Filthy Doctor(306)

“I’m not snotty,” she said, picking up a limp fry and turning up her nose at it.

“You are, too, snotty,” I said. “You act like you’re too goddamn good to eat a greasy spoon hamburger.”

“Maybe I am,” she said with a shrug. She had removed the bun from her plate and set it aside. She had a knife and fork in her hands and was cutting up the hamburger patty and the slice of tomato in an equal number of bites. She stabbed a piece of tomato, then a piece of burger, and stuck them between her teeth. She didn’t let her lips touch the fork, like she was afraid of catching anthrax or something. She chewed and stared at me.

I picked up the burger and took a huge bite. My guts were growling like a den of lions. It might have been my imagination, but as soon as the first bite slid down my gullet, the pain in my side started to ease. I sighed as I chewed, thinking I might just live after all.

“Why didn’t you ever call me?” Shelby asked as she picked up her Coke and brought the straw to her lips. I watched her lips close around the straw, then her tongue slid slowly around her lips to clean them off. Goddamn if she still wasn’t the sexiest little gal in the whole state of Texas. I felt my old pecker chubbing up a bit, just knowing she was sitting across the table from me.

“Why didn’t I ever call you?” I asked. “Well, honestly, I figured you were too busy with school and I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Oh bullshit,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Why didn’t you ever call me?” I asked, knocking that ball back into her court. “I mean, they must have had phones at that fancy cow college you went to. If you wanted to talk so goddamn bad you should have picked up the phone.”

Her cheeks flushed and I knew I’d crossed a line. She still had the knife and fork in her hands. She aimed the knife at me like she was gearing up to throw it.

“I would have called you if I’d known how,” she said. “You were always on the road. Nobody knew how to get hold of you, not even Cody. He said you didn’t even had a cell phone.”

“Cellphones cost money,” I said, chomping off another big bite of the burger and chewing through the words. “I did good most weeks to have money for gas and food. I couldn’t pay for a goddamn cellphone.”

“You could have borrowed someone’s phone,” she said, shaking her head. She stabbed another bite of tomato and hamburger and waved them at me. “You should have called me.”

“Okay, Shelby, I should have called you,” I said with a defeated sigh. “I was just always on the road, traveling from one town to the next, trying to make a name for myself. I mean, I asked Cody for your number and he said he’d get it for me, but he never did.”

“Oh, so it’s Cody’s fault that you’re a selfish asshole,” she said, rolling her eyes again. I swear, she was making me dizzy with all that eye rolling.

“No, goddammit, it’s not Cody’s fault,” I said. “And who says I’m a selfish asshole?”

“Just everybody who’s ever known you,” she said, hands in the air, knife and fork waving like she was conducting some kind of greasy spoon orchestra. “You’ve always been a selfish asshole, Luke, ever since we were kids. And the sad thing was, me and Cody let you get by with it because we both loved you like a brother.”

I blinked at her for a moment. I had never thought of myself as selfish. Truth was, I’d never thought about myself as anything other than a good old boy from Texas who appreciated a good cold beer, a good hard ride, and a nice tight piece of pussy. What was selfish about that?

“So, you’re pissed at me because I haven’t called you since we both left home,” I said, nodding in slow comprehension. “Let me ask you something. Let’s say I had called you. Exactly what would you have expected me to say?”

It was her turn to look at me like a dog watching a ceiling fan. “What you do mean?”

“I mean, did you expect me to say that everything was good and I was just checking in? Or that I missed you so much that it hurt? Or that I lay in the back of my truck many nights staring up at the stars and wishing you was lying next to me?” I huffed and spread out my hands. “I mean, seriously, Shelby, what did you want me to say?”

“Well, all of that, I guess,” she said. All the air seemed to go out of her as she set back and put the knife and fork on the table. She had tears in her eyes. Goddammit, I hated it when a woman cried. She gazed into my eyes. “I reckon I wanted to just hear your voice.”

