Casanova Cowboy (A Morgan Mallory Story) (19 page)

             
The chase was on I figured; players were generally like that: chase till they get what they want, then game over. I didn’t believe for a minute that I was the one destined to change him.

Chapter 20

“Seriously? You slept?” Liz laughed.

             
She had a hearty laugh for such a petite girl. Growing up with two older brothers, she was more tomboy than girlie girl—I think it was what sealed our friendship. Men did find us attractive, but Liz and I had gotten comfortable with who we were, neither of us thought of ourselves as all about looks.

             
“Yeah, it was good. Good to have a man hold me and not have to have more. I mean he wanted more, but I didn’t want to go there. Shelter Island is a small island in a big city, and everyone seems to know everyone’s business. Same with all the employees at The Chart House, everyone knows who’s sleeping with who. I didn’t want to give him bragging rights; wasn’t so easy, though,” I said with curiosity.

“Are you going to see him again?”
Liz asked.

             
“He asked if I would. We’ll see. Maybe he can prove me wrong. Maybe he just hasn’t found the right girl yet,” I teased.

             
Liz laughed; she loved my mom, and she’d heard the “you just haven’t found the right one yet” speech too.

“
What time is Ryan supposed to meet us?” she asked as she looked at her watch.

“I told him seven
,” I said, pulling my hair back.

             
We were sitting in a booth at the Kraken restaurant across from the beach in Del Mar and halfway into a pitcher of margaritas.

             
“You seen much of him lately?” she asked.

             
“No. Seems we’ve both been tied up with one thing or another. We talk on the phone pretty often.”

             
“Is he liking Southern Cal?” she asked.

             
“I think so. He likes the weather for sure. Not working in the snow. He thinks the girls are sort of crazy. You know, lump all us crazy California girls into one. Sounds like he’s getting some of the crazy though and I’m sure he likes that.”

             
She laughed. She understood that I was talking about sex. I reached for my margarita glass.

“Han
ging around with us,” she said. “He should be getting his fill of the other kind of crazy.”

             
I saw Ryan come through the front door. His skin was tan making his hair seemed blonder. He looked yummy in his light blue collared shirt, jeans, and nice belt. I noticed he had his cowboy boots on, which made me smile. I had teased him on more than one occasion that this was his getting-lucky look. He saw us right away and crossed the bar with a smile.

“How’
s it going, girls?” he said as he greeted us, sliding into the seat on Liz’s side of the booth.

Grinning,
I poured him a margarita and pushed it across the table.

“Good
,” Liz answered moving a little to make room for him. “You look handsome.”

She angled her body slightly so she could look at him.

              “Thanks,” he said, taking a sip of his drink.

             
I could tell Liz’s comment pleased and embarrassed him at the same time. He thought Liz was hot; he’d told me as much.

             
“So what’s the plan?” Ryan asked.

             
“More of this,” Liz chuckled. “Drinking, having fun.”

             
“Some dinner and dancing mixed in with it,” I added.

             
His eyes brightened at my comment.

             
“Where are you thinking for dinner?” he asked.

             
“We could stay here, or we could go across the street to The Chart House and sit in the bar and do appetizers. I get my discount at any Chart House,” I said. “Be cheaper that way. And you know what great views it has on the ocean side…”

“Let’s do that
,” Liz said as she twisted a chunk of her hair. “I love this bar, but you can’t beat the view there.”

             
When we finished our drinks, we walked across the street to find that the restaurant wasn’t too busy yet, so the bar was fairly empty, and we were able to order right away. Several waiters I knew from picking up shifts at this Chart House came by our table to say hello and chat—I figured they wanted to meet Liz, and I watched Ryan observe the interaction.

             
“Ryan, can we take a walk on the beach after this?” I asked, unsure if that would interest him, since he was dressed to go out.

             
“If that’s what you girls want to do,” he shrugged. “I’m up for it.”

“Oh, good.”

“Did I tell you I saw Karen and Jackie the other night?”

I wondered what had made him think about them.

              “No, you didn’t tell me,” I said, surprised. “Where did you run into them?”

             
“I didn’t, Karen called. Said a group of people were meeting at El Torito in the bar after their Jazzercise class, and wanted to know if I wanted to meet them. She said there would be several girls, and that I should come,” Ryan said.

             
“Did you have fun?” I asked a little miffed she hadn’t called me to join.

