The Cowboy's Girl

Chapter 2

I'm wedged between a woman with a fussy baby and a man committed to sleeping the whole flight.

"Give him an hour, he'll be knocked out," she says with bags under her eyes.

"It's okay," I reassure.

But the baby doesn't sleep. Between the constant crying and the man's unconscious elbow jabs, I don't get any rest on the 15-hour flight.

When I finally land in Jackson, Wyoming, I'm spent. I drag myself onto the packed Greyhound coach and for the next 2 hours, I endure the smell of sweat, fast food and stale air because the AC's broken.

We drive down the i-80 and I find some comfort in the view. The landscape shifts from the bustling airport town to wide open plains and rugged mountains.

It's strange to think that this vast expanse is my new home. Everything here is so much bigger than me, so out of reach and I feel even less significant than in the congested city. I know London was suffocating me, the constant noise and grey skies but I also knew how to cope there, how to survive. But this... it's isolating in a new kind of way.

Fear aside, there's also a part of me that's excited to see what I make of myself. Spend enough time being a cog in a machine, you start to feel that's all you'll ever be, days start blurring into one and before you know it, you've got so used to the routine you don't know who you are anymore. But here, there's a sense of endless possibility.

We pull into a small service station at 5:49pm in the middle of nowhere. I'm the last person off the bus, desperate to take in the fresh air.

The bus driver pulls out my suitcase from the storage on the side of the bus and drops it in front of me with a huff.

"There you go," he says slamming the rear hatch shut.

"Oh. I didn't need anything from my bag," I say. "Could I keep it stored until we arrive?"

"Arrive? Darlin' look around. We're already here."

I scan the area and see nothing but a line of rundown stores along the dusty street. A dilapidated gas station with a flickering neon sign, a convenience store that looks like it hasn't been restocked in years and a diner with peeling paint and a faded "open" sign swinging in the crisp Autumn breeze.

The entire place feels like a ghost town, there's tumbleweed practically rolling across the road. This lonely outpost is nothing like I imagined, Google images promised rivers and woodlands but all I see is an endless expanse of dry, cracked earth and barren hills.

I squint at the weathered sign across the road, the black letters have faded over time and someone's crossed out 'WELCOME TO KAYCE' in red spray paint, correcting it to 'NOWHERE'. It literally reads, 'NOWHERE, WYOMING,' topped off with a giant red penis in the corner. Classy.

I turn back to the driver, "wait, this can't–"

But the doors slam shut and the coach swerves out of the service station. I watch it trail down the road, leaving me stranded.

Welcome to Kayce, population... well, me apparently.

As I stand there, trying to process everything, a notification pings on my phone: 5% battery left.

I scramble to order an Uber before it dies but there's no signal. I wave my phone in the air, moving around in a futile attempt to catch a bar.

"That's not going to do you any good, love, there's no signal around here," a young woman chimes in a navy blue jumpsuit and a distinct red dragon tattoo winding down her arm. She strolls out of the station breaking open a pack of Twizzlers and a can of Coke.