Spirited Ride

by Rebecca Avery

  Unfortunately it had come a day late and a dollar short because whether it was Gina she believed more than him or Chris or someone else…. The result was the same.

  She might love him but she didn’t trust him at all and that meant their second chance would end much as the first one had. He shouldn’t care but found himself stealing a glance at Sherri to judge her reaction to Chris’ confession.

  The stunned expression on her face made him want to go to her and hold her close, assuring her that it would all be okay but what was the point?

  Someone else would just come along in the future to create suspicion in her mind… because along with having been unwilling to support his goals all those years ago, she also obviously still had serious doubts about him… along with little faith and no confidence at all in his character.

  “Today just may be your lucky day, pal,” he said standing up carefully, keeping the gun pointed at Chris. “Take your dope and get the fuck out of my house. Bump up your plans to move out west to today because I don’t want to see your ass around this town again. I’ll give you an hour head start before I come looking for you. Chances are good I won’t be the only one looking either. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  Chris didn’t respond but instead scraped himself up off the floor, grabbed his dope and took off out the door. TJ watched out the front window until the man’s car was out of sight before turning back to Sherri.

  “I had no idea he was keeping any of that stuff here, TJ. You have to believe that,” Sherri said.

  “So I’m just supposed to believe you… just take you at your word? All because you say you didn’t know… you expect me to just trust you… unquestioningly,” he said incredulously. “Even though you’re not about to give me the same benefit of the doubt regarding anything I tell you? When I tell you that I love you and that all I’ve ever wanted was for you to believe in me and support me… you’ll take a liar and a dealer’s word over mine… every single time. Well not today, love, not tomorrow or any other day for that matter. I’m done and I want you out of my house.”

  “Wait, TJ… let’s just talk about this for a minute,” she said.

  “There is nothing to talk about other than when you can come to clear your things out of my house. However, that will have to wait for another day because if you don’t leave right now I will call the cops and have them detain Chris who will say he just picked up the dope he’s carrying from you,” he said. “They will not only search my house but your bar as well… possibly shutting the place down for days.”

  Anger whispered across her face and she said, “This is as much my house as yours. I understand that you are angry and I don’t blame you for that but you know damn well that I had nothing to do with those drugs being here. If you think you are going to use this as a way to scare me into walking away from this place or as an excuse to keep from giving me my rightful share… that I worked the last decade for… then you are seriously mistaken. I was wrong about Chris, I admit that… and I’ll be honest that I don’t know what to think about Gina right now… but I will not give up this house without a fight so you need to just go home before this gets really ugly and I end up calling the cops.”

  “My name is on the deed to this house. Plus I left my shirt and shoes here the other night so some of my belongings are here as well. If you call the cops, they will just consider this a domestic issue and try to convince one of us to go and stay somewhere else. However, they can’t make either one of us leave since we’re married… it’s for the courts to decide who gets to stay and who has to go,” he said. “I hope you still want that divorce, Sherri, because you’re fixing to get it.”

  “So after everything you’re going to let Chris and Gina pit us against each other?” she asked, clearly frustrated at his unwillingness to do what she wanted.

  “No, Sherri. I would never do that… but you already did… ten years ago,” he said, walking over and picking up the pictures of Gina outside of his apartment and then walking back over and holding them out to her. “And you did it again today!”

  Walking over to the sofa he flopped down and after several moments of staring at him, she finally sighed and said, “I need to get some things together and then I’ll go stay with Lilly and Bobby but don’t think this means that I’m giving up. I will fight you with every last breath I have because making a mistake doesn’t mean I should lose it all.”

  He listened to her for several minutes as she noisily packed up some things to take to her sister’s house with her. Then he watched as she stormed out the front door dragging her bags along with her. Getting up he went over to the door and slid the lock into place more for show than anything. Once she backed out of the drive and took off down the road he pulled out his phone and called Chuck.

  “He’s gone. Took his dope and left. Sherri left too for that matter… she’s going to stay with Lilly for a little while and I’ll be staying here at the house. I appreciate the heads up more than you will ever know,” he said when Chuck answered.

  “It’s okay but old boy didn’t get very far. You haven’t been back for very long and don’t know this but Carla Sanders’ dad, Nathan Patterson, used to be a juvenile court judge. He made some bad choices once where Carla was concerned when she was younger. Once the general public found out they weren’t very forgiving and now Nathan has a ways to go in order to earn back the trust of the citizens in this little town. A good sized drug bust always makes the good people around here sleep a little better at night… for some reason,” Chuck laughed. “I guess you could say I helped two birds with one stone.”

  “Can I ask another favor though?” TJ asked.

  “If I can…” Chuck replied.

  “Can you go pick up a new lock for my front and back doors from the hardware store? I’ll call in what I need but if you can pick it up and drop it off here that would be a huge help,” he said.

  “Sure thing,” Chuck replied.

  He called the hardware store once he got off the phone with Chuck. Then he sat and waited for Chuck to drop off the locks. Once Chuck left, TJ went around and changed the locks on both the front and back door and made sure all the windows were also locked up tight.

