The Longest Ride

tires and a rack of lights across the roof, the only one parked with the nose in the opposite direction. He opened the tailgate and hopped up into the back. Again, he held out his hands, and with a quick lift, she was standing next to him in the bed of the truck.

Luke turned around and began rummaging, moving things aside, his back to her. She crossed her arms, wondering what Marcia was going to think of all this. She could imagine her questions already: We’re talking about the cute one, right? He took you where? What were you thinking? What if he was crazy? Meanwhile, Luke continued to sort through various items. She heard a metallic clunk as he finally reappeared beside her with the chair, the kind that most people brought to the beach. After opening it, he set it down in the bed of the truck and motioned toward it. “Go ahead and sit. It’ll be ready in just a bit.”

She stood without moving – again picturing Marcia’s skeptical face – but then decided, Why not? The whole night had felt slightly surreal, so finding herself sitting in a lawn chair in the bed of a pickup owned by a bull rider was an almost natural extension. She reflected on the fact that aside from Brian, the last time she’d been alone with a guy was the summer before she first came to Wake, when Tony Russo had taken her to the prom. They’d known each other for years, but past graduation, it hadn’t amounted to much. He was cute and smart – he was heading to Princeton in the fall – but he was all hands by their third date, and —

Luke set the other chair beside her, interrupting her thoughts. Instead of sitting, however, he hopped down from the bed and went around to the driver’s-side door and leaned inside the cab. A moment later, the radio came on. Country-western.

Of course, she thought to herself, amused. What else would it be?

After rejoining her, he took a seat and stretched out his legs in front of him, crossing one leg over the other.

“Comfy?” he asked.

“Getting there.” She squirmed a bit, conscious of how close they were to each other.

“Do you want to trade chairs?”

“It’s not that. It’s… this,” she said with an all-encompassing wave. “Sitting in chairs in the back of your truck. It’s new to me.”

“You don’t do this in New Jersey?”

“We do stuff. Like see movies. Go out to eat. Hang out at a friend’s house. I take it you didn’t do any of those things growing up?”

“Of course I did. I still do.”

“What was the last movie you went to?”

“What’s a movie?”

It took her a second to realize he was teasing, and he laughed at her rapidly changing expression. Then he motioned toward the rails. “They’re bigger up close, don’t you think?” he asked.

When Sophia turned, she saw a bull lumbering slowly toward them, not more than a few feet away, chest muscles rippling. Its size took her breath away; up close, it was nothing like viewing them in the arena.

“Holy crap,” she said, not hiding the wonder in her tone. She leaned forward. “It’s… huge.” She turned toward him. “And you ride those things? Voluntarily?”

“When they let me.”

“Was this what you wanted me to see?”

“Kind of,” he said. “Actually, it’s that one over there.”

He pointed into the pen beyond, where a cream-colored bull stood, his ears and tail switching, but otherwise unmoving. One horn was lopsided, and even from a distance she could make out the web of scars on his side. Though he wasn’t as large as some of the others, there was something wild and defiant in the way he stood, and she had the sense that he was challenging any of the others to come near him. She could hear his rough snorts breaking the silence of the night air.

When she turned back to Luke, she noticed a change in his expression. He was staring at the bull, outwardly calm, but there was something else there, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“That’s Big Ugly Critter,” he said, his attention still on the bull. “That’s what I was thinking about when I was standing out there. I was trying to find him.”

“Is he one of the bulls you rode tonight?”

“No,” he said. “But after a while, I realized that I couldn’t leave here tonight without getting right up close to him. Which was strange, because when I got here, he was the last bull I wanted to see. That’s why I parked my truck backwards. And if I had drawn him tonight, I don’t know what I would have