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Caroline had forgotten how much she hated rodeos.
It was more the situational anxiety she'd adapted into back when Tyler was a rodeo rider—watching him, a stupid kid from deep Arkansas probably wearing a backwards Texas cap on his head (and that was it for skull protection), barrel across a sandpit on the back of a wild horse, or tempt a raging bull with a strip of his red flannel.
Back then Caroline had hated rodeos because she had to watch her boyfriend get trampled near to death every night.
Now, though, she realized she hated them for a different reason:
"They must treat these animals real bad," she said aloud, warily watching as one of the riders just barely made a last-minute turn around a barrel. "Only ways horses will react that quickly is either through good training or bad."
"And you think it's just gotta be bad, by default?" Tyler scoffed, leaning his elbows onto his knees to get a closer look at the show. He nodded off to the side; over toward the gates where the animals waited their turn. "Nah, they're alright out here. Look how pristine those bars are. A bad rodeo ain't worried about how clean their stage is—they're worried about how to keep their livestock from telling on 'em mid show."
Caroline smiled, mirroring his movement. "Oh, and if the tornado wrangler says it's true, it's gotta be."
He shot her an amused, sideways glance. "Alright, then, tree hugger."
She scoffed, offended, but soon her smile gave her away—Tyler pointed to it with an oddly victorious expression, like he was staking his claim at the fact that he finally got her to break.
"You did not," she said in reply to his expression, casting her gaze back over the rodeo.
"Did too," he protested, but he was laughing.
Someone behind them whooped loudly as the bullfighter made a narrow escape, hopping over an upturned barrel just in time before getting skewered by a pair of horns. Caroline winced.
"You got too much empathy for this," Tyler noticed—though how he'd seen her wince rather than watching the show, she didn't understand. Either way he was looking at her when she glanced over. "How did you ever make it through freshman year? Seriously."
"Well, it was different watching you," she admitted cheekily, then smiled in a prideful manner. "I knew your head was made of tin, so I didn't have to worry if you got it stomped in. It'd just pop right back out like a soda can."
Tyler laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Jesus, Line. You always knew how to make a man feel great about himself."
"Well, what can I say?" She grinned, lifting her shoulders. "You did have a damn empty head, back then. Full of cotton—or hot air."
