The Last Ride of Summer

The rodeo grounds smelled like popcorn and panic. I clutched my lucky trucker hat—faded blue, embarrassingly dad-coded—but nobody was gonna see it. Not tonight.

"You going, or what?" Marcus shouted over the blaring country music. He gestured at the mechanical bull, currently throwing some sophomore from Oakdale around like a ragdoll. The crowd went wild.

"Yeah, yeah, give me a sec." I adjusted my hat lower, wishing I could disappear.

The truth? I'd been practicing. Every Friday after school, I'd sneak into the empty fairgrounds where Old Man Miller kept the mechanical bull for the season. I'd paid him twenty bucks to let me ride that thing until my thighs burned and I could actually stay on for more than three pathetic seconds.

But nobody knew. Especially not Marcus, whose entire personality was being good at everything and making sure everyone else knew it.

The bull operator—some guy with a cigarette hanging from his lip—fiddled with the control cable, testing the settings. The machine jerked, then settled.

"Next up!" the announcer barked.

Marcus smirked, leaning against the fence with that practiced casual cool he'd been perfecting since seventh grade. "Watch and learn, little man."

He climbed on, hat tipped back, chest puffed. The bull started slow, then ramped up. Marcus lasted seventeen seconds—respectable, but not legendary. When he got thrown, he rolled with it, popping up with a grin like he'd meant to do that.

"Beat that," he said, bumping my shoulder.

I climbed onto the bull, heart hammering against my ribs. The operator adjusted something on that control cable again.

The bull lurched beneath me.

I found my rhythm. Left, right, back, center. My body knew what to do from all those secret practice sessions. Eight seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. The crowd noise swelled. Through it all, I caught sight of Chloe by the water trough, actually watching, not looking at her phone.

At twenty-eight seconds, the bull went full chaos mode. I hung on until it jerked left, then right, then—

I flew off, hitting the padded ground hard but rolling through it like I'd practiced.

Silence, then screaming.

Marcus's jaw actually dropped. "No freaking way."

I stood up, dusting off my jeans, adjusting my dumb lucky hat. A grin I couldn't suppress spread across my face.

"Beginner's luck," I said, but I knew it wasn't.

Chloe caught my eye across the crowd. She smiled.

Some nights, you find out who you're gonna be. Tonight wasn't about the bull. It was about finally showing up.