Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  “That’s too bad. I rode myself once, my senior year of high school. Didn’t get hurt, but Coach Willis lit into me good when he found out.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t see no coach stopping you now.” Mr. Mendoza shook the can again. “C’mon, do your civic duty.”

  Tony checked out the setup—a bull head and body mounted on a thick pole and surrounded by inflatable pads for a soft landing, a big tarp overhead for shade and a control console for Mr. Mendoza.

  “Well,” Tony said, “I might have a little cash on me.”

  He dropped a ten in the coffee can, stepped up, grabbed the strap and swung on.

  The bull was covered with brown-and-white cowhide and had a nice leathery scent. Tony got himself situated, raised his left hand and nodded.

  It started with a jerk. The bull pitched forward, and Tony leaned back, acting on instinct more than anything else. Then it reversed, fast enough to make his head snap. He had to lean forward and grip hard with his thighs to keep from sliding off the end.

  Then he found his rhythm, and everything fell into place.

  There was nothing quite like that bucking bull motion. A back-and-forth, seesawing kind of thing, with some spinning action thrown in. He watched the back of the bull’s head for directional cues, drilling his gaze right between those sawed-off horns, but he didn’t think too hard about it. This was one of those things where, by the time you thought what to do, it was too late. You had to feel what to do, and do it, all in the same instant.

  And it was a lot to do, in a very short time. One second he was leaning way back, with his spine in line with his thighs and almost touching the bull’s back, and the next, the bull’s head loomed up right in his face, and all the while his arm was swinging as a counterbalance.

  The bull changed directions.

  Everything that wasn’t Tony or the bull was a blur. All that mattered was right here, right now, this pitching, spinning six feet or so of space, with him at the center of it.

  And suddenly he was flat on his back, with the striped tarp whirling overhead and a sound of cheering, though he couldn’t remember there being a crowd when he started.

  Mr. Mendoza’s face appeared above him. “Hey. How you feel?”

  Tony was laughing. “I feel fantastic,” he said.

  “Good. ’Cause you held on for nine-point-two seconds.”

  “Really? It felt like longer.”

  “Yeah, it always does for me, too. But you did good. And I may have turned up the difficulty level a notch or two for you, bud.”

  “You did? Thanks, Mr. Mendoza.”

  Tony got up and back onto solid ground. All the dings he’d gotten in the football game this morning were making themselves heard again loud and clear, plus a few new ones, but it was a good feeling, because he’d done the thing. He hadn’t been beaten.

  Someone else was already taking his place on the bull, and a line was forming.

  “Looks like you drummed up some business for me,” Mr. Mendoza said.

  “Ha ha! Happy to help. I’ll be back later if things slack off again. Got to fill that cash can.”

  “Yeah, and get some training in while you still can.” Mr. Mendoza smiled. “County fair’s just a week away.”

  “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”

  He thought of all the equipment he’d bought for his one rodeo ride. After that night, he’d stuffed it all back in his brand-new riggin bag and taken it to his grandparents’ place. Was it still there?

  * * *

  SO JUST HOW hard could it be to avoid one man at a big community-wide event?

  When the man was Tony, next to impossible.

  He was everywhere. Playing football. Calling out names of winners in the raffles, making everyone laugh with his hilarious improvised one-liners. Grilling fajitas in that Texas flag apron of his. Riding the mechanical bull.

  Dancing.

  She thought she’d get a break when she drove the tractor for the hayride, but there was a ridiculously smitten high school couple snuggled down among the hay bales on the trailer, and that reminded her of the hayride out at the Mastersons’ place back in tenth grade, when she and Tony sat next to each other, her hip and thigh close against his, each of them acutely aware but ignoring each other with all their might. They managed to go the entire ride without making eye contact or exchanging a single word.

  She couldn’t get away. Even when he wasn’t there, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. She longed to feel Tony’s arms around her, and for him to kiss the top of her head like the stupid adorable high school boy with his stupid adorable girlfriend.

  And the worst part of it? This was how it was all the time. This was her life. Even in Philadelphia, he was always popping up in her imagination, making random snarky remarks about whatever was happening at the moment. Every time she leafed through a Texas Monthly, she thought about the place in the country the two of them might’ve settled down in one day in their phantom future.

  She didn’t like daydreams. She liked real things. And in spite of all that had happened, in spite of knowing better, she wanted Tony for real—and she couldn’t have him.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Dalia sat down at a table in the eating area with her mother, she was exhausted. She deserved a break. She’d been working nonstop, she’d been helpful and courteous, and she hadn’t clawed the eyes out of any of Tony’s dance partners.

  The sun was on its way down, but there were hours yet to go. Another hayride. The bonfire.

  People around her were chowing down on grilled brats and fajitas, drinking craft beer from kegs kept cold in trash cans filled with ice. The food looked good, but she was too stressed to eat. All she wanted now was to rest her feet for a while.

  “Oh, sweetie, would you get me some of that green salsa? It’s in those ketchup-type bottles with the nozzles cut down. They’re behind the bar.”

