“I can even tell you how many times I came back to this very spot,” he tells me, looking away from me to point behind his shoulder. When his eyes meet mine again, they don’t look nearly as troubled as they did minutes before. “Come on.” I get a small smile before he guides me a few feet behind him.
He looks around for a second before he drops to the ground, pulling me down with him. We sit, much like we used to, with the wildflowers surrounding us. I don’t wait for him to speak; instead I drop to my back, look up into the sky, and let the years fall away from us. He clears his throat and I feel him moving to lay next to me, placing his hat on the ground next to him before taking my hand in his. I don’t take my eyes off of the clouds. Even back then, I didn’t take my eyes off of the clouds. Part of me always thought that if I did, he wouldn’t keep talking.
“This was the first time I ever told anyone about ridin’. The first time I vowed, out loud, to leave this town and be the best damn rider the rodeo had ever seen. You didn’t say a thing, but when I said I would be leavin’, you held my hand so tight I almost checked to see if it was broken. Each time we came out here, you would change. You started lookin’ at me differently. I think I knew, even then, that you would have done just about anythin’ to help me make my words a reality. You never said anythin’, just let me get it all out, but I could see it in your eyes. If I would have asked, you would have left this town with me. And you wanted me to ask.”
I blink wildly to keep the tears from escaping at his words.
“Just started middle school, not even old enough to know what the hell you were thinkin’ about, but still you would have done that.”
“Yeah,” I respond thickly.
“The last time I came out here, do you remember what you said to me?”
I shake my head, trying to recall the worlds of a love-drunk teenager.
“You said”—he pauses, and then looks over at me—“Maverick Davis, you’re going to be the best rider in the whole entire world and I’m going to be there for every single ride yellin’ for you so loud they’ll hear me back home.”
I have to close my eyes; the battle I had been winning with my tears is lost, and I feel them roll down my cheeks and into the dirt under me. “You didn’t come back out here after that.” My words sound just as pained as that teenage girl had felt when he never came back out to the wildflower field.
“I didn’t. That was the day that I realized I had to do whatever it took to make sure you were able to find your own dreams and grow without me draggin’ you down the dark path I was stuck on.”
“You changed so much after that spring. That boy I knew was gone in just a blink of an eye.”
He moves, and I turn my head to see him leaning up with his elbow on the ground, looking down at me with regret in his eyes. “It was one of the hardest things I ever did. I know now that I could have gone about things differently, but to a desperate kid, that was all I could see. No matter how much I wished differently, I couldn’t tear you away from this place. Not when you loved it so much. I had to let you find yourself.”
“Why did you bring me back out here?” I sniff, trying to rid my mind of those painful memories.
“Because even though this place eventually didn’t hold the same feelings as it did at first, it still is a place that I look at fondly, knowin’ how close we were at the time. I sat here and made plans for my future. I looked up at the sky while we were side by side, flowers all around us, and each word out of my mouth I used over the years as a promise I was unwilling to break.”
The hand not holding his weight comes up. He brushes his fingertip across my forehead, moving some of the hair in its path. “It only seemed right that I bring you back to the same place I made all those grand plans years ago and give you new ones. New dreams for a future that, this time, we’ll be buildin’ together. Tell me, why did you sell this land to Clay?”
“What? I don’t understand.” His question makes my mind pause, still stuck thinking about his reasons for bringing us here.
“When you sold him your land, why didn’t you keep this part of it?”
I sit up and his hand falls, the piece of hair he had been playing with landing in my eyes. I roughly swat at it and then turn my head to look down at where he’s still lying. He holds my gaze, but moves to sit as well.
“You have to understand, while this place was always special for me because of you, it also held a lot of memories of my parents. In time, all it did was remind me of everything that I had lost. This is the first time I’ve been here in almost eight years.”