  Sherri was no longer free to stomp around all over his heart… or his home. Then worn out from having worked all day, dealing with the drama of Sherri’s ex-boyfriend and securing his home, he went to bed.

  Had he known the sleepless night he was in for he may have decided to make a bed out on the couch instead. It would have saved him from stepping foot into a bedroom that looked, smelled and reminded him of Sherri.

  From the scrap of lace that he found on the floor near the hamper that he only realized were her panties once he picked them up, to the sheets that smelled like her… he lay there in agony for hours. When he finally did make it out to the couch the memories of what they’d done in the little living room, once upon a time, flooded his mind.

  The house was Sherri. Sure he had memories of his childhood and being here with his grandmother but somehow memories of being here with Sherri outweighed them all. Without her here, it was no longer a home worth fighting for. He was hanging on to the dream that the house represented in his mind and it was just that… a pipe dream.

  He and Sherri never stood a chance of patching things up and making even more memories in the confines of this house. What was once a love nest where two lovers rushed to at the end of the day to enjoy the pleasures of each other’s bodies, now was nothing more than some painted walls in a rundown neighborhood.

  He should have seen it the minute he came back to town but he’d been unwilling to admit true defeat at that point.

  She was right in that if he did fight for the house it was for no purpose other than to extend the inevitable. Everything in this house, in the garage, in the yard was hers now and had been for a decade. What right did he have to any of it after all this time? Regardless if his name was on it or not.

  He’d been truthful in that the id
ea of her growing old in this house with someone else had hurt so bad he couldn’t think of anything else but staking his claim… to her and to the house. At least it wouldn’t be Chris Anderson now though… that stupid son of a bitch.

  However, eventually it would be someone other than him or it would just be in a different house than this one. He was fighting a losing battle and he knew it.

  A week later, he knew it was time to do what he should have done when he rolled into town. Pulling out the document Sherri had given him that asked him to sign over his rights to the bar, the house… and to her… he signed them all after crying for maybe the first time since reaching adulthood.

  Deciding to cut out the middle man and hopefully eliminate the possibility of a fight between them, he called and got Dickie’s address from Chuck. Then hopping on the unfinished bike he’d been working on at the shop on his own time, he headed across town. Pulling up in front of a small ranch house he was greeted at the door by the older man.

  “What brings you out this way?” Dickie asked, shaking his hand and inviting him inside their small two bedroom house. A young man sat on their sofa looking at a motorcycle magazine. “That’s Connor. He’s a foster kid that will be staying with us for a little while. He’ll be eighteen in a couple of months and we were just looking at some options for him after he graduates,” Dickie finished.

  “I was actually looking for your wife, Becca… right?” he said.

  “Yeah, hang on. She’s on the phone in the back bedroom, let me just go get her,” Dickie offered and then headed back the hallway.

  A few moments later Dickie came back in the room and looking at Connor said, “Come on boy… let’s go look at what we might be able to do for a seat for TJ’s bike out front.”

  Connor set the magazine aside and headed outside with Dickie just as Becca emerged from the hallway. She gestured toward the couch, offering him a place to sit down before taking a seat in one of the smaller chairs nearby. TJ sat down even though everything in him wanted to just thrust the papers at her, tell her to take care of things and then make a run for it.

  “So what brings you by today?” she asked.

  Swallowing down the fragments of his heart that had floated to the surface after having broken into a million pieces when he signed the damn papers, he said, “Sherri wants a divorce. I’ve looked over her offer and signed it. I was hoping that you could file it at the courthouse for us. Neither one of us knows much about that part. I’d be happy to pay the fees or whatever, just let me know how much it will be.”

  With that he pulled the folded, re-folded, crumpled and then finally rolled up documents out of his back pocket and handed them to the proper looking woman who sat staring at him.

  She studied him as if he was a speck under a microscope but took the documents all the same. After attempting to smooth the papers against her leg she read over them while he sat across from her in more discomfort than he’d felt the few times he’d attended church.

  Finally she looked up and said, “It appears that everything is in order. If you are both absolutely sure that this is what you want and that reconciliation isn’t possible, I’ll file them first thing Monday morning.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” he managed to choke out. Without saying goodbye to the woman he got up off the couch and walked outside.

  As he exited the house and headed toward his bike, Dickie just stared at him. He could tell the man wanted to say something and as TJ neared where he stood with Connor, Dickie shoved his hands in his pocket and waited. Dickie had miles of wisdom about motorcycles, engines and life in general and as much as TJ wanted to just ride off into the sunset and never come back he decided to hear the man out this time.

  “Why don’t you go inside and see what leather remnants we have left that we could use for this and start marking the leather,” Dickie said to Connor.

  Connor gazed at him and then back to Dickie before heading inside the house. Once the boy was out of earshot he said, “You kind of look like you have the weight of the world on you, man. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just that divorce, even ten years in the making, is hard… I guess I should have taken care of things a long time ago,” he replied.

