Page 11 of Rope Me, Cowboys

“You don’t remember?” Senator Westling asked.

“Remember what?”

Mom gave me a long, hard look. “You were arrested last night.”

The world swayed unsteadily under my feet. I felt like I was going to get sick.

“What—what happened?” I asked again. “How could I have been arrested?”

“You assaulted Charlie Bontrager,” she said, her mouth in a hard line.

“Charlie?” I remembered his Cheshire grin, and the two chicks pleasuring him. A fist of pain punched my hollow heart, but the pain was quickly overtaken by the revelation of what had happened after that. “I threw soup at him,” I said, trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness.

“You threw eggs at him,” she corrected me. “You and that…friend of yours. I always said she was trouble.”

Eggs…a flash of memory of pulling cartons of eggs from Haley’s refrigerator, running to the window in our bare feet. “But Mom, you don’t understand. He cheated on me. He—”

My mother’s palm smacked the table, interrupting me. “I don’t care what he did,” she yelled.

Senator Westling cleared his throat. “You were arrested, Amber. If he presses charges, you’ll have a criminal record. This will affect the rest of your life.”

“Not to mention mine,” Mom said, taking a shaky breath. “I’m up for reelection next year, and my daughter is running around getting arrested? Your lovers’ quarrels are your own private affair, Amber. It’s time you started behaving like an adult and using a little discretion.”

“It’s on Page Six,” Senator Westling said, pushing his tablet towards me.

My stomach lurched, and I had to swallow the urge to puke. I gripped the edge of the table, my throat aching with unshed tears. Moms were supposed to hold their daughters’ hands and get them ice cream when they got cheated on. If I opened my mouth to defend myself, I was going to break down in a blubbering, sobbing mess.

“A gossip column,” my mother said, sounding as horrified as if I’d made a sex tape. “My daughter cannot be in a gossip column. Do you think Hillary Clinton would be where she is today if Chelsea had been running around getting drunk and being arrested instead of going to an Ivy League school?”

“Bush Senior didn’t have any trouble, and his son liked to party,” I managed, giving her a hopeful smile.

“They are men,” my mother said, slapping the table.

“That’s not very fair,” I protested, tears burning behind my eyes.

“Grow up, Amber,” she snapped. “You should know by now that life’s not fair. And it’s far past time you straightened up and stopped all this nonsense.”

“Okay,” I said, swiping at an errant tear. “You’re right. I will.”

“She’s right,” Senator Westling said, nosing into our family business like he belonged. Technically, he did, I supposed, but I didn’t like it. “It’s time you learned a little bit about responsibility and hard work. I never would have learned those lessons myself if I’d grown up here, but I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. Three of my sons live there now.”

“And we’ve decided you need a break from the business of the city,” Mom said, taking the senator’s hand. “You’ve had too much freedom here, going to a private school, doing as you like. We think it’s time you learned a little about hard work, discipline, and responsibility in a safe environment.”

“Where?”

“With my sons in Wyoming,” Senator Westling said. “You’ll be out of the headlines until it’s all blown over and is forgotten.”

“Babysitting?” I asked incredulously.

“It’s not babysitting,” my mom said, but she was straight-out lying. I could tell.

12

Amber

Now

Now here I was, in Wyoming, tied to a cow fence that might electrocute me at any moment. And Mom was pissed at me all over again. But she must not have wanted to actually kill me, because ten minutes later, something that looked like a dusty golf cart rolled onto the grassy path.