Page 38 of High Heels & Heifers
He laughs again. “I was. I met Sonja in college.” He presses his lips together, looks up at the cloudless sky, and shakes his head. “And if I’d gone through with it, that would have been the worst mistake of my life. New Mexico changed my life.”
I wait for him to tell me more, still in his arms, and study the small lines at the corners of his eyes. There are a few gray hairs at his temples too. Since he mentioned eight to nine years, numbers start rolling through my brain. “You left California eight years ago?”
“Nine,” he corrects.
“Geez. I was only in my second year of undergrad and still on the medical track Mom and Dad insisted on.” I hadn’t realized he would be that much older than me. Five years, sure, but eight plus however long it was before he left California. Tucking my lips between my teeth, I look down for a second and meet his dark gaze again. “How old are you, Luca?”
“I was wondering how long it would be before you asked that question.” His brows furrow, and he smiles a little ruefully.
“It’s not that it matters,” I rush to say. “I’m just curious.”
Luca releases me then, and I feel a chill at not having our bodies pressed together. But he slides his hand down my arm and laces our fingers together. “We have to finish up breakfast and get on the trail,” he says with a sigh. “Otherwise, we’re not going to make it to the right spot to meet Emma for the night. I’ll pack Lucy up and ride with you on Jasper, and we’ll have all day to talk as we ride. Seems like we’re gonna need it.”
As we return hand-in-hand to the others in the group, my team members collectively lower their eyes to where our hands are joined. A flush of heat creeps up my throat and sets my cheeks on fire. I tuck my hair behind one ear and nearly drop Luca’s hand. Then, I decide their opinion doesn’t matter, and raise my chin proudly.
Eddie walks over, hands me a plate of pancakes, and winks. “Well, heavens to Betsy,look at the lovebirds!”
* * *
After breakfast, we finish packingup the tents and supplies and head out for the final full day of the ride. This time, riding on the same horse as Luca is different. I no longer feel like a fish out of water on Jasper. In fact, riding him or simply being near him gives me more comfort than I would have imagined a week ago. Geez. I mentally shake that off because I don’t want to consider the implications that I’ve fallen for someone in such a short period. But this thing between Luca and me has me feeling a lot of clichés at the same time—twisted in knots, feeling all warm and fuzzy, and off-kilter. Though, if I’m being honest with myself, I am a little smitten with the man who’s currently wrapped around me.
He navigates Jasper with ease around our side of the herd, calling commands to Frankie on occasion when a few of the cows begin to veer off in one direction or another. But nothing like a couple of days ago when he was thrown from Lucy.
A couple of hours into the ride, Eddie and Calvin ride ahead of us, and Luca slows Jasper to distance us from the others. He clears his throat and then we both start at the same time
“Jack?”
“Luca?”
We share an awkward giggle and then I say, “Go ahead.”
“I wasn’t sure if yesterday meant anything to you.” Luca squints off into the distance. “Until you accused me of all that this morning.”
He’s got a point.
“I don’t think I was sure of it either,” I say.
“I shouldn’t have done it. You’ll go back to California tomorrow and that’ll be it. Even if we try to make things work, long distance relationships are always ill-fated.”
However, he doesn’t complain when I snuggle into him, so I enjoy the soft rocking of Jasper’s gait and Luca’s warmth surrounding me while I contemplate his words. It would be a challenge to be wrapped up in a relationship with someone a thousand miles away, but we could visit each other, right?
Luca stays silent at my back, allowing me to think things through, something other dates in the past have never done. It always seemed as if they needed to fill the void with useless words. Luca is different. Silence between us is okay, and I like that. I enjoy it so much I hold on to it for a long time and allow my mind to drift and examine my “love life.”
The times I’d kissed guys in college or the few Tinder dates I went on after graduating, everything seemed unnatural—to the point that I started to wonder if I should try dating a woman. I thought about it for weeks and even considered talking to Mari about it. After all, she’d always been open about being bi-sexual and went on dates with both men and women on the regular. I just assumed I was straight and always tried with men. But after a year or so of worrying about it, I decided to focus on my career first and assumed when I met the right person it would feel natural, regardless of gender.
And here I am with Luca, feeling natural. The notion of him being the right person scares me because both he and Emma have mentioned how unhappy he was in California. How can I expect him to engage in a relationship with someone whose entire life is there?
I decide it’s time to change the subject and look up over my shoulder at him. I wonder for a split second if he’s contemplating the same things as me, perhaps not the failed attempts at connecting with anyone but his own failed relationship. “Tell me about Sonja,” I say.
A frown crosses his lips, but he gives a small nod. “I said before that we met in college. Once we both graduated, we moved in together. It seemed like the expectation and the next steps. I landed the job at Google, and we were well on our way to a white picket fence with 2.5 children. She even got a cat within the first year of our cohabitation.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“Yeah, I’m not a cat fan either. Anyway, she worked in marketing at several techie startups, bouncing between jobs regularly, and my career progressed until I received a promotion to director of research and development. At our celebration dinner, the hints at marriage started. A few weeks later, she was laid off from her latest gig and she stopped trying as much at her career.”
“So... you believe all she wanted was to be a wife.”
“The thought crossed my mind, but then she landed a job with a larger company. I popped the question the day she started, thinking the future was looking up.” There’s something sad in the way he says it.
