Hard As Rock (8 page)

“Did you meet Mrs. MacCruder?” Ryan said, gesturing to the silver-haired lady. “This place wouldn’t survive without her.”

“Oh, well aren’t you sweet,” she smiled at Ryan.

“We met,” I nodded, waiting for her to make a comment about my pink t-shirt.

That wasn’t the clothing she mentioned, though.

“Hello again, dear,” she smiled, then looked me up and down from head to toe. “Oh, Ryan, you can’t let her traipse around in those fancy clothes, she’ll ruin them. You should take her into town and get her something she can get dirty.”

While her back was turned, Ryan grinned at me and silently mouthed
Nice fancy clothes
.

I had to stifle a laugh, then gave him a
Behave!
look.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “We’ll go after breakfast.”

Mrs. MacCruder finished spooning the eggs onto a platter, and carried them to the table. “Alright, well, I’ll let you young people get on with your day. Dinner’s at seven if you want to join us.”

“We’ll be there. Thanks, Mrs. MacCruder,” Ryan said, bending over and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Careful now, my husband’ll get jealous,” she laughed, then waved to us as she walked out the back door.

“Ready to eat?” Ryan said as he sat down at the table. I followed suit. There were platters filled with bacon and eggs, another with toast, and a stick of butter and jars of different jellies.

“She seems nice,” I said neutrally as I took a piece of toast and buttered it. I was wondering if she’d made any comments to Ryan about my sleepwear.

Her line
But you might want to change into something else, or he’ll want to
kept echoing in my head.

It made me feel weird.

Not uncomfortable or wary, exactly.

Just… odd.

Especially since he’d seen me wearing that pink t-shirt yesterday morning in New York.

“She’s great,” Ryan said as he dished out eggs onto both his plate and mine. “Seriously, if I didn’t have her and her husband to run the place, it would be a wreck by the next time I got back.”

“What do they do?”

“Well, they take care of the horses. Exercise them every day, muck out the stalls, feed them… that’s a big job. Mr. MacCruder goes out and rides the ranch, makes sure there’s no problems. They keep up the main house, stuff like making sure the pipes don’t freeze and burst during the winter, and they take care of any repairs along the way. Mrs. MacCruder has her garden, and she gives me food from it whenever I’m here. Plus, I can basically call them on a moment’s notice and they’ll have the heat or air conditioning turned on for me, the refrigerator stocked, and the place ready to go.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is. I never have to worry, I can just show up and the place is perfect.”

“Why do you keep horses?”

He shrugged. “My grandparents always had them when I was growing up. My sisters and I used to ride all the time when we came here. When my grandparents died a few years ago, I couldn’t bear to sell the horses… so I just decided to keep them.”

“That’s cool.”

“I’m very lucky.”

“You worked hard for it.”

He laughed. “Compared to the MacCruders, I’ve never worked hard a day in my life.”

“That’s not what I meant – I was talking about you work hard to pay for it.”

He smiled. “I know what you meant. I still got lucky, though. There’s a million guys my age in bands still working as barbacks or convenience store clerks, playing a show a week, hoping to get their big break… and for most of them, it’ll never come.”

His words made me think of him and Derek, starting out in Athens… and once I thought of Derek, I got all depressed and sad.

Ryan immediately realized the effect he’d had on me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring… that up.”

I shook my head as I stared down at my food. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?”

I looked up at him. He was peering at me intently.

I forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… but you don’t have to pretend, okay? Not with me. I know what you’re going through. You don’t have to put on a brave face all the time.”

Something about his kindness… his gentleness… allowed my guard to come down. Without a second thought, the tears began to flow down my cheeks.

“I just… I hurt all the time,” I cried quietly. “And I don’t understand why he’d do that to me if he loved me. If he even
cared
about me.”

Ryan pulled his chair right up next to mine and hugged me. I buried my face in his chest and just let myself go, my entire body wracked with sobs. We must have sat like that for five minutes, him just holding me, letting me get it out, just letting me
be.

