“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I feel like I kind of got dumped back into my twenties…though a twenties I never actually lived since I had three kids and a house by then.”
He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t want to go back because of what I would have up ahead.”
The comment felt electrified in the moment. She knew why. She just tried not to think about it.
“I didn’t mean it in that way,” she said. “But in the way that things are shiny and new and you have possibilities. Not that that was the case for me back then. My choices were already made. They still are.”
She visualized next September. Meeting at their house, in their driveway, the hot summer air all around them.
I missed you, Will would say.You were right. I went looking out there, and there was nothing better than us.
“They don’t have to be,” he said.
“No, Logan, they do. They are. I made my choice when I was eighteen. I made my choice. I had kids with the man. I built a life with him.”
“When I was eighteen, I went down to California, pissed as hell at my old man, bound and determined to have a whole different life. If I were stuck in that choice, I’d be living in a shack down by a beach somewhere, surfing, drinking beer and trying to pick up college girls. We shouldn’t be held to the decisions we make when we’re eighteen. Hell, we aren’t the same people this many years on.”
In some ways, she agreed. But that wasn’t how a long marriage worked. You grew and changed together and made a life around those changes.
Isn’t that what Will is doing? Growing and changing, and you just don’t like it?
No. She maintained that if your changes violated your marriage vows, they weren’t fair game.
“I get that. But I don’t want everything to change. I want my life back.”
“What life, Sam, the one you had or the one you pretend to have?”
The words landed hard, like a bullet to the gut, right as they entered the neon parking lot of The Painted Lady. There was a classic cowgirl neon sign, a woman kicking her leg up as she reclined in a skirt and boots, her hand on the hat on her head.
The building itself wasn’t as fancy as the sign.
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said.
“For God’s sake.” He got out of the car ahead of her and slammed the door behind him without bothering to wait for her.
She scrambled out and followed after him, into the building.
It was dim and disreputable inside. There was a jukebox and a cleared-out section of floor where people were line dancing. In the corner was the mechanical bull, which had drawn a crowd of balding men and young drunk girls, which seemed to draw a firm line beneath her earlier point that she was back in her twenties. Or someone’s twenties, anyway. Since she’d already been a wife and mother at that point.
Logan was at the bar, and she saw him hold up two fingers while he was talking to the bartender, as if he was ordering two drinks in spite of the fact that she had clearly pissed him off.
The place was packed full, and she looked around, seeing that if she wanted a breather from her tour guide, she was going to have to line dance or ride the bull, and she wasn’t feeling especially keen on either one.
But she decided, with all the cash in her pocket, that if she was going to do something…it was ride the mechanical bull.
So she waded through the crowd and went to stand in the line, behind a tall wiry cowboy type with gray hair. Older. Except she was forced to admit, probably not that much older than she was.
“First time riding the bull?” he asked.
“Yes indeed,” she said, watching as a lithe blonde mounted the back of the beast and drew all eyes for what was more of a simulated sex show than anything else. Until she was unseated, and went flying onto the mats below.
“Still want to do it?” the man in front of her asked.
“Oh yeah. I’m ready.”
She watched the bull brutally unseat many a middle-aged man. She realized she was a near middle-aged woman signing up for the same, butoh well.