             
“I had a good time. Lots of foolishness, hard to get a word in with a bunch of pumped-up women. Jackie was really flirty,” he said.

             
“I’m sure she was,” I said, envisioning how Jackie could be so brazen.

             
“Who’s Jackie again?” Liz asked, curious.

             
“Karen’s younger sister,” Ryan and I said at the same time.

             
I smiled at him noting how the blue of his shirt intensified the color of his eyes.

             
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve met her a couple times I think,” Liz said with a question.

             
“You’ve met her,” I said grimacing. “Jackie’s cute, loves to flirt, even more than Karen. She stopped by Mom’s that day you and I were tanning.”

             
“Oh right, brunette,” she said with a smirk.

             
When we got outside to the beach, the moon was full in the sky illuminating the waves, the foam riding up onto the sand in the darkness. The palm trees outside of Jake’s and The Chart House moved gently in the breeze. Liz and I pulled off our sandals as we scurried out into the sand.

“Oh, perfect temperature,” Liz said with a twirl.

Ryan sat down on a low sea wall and took off his boots and socks and rolled up his jeans. He followed Liz and I holding his boots as we acted like little girls and ran down into the ocean, letting the waves splash up to our knees. Ryan walked cautiously down to where we played and safely stayed on dry sand, watching us.

“Come on
, Ryan,” Liz called.

             
“Not a chance,” he said with a grin. “I know you two, and I don’t trust either of you when you’re on a tear, getting wild and crazy.”

Liz
and I played with the surf challenging it to get us. I did several cartwheels and Liz laughed joining me. Ryan seemed entertained as he followed along keeping his distance from the ocean as if we might get him wet.

“Okay, I’m ready to go dancing,” Liz said after we’d walked a long way.

“Me too,” I said playfully taking Ryan’s hand as the three of us turned back.

“I don’t really want to drive,” Liz said.

“Why don’t we drop your car off at your place, I don’t mind driving,” Ryan suggested.
“I can drop you both back later.”

“Oh, Ryan, I love you,” Liz crooned.

We went to the Belly Up Tavern, and it was crowded with a line at the door. A high school friend of Max’s was the bouncer so I worked my way up to the front.

“Flip,” I said loudly over the music spilling out the door. “Can you get three of us in?”

“Sure,” he said with a smile pulling back the rope.

“Thank you so much,” I said.

We made our way through the crowd towards the bar. Liz shouted that it was her turn to buy and wiggled in between people to order. She got the bartender’s attention easily.

“Morgan,” Liz
called as she held a drink out to me.

Si
nce there was no table open, we stood next to a thin rail that ran along a side wall.

Tom Petty’s
“American Girl”
burst out of the speakers with “
Well she was an American girl, raised on promises
”.

“Come on
,” I shouted, pulling Liz and Ryan towards the dance floor.

Ryan
came willingly. It felt so natural, the three of us dancing together and we stayed until one thirty in the morning.

“That was too fun,” Liz said wiping the sweat from her brow as we walked out into the cool night air.
“Did you see that one meat head that asked me to dance?”

“What do you mean one, there were several. They knew
Ryan had two pretty girls, were no doubt jealous,” I teased hooking my arm through Ryan’s.

“I’m guessing so,” Ryan grinned.

The dancing worked off most of the booze, so we were all fairly sober when Ryan dropped us off.

             
“Do you want to come in?” I asked, hoping he would keep the party going.

             
“No, I gotta get home. Get the dog out,” he said.

             
I was disappointed, but understood. I leaned over and kissed him quickly on the lips. The dog had come with him from Park City, a cast off that roommates of his hadn’t wanted to keep, a big black lab.

“Th
anks. Thanks for going with us,” I said softly.

Chapter 21

That summer Liz and I spent most of our time between her place and Del Mar Beach. With school being out, I had the free time, and I wanted to be at the beach. I dated Captain Blake several more times. Yeah, I slept with him again—without sex—and could tell that without that
essential element
, he wasn’t much interested. I couldn’t blame him. But I had no intention of being that easy, and the butterflies just weren’t happening. He never went out of his way to see me between several trips he captained in that time, nor did he keep in touch except to pop in unannounced to The Chart House. If he wasn’t going to start out trying—and trying hard—I wasn’t interested.

