“Not very well.”
“That’s okay. Get up in there and I’ll adjust the stirrups.”
He lifted his foot with grace into the stirrup, hoisted himself into the saddle, and looked down at me. His chest was pumping and there was fear growing on his face.
“Go ahead and get down,” I said.
“Why?”
“Let’s do this right so you feel comfortable.”
When he got down, I handed him the reins. “Lead him around in a circle.” Nate followed my command. “Now let him smell you.” He let Tequila smell his hands.
I handed him a carrot to feed to the horse. I could see it was coming back to him. I knew he had spent time on the ranch as a kid but horses are large, intimidating animals if you haven’t been around them much. “His name is Tequila because he’s the only horse you can ride when you’re shit-faced drunk.”
Nate let out a huge sigh of relief and then chuckled. “Thank God. I’m not gonna lie, the name threw me.”
“He’s a Tennessee Walker. You’ll look really cute and fancy riding him,” I said, in a mocking tone.
“Oh, I see, this is all for your amusement, isn’t it?”
I giggled.
“There’s that sound again.” He smiled and hopped into the saddle.
I called for Dancer, who was grazing on a little patch of grass near the main house. Climbing into the saddle, the fishing rods in hand, I looked over to Nate. He looked comfortable; he relaxed back in his seat after a few minutes of acquainting himself with the horse.
“Why weren’t you at breakfast this morning?” he asked.
“I normally eat in my cabin. And remember our agreement?”
“What?”
“No talking.”
We walked slowly past the main house. Bea waved to us from the porch where she was knitting in her chair. Dancer picked up her pace a little as we rode toward the meadow above the stream. I could feel Nate and Tequila keeping pace behind us. I slowed Dancer and let Nate ride up beside me.
Nate was holding the reins high, which was normal on a horse like Tequila who trotted naturally with a high-necked posture, but I was pretty sure he was holding the reins that way out of fear. “It’s actually more comfortable to gallop that horse than to trot.”
“I’m comfortable,” he said.
“I don’t want you to exhaust him. Go ahead and let him out a bit so you can see. Give him a little squeeze.”
“I’m scared he won’t stop.”
“You’re riding the horse. You’re controlling him. You wouldn’t put a car in neutral on a hill and just see what happens, would you?”
He laughed. “No, I definitely wouldn’t do that, and the analogy is not helping me. This horse has a mind of its own.”
“Not if you don’t let him have his way. If you want him to stop, pull back on the reins and say, ‘Whoa, horsy.’ ”
“I have to say ‘horsy’?” He looked incredulous.
“I’m kidding.”
“Shit, I would be laughing right now but I’m terrified.” When he looked over at me I could see his eyes were wide.
“Listen, Nate, Tequila won’t pass me on Dancer. He was trained that way.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice shaky. “That’s what I want to hear.”
“Let’s just trot a bit and then we’ll canter. Give him a little kick with your heel a bit farther back than you normally would, just on your right side. That’s how he knows to canter. Stay upright and move your hips with the motion. It will be like a smooth jog, and then we’ll race after that.”
His eyes shot open even wider.
“Relax, we’ll gallop a little while we have this nice open space,” I said, giving him a reassuring smile.
I let Dancer pick up the pace. I could see in my peripheral vision that Nate had done the same. “This is fun!” he shouted to me. “I want to run.”
“Let the reins out but stay firm. Tap him with both heels.”
Tequila was actually just following me but it was good that Nate was learning to give the proper commands. There was a fleeting moment when I looked over at him and saw joy on his face. I wanted that feeling and thought maybe I could allow myself a little of it once in a while.
I found it uncomfortable and distracting for Dancer to run while I was holding the fishing rods, so I slowed and then headed toward a familiar embankment that led down to the stream. We stopped at the top of the bank. Nate looked like he was having so much fun. He pulled a pair of dark sunglasses from the saddlebag and put them on while still wearing a huge smile.
“That was awesome,” he said. “It’s way hotter out here than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah, I should have grabbed you a hat.”
“What, like a cowboy hat?”
“No, a baseball cap.” I laughed. “This isn’t Texas, Nate.”
“Trish wears a cowboy hat.”
“She’s a rodeo queen.” I didn’t bother mentioning that Jake wore both baseball caps and cowboy hats and that it kind of depended on what he was doing. Just thinking back to him in his black Stetson on the night we met felt like a knife slicing through my heart.
“Weren’t you?”
“No, I’m from California,” I said simply and then began leading Dancer down the hill.
“Oh. I didn’t know. Wait, we’re taking the horses down that hill?”
“Four legs are better than two,” I yelled back to him.
“Good point,” he said as Tequila picked her way down the bank.
At the bottom, we let the horses drink from the stream before tying them up. Nate continuously ran his hand through his windblown hair. There was no product in his hair that morning like there was the day before. The loose, tousled strands gave his look a more youthful charm. I had never met a doctor who resembled a real, flawed person with insecurities, but more than that, I had never met a doctor who was so terribly good-looking and didn’t know it.
Without speaking, we drew our lines through the poles and dug around in the saddlebags for various things. We took our shoes off, rolled up our jeans, and stepped carefully over the pebbles to the edge of the stream water.
