"Ruined"
"She's Country"
(Jason Aldean)
Bella
July
Cheyenne Frontier Days, Wyoming
"Cowboys, cowgirls, ladies, and gentlemen," the radio host from the local country station calls out to the audience. "Are y'all ready to hear Laramie's very own favorite country band?" The applause is uproarious—deafening. "Louder!" he yells and is matched by the even more thunderous sound from the crowd. Boots are stomping on the dirt and "yeehaw"s are being shouted out.
I've grown up here, basking in the prairie grass under the majestic Wyoming sun as my skin freckled and my auburn hair lightened to a strawberry brown. After Mama died of that damned colon cancer when I was five, I spent most of my summers here, working on Aunt LaRae and Uncle Bobby-Joe's ranch. LaRae was my mama, Renee's, little sister. The sprawling two hundred acres that she and my uncle have was a wonderful place to spend those sad years after Mama's death. Convenient since it was only a two and a half hour drive from our city life in Denver, it allowed my daddy to send me away when things got too tough for him to handle.
My cousins, Rose-Mae and Jasper, and I became the closest of friends over those summers. Rose-Mae was only a few months older than me, so it was easy for us to bond. They helped me through Mama's death, and they even saved up their allowances to buy instruments when I asked them to form a band with me at the ripe old age of eight. Together, we took music lessons from Sister Sue Clearwater down at the church every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday evening during the summers for ten years.
I've always loved writing poetry, and when we began translating those poems into song lyrics, I knew I'd found my calling. The words flowed through my body like the rushing Colorado River up in the Rocky Mountains—they streamed and spilled through my pencil as I put graphite to paper. Jasper was the musical genius, able to create an entire composition in his mind, and Rose-Mae had a beautiful voice to harmonize with my more melodious one. We found our worth in each song.
Now, five years after our first show in a little dive bar down in Fort Collins, we've gained some renown as a great, new country band and some distinction for our unique sound—bluegrass-country with a rock influence. Even though we are opening for the much wider known Mississippi Queen's Mistake, last month we won New Artist of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Our first album hit the country charts with a bang and our single, "Don't Know 'Bout Love," is sitting at number eleven. For a new band, it's pretty damn kick-ass.
Glancing over at Rose-Mae in all her wavy, shoulder-length, platinum-haired glory, I see that she's busy checking the strings on her guitar despite the fact that our sound check ended just a few hours ago. She's always been very particular about her favorite black Gibson, and often feels the need to fine tune the gorgeous instrument before she takes the stage. My Martin is sitting on its rack and waiting patiently for the show to begin. I honestly do love my guitar just as much as Rose-Mae loves hers, but I prefer to use my pre-show minutes to guzzle water and dance back and forth on my tiptoes, loosening up for the performance.
"You ready, Bell?" Jasper asks me with a wide grin. He's always so excited before a show and he can usually help me relax despite my nerves. This is different though. We've never played such a huge event so close to home. There are bound to be people we grew up with in the audience.
Jasper is wearing the silly newsies hat that he bought when we were on tour in Louisiana. He's a rancher's son and knows that it's not at all country, but I don't think he gives a shit. He does look kind of adorable as he plays his fiddle with that hat on though, so I have to give him that. The Southern girls it attracted when we were down there sure seemed to like it, though. I don't know that the cowgirls in Wyoming will feel the same way, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.
The announcer's voice rings through the Stampede Grounds. "For the very first time at the Frontier Days, please welcome Hankerin' to the stage!"
With a wink, Jasper takes the stage with our banjo player, Emmett McCarty, who happens to be having a spicy relationship with Rose-Mae. They're adorable together. A pure-blooded Irish boy, Emmett comes from deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Tennessee—straight from the life of making moonshine and raccoon hunting—and he's the best banjo player I've ever seen. We're lucky that he's so infatuated with Rose-Mae that he'll never leave us for a more famous band. One day, they're going to get hitched and have a bunch of blue-eyed, blond-haired babies.
I refuse to admit the jealousy that seeps into my soul as I watch them. My boyfriend...former boyfriend, Jake, left Denver for Los Angeles because he is convinced that he's meant to be an actor. We'd been together since our senior year of high school, yet he had no qualms about leaving. The last I heard, he's a waiter at a Jewish deli in the San Fernando Valley. I really don't want Jake back; it wasn't meant to be for us. But, I would love to have that look on my face that Rose-Mae has on hers when she gazes at Emmett.
The crowd—especially the women—is flaring with enthusiasm at Jasper's quick fiddling and Emmett's fiery banjo picking, but the noise grows in strength when the men join in as Rose-Mae and I walk onstage. She stands beside Emmett on the right side of the stage, Jasper is on the left, and I, the lead singer, dance to the middle. I'm right in front of the VIPs and really hope that they can't see up my short skirt, but that doesn't stop me as I raise my hand up high. All the music cuts off sharply.
Let the show begin.
I raise the microphone to my lips, gently lower my arm, and sing as loudly as I can. The audience is momentarily stunned to silence before it erupts with fervor around me.
"No way!
I didn't mean it,
You should have let it go
Why couldn't you move on?
Instead you just sit around and wait,
Always hesitatin'.
Now look what we've done..."
