Caroline completely missed my joke. “No, I tried that. It didn’t work out at all.”
“I was making a joke.”
“Oh, of course.” She giggled again. “Sorry, I’m nervous.”
“What do you mean you tried that?” I asked.
“I slept with this guy in Chicago. He was all brawn and no brains. I thought that maybe my issue was overthinking everything, trying to plot and plan the details, but it wasn’t at all. That encounter was terrible.”
Now I was genuinely curious. “Why do you think I’ll be different?”
“You are more than brawn. You are Wyatt Morgan. You are undoubtedly burly and handsome and all the things women want—but you are also the guy who stood up for me anytime someone mistreated me. You care about me and you’re gorgeous. Plus, you have a certain reputation. Women talk, Wyatt, they are not unsatisfied. Also, I have examined the goods.”
My ego was soaring. “You like my goods, huh?”
“I told you, way above average. You are sporting grade A goods.”
“Are you saying my goods are grrreat?” I rolled my r’s like Tony the Tiger.
“Now you’re just being corny.”
“Come on, Caroline, you are asking me to bang you? Like contractually. This is kind of an odd moment.”
“True.” She turned away, her face soft and sweet, like all of a sudden she felt shy.
If I was smart I would have searched my brain for an argument, a line of thinking that didn’t include holding a trembling naked Caroline Winchester in my arms. But honestly, I didn’t even consider it. Caroline wasn’t asking me to be her boyfriend. She wasn’t thinking that we would make a good match. She was asking me to service her. And in the moment, it felt like a calling, like God put me on this green earth solely to make Caroline come. Period. It was not a job I was capable of turning down. It was literally my dream job.
Not wanting to leave her hanging, I slapped my thighs and said, “Okay, what are the rules?”
“Okay, you agree we should do the other things?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes, Caroline, I agree to be your one-way ticket to O-town. But only if there are rules.”
She grinned at me and clapped her hands together, cheering, “Oh, goody!”
I laughed because the moment was bizarre. Her response felt inappropriate, like I was agreeing to pick up her dry cleaning, not sleep with her.
She followed up with, “I think rules are a wonderful idea. We should definitely make rules.”
“Yes,” I concurred. I definitely needed rules to keep this professional.
She pulled out her phone. “Shall we set a meeting to discuss our rules—or perhaps create a shared Google doc?”
Leave it to Caroline.
8
Caroline
Bev and I were hanging out on the floor of my bedroom just like we did as teenagers. The entire moment was physically reminiscent of our teenage years because I hadn’t really been back for more than a few days since I went to college at sixteen and my father had never updated my bedroom. Bev was lying on her belly on a pale-purple area rug, making notes in a glittery spiral notebook with a kitten in a high-top on the cover. I was opposite her, good and swallowed up by the hot-pink bean bag chair in the corner. She’d been trying desperately to be helpful, but she just could not be serious about sex. She kept making jokes, and so far we hadn’t come up with one rule.
“Please try to be serious, Beverly,” I scolded. “I know this is sort of silly, but it’s a very big deal for me.”
“You’re right,” Bev said contritely. “I’m sorry. I will try harder.” She made a show of putting on her game face, and then holding her pen to the paper, said, “Okay, how about your sexual preferences? What are your sexual limitations? No if, ands, or butts?” Thrilled with her own joke, she lost it and broke into another fit of giggles.
I rolled my eyes at her, saying, “You're being childish. While I’m not partial to anal stimulation, I have read that for some it is quite invigorating.”
Still snickering, she said, “Are you saying I should make a rule that you want to do butt stuff?”
I shook my head and sighed. “You are absolutely not helpful.”
Her laughter clicked up a notch. “I’m not. I’m totally not.”
Perhaps drawn by Bev’s raucous laughter, my father knock-knock-knocked on my bedroom door. I felt my eyes get wide as panic flooded my chest. Bev continued to giggle as she called, “Come in.”
My father was a somber man, imposing too. At the station they called him Sheriff Clean—but not because he was tidy or kept the streets of Conway sparkling. They called him clean because he looked like Mr. Clean, tall and fit with a shiny bald head and brow bone directly descended from homo erectus. He spoke gruffly and took no flak, but I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d take a bullet, jump on a grenade, or throw himself in any kind of harm's way to protect me. He wasn’t cuddly or compassionate, but he loved me. He also liked to control as much of my life as he could, which was never okay, but it was straight-up insanity considering I was thirty years old, and yet I still found myself constantly struggling to stand up and say, “Dad, back off. This is my life.”
He was in his uniform, so most likely he was stopping in to talk to us before heading out to work. He scanned the room as if he were conducting a search, and then said, “Awful lot of laughter in here. Don’t you girls have homework you should be doing?” He was making a joke—albeit a kinda cheesy one.
“We’re almost done,” Bev said. “Just a little chemistry left to wrap up.” She was also making a joke at my expense, and I rolled my eyes at her—perhaps I was still sixteen after all.
My father smiled at Bev, clearly not getting the nuance, so he accepted her comment at face value as a little witty repartee in response to his attempt at humor. “You working on the rodeo?”
“Yes,” I said a little too eagerly.
With a regretful smile, he said, “Well, I guess that’s good. I’m still not sure why you two feel the need to host this event.”
“Dad.” I sighed. “I told you. We’re helping kids and raising money for a good cause. Why does this bother you? I’m doing something good.”
“I just think you should be focused on preparing for your job in Seattle.”
Playing dumb, Bev looked at me, and using the most innocent tone, asked, “What exactly do you have to do to prepare for that?”
“Nothing,” I said, exasperated. “I don’t even have the job yet.”
“You could be using this time to prep for the interview,” my father suggested.
“Or you could trust that if there was something I needed to do, I would do it.” I said the words calmly, too calmly. They completely lacked any sense that I was certain about my ability to manage my life.
In his father-knows-best tone, he lamented, “Better to be overprepared …” He let the sentence putter out, waiting for me to complete it for him.
“Then underprepared,” I muttered.
“Exactly,” he exclaimed, all but patting himself on the back.