“So you’re from California? Which part?”
“The Central Valley.” I sat on a rock to tie my lure.
“Allow me.” Nate reached out. I handed over my line and lure.
His deft hands tied the lure on the line with speed and accuracy. “What kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a heart surgeon,” he said, smirking. I smiled too, probably sharing the same thought as he tied up the heart-shaped lure.
“Well done.”
I cast my line into the deeper part of the stream and reeled it in slowly.
“Do you know how to fly-fish?” he asked.
“You have to be quiet, Nate, you’re going to scare the fish away. And yes, I know how.”
“Okay. I just thought maybe you could show me,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
He was adorable. I couldn’t help letting a smile touch my lips.
“Just hold the line with your index finger, turn the bail arm, pull back, and release the line at the peak of the pole’s arc. Aim for that deeper water there,” I said, gesturing toward where my line had landed.
He cast and immediately got a bite but lost it.
“You need to jerk back when you feel a sure tug, that’s how you set the hook,” I said to him.
“That’s right. It’s all coming back to me,” he said with a smile.
The carefree look Nate wore reminded me of a feeling I used to know but had been absent for so long. It was the first time in a long time that I wished for that feeling back.
CHAPTER 6
Hearts in Nature
Nathanial
At midday the score was Ava: six, me: zero. I love a woman who challenges me but Ava was beating me to a pulp, which I think was even more refreshing. The fish weren’t biting anymore so Ava handed me a sandwich from her saddlebag.
I
opened the foil. “Peanut butter and jelly. I like it.”
Her smile was shy. “I don’t have much in my cabin.”
We sat on rocks under the shade of a tree near the stream and ate. The day was unusually warm for spring. Ava wore faded, tight jeans rolled up and a beige cotton blouse with short lace sleeves. When she leaned over I could see the swells of her breasts¸ glistening from sweat. Her skin was a warm, natural tone.
“Why did you move here from California?” I asked.
She glanced up, looking conflicted. “Nate . . .” I could tell from her expression that she wanted to tell me things but couldn’t find the words. She looked back down at her feet. I remembered our rule of no talking.
I stopped chewing and swallowed while I stared at the side of her face intensely. “Take down your hair, Ava,” I said in a purposeful tone. Something came over me suddenly and I felt the need to touch her, like my body was moving of its own accord.
Facing her on the rock, I watched as she kept her gaze straight ahead and slowly slipped the tie from her ponytail. Her long, straight hair fell cleanly down her shoulders. I reached and grabbed her by the side of the neck and pulled her toward me. She didn’t resist but didn’t face me either. I leaned into her hair and inhaled so deeply I felt drowsy. I was shocked by how drawn I felt to touching her and equally shocked that she had obeyed me and submitted to my touch.
It was like there was a force beyond me creating the involuntary movements of my hands on her body. She smelled of sweet alyssum like no one I had ever known, so sweet and natural only God could create it—a reminder of salvation in the secular age we were living in.
I wanted to rub her skin against mine. I glanced down her shirt and wondered if her sweat tasted as sweet as she smelled. I wanted to be inside of her. I was impossibly close to telling her to take her clothes off. Somehow I knew she would do it if I asked. It seemed like she was that directionless at times. It was as though her mind was a pinwheel endlessly spinning on a TV screen, and she was waiting for someone to come along and change the channel. She seemed lost and fragile one minute and then sharp and callous the next. I knew I couldn’t take advantage of someone like Ava, even though in the moment I was one hundred percent sure she wanted to escape it all with me.
My heart was racing, pushing blood to the center of my body, thumping so powerfully that it actually scared me. I ran marathons and cycled for miles, I was conditioned for stamina, yet I found myself completely out of breath in her presence. I hadn’t thought about the hospital or Lizzy or surgery at all that day, but suddenly, and for the first time in my life, as I sat there breathing Ava in, I thought about our hearts in relation to love.
Surprised by the thought, I got up abruptly, breathing rapidly. I stood prostrate from the shock, held my hand over my chest, and stared down at her. I couldn’t form words.
A horrified look washed over her face and then morphed into embarrassment as her cheeks flushed pink. She got up and began running over the rocks toward the hill. I felt confused and guilty and chased after her.
“Ava, wait!”
Her bare foot slid across a moss-covered rock and sent her flying off her feet backward. It seemed like slow motion as I watched her turn in the air to protect her body. She landed on her side violently over jagged rocks.
She let out a deep moan. I ran to her and knelt. Her eyes were pressed shut as she began to cry. Her cry reminded me of Lizzy’s mother, unprocessed and real.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” she managed to force out with a heavy breath.
“Where?” I said frantically. I scanned her body as she lay curled in the fetal position.
“Inside.”
“For Christ’s sake, where, Ava? Please let me help you. I’m a doctor.”
Her bloodshot eyes opened as her hand moved slowly to her chest. She firmly pressed the space over her heart. “In here. I’m bleeding. I must be,” she said, falling into a fit of full, powerful sobs.
Complete understanding struck me. I took her into my arms, cradled her like a baby, and let her sob into my chest. I had gone too far back on the rock and she was struggling with it.