When I throw my hand back into the air, the band rejoins me. And it's on. This is what I live for: dancing around the stage, fist pumping to the beat, and singing my heart out.
We perform two songs before I begin working the crowd.
"How y'all doin' tonight, Cheyenne?" I yell through my microphone. Hollers and cheers and screams emit from the crowd. "How about up there in the bleachers?" I ask, waving at the majority of the audience who aren't right in front of the stage. The grand stands break out in applause and ear-piercing whistles. "Do any of y'all know anything 'bout love?" I question, cueing us into our next song. More cheering fills our ears, and I smile into the bright spotlight.
I love my job. Closing my eyes, I lift my hand into my hair and pour all my emotion to the slower tempo.
"What I didn't know before,
I sure as hell do now.
Thanks for showing me the basic idea
Before you broke my heart into a million little shards.
The glass ceiling is crumbling
And my feet are bleeding
But you forgot to keep your promise to save me
Would it really have been that damn hard?
I don't 'bout love,
No matter how hard I wanna try..."
When I open my eyes to sing the chorus, I stop dead in my tracks with my mouth still pressing against the microphone. My gasp is audible through the entire arena. Standing in front of me is the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life. His hair is an unusual mix of brown and red, at least from what I can see poking out from underneath his tan cowboy hat. My eyes travel over his face, studying him and trying desperately to commit every handsome feature to memory.
His eyes are the color of a cornfield in Iowa, that deep green of the husks, and his jaw is perfectly squared and stubbled with reddish whiskers. The man is dressed in a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his sculpted and tanned forearms. He's definitely a rancher. Those muscles can only come from throwing a lasso for hours a day.
As I drink him in like a cold glass of sweet tea in the sweltering heat of a mid-July day in Alabama, I finally notice a smirk gracing his lips. He knows exactly the effect he's having on me.
Oh, hell no, cocky cowboy.
I tear my eyes from him and turn to offer an apologetic look to Rose-Mae, who has picked up my slack and sang through the chorus for me. She shoots me a knowing wink and I feel my cheeks flame. My voice is surprisingly steady when I begin to sing again.
The rest of the set goes off without a hitch, though only because I've done a spectacular job of avoiding looking at Mr. Tall, Dark, and Sexy-as-Hell. The audience loves us and roars even louder when we tell them how happy we are to be home after so many months on the road. Because, finally, that's where we are. I'll leave for Denver tomorrow evening, after I present the award for the bareback riding champion at the rodeo in the afternoon.
As soon as we leave the stage, water bottles are thrust in our faces and my guitar, which I used in the last few songs, is taken by one of our roadies to be put away. The stage is getting set up for Mississippi Queen's Mistake. When they go onstage, we'll be hanging out with all the fans who've won backstage passes. For now though, we cool off while we chat with some members of MQM and munch on the barbecued buffalo and veggies that have been generously provided for us. It's delicious. So is the whiskey. Whiskey is always good. The three shots I've thrown back definitely agree.
After a good half-hour, their stage manager finally comes backstage to let them know that they're up and we wish them luck. Not that they need it. Even though they're my daddy's age, they're still legendary in the country world. Being on tour with them has been monumental for our careers, and Frontier Days is a wonderful place to wrap it up.
"All right, Bella! Jasper! Rose-Mae!" our manager calls us over. Since they're all hired guys, the rest of the band is helping the roadies get the sound truck packed up. "Here come the contest winners and some of the VIP's." The security staff opens a cattle gate behind us, and we hear the shuffling of boots through the dirt. I love meeting our fans, they're always so grateful to get to know us and are sweet enough to ask for autographs and pictures without just shoving pens in our faces.
Usually anyway.
We spend the next twenty minutes taking pictures with them, and I smirk at Jasper as a crowd of teenage girls and their moms gather around him. That might not have been exactly what he was hoping for when he wore that silly hat tonight, but I think that Alice Brandon, a girl he met down in New Orleans, will be pleased. She'd traveled from Biloxi just to see us play that show, but having Jasper in her hotel room that night had been an added bonus. Since they still keep in touch, I assume it's a serious thing for my cousin.
After I've signed at least fifty autographs on anything from our CD cover to a napkin, and it seems like the focus is flowing to Rose-Mae and Jasper, I feel a tap on my shoulder and spin around.
Oh, God.
He's even more gorgeous than my initial impression. The strapping cowboy is grinning wildly at me as if he can hear my thoughts. Even though I try to stop myself, I can't keep my eyes from traversing his striking features once again. His skin has the perfect tanned-tinge to it, obviously from days spent out on the range chasing down stray cattle. My mind flashes to an image of him tackling me—not a cow, me!—to the ground and tying me up so he can do wicked, dirty, delicious things to me.
Lord, yes. Please tie me up.
"That might be fun," he says with a chuckle and a raised eyebrow. "I bet you'd be really feisty if I hogtied you."
My mouth drops open both at the shock that I just said that aloud and of what he suggested in return. Of course, the lust shooting through my limbs is mind numbing, which might explain why my verbal filter slipped. Well, that and the Jack Daniels currently coursing through my system. I don't even try to stop myself from singing, "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" under my breath and biting my lower lip in my lustful daze.