The Pioneer Woman by Ree Drummond Page B

Overalls? Isolation?
    Then, almost without fail, just about the time my mind reached full capacity and my what-ifs threatened to disrupt my sleep, my phone would ring again. And it would be Marlboro Man, whose mind was anything but scattered. Who had a thought and acted on it without wasting even a moment calculating the pros and cons and risks and rewards. Who’d whisper words that might as well never have existed before he spoke them: “I miss you already…” “I’m thinking about you…” “I love you….” And then I’d smell his scent in the air and drift right off to Dreamland.
    This was the pattern that defined my early days with Marlboro Man. I was so happy, so utterly content—as far as I was concerned, it could havegone on like that forever. But inevitably, the day would come when reality would appear and shake me violently by the shoulders.
    And, as usual, I wasn’t the least bit ready for it.
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    M ARLBORO MAN lived twenty miles from the nearest town, a small town at that. There was no nightlife to speak of, save a local bar where retired oilfield workers and cowboys gossip and spin yarns over whiskey. His childhood friends were mostly gone, having moved on to larger lives in larger places. But after college he’d wound up back here, back in the same place he’d grown up. Back on the land that, apart from the telephone poles and oil wells, looked the same as it had a hundred years earlier, when his great-great-grandfather had first moved to America from Scotland. It was a quiet, isolated life. But it was where his heart was.
    Strangely, I understood. There was something about the prairie. It was so drastically different from the crashing waves of the California coast, or from the rocky cliffs of Laguna, or from the palm trees and the mountains and the sunshine and the smog. It was wide open—not a freeway or high-rise in sight—and it whispered history and serenity. Apart from the horses and cattle, it was scarcely populated, with miles from one cowboy house to the next. Though I’d been away from L.A. for months, its pace and clutter were still so much a part of me, I could sometimes hear it ringing in my ears. I’d still get road rage pulling out of my parents’ driveway. I’d still allow an hour for a ten-minute drive.
    But five minutes on the prairie, and I’d forget about all of it. My soul would settle, relax, let go. The ranch was so removed from any semblance of society, it was easy to completely forget society even existed, let alone a society brimming with traffic, hustle and bustle, and stress. And stripped of all the noise and pounding distractions that had ruled my life for theprevious seven years, I found it so easy to think clearly, to focus on my growing relationship with Marlboro Man, to take in and reflect on every delicious moment.
    Absent all the friends, acquaintances, and party buddies with which I’d surrounded myself in L.A., I quickly grew accustomed to having Marlboro Man all to myself. And with the exception of a few brief meet-and-greet encounters with his brother and my mom, we’d spent hardly any time with other people. I’d loved it. But it wasn’t reality.
    And it couldn’t last forever.
    â€œCome over early tomorrow morning,” Marlboro Man asked over the phone one night. “We’re gathering cattle, and I want you to meet my mom and dad.”
    â€œOh, okay,” I agreed, wondering to myself why we couldn’t just remain in our own isolated, romantic world. And the truth was, I wasn’t ready to meet his parents yet. I still hadn’t successfully divorced myself from California J’s dear, dear folks. They’d been so wonderful to me during my years of dating their son and had become the California version of my parents, my home away from home. I hated that our relationship couldn’t continue despite, oh, the minor detail of my breaking