath and preparing myself for the quiet drive ahead, my thoughts turned suddenly to J. God only knew where he was at that point. I wouldn’t have known if he’d tried to call all evening; in the mid-1990s there was no “missed call” feature on car phones. Neither would I have known whether J had made a surprise visit to my parents’ house with a chain saw or an ax, as they’d left town that evening for a trip…but then, J never really was the chain saw type.

  Winding around the dusty county road in the pitch-black of night, I found myself equal parts content and unsettled—a strange combination brought on by the events of the day—and I began thinking about my move to Chicago and my plans to pursue law school. Was this the right choice? Was it a fit? Or was it just a neat and tidy plan, something concrete and objective? The easy road? An escape from creativity? An escape from risk?

  The loud ring of my car phone disrupted my introspection. Startled, I picked up the phone, certain it would be J calling from the airport after, probably, persistently calling all night. Another phone confrontation. But at least this time I’d be ready. I’d just had a four-hour dose of Marlboro Man. I could handle anything.

  “Hello?” I said, readying myself.

  “Hey, you,” the voice said. The voice. That voice. The one that had infiltrated my dreams.

  It was Marlboro Man, calling to say he missed me, a mere five minutes after I’d pulled away from his house. And his words weren’t scripted or canned, like the obligatory roses sent after a date. They were impulsive, spur-of-the-moment—the words of a man who’d had a thought and acted on it within seconds. A man who, in his busy life on the ranch, had neither the time nor the inclination to wait to call a girl or play it cool. A man who liked a woman and called her just as she left his house, simply to tell her he wished she hadn’t.

  “I miss you, too,” I said, though words like that were difficult for me. I’d conditioned myself to steer clear of them after so many years with J, whose phlegmatic nature had bled over into almost every other aspect of his life. He was not affectionate, and in the four-plus years I’d known him, I couldn’t recall one time he’d called me after a date to say he missed me. Even after I’d left California months earlier, his calls had come every three or four days, sometimes less frequently than that. And while I’d never considered myself a needy sort of gal, the complete dearth of verbal affirmation from J had eventually become paradoxically loud.

  I hung up the phone after saying good night to Marlboro Man, this isolated cowboy who hadn’t had the slightest problem picking up the phone to say “I miss you.” I shuddered at the thought of how long I’d gone without it. And judging from the electrical charges searing through every cell of my body, I realized just how fundamental a human need it really is.

  It was as fundamental a human need, I would learn, as having a sense of direction in the dark. I suddenly realized I was lost on the long dirt road, more lost than I’d ever been before. The more twists and turns I took in my attempt to find my bearings, the worse my situation became. It was almost midnight, and it was cold, and each intersection looked like the same one repeating over and over. I found myself struck with an illogical and indescribable panic—the kind that causes you to truly believe you’ll never, ever escape from where you are, even though you almost always will. As I drove, I remembered every horror movie I’d ever watched that had taken place in a rural setting. Children of the Corn. The children of the corn were lurking out there in the tall grass, I just knew it. Friday the 13th. Sure, it had taken place at a summer camp, but the same thing could happen on a cattle ranch. And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Oh no. I was dead. Leatherface was coming—or even worse, his freaky, emaciated, misanthropic brother.

  I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on the road in front of me, I watched out for Leatherface while dialing Marlboro Man on my car phone. My pulse was rapid out of sheer terror and embarrassment; my face was hot. Lost and helpless on a county road the same night I’d emotionally decompensated in his kitchen—this was not exactly the image I was dying to project to this new man in my life. But I had no other option, short of continuing to drive aimlessly down one generic road after another or parking on the side of the road and going to sleep, which really wasn’t an option at all, considering Norman Bates was likely wandering around the area. With Ted Bundy. And Charles Manson. And Grendel.

  Marlboro Man answered, “Hello?” He must have been almost asleep.

  “Um…um…hi,” I said, squinting in shame.

  “Hey there,” he replied.

  “This is Ree,” I said. I just wanted to make sure he knew.

>   “Yeah…I know,” he said.