Finally I had cried myself out. I pulled away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry… your food’s going to be cold…”

“I don’t care about that. I care about
you.
”

I looked up at him, and suddenly I felt horrible. I knew why he was doing all this, and I felt guilty that I couldn’t return his feelings.

“Ryan…” I said softly.

He smiled at me, like he knew exactly what I was thinking – and that I was a bit silly for thinking it.

It was weird. I’d never been with anybody who
got
me that way before – that clearly, that easily. That completely. Like he could read my mind.

“Kaitlyn, I know what the score is. I’m not asking for anything but your friendship, and that’s
all
I’ll ever ask for, okay? So quit worrying about whatever you’re worrying about, and just take care of yourself and heal, alright?”

I sighed deep and long. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“As long as you stay my friend, there’s no way you possibly can. So just let me be a friend to you, and don’t worry about anything else, okay?”

God.

Two different men in my life… two entirely
different levels of character and integrity.

For the second time in the last week, I wished that I hadn’t met Derek first.

“…okay,” I relented.

“And we have to get you out of those ‘fancy’ clothes and into something a little more country,” he said, affecting a country twang on ‘fancy’ and ‘country.’

I was taking a sip of coffee when he said it. I laughed and ended up snorting a little out my nose.

“Oh, you’re country already,” he teased. “No manners at all.”

I threw a wadded-up napkin at him. Then we returned to our breakfast and a lot of easy conversation that had nothing to do with rock bands, or touring, or unfaithful lead singers.

The day passed quickly. After we cleaned the dishes, Ryan took me out to the barn to see the horses. I am
not
a horse chick, just so you know. Never even wanted a pony growing up. But I enjoyed watching Ryan with them. He was so familiar and relaxed, feeding them each a carrot as a treat. He offered to let me try it, but I was too afraid of those giant chompers taking off a couple knuckles.

“Maybe we can take them out riding later,” he said as he rubbed the mane of Bessie, a sweet little chestnut mare.

“Um…”

“You’ve never ridden before?”

“No.”

“I’ll teach you. There’s nothing to it. Bessie’s gentle, it’ll be easy.”

“…if you say so…”

Then we left the barn and walked over to one of the other wooden structures, which turned to be a garage, just like I thought. Ryan unlocked the door on a gigantic blue Ford F-150 truck and helped me up into the oversized cab.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed.

“What?”

“This is big enough to fit a small village in!”

“I’m the local rock star,” he joked. “It’s my duty to ferry around small villages.”

We drove off the ranch and over the rutted dirt and gravel roads. In another thirty minutes we were in Deadwood, where we found a clothing store off the main strip. I paraded in and out of the dressing room in a series of jeans and plain cotton tops.

I didn’t wear the Daisy Dukes jean shorts out, though. They showed off my ass just a little too well. For the same reason, I didn’t wear the V-neck white t-shirts I had picked off the rack. They exposed a little too much cleavage… and I was worried about what I might see in Ryan’s eyes.

But I
did
add them all to the ‘maybe’ pile.

In the end, though, the cumulative price tag was just too much – even though everything was reasonably priced. I only took a couple pairs of jeans and two long sleeve shirts with me out of the dressing room.

“What, that’s it?” Ryan asked, perplexed. “I thought you liked the rest. I mean, it’s not high fashion or anything – ”

“I can’t afford more than this,” I said. Truth was, I couldn’t even afford the two outfits.

He groaned and rolled his eyes. “Kaitlyn – ”

“I can’t keep asking you to buy stuff for me.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

“This is a waste of your money. I mean, how long am I going to
be
here, anyway?!”

“I’m here for two months. You’re here for as much of that as you want.”

“All this for two months?”

“So wear it to the local hoedown when you go back to New York,” he joked.

“Ryan…”

“Am I going to have to repeat the fifty bucks speech? Except this time, it’s going to be more like the two bucks speech.”

“Ryan – ”

“Kaitlyn, do me the favor of not making me go into the women’s changing room to grab your stuff.”