After an hour of holding her tight, I felt her body relax. She had fallen asleep in my arms.
I thought back to a time when I had assisted on an eighteen-hour surgery with my father and another established doctor. Things kept going wrong but my father had remained steadfast. It was hard to understand how he had the physical stamina but I quickly learned that being a doctor required that. I had held forceps and a clamp on a bleeding artery for four hours straight during that surgery while my father tried to figure out the problem.
I held Ava for hours in the same way near the stream as she slept that day. My arms were tired and tingling with numbness but I held her with determination. It was unbelievable how deep and relaxed her breaths were. Examining her body, I noticed that her feet were tiny and her toes were painted pink, which I found adorable but peculiar, knowing the type of lifestyle Ava led. They looked newly painted and I wondered if she had done it for my benefit.
She made no sound as she slept. I felt her pulse with my hand and then bent to hear her steady heart. That woman must never have slept so peacefully. It was like she had fallen into a temporary death as she lay next to the trickling stream. Her body was as seemingly lifeless as the bodies I cut open on my table. No sign of life until you peer inside and see the organ pulsing. The strange thing is that when you first see a beating heart, you expect to hear that rhythm that is so synonymous with it, but there’s barely a sound. Instead it’s just a motion like it has an independent existence. The heart will actually beat a few times once it is outside of the body, and even though I’m aware of the scientific reason, I wondered in that moment, holding Ava by the stream, if maybe our hearts really could be broken by shattered love or tragedy.
When she finally stirred and opened her eyes, she looked to the sky first, her eyes registering the observation that the sun was much lower than it had been when she’d fallen asleep in my arms.
“What happened?” she asked with a bemused expression.
I laughed. “You fell and then took a little nap.”
“How long?”
“A few hours.” I helped her stand on shaky legs.
“And you held me that whole time?”
“It was the nicest few hours I’ve had in a while.” Putting on her shoes, she seemed quiet and withdrawn again. “I didn’t mean to overstep my boundaries earlier. I’m sorry,” I said.
“I shouldn’t have, you know . . . we shouldn’t.”
I sat down next to her on a rock. “Are you still feeling a lot of grief?” What a dumb question that was.
“Grief, yes, I’m still feeling it and I always will. I don’t think it ever gets better.”
“It takes time to heal.”
“I don’t know if it’s the healing that hurts. I just miss him and I’ll never stop missing him.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” she said. She wasn’t being snarky; her eyes were wide with curiosity.
“I’m trying to.”
She nodded her understanding before looking back at the stream. “Let’s clean the fish down here. Bea can barbecue them tonight.”
Her abrupt change of subject was welcome. I thought it was interesting that the last time I had eaten meat was a piece of trout I’d ordered at a five-star restaurant in Hollywood. I watched Ava slice the belly of the small fish from neck to tail and then proceed to remove the guts. I thought about how she had wasted five years in her twenties grieving over a man who was too cowardly to live for such a strong, beautiful and capable woman.
She held the open fish belly out to me. “See? Nice and clean.” I scrunched up my nose. “You can’t be squeamish, you’re a surgeon.”
I laughed. “Good point. I just um . . . well . . . you’re doing a great job. I think I’ll let you handle this.”
“Redman would have a field day if he saw your e
xpression.”
“Please don’t tell Redman I let you do this. He’d hang me by my balls.”
She laughed. “He’ll do worse than that. You better get used to this kind of thing though, Nate. You’re on a cattle ranch after all.”
Ah, the irony.
After we had cleaned the fish, we headed back to the ranch. I finally got up the courage to run Tequila for a short way back. It was freeing to be out in the crisp and clean air. Surely there must be more pure oxygen in the air in Montana. Growing up in L.A., there was this idea that breathing in the air-conditioning was actually healthier than going outside into the smog-filled air. People didn’t dare drive with their windows down or dance in the acid rain in the streets of Los Angeles.
In the barn, I wordlessly helped Ava brush the horses. Bea came down from the house and shuffled around in the shed. Ava went to her and handed over the bag of fish.
“Here. Trout.”
“Thank you, sweetie. I hadn’t a clue what I was going to cook tonight.” Ava nodded.
After Bea left, I asked Ava, “Do you like Bea?” in a placid, neutral tone so it seemed like idle curiosity.
She looked up immediately. “Yes, of course, I love her.”
“Oh. Sorry, I just . . . um, it seems like a struggle for you to talk to her.”
“It’s a struggle for me to talk to anyone.”
“Is it a struggle for you to talk to me?”
She threw the brush in a bin, walked past me, and replied, “Yes, but not as much.” As she left the barn I called out to her, “Are you going to be at dinner?”
“No.”
More than a week went by during which I only saw Ava in passing. I would see her truck and horse trailer going down the long driveway almost every other day, but at dinner she would be absent or sitting alone with the ugly dog on the back porch.
One morning, while I was performing the glamorous task of shoveling shit with Caleb, Ava passed us in her truck. I stood waiting for her to look over so I could wave but she didn’t. She just zoomed down the hill, leaving a large cloud of dust in her wake.
“Where does she go?” I asked.
“She teaches kids.”