Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (12 page)

Now that it was summer, I could spend more hours bronc riding. I always tried to show up promptly at the dinner table, no matter how much I hated seeing April. We sat at opposite ends and tried not to look at each other—as if Sadie would know her son had just eaten her stepdaughter’s tuna taco. April was in an even fouler mood since she now had to work fulltime for Cliff and couldn’t party with her trivial little friends as much. She really was a shallow, vain girl—and I only hated her so much because I liked her.

One night she came barreling to the dinner table like a house on fire. I knew instantly her conniption fit was due to one of the practical jokes I was so famous for. I wondered which one had made her flip her lid.

She pointed a stiff arm at me and trilled at her father. “
Someone
has been sending dozens of boxes of bovine colostrum to my office.”

Cliff just laughed! I think I had won him over in recent weeks. My scores at the arena had been superb. “No big deal. It’ll stay good for a while. We can use it.”

I was loving this. April jammed her hands onto her hips. “He put soap on my toothbrush. I want him to use the other bathroom down the hall, the one with the yellow shower curtain.”

Still, Cliff laughed. “Are you sure? Maybe you just got a bad batch of toothpaste.”

I could see steam coming out of her nostrils like a hooky bull seeing red. “Oh
yeah?
Dad, he sent me ten
black faxes
—he used up my entire toner cartridge! What next, a flaming bag of dog shit?”

“Oh, come now,” was all Cliff would say. “How do you know it was him?”

Apparently she hadn’t yet seen where I’d drawn moustaches and dicks all over her eight by ten modeling portfolio glossies. “Why do you always stand up for him, daddy? You don’t believe your own daughter when I tell you what a worthless jerk he is?”

“Oh, come now,” I said, handing Sadie the bowl of green beans. “How bad of a feller can I possibly be?”

“Yes.” Even that creepy Marcus agreed with me, seemed. “Is there maybe something
else
between you two that you haven’t told us?”

“
Oh!
” April just fisted her little hands in frustration and spun around. “That’s
it
! I’m eating in the kitchen!”

I called out, “While you’re there, can you get me another Bud?” Cliff had been letting me drink since I recently turned eighteen. He said eighteen
should
be the legal drinking age, for boys anyway, like it had been in Texas in my dad’s youth. I didn’t want any of their Sidecars or Old Fashioneds, so I opted for beer.

“Sit on it and spin!” April yelled back.

I raised my eyebrows. “Such talk.” I knew I was loading it on heavily for the benefit of Cliff and Marcus. But wasn’t it to everyone’s benefit to get along?

Cliff frowned. “That’s another reason she’d never make a big hit at an Ivy League school. Those places expect you to talk all hoity toity. Dyno, you going back to the practice ring tonight?”

“Sure,” I lied. “I was wondering if I could borrow one of your horse trailers. Was thinking of bringing Hindsight back from the arena. Sequoia can help me. He’s been acting funny lately.”

“Funny? What way? I could send Doctor Roberts over to the arena. No need to bring ’im back here.”

I frowned, trying to look professional. I even picked my teeth with a toothpick. “Well, why pay the stabling fee if we’re not gonna use him in the regional?”

It was agreed I could take the trailer. Cliff even acted like he wanted to come for a few minutes there. That was a close one. Luckily my mom reminded him he had to go over some inventory report April had printed out.

So I waited the polite amount of time after dessert to bail out of there, picking up Sequoia on the way with the one-ton pickup hauling the trailer.

Only we didn’t go down to the Last Chance arena. We went the opposite direction once we hit Manilow Avenue.

Sequoia said, “I scored some Ecstasy we can do once we’re done with this job. It’s not that weird Chinese stuff either. It’s direct from Russia.”

“No thanks. I’m not into any of those bizarre chemicals since I joined the circuit.”

“You on some kind of health kick? We don’t really need to get healthy until a few days before the roundup.”

