Love In The Wild West

“Hey,” said Lila, and she realized that she did not sound any less tired than Louise looked. She wondered if her best friend was thinking the same thing about her when she looked at her. Lila would not be surprised, she was feeling exhausted and spent.

“Rough day at work?” asked Louise, confirming Lila’s suspicion that she looked extremely tired.

“Yeah,” said Lila. “A really rough day. Man, I do not know how much longer I am going to be able to do this job. I mean, it’s a great job and I am really grateful that I have it, but sometimes I feel like I can not go on like this.”

“Oh honey,” said Louise, “both of us have been feeling this way since before we can remember. Remember when we were twenty three and we started these jobs? We both thought that these would be temporary arrangements and that we would soon move on to bigger and better things. Well, that didn’t really work out very well now did it?”

Lila laughed a humorless laugh. “No,” she said, “that did not end up working out very well. What can you do, that is just how life is.”

“Has anyone ever stopped to think about how much that su*ks?” said Louise. “The fact that life has to be this way, I mean. Who says that we should have to live like this? There are people out there with billions of dollars, why can’t they just hand us fifty grand each and help us get started off!”

“Man,” said Lila, “our lives would have been so much easier if we had started off with fifty grand instead of zero.”

“Yeah,” said Louise, looking up wistfully. “No student loans, and we would probably have been able to afford the rent of a nicer place without sinking deeper into debt.”

“Oh well,” said Lila, for perhaps the tenth time that day and the hundredth time that month. “Nothing we can do about it now. Guess this is just the life that we are stuck with.”

“Great,” said Louise wryly, “that is just so great.”

All of a sudden, Louise’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and said, “That is odd. I do not recognize this number.”

“Answer it, maybe it’s a secret admirer,” said Lila teasingly.

“I wish,” said Louise, rolling her eyes.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly, holding the phone to her ear. Lila heard a voice on the other end talking but she could not make out what the voice was saying. All she could see was Lila’s response to the whole thing. “Yes,” she said, her eyes widening as she spoke. “Yes,” she said again, “yes, yes, yes.”

She just seemed to be agreeing with whatever the person on the other end was saying, and Lila was dying to find out what was going on. She waved her hands in front of Louise’s face and then gestured that she wanted to know who it was. Louise made a shushing gesture and then focused her attention on the phone once again.

Her eyes were wide and she looked incredibly excited. “Oh my God,” said Louise, “oh my God thank you so much! Really, thank you, you have no idea how much I needed this! Oh my God thank you so much!”

She cut the call and then jumped into the air, whooping for joy. “What is it?” asked Lila, hugging her friend confusedly because she knew that something good had just happened.

“You will never be able to guess who that was,” said Louise.

“Tell me!” said Lila. “Now!”

“It was a guy that works at the company that runs all of the scratch cards and lottery tickets,” said Louise. “I bought one last week and filled it out, and it turns out that I won! I won big, Lila!”

“How big are we talking here?” asked Lila, her heart pounding in excitement.

“Three hundred grand!” said Louise, jumping around and screaming, “I just won three hundred thousand dollars!”

“Oh my God!” said Lila, “that is so amazing, I am so happy for you!”

Louise hugged her best friend tight and said, “This is so incredible, just when we were talking about how nice it would be if we had some extra money! Oh God, this is so amazing this is such luck!”

“You really struck gold,” said Lila with a laugh. She was truly happy for her best friend. Louise would now be able to go back to college and get better education, something that would allow her to get a better job later on. It was something Louise had been wanting to do for a long time, it had just never been the right time to do it.

“What are you going to spend the money on?” asked Lila.

“Well,” said Louise, “you’ve probably already guessed that I am going to go back to school. I am going to pay my student loans off a little bit, and I am going to spend some money on myself. But do you know what I really want to do?”

“What?” asked Lila, genuinely curious.

“What I really want to do is take you somewhere,” said Louise. “I have earned far less money than you since we both graduated from college, and there is no other way to put it. It’s because of you that I have been able to live in a halfway decent apartment and eat good food every day, because you contribute more money to the running of the household. And so I want to treat you to something.”

Lila laughed and said, “You can take me out to a fancy dinner, how about that? Dinner and a show.”

“Oh please,” said Louise, “I will do that for sure, but that is just for kicks. No, for your real treat I am going to do something that I am sure that you will like. In fact, I can not believe that I am actually able to do this because you are going to love it so much!”

“What are you going to do?” asked Lila, her voice high pitched and her arms flailing because she was so curious. “I am dying to know!”

“I am going to take you…” said Louise, letting a dramatic pause increase the intensity of what she was about to say next, “to a ranch!”

“What?” asked Lila, practically screaming now. “A ranch? What are you talking about?”

“That is right,” said Louise. “I know of these lovely ranches that are basically hotels set out in the wild west. They are supposed to give you a much better experience, something that you can enjoy a lot more. I know that this is the kind of thing that you would love, and since this is my thank you to you for helping me out so much it makes sense that we do something you like.”

“Oh Louise, that is so sweet!” said Lila, hugging her friend tight. Something had happened after all. Lila might not be quitting her job or leaving the city, but at least she was going to be able to go to a ranch for the first time in her life. She was actually going to see the kind of place that she had fantasized about for years, and that was something.