  “Um, funniest thing happened,” I continued, my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel. “Seems I got a little turned around and I’m kinda sorta maybe perhaps a little tiny bit lost.”

  He chuckled. “Where are you?”

  “Um, well, that’s just it,” I replied, looking around the utter darkness for any ounce of remaining pride. “I don’t really know.”

  Marlboro Man assumed control, telling me to drive until I found an intersection, then read him the numbers on the small green county road signs, numbers that meant absolutely nothing to me, considering I’d never even heard the term “county road” before, but that would help Marlboro Man pin-point exactly where on earth I was. “Okay, here we go,” I called out. “It says, um…CR 4521.”

  “Hang tight,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Marlboro Man was right there, in less than five minutes. Once I determined the white pickup pulling beside my car was his and not that of Jason Voorhees, I rolled down my window. Marlboro Man did the same and said, with a huge smile, “Having trouble?” He was enjoying this, in the exact same way he’d enjoyed waking me from a sound sleep when he’d called at seven a few days earlier. I was having no trouble establishing myself as the clueless pansy-ass of our rapidly developing relationship.

  “Follow me,” he said. I did. I’ll follow you anywhere, I thought as I drove in the dust trail behind his pickup. Within minutes we were back at the highway and I heaved a sigh of relief that I was going to survive. Humiliated and wanting to get out of his hair, I intended to give him a nice, simple wave and drive away in shame. Instead, I saw Marlboro Man walking toward my car. Staring at his Wranglers, I rolled down my window again so I could hear what he had to say.

  He didn’t say anything at all. He opened my car door, pulled me out of the car, and kissed me as I’d never been kissed before.

  And there we were. Making out wildly at the intersection of a county road and a rural highway, dust particles in the air mixing with the glow of my headlights to create a cattle ranch version of London fog.

  It would have made the perfect cover of a romance novel had it not been for the fact that my car phone, suddenly, began ringing loudly.

  YOUR PHONE’S ringing,” Marlboro Man said, his mouth a mere centimeter from mine. I kept my eyes closed and pulled him tighter, if that was even possible, trying to drown out the clanging cymbal of the car phone by stirring up even more passion between us. It was a beautiful moment; the dark, rural setting had made it so easy to pretend we were in another time and place, in another world. Aside from the ringing of the phone and the headlights from our vehicles, we could have been any two people in the whole history of time.

  But the ringing wasn’t going away, and ignoring it became impossible. “Who is that?” Marlboro Man asked. “It’s a little late, isn’t it?” His strong embrace loosened just enough for me to notice.

  It was a little late, yes—just after midnight. Way too late for a mom or a brother or most casual friends.

  It was also too late for J. We’d been together so long, and he’d never felt compelled to assert his love and affection like this before—only now, when he realized I was out the door, when he saw that my mind was made up, was he finally mustering up the wherewithal to make his true feelings known. And, of course, it had to be now, when I was standing in the arms of a man I was falling more in love with every day. It was way too late for J. Too late for anyone except Marlboro Man.

  Finally the ringing stopped, hallelujah, and the kissing resumed. Marlboro Man’s grip tightened, and I was swept away, once again, to that other time and place. Then the ringing began again, and I was thrown back into reality.

  “Do you need to get that?” he asked.

  I wanted to answer. I wanted to explain that in all our great conversations over the previous week, I’d managed to omit the fact that I was fresh out—barely out—of a four-year relationship. That I’d been slowly breaking it off over the past few weeks and that it had come to a head in the past day or two. That he was at the airport two hours from here, wanting to see me in person. That I’d refused him…because the only thing on my mind was coming here.

  How do you talk to a new love about an old one, especially so early in a relationship? If I’d brought it up earlier in the week, spilled the whole story about J and me, it might have appeared I was being way too open way too soon. Plus, when I was with Marlboro Man, right or wrong, J hardly crossed my mind. I was too busy staring at Marlboro Man’s eyes. Memorizing his muscles. Breathing in his masculinity. Getting drunk on its vapors.