I ran into a friend of
Max’s younger brother at the beach one day. Trevor was smoking hot, but he was shy. Unlike Blake, I pursued Trevor, but I was only looking for one thing with him. The first time I went to his place, we watched
Mad Max
with Mel Gibson and then had sex the rest of the afternoon. Our hook-ups were just that: sex and more sex. Really hot, steamy sex, but that was the depth of it.

Liz and I packed a cooler with beer one sunny day and drove down to the beach close to Torrey Pines, farther away from the crowds.

“Some days it’s just too crowded at Del Mar,” Liz said as we
spread our towels out in the sun below the cliffs.

“I know,”
I said. “There wasn’t even a parking spot.”

I took off my shorts and lay down
on my stomach. I watched the heat radiate off the sand which triggered thoughts of steamy sex with Trevor; Liz was on her back with her eyes closed. I thought about how one-dimensional our relationship was. I liked it best when we didn’t talk and it was kind of sad, just physical, no other connection.

“Liz, I feel like I’m broken.
Like I can’t get back to that place of really caring again,” I said forlornly.

I
sat up and got another beer out of the cooler and poured it into my plastic cup.

“You ready for another?” I asked.

Liz sat up and looked in her cup and then lay back down, closing her eyes again.

“Not yet
,” she said. “And you’re not broken.”

I crossed my legs into an Indian style position.

“What’s it called then, Liz? I start out obsessed with Mathew when I was just a child. Although I didn’t think I was a child then, and I hung onto that fragmented, screwed-up relationship for years,” I said, mindlessly poking a stick into the sand.

“I
meet Max who I think loves me, and I think I love him, and then learn through a car wreck and a tryst with the first love, hmm, maybe not enough,” I went on.

I
jabbed the stick in and left it standing straight up. I picked up another stick and poked it in the sand. I followed that with several more sticks and twigs, jabbing and poking as I talked, creating a sort of forest of standing sticks.

“
I decide to move to Park City to get away, maybe end Max and me. And even though I had some meaningless dates there I end up back home, back to Max, until that finally dies a slow death. Then
bam
, Mathew comes back into my life out of the blue until that ends. Next there’s Captain Blake, who is all the things I’m attracted to, except with him, I don’t want to be a number. An issue which didn’t seem to matter much before,” I rambled.

I picked up dried seaweed and
placed it gently on top of the sticks to not knock them over, making a sort of canopy over my forest.

“
Sounds like a fucking soap opera, even to me,” I said in annoyance.

I
rolled to my side, back onto my stomach, and rested my chin on my hands. I looked through my makeshift forest. I wanted to be able to get small and go into it, escape to another world, forget my damaged feelings.

“You listen
ing?” I asked.

“Unfortunately
, yes,” she answered, not moving. “Why did you go back?”

“To which one
?” I asked.

“D
uh, the two you went back to,” she said.

Damn,
I wished I could be more like Liz in that department; she was so much less emotional than I was about men. She didn’t overanalyze; she was more middle-of-the-road. It was what it was, and she let it go at that. She could take them or leave them.

“
Like I told Ryan, Max and I were done the day I drove out of town for Park City. We were, but we weren’t. I guess it was necessary to go round two.”

“That was a mistake,” Liz said. “Even I questioned that one.”

“I know. I feel stupid that it took me so long to figure it out.”

“Wasn’t the first time you were a slow learner, and Mathew?” she asked.

“Mathew and I were done when he let me walk away without fighting for us. I thought he would. I wanted him to prove that he loved me. I needed that. I thought we had been through so much, over so long, that things would change.”

“Sometimes men like things exactly as they are, they don’t want to change.
Mathew wanted to “try” Morgan not change.”

I get that
now. It was just hard watching Ryan and Karen on that trip; it made me want that connection again. I was feeling so lonely, worrying that I made the wrong decision not to try. When I picked up the pay phone in Bakersfield, I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. And I still called him hoping beyond hope that maybe seeing me he would profess his love. Does any of this make sense?” I asked.

“I
understand it. It’s like Dave. I hung on because I knew us. It wasn’t right, but I kept hanging on, thinking maybe it could get right again,” Liz said.

“Exactly
,” I said. “But now I don’t want to let my heart go. I want to play, I want to have fun, I want to have sex, but I don’t want to care, and that scares me. I need love, but I’m afraid of it.”

I picked up little pebbles making an entrance to the forest.

“Why? Men do it all the time, not care. Roll in the hay for just the sex,” Liz said.

