Cowgirls Don't Cry(120)

Everything about it seemed…too perfect. He looked at his brother. “So, is this heaven? Or hell?”


Luke shrugged. “Neither, really. I guess you’d call it neutral ground.”


“Why are we here?”


“You tell me. It’s your dream, bro. I’m dead.”


Brandt winced. He wondered how much this dream brother knew about what’d happened in the past few months.

“I know about you and Jessie,” he said softly.

“Then you know I love her.”


“You’ve always loved her.”


“Did you really hate me for that, Luke?”


“No. I felt guilty. I should’ve let you have her that first night. I shouldn’t have tried so damn hard to prove that I was the better man. When it’s always been obvious that you are the better man. In all respects.

It kinda pisses me off.” Luke smirked, and flicked the cap of his beer bottle at Brandt, like he always used to.

“Hey! What was that for?”


“Old times’ sake.” Luke’s intense gaze didn’t waver. “None of that past stuff matters anymore. You are doin’ the right thing by her?”


Brandt kept his cool since he’d already lost his temper once today. Granted, he doubted this dream embodiment of Luke could swing back. “Do you really think I’d pick a chunk of dirt over Jessie? Do you really think I’d walk away from her now when I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted?”


Luke shrugged again. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”


“I know what’s important. I won’t be like you, Luke.”


“Good.”


“What? No excuses?”


“There wasn’t any excuse for what I did. I just wanted to—”


“Give me your blessing?” Brandt poked in the fire with a long stick, close enough he felt the heat burning his knuckles.

“You don’t need that from me. Just havin’ her in your life will be blessing enough.”


When Brandt looked up from the fiery red embers, Luke was gone.

He woke up gasping, coughing from the campfire smoke, his knuckles smarting from being too close to the fire.

But as he pushed himself upright, he remembered where he was. In the bunkhouse, which accounted for the smell of smoke. He glanced down at his hands, hot because they were still encased in gloves.

That explained it.

But still…What a weird f*cking dream.

Brandt tossed another log on the fire, downed four aspirin and returned to the bunk. His clothes were stuck to his body with a mixture of blood and sweat, but he couldn’t muster the energy to clean himself up.

He managed to toe off his boots. As he took off his coat, something pinged on the wooden floor. Despite the shooting pain in his arms, he reached down and caught the circular object on the tip of his finger.

A metal cap from a bottle of Fat Tire beer.

No. It couldn’t be.

He spun around the room, half-expecting to still be in that alternate reality, praying everything today had been some kind of twisted dream. His father gleefully cutting him out of his heritage. Losing his mind in a fit of rage in front of Jessie and hurting her. Hoping the walls of the bunkhouse would disappear and he’d see his brother, sitting by the campfire, drinking beer and grinning at him. Just like old times.

But nothing changed.

Took Brandt really long time to fall asleep after that.