Sequoia hadn’t qualified for any of his events, making him even more bitter and self-destructive than before. I still liked the guy, but was having second thoughts about leaving him behind in the dust. He was my assistant rodeo coach when he wasn’t plastered, which wasn’t that often anymore. He’d barely squeaked out of high school with a much worse GPA than me. I was trying to get him a job as a night herder for Cliff Pleasure, now that I was too valuable to work at night. I needed my rest.

“Hell yeah I’m on a health kick,” I said, “and you should be too. The way you’re going, you’re gonna wind up in a ditch before you’re even old enough to drink. Why don’t you cut it back a little? Maybe, like, not start drinking until a certain hour?”

Sequoia snorted. “You mean like noon?” But he had a constant need to please me. “I see what you’re saying. I’ll cut back until after the regional. Then we can have a giant party, celebrate your win, go down to Palm Springs, stay at the Ritz Carlton. That’s on Frank Sinatra Drive.” He was giving me shit how I always laughed at the funny street names in Last Chance.

“Frank Sinatra Drive,” I grumbled, “my ass. Nah, I’m going to use the purse money for something smart, no partying. Maybe invest in some ideas Cliff Pleasure’s got going. There’s a new fertilizer works like gangbusters for growing hay. Made out of dead worms. I want to get my own place too. No sense living in a bedroom at Cliff’s house.”

“Dead worms?” Sequoia scoffed. “Well, that might work for an entrepreneur like you. Someone like me is just destined for ruin. Abomination and ruin, my dad always says. I’d be happy if you could get me that job with Mr. Pleasure. Hell, I’ll be a hoodlum or a little Mary.”

Those were cook’s helpers, and Sequoia couldn’t cook a piece of hardtack. “You’re way too overqualified for that. I’ll work on getting you that lead rider job at Hardscrabble. Maybe we could rent our own house then.”

“I don’t blame you, not wanting to be around that saucy vixen.”

“Who might that be? Ah, look, they left the lights off. Good.”

“I think they’re on a motion sensor. I came here to vandalize one night when I was bored. April Pleasure, I mean. You two were getting hot and heavy that night we were shooting at the bales. Now, don’t deny it, lover boy. I found her panties a couple days later blown across the lot.”

Normally, I’d be proud of something like that. Tonight, I just cringed. It never failed to remind me of what had happened immediately afterward, how April’s panties had been lost, the nasty things she’d said to me. It made me even more determined than ever to pull off the stunt we were about to pull. I was going to make the grandest gesture of all time, to show my passion for April, my love and hatred for her, to show her how she cut me to the bone.

I was going to steal the stupid school mascot, an iron bull that weighed about a ton, probably more than a real bull.

As I backed the horse trailer into the closest position, I saw Sequoia was right. Lights came on automatically to light the school’s front lawns, and no doubt there were cameras too, to catch delinquents like us. I’d prepared by covering up the license plates on my vehicles. We had handy ski masks at the ready.

I spoke as I looked in my side mirror. That backup alarm sounded like an air raid siren, it was so loud, but we hadn’t seen any other vandals around. “We got hot and heavy for about thirty seconds, Yazzie. That dog won’t hunt, so I beg you to never speak of it again.”

Sequoia looked truly crushed. “That bad, huh? I could sort of see the two of you together. She gets that misty, sad-eyed look when she sees you.”

“We’re as different as Spock and Kirk.”

Sequoia really seemed about to blubber. “Yes, but…Spock and Kirk loved each other.”

I had never wanted to hit my best and only friend before.

APRIL

I
t was hell
living with that jackoff stepbrother of mine.

In the first fucking place, he constantly sauntered around the house shirtless. He acted all palsy-walsy with my dad, who seemed clueless about the jerk’s pompous, self-serving agenda. So I’d drag myself out of bed to grab a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and there they’d be. Dyno leaning against the center island fucking shirtless, steam from his own cup of coffee mingling with his stupid chest hair, talking shop with my dad. His hair would be all attractively tousled as if he arranged it just that way—and I’m sure he did—like some asinine boy band member. He’d slip one hand into his armpit just to bulge his bicep out more prominently. It got so bad I’d skip the kitchen coffee and stagger directly to the home office in a completely different wing of the house. There was plenty good coffee there.

