Bullheaded

“Again?”
    “What?”
    “You said ‘again’. Did you see Johnny?”
    Struggling with his pride, Cody didn’t want to tell her, but he needed someone to tell him what to do, even though he hated it.
    As if she could read his mind, Val said, “Time wears a path in relationships, Cody. You can’t just put someone you love on a shelf until it’s convenient for you. Johnny’s at a different place in his life. There are ten years between you. You’re planning for retirement—”
    “I’m not planning for retirement!”
    “Bullshit. If you’re not, you’d better be. Your body’s not going to hold out forever. Being a rider isn’t like wine. We don’t get better with age, we fall off and get hurt.” Val studied his face sympathetically. “Trust me, none of us ever think we’re going to get old. If I could still swing a leg over a bronc and ride like I used to, I’d be out there showing the girls how it’s done.”
    “You miss it?” Cody was amazed. He’d thought his mother was totally content with her life on the ranch.
    “It was a wonderful and exciting part of my life.” Val looked away and Cody saw her fingers clench around her mug. She relaxed them before meeting Cody’s gaze again. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it. But life keeps moving forward. Still, there are compensations. Your father and I are closer than we’ve ever been, once I stopped traveling. And you can’t go on doing the same thing forever because you stagnate.”
    “And mold grows on you.”
    “You’re heading for retirement, not the grave. Johnny’s just starting to make a name for himself. Trying to align two separate lives can be difficult, but it’s not impossible if two people know what they want.”
    “I wasn’t going to make him give it up,” Cody lied feebly.
    “Maybe that wasn’t clear to him. I seem to recall you talking about the both of you spending the entire summer here when he said he needed to keep working. He needs his salary. He’s supporting his mother, his sister, and her child.”
    “I offered him a salary to stay here all summer.”
    “He’s a man, Cody, with all the male pride you have. Would you accept that kind of handout if someone offered it to you like that?”
    “I’m living off you and Dad.”
    “Please. You earn enough to buy your own place if you wanted to. We’re your parents, plus we’re in a partnership in the stock business. Johnny doesn’t want a handout, especially from his partner. If he feels he must support his mother, he needs to do it himself.”
    “I make more than he does. I could give him a hand and it wouldn’t be a handout. We’re equal.”
    Val tilted her head thoughtfully. “You hear a lot of crap that relationships are supposed to be equal, but equality isn’t the issue, it’s balance. Sometimes you give more, sometimes he does. The way you two were going on before, he was doing most of the giving, and I don’t mean money.”
    Cody flushed angrily. How he hated hearing it. “It wasn’t like that.”
    “Wasn’t it? A relationship needs respect from both sides to be healthy.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I respected him. I do!”
    “Maybe he didn’t see it that way. A man needs to feel respected to be happy.”
    Cody thought about his dad. Never once had he heard his mother knock Davis down. “Johnny could be a bull rider if he wanted to. He’s really good.”
    “But he’s chosen to be a bullfighter. When Chris was injured, Vern chose Johnny out of all the men with more experience he could have called. He saw something special about Johnny.”
    “He is special!”
    “Yes, he is, in many ways. And capable of managing his own life.”
    “I did a lot for him. I just had stuff to do. I was planning for our future—you know how it is when you ride. You can’t always count on a payday, so you have to be careful and think ahead….” Cody petered out. He wasn’t even convincing himself.
    “Maybe you were so busy living in the future you forgot what you want here and now. You always get to pay for what you want, one way or another.”
    “What do I do to fix this, Mom?”
    Val shook her head. “You do what you’ve always done when you want something. You go after it and you don’t stop ’til you get it. How many times have you fallen off a bull’s back and gotten on again?”
    “But how?”
    “You’ll figure it out.” She got up to go and tidily put her coffee mug into the dishwasher, ignoring