I did him that favor, at least.

We also got a couple of pairs of shoes: some sexy, feminine cowboy boots and a pair of plain brown shoes for around the house. Plus a half-dozen socks for each. Plus a pair of cheap sunglasses Ryan picked up at the register.

As the sales lady rang up the clothes, I noticed Ryan eyeing the Daisy Dukes, which he hadn’t seen me wear yet.

He didn’t say anything… but I noticed his eyebrows raise the tiniest bit.

It didn’t make me uncomfortable.

In fact, I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel a little flattered.

And maybe a tiny bit excited.

We put the clothes in the truck and ate lunch at a little sidewalk place that apparently only locals frequented. Lots of meat on the menu. I opted for a steak sandwich.

We chatted a little, talked about the local temperatures (highs in the 80’s, lows at night in the 50’s), and joked about going to the local casino when I got cabin fever.

Along the way, I asked to stop by the local pharmacy. While Ryan was browsing the magazines, I surreptitiously fulfilled my prescription for the NuvaRing. Not that I was planning on doing anything, but I’d been on birth control for a couple years. There was no reason to stop now just because I had gone through a breakup. Hell, I’d always made Derek use a condom (at least when I wasn’t hallucinating on mushrooms) even though I couldn’t get pregnant. Why stop now?

When we got back to the ranch, Ryan asked if I wanted to go horseback riding. I declined, so he headed to the studio to work on some music for the band, and I wandered into the library. It was just a small room with bookshelves on every wall and a comfortable desk and chair in the center. As for books, there was a little bit of everything, from World War II pulp fiction military novels (which I’m assuming had belonged to Ryan’s grandfather) to Jane Austen to Harold Robbins paperbacks. I went unconventional (for me) and settled on a book titled
Papillon
about a French safecracker in the mid 20th century who was sentenced to life on Devil’s Island. The paperback’s cover – which was very old and crinkled – screamed, “Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman!” To be honest, that’s probably what sold me on it.

I did laundry – both my new acquisitions and my clothes from the tour – as I became engrossed in the book. It all felt very domestic… and relaxing.

And happy.

I was even able to forget about Derek for awhile.

Well… I was able to forget about him in fifteen minute increments, anyway.

Around 5PM, Ryan came out and asked, “Hey, do you mind if I get your opinion on something?” He led me back to the studio and played a couple of tracks on the computer. There weren’t any lyrics, and the drums were minimal at best, but they were still pretty great. One was a heavy, driving asskicker, and the other was a slower, more contemplative, darker tune. The bass part, in particular, was awesome. The guitar part was good, but definitely not up to Killian Lee standards.

“That’s great – how long have you been working on those?” I asked.

“Since we got back this afternoon.”

I stared at him. “What?!”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t come up with the tunes since we got back. I just kind of laid down some stuff I’d been thinking about.”

“You mean… you just walk around coming up with music in your head?”

“Yeah.”

“Like… whole songs?”

“Yeah.”

“And you remember everything?!”

“Yeah.” He said it almost like,
Doesn’t everybody?
“Don’t you walk around coming up with words in your head for stuff you write later?”

“Not really, no. I’ll think about ideas for stories, but I don’t actually write out
sentences
or anything until I sit down.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure it’s similar.”

I actually didn’t think it was similar at all. But I wasn’t actually in
awe
until the next few things he said.

I pointed at his head. “How many songs have you got bouncing around in there?”

He shrugged. “Dozens.”

“Dozens?!”

“Not dozens of finished songs or anything,” he said quickly. “A lot of it’s just basic tunes, maybe some chords or riffs I want to try out.”

“So how many
finished
songs do you have?”

“…ten?” he said modestly. “Fifteen?”

“A WHOLE ALBUM’S WORTH?!”

“They’re not all good enough to go on an album.”

“Are these definitely going on an album?” I asked, pointing at the computer.

“Maybe.”

“They should
totally
go on an album.”

“The rest of the band has to improve them, though.”