  Dalia stifled a groan. “Sure,” she said as cheerfully as she could.

  The guy behind the bar was around seventy, with a thin cotton snap shirt and a cowboyish swagger.

  “I’d like one of those green salsa bottles, please,” Dalia told him.

  He grinned. “Well, darlin’, I’ll give it to you on one condition, if you’ll give me a smile first.”

  Dalia took a step back. Bad enough to be called “darlin’” by a man older than her father—but this? How many times in her life had she been ordered, directly or indirectly, to smile? The variations were endless. “It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown.” Or “Smiling makes you more attractive.” Or “Can I get a smile?” Or “You forgot your smile!” Or just “Smile!” It always came as a rude shock, with Dalia not bothering anyone, just sitting there minding her own business with a neutral expression on her face, maybe thinking about some task she needed to do later, or trying to remember the name of a song, or noticing a potted plant, or just zoning out. And then someone jerked her out of her own head with a command to smile—like telling her to smile would make her want to smile. It was like being dowsed with ice water.

  Did sober-faced men get told by complete strangers to smile, or was it just women? She really wondered about this. Someone ought to do a study.

  When she was a kid, whenever pictures were being taken, her mom used to tell her, “Smile naturally!” The illogic of the command always bugged her. If the smile really was natural, she’d be doing it without being told. Otherwise it was just a convincing fake smile. But Dalia couldn’t do a convincing fake smile. She tried, but she couldn’t. She cringed at the sight of those pictures now, of her stiffly curving, fractionally parted lips. Now she was grown up, and she would not smile unless she wanted to. Certainly not on the command of some stranger. Much less when there was so little to smile about.

  “Thanks, anyway,” she said to the guy. “I’ll find it somewhere else.”

  And she turn
ed and walked away.

  It felt pretty satisfying, except now she had no salsa, and what was she going to tell her mom? That she refused to get it on principle because some moron told her to smile? A man of her grandfather’s generation, who ought to have allowances made for the sexist assumptions of an earlier time?

  She scanned the area. Surely there was a surplus salsa bottle somewhere in this place.

  And there was...at Tony’s table.

  This time she did groan out loud. Really? Really?

  He wasn’t alone. He was sitting there with three girls—Short Skirt, Too Much Eyeliner and Halter Top. Short Skirt had her hand on Tony’s arm and was leaning way forward, smiling into his face.

  Okay, no reason this should be a big deal. Just go on over quietly to Tony’s table and get the salsa. I don’t even have to speak to him. It’s not his salsa. He’s not using it—he’s just drinking a beer. I’ll just reach past him—

  Tony whirled around with a quick shout, colliding with Dalia, sloshing beer down her jeans.

  “Sorry,” Dalia said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Just wanted the salsa.”

  Tony held a hand to his heart, breathing hard. “I’m sorry. Did I spill on you?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “Why are you so jumpy, Tony?” Halter Top asked. “You need another drink.”

  Dalia took the salsa back to the table. A woman had joined her mother, one of her church friends who’d brought food, but Dalia didn’t hear what they were talking about. She was thinking.

  Years ago she’d seen a horse at the equine veterinarian’s. Another horse approached it from the side, not menacing or all of a sudden or anything, just there. But the first horse reacted all out of proportion. It snorted, shied and drew itself up, tall and daunting. Then it whipped its head around really far toward the other horse.

  It calmed down right away after that. By the time Dalia saw the cloudy film covering the horse’s eye on the near side, she didn’t need the veterinarian’s explanation. And she didn’t need an explanation now for Tony’s performance, which had echoed the horse’s so eerily.

  Of course, Tony had always been ridiculously easy to startle. That had been a running joke throughout their school years. But this was something more.

  There was no cloudy film over Tony’s right eye. But there was a sort of flat, unfocused look to it. And the way he’d startled, whipping his head around far enough to see her with his other eye, was exactly the same.

  She didn’t know to what degree, or how it had happened, or when. But there was one thing she knew for sure.

  Tony was blind in one eye.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THINGS THAT HADN’T seemed significant before suddenly clicked into a much bigger picture. The way Tony trailed his right hand along the wall while walking through the house at La Escarpa. The catlike swiveling of his head before he threw the football. The way he’d startled when she’d approached him in the lumberyard—much like the way he’d startled just now. How he’d collided with the display in the lumberyard when he’d walked off after she accused him of cheating on her.

  She’d thought he was just being childish and dramatic.

  In fact, he couldn’t see the display.

  It was his right eye, his dominant eye. That must be a hassle, though clearly not too incapacitating. His peripheral vision and depth perception were obviously lacking, but apparently he could see well enough to do construction work. And while he couldn’t throw a football with the same precision as in his heyday, he was still an above-average player.

  What could cause loss of sight in so young a man? Diabetes? Glaucoma?

