Parking Lot Cowboy

Epidemiologist Margot Dunn has spent months making up an elaborate fantasy about the tall, silent cowboy who serves as her fellow volunteer escort at a family-planning clinic in Topeka. Life in Kansas hasn't worked out exactly like she planned—her now ex-boyfriend isn't the best roommate, for a start—but Saturday mornings at the clinic are a high point, and not only because of the hot guy in the cowboy hat. Then one morning he speaks, and the complicated reality of ranch-hand Tyler Olsen is better than any fairy tale.

Tyler Olsen's approach to life is to work hard, keep his head down and his mouth shut. He doesn't know much about politics or the government or anything like that, but it pisses him off to see people getting harassed on their way to a doctor's appointment. Fancy, pretty Margot Dunn is a welcome—if unattainable—addition to his weekend clinic-escort routine, until he works up the nerve to speak to her, and everything changes.

These opposites attract in the unlikeliest of places, but can the roar of their burgeoning love drown out the insistent chanting of hate?

Originally published in the Rogue Nights anthology in 2018, and re-released in 2021 in response to the passage of Texas Senate Bill 8, this is a short story (14k words) about two clinic escorts falling in love. When they are again permitted to operate safely, this Houston-based author will donate 100% of the proceeds from this story to the Clinic Access Support Network, which provides inclusive, practical, and essential support to people seeking abortions.