  “Why didn’t you?” Dickie asked.

  “I was kidding myself… living in denial, I guess. I thought I’d eventually come up with the song, record it, make a mint from it and Sherri would be proud of me. That she’d be sorry for not having gone with me to Nashville in the first place,” he explained.

  “What would becoming rich and famous and proving Sherri wrong have resolved?” Dickie questioned.

  “Hell I don’t know… nothing I suppose. I just wanted to prove myself to her but she wouldn’t even go with me. In hindsight I guess it was better that way since she didn’t get to witness me failing,” he said.

  “Becca never talks about her cases to me but I heard through the grapevine that Tommy made some good change on that one song that hit the charts. Doesn’t that mean you’ve made your mark? What more did you want?” Dickie inquired.

  “I gave all the money from that song to Tommy and Dana to take care of his little girl’s medical bills so he could adopt the youngest one,” he responded. “So I guess it was never about being rich and famous… it was about proving that I could do something great and take care of her at the same time… my own way, with my own talents and doing what I love… even though I was so young.”

  “Did she ask you to do that for her?” Dickie asked.

  “No… she was fine with me just singing at the bar and helping to bring in a crowd. That was fine with me too… for a while, but then when Tommy quit the band to look after Gretchen, I felt like I was losing my chance to show the world that I could take some words and a tune… put them together and make magic,” he replied.

  “Why did you give up on that dream then?” Dickie questioned.

  “I haven’t really. It’s just that when I saw Sherri at Tommy and Dana’s renewal ceremony, I guess I realized that in following one dream I’d given up on another one. Somehow, as much as I love making music, not having someone to sing to… someone who wants to hear me as much as I want to perform… it’s just not as fulfilling,” he said. “The times I felt the most successful were when I was performing for her at the bar and impressing her with my songs.”

  “It sounds to me like Sherri is your muse. Without her you can’t make the music you were meant to make. The question is how can you have both? Sherri and the music…?” Dickie responded.

  “I can’t… at least not anymore,” he finished in a whisper.

  “Did you ever think that in life and love it’s not about winning or losing? A long happy life and a good healthy relationship are only possible through compromise. If you learn to accept that even though you didn’t get exactly what you wanted in a certain situation, that through compromise and a little adjustment in how you think, you can get a little bit of what you really need.” Dickie said.

  “So what are you saying?” he asked.

  “Maybe your marriage didn’t work out for a reason. Maybe if you step back and look at the reasons why, you’ll find a compromise in there somehow. Something you can both live with that will allow you a little bit of the music you need as well as the connection to Sherri that you need. I believe the kids now days call it friends with benefits or some bullshit,” Dickie replied.

  He laughed and said, “I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

  “If you want something badly enough and are willing to compromise… it’s hard telling what version of it you’ll end up with but I have to think that you’ll get some portion of the original dream,” Dickie said, smacking him on the shoulder. “In the mean time I need to get in there and help that boy build you a seat for this heap.”

  He thought about what Dickie said the whole ride back home… to Sherri’s house… and found the underlying message. If he wanted the dream of Sherri he would have to fight for it whether she
was still his wife or not.

  Perhaps by giving her the divorce she thought she wanted so badly, she’d finally relax enough to talk to him about where things had went so wrong.

  Without the fear of winning or losing a divorce settlement they could finally get down to the business of working through their issues and come out in the end… friends. That was seriously doubtful.

  God knows that since finding his way back into Sherri’s bed, he’d been writing songs like there was no tomorrow, so she must in fact be his muse. Or maybe his punishment for some unknown sin. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure he was cut out to take the bullshit that went along with trying to be friends… or friends with benefits… with Sherri.

  He did enjoy working with Tommy’s girls. It was nothing short of a riot and he loved every minute of it. It was the one bright spot in his world at this point. The only chance he had to feed the music his soul needed.

  Unlike Sherri, the kids were more willing to allow him an opinion in what was going on. Maybe somewhere in the mess of losing Sherri and teaching Tommy’s kids how to play instruments, was a compromise on his dream of music at least. Pulling into the driveway he was shocked to find Gretchen waiting on the porch.

  After parking the bike and heading up the steps, he said, “How’d you get here?”

  “Rode my bike,” she supplied, nodding her head at the dirt bike propped up against the tree in the side yard.

  “Do your parents know that you’re here?” he asked.

  “They know… and they aren’t taking sides between you and Aunt Sherri so neither am I,” she replied.

  “Then why are you here?” he asked.

  “I wrote this poem and Melody has been walking around singing it for days. I want you to help me write the music out for it. I want to sell it for money like you and my daddy do,” she replied. “I don’t want it to sound like the way she sings it though… it won’t sell that way.”

  “Sometimes it’s best to stick with your roots, Gretchen,” he warned. “When you get too far from what you know and love, you start losing what makes your sound unique.” He’d once tried to veer off what was natural for him and it had cost him dearly. Perhaps he could spare someone else that lesson.