I felt like a shit heel. I reached across the table and held out my hand. She put her hand in mine and my fingers closed around hers. “I never stopped thinking about you, Shelby,” I said. “Not for one second. But the God’s honest truth is, you and me, as much fun as we had, we had different takes on life. You wanted to get an education and build yourself a career that didn’t include ranching and riding and shoveling shit. And I just wanted to ride bulls. I didn’t want to force my dreams on you and I knew you well enough to know that you’d never force your dreams on me. So… well, I just figured if it was meant to be we’d come back around to each other one day.”

She squeezed my hand. “And here we are.”

“And here we are.” I smiled and let my eyes go around her face. “And you ain’t changed a bit.”

“Oh bullshit,” she said, tugging her hand away. She picked up her Coke and sucked on the straw. My eyes watched her lips purse, watched her suck on the straw. It was the first time in my life that I had been jealous of a damn straw.

“I mean it,” I said, picking up my glass to toast her with it. “Shelby Cates is still the prettiest dang girl in the state of Texas. Period.”

“Well, I think you might have sustained one too many concussions,” she said. Her face went serious and she nodded at my side. “Seriously, how bad was it? And don’t give me that ‘I’ve had worse’ bullshit.”

“Well, I don’t really remember getting gored.” I leaned back and gently touched the bandage beneath the scrub shirt. “One minute I was on the back of the sumbitch and the next minute I was tossed in the air like a rag doll. Somebody said I came down on the bull’s horn and he flung me around till he got tired and then tossed me aside. One of the cowboys that visited me in the hospital said there was a YouTube video of it, but I ain’t seen it and have no desire to do so.” I took a sip of Coke and set the glass on the table. “I mean, why would anyone wanna see themselves getting gored by a damned old bull? Not me.”

“How bad was the damage?” she asked, a look of sadness in her pretty eyes.

“Well, it was considerable I guess,” I said. “Punctured my stomach, ruptured my spleen, cracked a few ribs.” I worked up a smile for her. “If you’ve never been gored, I do not recommend it. It can really fuck up your day.”

“So how did you bust your stitches?” she asked, arching her eyebrows and giving me that look she always gave when we were kids and she caught me doing something I should have, like jacking off in the bathroom to her Cosmo magazine when I was fourteen.

“Like the nurse said, I got up by myself to take a leak and passed out on the floor.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” she asked, eyes rolling yet again.

“I do not know,” I said, picking up the last chunk of my burger and stuffing it in my mouth. I smiled and chewed and smacked my lips. “You need to get your eyes checked. They seem to roll around an awful lot.”

“Only when I’m around you,” she said.

She picked up her fork and went back to work on her plate. I couldn’t help but stare and wonder where we would be today if I hadn’t gone off the ride the circuit and she hadn’t gone off to college.

Would we have had a future together?

If so, would we still be together today?

Shelby wasn’t the type to live on a ranch and pop out babies. And I wasn’t the type to stay in one place for too long. No sir, whatever water had gone under the bridge between us was probably water well served. I seriously doubted even Shelby would have put up with my shit for this long.

Shelby

We sat and talked for what seemed like hours. I heard all about Luke’s adventures on the rodeo circuit and bored him to death with highlights of my six years at A&M getting my Masters in agriculture. I want to work with seeds, I told him, developing wheat and rice seeds that would grow anywhere in the world, in any climate. It was a big goal, which flew right over his head.

“I’m not sure there’s much call for that sort of thing, Shelby,” he said, scratching at the stubble that covered his chin.

I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Can’t you just buy little packets of seeds at the Home Depot?” he asked with a shrug. “Or buy rice in a bag at the food mart?”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but I was pretty sure he was. Lordy, how many times had this boy been dumped on his head?

We talked about home and horses and cattle and trucks and Cody and Daddy and Texas football. He asked if I was seeing anybody special and I just chuckled to avoid telling him he had more luck riding bulls than I had riding men.