When I got back to the table, there was a box and a card sitting on my plate. Austen was smiling like a Cheshire Cat.
“What’s this?” I dropped my bag and eased into the chair, a feeling of dread sinking in my stomach. That box was pretty small.
“You have to read the card and find out,” was his innocent reply.
I drew a tight breath. He wasn’t making this easy. “Austen, I don’t think...”
“Aren’t you even going to read the card?” He slapped a hand to his chest with a grin. “I’m hurt.”
I stared at the pink envelope. Fine. I’d open it, smile, and say thank you, but no. “Okay.” I broke the seal and slipped the card out. It was a cute picture of an Australian Shepherd dog with a heart cut-out in his mouth and big sad puppy-dog eyes. “Aw. That’s sweet.”
“You have to read the inside.”
I flicked my eyes up. He looked confident. Pleased as punch. I breathed out slowly, and opened the card.
There was a poem, hand-written on the inside flap. I gaped at it for a second, frozen. If there was one thing that could make me hesitate, make me hope I had been wrong about Austen, this was it—what I’d been asking for, and what he’d been avoiding. I looked up at him again.
His face was bewildered. “Aren’t you going to read it?”
I wetted my lips and caught my breath. Was this what I’d been needing to see? The clue to his inner thoughts I’d given up on finding?
An Angel for the Cowboy
She waits for forever
Stared at, but never seen
Desired by many, but accepted by none
Her heart is like mine—I would beg it for my own
But I cannot find the words to ask
A blessing I cannot give
Her friendship, a gift I must return
I come to her and tell her my secret
"I am in love with your friend."
She looks at me, and asks a question
"Are you the one who saved her?"
“No,” I say, and my heart bleeds to hear
My own confession, I would die for her to unravel
“I did not save my angel. It is she who saved me.
And she who taught me to thirst.”
She smiles and wishes me luck, but she does not understand.
And so, this cowboy waits. I dream under a blue-roan sky
Of my mountain angel, the one who slips the noose of my embrace.