Page 115 of Untamed
The arena is the area in which the bull riding action takes place. The arena size depends upon the size and shape of the hosting venue, but a PBR arena typically averages 85 feet by 140 feet. The steel bucking chutes, panels, gates and posts that encircle the arena collectively weigh 50,000 pounds and, when assembled, equal 1,800 feet or six football fields worth of connected steel. The steel materials travel from event to event on a 53-foot long flat-bed trailer pulled by a semi-truck.
“Ty drew Bruiser for Springfield,” Haylee says, her voice distant on the other end of the line. She left last night with Ty to head to Springfield, Missouri. Her guy, he’s ranked number one in the world right now. Ty and Haylee, they’re hot and heavy now too and pretty much together whenever they can be. Which is about as much as Grayer and me. When you’re dating a pro bull rider, it’s hard to find time together. But it’s nice to have Haylee around because she understands the frustrations.
Reaching for my necklace on the counter, I duck my head, slipping it on. “Grayer drew Pearl Harbor.” With my black cowgirl hat Grayer gave me for Christmas, I reach for my bag near the door and my purse next to it. “It’s a three-night show, right?”
“Yep. You’re leaving now, right?”
“Yeah, Grayer just got here.”
She squeals. “I love our life. See ya soon, babe.”
We hang up and I’m out the door, rushing toward Grayer’s truck like any girlfriend of a bull rider would do.
What’s it like being his girlfriend? Crazy, addictive, loving, amazing. I could go on. I guess I could say I’m a little reckless now. Recklessly in love with a wild-hearted boy who loves me fiercely and without restraints of what might happen.
When I think about this time last year, I didn’t follow Grayer to Biloxi in an act of rebelliousness or to make him fall in love with me.
I went because I wanted to. I fell in love with Grayer during our time together, traveling from city to city because it was Grayer Easton and the boy was easy to fall in love with. Anyone who can sing every word to any Garth Brooks song is worth loving if you ask me. And whetherhewants to admit it, he’s worth loving. He’s worth making memories with that last forever.
It’s worth it like dancing in the rain and making love under the gray-lit sky that blankets that love in clouds of hope.
Hope I thought was gone forever.
I thought being with Grayer meant freedom. I thought I’d find myself with him. I thought if I could feel love, maybe the brokenness inside me would heal. Instead, I lost myself along the way and found me again with the help of him, Haylee, and his entire family.
A lot has changed since then.
The biggest?
I’m living in Austin and going to college and . . . dating a boy. Am I living with him?
Nope. Are you crazy? I’m nineteen and still have no idea what I’m doing with my life. Who says I have to have it all figured out? There’s nothing that says just because we’re in love we have to be living together. Besides, Haylee makes a much better roommate than bull riders any day.
What hasn’t changed?
Haylee’s still with me. We got an apartment together and enrolled in a community college. I just finished up summer quarter in my first year to become a veterinary assistant.
I went back to Ellensburg a few weeks after the World Finals in Vegas with Grayer, because I needed to. Grayer said he needed to check on Morgan, which she then talked him into building her a cage in her bedroom. He didn’t ask questions, but he did it for her like the good guy he is.
I also needed to talk to my parents, tell them my plans to live in Austin, and finally say goodbye to Jamie. To forgive myself. I never did when he died, and I needed to leave that part of my life where it belonged, with him.
If I was going to love me, I had to let go of that girl who loved him and blamed herself for his death. Sure, we were fighting that night, but he was the one driving the car. I couldn’t control that.
I’ll be the first to admit my fear of letting go of Jamie wasn’t easy because I refused to admit I was holding on. The truth was, Jamie had my childhood and always would. I’m not trying to live in the past or replace that love I will always have for him.
I couldn’t love Grayer in the ways he needed me to if I was still hung up on Jamie and the regret I had over that. I was carrying around this notion that someone had to replace him to make me forget that pain. No one ever would replace Jamie. And finally, I was okay with that. After I left Ellensburg for the second time, I moved to Austin with Haylee, and though Grayer lived three hours away, we started dating. Slowly. Being the World Champion, he had a lot going on in his life and we certainly didn’t have any business living together just yet.
While dating that wild crazy bull rider, living our life out on the highway and between cities, we discovered how good it could be. And next to driftwood on a sandy beach making love, the sunset on Jekyll Island our backdrop and a sky full of cotton candy colored clouds, I fell in love with Grayer Easton all over again.
Everyone in this world has imperfections they don’t like. Imperfections, fears, doubts, lies they’ve told, lies they believe, words they desperately want to hear, and words that can destroy them. Broken hearts don’t mend. You just learn to live with the cracks.
The thing is, all that baggage we carry makes us beautiful in my opinion. Look at Haylee. Ordinarily you’d look at her and think, there’s a girl who had a rough life. And you would think, she’s throwing it away by doing nothing. I’m sure they think the same thing about me too. But what they don’t see, what they refuse to see is that’s her. She’s not hiding from anyone or being someone she’s not. That makes her beautiful. That sets her apart from the rest of the world.
For a while, I thought being imperfect made me damaged. Not good enough. I learned with time, that was not the case. Nobody is completely damaged or irreparable. What it did was allow me to see that in others. Realize that while I thought maybe I was the only one confused about life, I wasn’t. I used to think like this. If Grayer was those sunrises that blanketed the southern sky with its peppered flecks of light, I was the darker days with clouds so low they suffocated me like a thick fog. I don’twantto feel this way. It’s the hand I was given. But what I never considered until now, was that maybe Grayer had been thinking that way about me too.
Maybe I was a light for him.
Maybe he saw me in that southern sky.