“It makes me feel d
isconnected. Like with Blake, I wanted to be with him, wanted to sleep with him even, but he couldn’t give me a good enough reason. I think he was shocked a girl would tell him
no
.”

“Player. H
e wouldn’t have changed either you know?”

“
We actually talked a lot, about all kinds of things, our communication was good, but you’re right. Now, with Trevor, I don’t want him to talk. I strictly want sex and then for him to go away. Broken,” I said forcefully. “I’m broken.”

She rolled her face to the side and opened her eyes
, looking at me.

“Open me another beer
,” she said.

She sat up
, wrapped her arms around her knees, and stared out at the ocean. I watched her, waiting for her to say something; she seemed to be contemplating something. Her only movement was her blond hair blowing back from her face in the breeze.

“At least you’re not afraid of them
,” she said at last.

“Of men
?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah
, of men,” she answered turning toward me.

“Why?
Are you afraid of them?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed and a small wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows.

“
Afraid
is probably not a good word.
Leery
, maybe
mistrustful
, I guess, is better,” she said then sighed.

She
pulled her knees tighter to her chest, and rested her chin on her knees.

“What is it
, Liz?” I asked, worried about how her mood had shifted.

“I’m going to tell you something I haven’t ever shared with you
,” she paused, “not because I was hiding it, but because it’s not something I try to remember.”

Liz then told me a
painful story of her being attacked by a stranger. She was in college and came home alone with groceries. She had opened her apartment door and left it open to set down the two bags filling her arms; when she turned around to close the door, he was there. He shut the door and came after her with a knife. He pushed her down on the floor and put the knife to her throat. When she tried to fight, he hit her in the face and broke her nose. He threatened to kill her.

“
God Liz, how awful,” I said cringing.

“
He tried to rape me, but I kept fighting, and he finally ran away. It happened when Dave and I first started dating, Dave found me on the floor, curled in a ball, covered in blood. He took me to the hospital, and then home, and stayed the night with me, on the couch.”

When she finished, tears were running down my face.

“Liz
…” I stumbled, not knowing what to say, “why haven’t you told me this before?”

“I hate t
he story. I hate feeling mistrustful. It’s another reason I stayed with Dave so long. He knew the story,” Liz said, her voice devoid of emotion.

What she said
made sense. Sometimes it was easier, even if it wasn’t working, to have someone who you thought understood you, who you had a history with.

“I’m so sorry
, Liz,” I said, feeling inadequate, feeling a twisting in my gut.

What could I say
? Nothing would ever make it go away, make her forget. Her telling me made a lot of her actions clearer to me. It made me comprehend her, why she was reluctant sometimes when I got wild. It made me recognize why she worried about me and my carefree attitude with men.

We stayed on
the beach, keeping the rest of our conversations light while we enjoyed the sun. I tried to think of funny things, paint scenarios that would push the memory to the back of her mind. It was late afternoon before we decided to pack up and leave, a quiet thoughtfulness lingering between us.

“What’s that?” she
asked, noticing my stick forest as she folded her towel.

“It’s a make
-believe forest where everything works out and everyone is happy,” I said as I smoothed the sand, knocking the sticks flat with my hand.

“Hey
,” she said. “I didn’t tell you about the attack to make you sad or feel sorry for me. I wanted to tell you because you said you feel broken. I wanted you to understand there are so many different kinds of broken. We’re all broken, even the men; it’s just in varying degrees and for different reasons. Everyone has a story.”

What Liz
said hit me hard; regrettably she was absolutely right. Liz sharing her story gave me a lot of insight, into her, into people. I thought about the people who had been in and out of my life, and yes, we all had our issues. Love wasn’t like the movies, it was much more complicated than that. On my drive home, I thought about Ryan and desperately wanted to talk to him. I thought talking to him might make some of the sadness I was feeling go away. I stopped at a 7-11 a block from Liz’s place and called him from a pay phone. The booth smelled of rotting food and urine, making me cringe at having to put the receiver close to my face.

“Hey
,” I said, trying to sound upbeat when he answered the phone. “I’ve been at the beach all day with Liz. I wondered if I could stop by.”

I kind of rushed the last part out, hoping his answer would be
yes
.

“I’m working tomorrow
,” he said, not answering me directly.

“Please?” I
whispered, running my finger over a silver button of the phone.

“Come on
over,” he said with apprehension.