And then the fucking pranks never stopped. I went to send some agency some modeling photo hard copies, only to find actual fucking
penises
drawn onto my forehead and chest. How the hell old do you have to be to draw
actual dicks
on photos,
four
? He finally started using the bathroom down the hall, but I swear there was soap or something worse on my toothbrush at least four more times.

Why did he hate me so much? Was it because he found out I knew about the gay rumors Olivia was spreading about him? I hated him too, but I wanted to be the only hater, not the hated. There was nothing to hate about me! He’d taken advantage of me in a weak moment, right when I was running from Marcus and the house of lies he’d built up with my dad. I couldn’t trust my dad or my own best friend and I felt completely alone in the world. I was surrounded by rah-rah cheerleaders who wanted to hang out at the Astro Bowling Alley, and some were even starting to hostess their own events at the country club. I avoided that place like the dentist since Marcus’ main haunt. It would only give him more opportunities to glom onto me, and there were certainly enough nooks and crannies where he could yank me behind walls and feel my boobs.

I tried to duplicate what Dyno had done to me, either in the shower or with BOB, my battery-operated boyfriend. Sure, I had explosive orgasms, but the same sensation just wasn’t the same. It was…different, is all I can say. If women all had mind-blowing orgasms with themselves, what would be the point to seek out men? Humanity as we know it would’ve petered out a long time ago. And yeah, that was an intentional pun.

I still sort of dated Lawson, but things had been strained between us. He didn’t try as hard to get in my pants, and I began to imagine he was bagging Amy Lauerbach. I didn’t really care.

Hatred for Dyno Drummond began to kind of obsess me. Of course I googled him. There were some hilarious photos of him in Paducah during regionals before he became the ultra-cool smooth dude we all knew and loathed in Last Chance. Photos of him riding saddle broncs with so much daylight between him and the horse you could see people hollering in the stands. His dickheadish fringed chaps were flying in the wind, one of his arms up in an arc over his head. Some photos showed him posing with trophies, girls who resembled the old me clinging to his arms.
That’s how I used to look
. Dumbass short pink bedazzled cowgirl jacket, short baby blue cowgirl boots. That look was a thing of yesterday. I was a working woman now. I’d only dress in that getup if someone wanted new modeling photos.

One day, Dyno and Javier and their crew had to go out looking for some coyotes who had killed three baby calves. Olivia didn’t have to work, like I did. She was attending country club functions and would be leaving for Sarah Lawrence soon. Her text, in retrospect, was the beginning of the end.

Some colossal asswads fuckin stole Bull Gravy from Mario’s front lawn!

What the fuck? We called that mascot Bull Gravy after the slang term for semen because the sculptor had made him anatomically correct. And yes, he was hung like a bull. Sticking a sculpture like that by a high school’s flagpole was beyond phallic and more than a little creepy. And how had someone stolen it? It must have weighed more than an actual bull.

Dad had gone in halfsies with me on a new Mustang. He’d finally backed down after I’d started managing CowBucks full time, freeing Sadie up to slut around with Marcus at the country club. I remember jumping in my car complete with its new-car smell and speeding off to the high school to see it with my own eyes. There was the empty pedestal, all right. Drag marks in the grass verified that it had been hauled away, probably with ropes, maybe even lassoed like a live bull by someone who knew how.

The incident even made the headlines of the local Last Chance newspaper.
Who handed someone a load of bull?
the witty caption blared out. I bought a copy so I could ponder the details.

Local vandals took the bull by the horns at Mario Lanza High School late Tuesday night. The iconic mascot that has been welcoming students to the hallowed halls of education since 1958 was ripped brutally from its plinth and hauled away for unknown reasons. Principal Neal Casady declared it the most “heinous and thoughtless crime since the founding of the school” and vowed that the culprits would serve the appropriate penalty.