  But now, standing in the dark and feeling so close to him, I wished I’d told Marlboro Man the whole story. Because as uncomfortable as the truth was, the incessant after-midnight phone calls were worse. For all Marlboro Man knew, it was my next date for the evening—or worse, my sugar daddy, Rocco, wanting to know where I was. The phone calls would have sounded much better if I’d provided more context before they arrived with a vengeance. “Sounds like you need to go,” he said as reality swept away the beautiful mist. He was right. As little as he knew about the phone calls that kept coming, he knew they were something that had to be dealt with.

  What could I possibly say? Oh, it’s just my ex-boyfriend…no big deal sounded trite and clichéd. And it was a big deal—if not to me, then certainly to J. But spilling the whole tale about J flying to see me against my wishes was more drama than I cared to insert into this love scene, especially after my breakdown in Marlboro Man’s kitchen earlier in the evening. But silence wasn’t appealing, either, as it would have just looked sketchy. I could have lied and said it was my brother Mike, calling for a ride to the fire station. But Mike wouldn’t have been up that late. And besides, I didn’t want to have to explain why my adult brother would even want to hang out at fire stations. My hands were tied.

  So I chose the middle ground. “Yep,” I agreed. “I’d better go. Old boyfriend. Sorry.” My mouth could form no words beyond that.

  I expected a sudden change in atmosphere, absolutely certain the words old boyfriend would cause a drastic drop in ambient temperature and Marlboro Man would simply say good-bye, get in his pickup, and drive away. And he would have had good reason. After all, he really hadn’t known me very long. Beyond some good conversation and a few fiery kisses, he didn’t know much about me. It would have been easy for him to put up his guard and step back until he had a little time to assess the situation.

  Instead, he wrapped his solid arms around my waist and picked me up off the ground, healing the awkward moment with a warm, reassuring hug. Then, touching his forehead to mine, he said, simply, “Good night.”

  I climbed back into my car just in time to watch Marlboro Man drive away. Pulling out onto the highway, I took a deep breath and sighed…then I picked up my still-ringing phone. It was J, calling from a depressing airport hotel to say he was crushed, and that he’d brought a ring—and a marriage proposal—with him.

  I’d suspected this. He’d been so urgent about wanting to see me when he arrived earlier that day, I knew he must have had a concrete objective in mind. In that sense, I was glad I hadn’t given in to his requests for me to come to the airport to see him in person. It would have been terrible: an awkward hug, limited eye contact, the presentation of the Last-Ditch Diamond, the uncomfortable silence, the inevitable no, the tears, humiliation, and pain.

  “I’m sorry,” I said after spending the next forty-five minutes listening to J say everything he wanted to say. “I really am. I hate that today happened like it did.”

  “I just wanted to see you,” J replied. “I think you would have changed your mind.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “I think once you saw the ring, you would have realized everything we could have had together.”

  I didn’t say what I was thinking. That, in fact, I would have seen the ring for what it was: a tangible, albeit expensive, symbol of the panic J felt at the prosp
ect of facing change. We’d been so comfortable with each other for so long. I’d always been so available to him, so easy for him to be with—losing me would mean the end of that source of comfort.

  “I’m sorry, J,” I repeated. It was simply all I could say. He hung up without responding.

  My phone didn’t ring the rest of the night. When I arrived back at my parents’ house, I fell onto my bed, collapsing in an exhausted heap. Staring at my dark ceiling, I twiddled my hair and found myself, strangely, unable to sleep. Thoughts raced through my mind—of my beloved Puggy Sue—that she wouldn’t be greeting me with a playful bark the next morning. Of J—that he was hurting. Of our relationship, which was finally, after so many years, over for good. Of Chicago and all I had left to do to prepare for my move.

  Of Marlboro Man…

  Marlboro Man…

  Marlboro Man…

  I awoke early the next morning to the sound of my phone ringing. My phone had rung so much over the past twenty-four hours, I wasn’t sure whether to welcome it or run screaming from my bedroom. Groggy, eyes closed, I felt around in the dark until my hand found the receiver. Rubbing my eyes in an effort to awaken myself, I said, softly and with great trepidation, “Hello?”