When the time is right, the cowboy will appear, as Angelique Fawns knows first hand.
One of my favorite things to ask any new couple is this timeless question:
How did you two meet?
After all, there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a true-life ‘meet cute’. For me, though, after living through two divorces as a child, I was skeptical of Happily Ever After and the construct of marriage as a whole. That is, until Luke Fawns changed everything.
Here is how it all began.
I spent the first part of my twenties traveling the world as a flight attendant. These were wonderful years of adventures. I met naked cave dwellers in Tenerife, partied with gay bull riders in Calgary, and went parasailing in Australia. Then, after ripping my eardrums doing too many multi-stop flights, I quit the skies and finally managed to get a job using my Journalism degree at a television network. It took long hours and years of hard work, but I built up a career promoting primetime television shows.
It was astonishing at that time how many of my completely gorgeous and successful women friends were reluctantly single. As in, they wanted to be in a relationship and just couldn’t find one. Unreasonable standards? Too many hours at the office? No good prospects? I was not equipped to say, since I was just on the other side of a disastrous three-year relationship with a horse veterinarian. He was so unavailable that my friends thought I was making him up.
But I hung in there until the day I asked him to give me a hug after a gut-wrenching lunch with my family when my mother’s second divorce was finalized.
Me: “I really need a hug.”
Him: “I don’t feel like giving a hug right now.”
“All I am asking for is hug. You can’t give me a hug?”
“You are such a nag. You are going to end up divorced and alone at fifty, just like your mother.”
Joke's on him. 50 has come and gone and I'm still married! Ha!
That was a pivotal moment for me. But let’s get back to the tale.
Wow, the guy just told me my future. If I stayed with him, he would leave me if I dared to ever need emotional support. I dumped him on the spot, gave him 24 hours to get his stuff out, and couldn’t believe what an idiot I had been for the past three years. The best thing I got out of the relationship was a fairly good figure. Normally, I was a big-boned sort of lady, but the misery diet had me looking fit. For three months after the breakup, I sat quietly on my deck after work, pretending to smoke cigarettes, and then I headed into my bungalow to watch Sex in the City re-runs and eat avocados.
So, on a beautiful summer day in 2004, I was tanning on my sundeck in a bikini (this was maybe the only time in my life I looked pretty dang good in a bikini) when I got a phone call.
The night before, I'd given my number to a 6' 8' hot number in a cowboy hat. Luke had come to a little party I’d thrown as a guest of a friend. I found him going through my books in the spare bedroom. He was holding a tome on racehorse breeding in his hand.
“We have a lot in common. I think we should go out sometime”.
He flashed me a crooked smile and tipped his cowboy hat. I thought about chastising him for the invasion of privacy, but how often do you meet a hunk of pure manly man who seems to be interested in horses? Almost never. And I was obsessed with horses, including owning a rescue mare and her young foal. I gave him my number. And now here he was, calling me less than six hours after the digit exchange.
He said he wanted to come by for a barn tour. Apparently, he had horses himself and wanted to do a “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”
Ten minutes later the blue 1949 Fargo pick-up truck trundled down the side road towards my house. It was a beauty, with cream leather seats and the original paint job gleaming in the sun. He did not tell me he was going to pick me up in an antique truck. I did not tell him that I was bringing along my 70 pound Boxer/Cane Corso puppy.
Luke rolled his massive frame out of the cab and scratched his head when I asked if Roxy could join us. It took him about four seconds to decide.
“Well, her fur is the same color as my leather seats, so what harm could a bit of hair on them do?”
Roxy and I climbed into the old truck and we were off on a farm tour. His Dad was a thoroughbred racehorse breeder and they had a barn full of his mares, foals and running horses. But first we were going to drive to my friend’s place where I kept my horses in exchange for giving riding lessons to their daughter.
On the drive to my barn we shared our firm belief that the only place to live was on a farm. Luke, who had grown up on a variety of large acreage properties, knew what this kind of life was like. I had a fanciful vision of gorgeous hay fields, horses grazing in green fields, and me sipping tea in a clean frock while enjoying the solitude and splendor. I soon learned that is not what farm life is like. It’s more about shoveling manure, fighting with frozen water, pulling bloody calves out of struggling moms, and chasing renegade pigs.
It was time to meet my chestnut mare and her foal. I rescued them from a low-end dealer who kept them in a field polluted with animal bones and metal shrapnel. Now she and her foal inhabited a big field with a slightly dilapidated bank barn. A definite improvement. Of course, then I saw his horses.14 stunning thoroughbreds that his family kept at a state-of-the art facility.
My big puppy drooled all over his leather seats on that drive, and I drooled all over the beautiful racehorses. The fact that neither one of us found drool off-putting was a very good sign. At 33, I had finally met my Mr. Right.
Twenty years later, we are still going strong!
Angelique Fawns is a journalist and spec/romance fiction author. You can find her work in newspapers, magazines, and over 80 fiction markets like EQMM, Stupefying Stories, and Amazing Stories. She lives on a farm in Canada with a horse named Cat, a dog called Hen, and a cat who answers to Janet. Her first cowboy romance novel is "on sub" with her agent as of Valentine's Day. Find her on Substack at @angeliquefawns1.
Images:
Close up of horses by Kayla Farmer
Horses nuzzling by Justus Menke
Wedding photo courtesy of the author
Delightful read that has me smiling big time
I just loved this. Saw it all like a home movie. Pictures are great.