“I’m sorry,” is the first thing out of her mouth. “I’m really, really, ridiculously sorry, okay?
It was stupid to get jealous. I’m so over it.”
She thinks I cut school to avoid her.
“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have read you. You kind of deserve what you get, when you read what somebody else feels about you.”
“Still, it wasn’t cool. I shouldn’t have felt that way.”
“We can’t always control what we feel,” I tell her. Boy, is yesterday the perfect example of that. “Hey, I’ve been jealous of you, too, occasionally. And this thing with my dad was a big surprise. You’re only half human.”
This last bit was meant to be a joke. Only she doesn’t laugh.
“So you. . forgive me?” she asks. It’s strange whenever Angela sounds vulnerable, when she’s usually so strong. It lets me see through a tiny window into her world, where I’m her only real friend. If she screws it up with me, she’s totally alone.
“Sure. Water under the bridge,” I tell her.
She sighs. Relief. “Want to come over?”
“I can’t. I have something I have to do today.”
I’m going to see Tucker.
The regional high school rodeo competition this year is being held in the Jackson Hole Rodeo Arena, one of the few times this year the team is competing at home. At the entrance the owner, Jay Hooper, waves me by when I try to pay admission. I’d almost forgotten he’s an angel-blood.
“Because you’re Maggie’s kid,” he tells me.
I don’t argue.
I pick a seat way in the back of the bleachers. I shouldn’t be here, I know, shouldn’t be away from home right now, when no one else knows where I am. But I want to see Tucker. Part of me thinks that if I can just lay eyes on him, I’ll find myself again. I’ll know.
I watch the rodeo as they start up with the calf-roping section, but I can’t concentrate.
Ever since yesterday I’ve felt lost in a sea of my own guilt, and it truly feels like I’m underwater.
The voices of the announcers sound muffled. I can’t see clearly. I try to breathe and I get a mouthful of guilt.
I let Christian kiss me. I can still feel it tingling on my lips, still taste him.
The thought makes me feel physically ill. This is not me, I think. I can’t be that girl who makes out with another guy when her boyfriend is this strong, amazing, wonderful, loving, honest and totally funny, hot and tumble,
you’d-have-to-be-freaking-crazy-to-cheat-on-this-total-catch kind of a guy.
I groan and close my eyes. Tucker is all of those things, and so much more. Right now I feel like I’m that empty beer can under the bleachers.
I hear Tucker’s name called. There are hoots and hollers from people in the stands. Then he and Midas are out of the gate chasing down a black-and-white calf. Tucker has a long loop of rope in his hand, swinging it almost gently around his head, one, two, three times, then lets it fly.
It catches the calf perfectly around the neck. Tucker slides down from Midas’s back, runs to the calf’s side, holding another piece of rope between his teeth, flips the calf expertly into the dirt, and ties his legs. The whole thing takes all of two minutes, maybe less. And he’s done. He waves at the crowd.
My eyes fill. It seems like I’m crying all the time these days, but I can’t help it. He’s so beautiful, even dusty and dirty and sweating with effort, he’s the most beautiful boy in the world.
Christian might be right. We belong together. That’s hard to deny. He’s my purpose, at least a big part of it.
But Tucker is my choice. I love him. That isn’t going to go away.
I wanted an answer, and that’s as close to one as I’m going to get. Now I should slip out of here before he spots me and sees the guilt that has to be plain as day all over my face.
The crowd around me cheers again as the time is announced. He’s done well. Even with all the other emotional garbage piling up on top of me, I’m proud of him.
I stand and edge my way over to the aisle, then move quickly down the stairs. Almost out.
But then someone whoops loudly at Tucker from the front row of the stands. A female someone.
And something about the whole thing makes me pause.
It only takes me a second to locate her: a girl wearing formal western wear, a white button-up shirt with stars on the shoulders, white jeans with fringe, white boots. A cascade of long red hair flows in perfect curls down her back. She’s looking at Tucker with this kind of light in her eyes that instantly twists me up inside.
I feel like I should know her. There’s something familiar — she must go to our school, of course — and then it hits me. This is Allison Lowell. She’s one of the girls Tucker took to prom last year. She was sitting right next to me when he drove us all home that night, a petite redhead in a deep navy dress.
But I do. I lower the walls, just a smidge, and I reach for her with my mind. I feel what she feels. And I don’t like it.
Because she thinks he’s beautiful, too. He makes her palms get sweaty and her voice get squeaky in this mortifying way. But he’s always nice to her. He’s really nice, which is so rare in a guy so gorgeous, she knows. He doesn’t even seem to know how hot he is. She remembers dancing with him, his rough and calloused palm as he held one of her hands while they danced a two-step, the other on her waist. She thought she would burst. His eyes blue as cornflowers.
Writing his name in the margins of her notes in Spanish class. She has a million things she wants to say to