  And why hadn’t anyone ever said anything about it to her? She’d certainly heard enough details from her mom and her mom’s friends about the medical conditions of other people in town—Mike Jeffries’s irritable bowel syndrome, Hannah Jacobs’s kid’s peanut sensitivity. No physical ailment was off-limits for discussion. Why hadn’t they told her about this one? Maybe they were being considerate, not talking about Dalia’s ex in front of her?

  Or maybe they didn’t know. Maybe it was a new thing.

  Was Tony sick? He certainly looked healthy enough, but who knew? He could be in the early stages of...something.

  There was nothing obviously wrong with the eye. It tracked right along with the other eye, and it didn’t look filmy. Was there anything off about the pupil, like it was too dilated or not dilated enough? She didn’t know. Tony’s eyes were dark brown, almost black. Any problem with the pupil would be hard to spot unless she was really looking for it, and really close.

  She was itching to take out her phone and do some Google research. But that was dumb. There was an easier way to find out.

  Just ask him.

  She looked at Tony. He was in high spirits, talking and laughing, and Short Skirt was pawing at him.

  Correction: just ask Alex.

  * * *

  “I JUST LOVE BONFIRES,” said Clarissa. “Don’t you?”

  “Sure!” said Tony. “All firefighters love bonfires.”

  The kindling crackled away beneath the carefully constructed teepee, with the flames licking the bigger logs. A loose crowd hung around, some in camp chairs, some with roasting sticks. People were handing around bags of marshmallows.

  “It’s always a toss-up, the triple-F bonfire,” he said. “Some years there’s a burn ban on and we don’t get to do it, which is sad. But this has been a wet summer, so we’re good to go.”

  Clarissa nodded like this was really profound.

  The wreckage from the Ramirez kitchen hadn’t bulked up the burn pile all that much after all. Most building waste wasn’t safe or practical to burn. Painted wood and pressure-treated lumber were full of toxic chemicals, and wallboard was mostly gypsum, which was a mineral and pretty much fireproof except for the paper coating. So the old two-by-fours went to the dump, along with most of the porch deck boards and siding from the house.

  A lot of the more stylishly weathered wood got held back for resale at Architectural Treasures, a new place in town that sold salvage from old houses. It was a great idea, Tony had to admit. That stuff was hot right now. People ate it up, and with good reason. You couldn’t beat old craftsmanship, for one, and a lot of old flooring and siding came from better wood than what was available today. Modern trees just weren’t as old or dense. The old stuff might be worn and weathered, but it was solid. Plus people liked the idea that there was a story there, a history—especially with all the throwaway culture around them. Modern stuff tended to be slick and cheap and crude—here today, gone tomorrow. But if something was old enough to be scarred by honest wear, it was probably worth keeping.

  “We use the same area for the fire every year. See that ring of stones? And that whole cleared space outside of it? That keeps the fire contained. And those fire hoses are all hooked up and ready to go so things don’t get out of hand. That’d be real cute, if the volunteer fire department started a Class G wildfire at our fundraiser and ended up burning half the county.”

  Clarissa giggled. “You were real cute this morning, lugging those fire hoses over here after the football game. You made, like, a little dance out of it.”

  He remembered that, but it felt like a long time ago. A fire hose was heavy, and moving all those lengths of it was a hot, boring job, so he’d decided to liven things up for himself and the other firefighters by turning the whole thing into a hose drill.

  “You were watching me, huh?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’ve had my eye on you all day.”

  That should have made him feel good, but the truth was, he was getting bored. Flirting with Clarissa was too easy. She flattered him too much. He liked it better when there was a layer of insult involved and he had to unpack the words and twist them around.

  As it was, all he could think of to say back was “Glad to hear it
.” Which sounded lame, but Clarissa giggled again—giggled hard, like he’d said something really clever. Honestly, he was embarrassed for her.

  The truth was, he wasn’t drunk enough for this to feel like a good time, and he didn’t want to be.

  * * *

  “ALEX, CAN I talk to you?” Dalia asked.

  It had taken her the better part of an hour to track him down. She’d finally found him working on the bonfire.

  “Sure!” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Alone, I mean.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  She led him away from the crowd, to a spot behind some brush. She was probably being silly. Just because nobody’d told her about Tony being partially blind didn’t mean it was some big secret. Alex would probably say something like, Oh, that. I thought everyone knew about that.

  Probably. But somehow she didn’t think so.

  “This all seems very mysterious and hush-hush,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Actually, I’m...a little concerned about Tony.”

  “Why? Has he had too much? He seemed all right when I saw him last. But don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on him and get him home safe. We came in my truck, anyway.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I want to know what’s wrong with him.”

  “What do you mean, what’s wrong with him?”

  “I mean he’s blind in one eye.”

  Alex was visibly shaken. “How did you know about that?”

  Her heart sank. So much for it not being a big deal.

  “I just figured it out. What’s wrong with him? Tell me.”

  Alex raised his hands, palms out. “Hey, that’s between you and him. You want to know, you ask him yourself. And remember, I told you nothing. Nothing.”

  “What do you mean? Why is it a secret?”

  He shook his head hard. “Uh-uh. Not telling.”