Not metaphorically. Not dramatically for attention, like that time I pretended to faint at a charity gala because the keynote speaker was droning on about tax loopholes. I was actually, literally, physically going to perish in a barn in the middle of nowhere, covered in a decorative layer of horse shit and my own sweat, while a woman who looked like a sun-drenched goddess watched with barely concealed amusement.
Every muscle in my body was staging a violent revolution. My back was filing grievances with HR. My shoulders had unionized and were striking for better working conditions. My thighs felt like someone had beaten them with a meat tenderizer, and my hands—my beautiful, well-moisturized hands that had never held anything heavier than a crystal tumbler—were developing what I was ninety-nine percent sure were blisters.
And it was only 2 PM.
"Alright," Winnie said after lunch (a meal that had been tragically short and inhaled way too fast), leading me toward a room filled with leather straps and metal bits. "Time to learn how to saddle a horse."
I followed her, still shirtless because I’d surrendered my dignity somewhere around the third stall of manure, and tried to calculate how many hours remained until I could collapse into bed and enter a medically induced coma. My phone was still in my room—I’d abandoned it this morning and honestly hadn’t even thought about it until now, which was a personal record.
In Dallas, my phone was a prosthetic limb. Here? I’d been too busy trying not to die to remember that Instagram existed.
It wasn’t like my "friends" were sending search parties anyway. I don’t know why I deluded myself into thinking my phone would be blowing up the second I stopped organizing the after-parties. Out of sight, out of mind.
"Question," I said as we walked, my boots crunching rhythmically on the gravel. "Is there, like... anything to do in this town? For fun? To keep the existential dread at bay?"
She glanced back at me, one dark eyebrow arching perfectly. "Fun?"
"You know. Entertainment. Nightlife. Stimulation. Things that aren't barns or horses or shoveling excrement. Please, for the love of God, tell me there’s something."
She seemed to chew on the question for a minute, and the slight flicker of hope in my chest died a quick death.
"There’s the Rusty Spur," she said, opening the door to the tack room and hauling out a saddle that looked like it weighed approximately the same as a Honda Civic. "It’s a bar. Live music on weekends, trivia on Thursdays, pretty decent wings. That’s about it."
I stared at her, blinking. "That’s it? One bar?"
"Welcome to small-town Oklahoma, Sterling. We ain't got your fancy Dallas clubs with the velvet ropes. We got one bar, one diner, a gas station that sells questionable sushi, a Dollar General, and a whole lotta nothin'." She hefted the saddle onto a rack like it was made of Styrofoam, which was offensive considering if I tried that, I’d slip a disc. "But what we got is good. Better than your city stuff, if you ask me."
I tried to process this information. One bar. In Dallas, I could hit five different clubs in a single night, each with a different vibe, different music, different people pretending to like me. Here, my entertainment portfolio consisted of: drinking at a place called the Rusty Spur (which sounded like a fast track to a tetanus shot), eating fried food at a diner, or staring meaningfully at livestock.
"What do people actuallydohere to distract themselves?" I asked, genuinely curious and mildly horrified. "If there’s only one bar, do you just... take turns?"
She shrugged, grabbing a blanket. "We work, mostly. Hang out with friends. Bonfire parties in the pasture. Rodeo when it’s in season. County fair in August—that’s the big social event, everyone goes. Fishin’ if you have the patience. Four-wheelin’. Lot of people just drive around for somethin’ to do."
"Drive around? Just... drive?"
"Yeah. You know, cruise the backroads, windows down, music up, nowhere specific to go. It’s relaxing." She looked at me like I was an alien species who had just landed and asked to be taken to our leader. "What, you don't have cars in Dallas?"
"We have cars. We just... use them to go places. Clubs, restaurants, galas, art openings—"
"Sounds exhausting."
"Sounds like civilization."
She snorted. "Sounds like you’ve never actually relaxed a day in your life."
That hit harder than it should have. Because she wasn't wrong. In my world, everything was a performance. Being seen, being tagged, being relevant. Relaxation was a spa appointment you booked three weeks in advance, not... driving in a circle looking at corn.
"Here," she said, interrupting my mini existential crisis by shoving the saddle toward me. "Lift this."
I grabbed it and immediately regretted every life choice that had led to this moment. My biceps screamed. "Jesus Christ, what is this made of? Lead? Dark matter?"
"That’s a western saddle. They’re heavier than English saddles 'cause they’re built for workin', not just ridin' around lookin' pretty in tight pants." She turned on her heel, marching toward the stalls. "You’ll get used to it. Eventually. Maybe."
"Your confidence in me is overwhelming," I wheezed, waddling after her with the leather beast in my arms.
"I’m bein' realistic. Come on, let’s get Daisy. She’s gentle. She won’t kick youifyou fuck up."
"Why do you keep saying 'if' like it’s a possibility and not a statistical certainty?"
