Leaving Amarillo

by Caisey Quinn

  “Solicitation, I think. I’m not entirely sure of the specifics,” Gavin mutters.

  Sliding my fingers between his, I give his hand a squeeze. He doesn’t return it, but he doesn’t pull away, either.

  The raven-haired middle-aged woman with a pixie cut taps away on the keyboard for several minutes before letting out a low sound that reminds me of one my Nana used to make. I’m pretty sure it’s the equivalent of her calling Gavin’s mom a two-bit hussy. Which she is, but still . . . this is her son standing here.

  With an overly exaggerated sigh, she rubs her eyes before giving us an exasperated look as if she’s bored with our presence already. Her impassive gaze meets Gavin’s and I can see the pity and the slight disgust in it. I have no doubt that he can, too.

  “There are several charges against her,” she tells us. “She solicited a police officer, Mr. . . .”

  “Garrison,” Gavin supplies. “She’s my mother.”

  The woman cringes and I want to slap her. What is it, her first day? Even I can manage to contain my feelings better than she is.

  “Well, I’m sure your mother would love to see you, but unfortunately visiting hours are on Sunday only.”

  “I’m not here to visit. I’m here to bail her out,” Gavin snaps.

  Tugging gently on his hand, I pull him back enough for him to take a breath.

  “Ma’am,” I say, leaning over the desk a little. “We’ve driven a really long way and we have to turn around and get back to Austin as soon as possible. If we need to contact a bondsman or whatever, we’d need to do that as soon as possible.”

  “It’s ten grand to get her out today, but honestly, her court date is Monday morning. I can see that she’s had warrants out before for failing to appear. If I were you, I’d leave her here.” She shrugs and the movement tremors through Gavin’s body as if she punched him in the chest.

  Ten grand. Holy hell.

  “Well you’re not me.” Gavin’s eyes are blazing. “And I’m here, and she’s going home. You got a bondsman you can recommend?”

  The woman shakes her head as if Gavin is too stupid to waste any more time on. “Here,” she says, handing him a business card with plain black print on it. “Good luck, kid.”

  “Gav?” I tilt my head indicating I need a quick sidebar. “A moment, please?”

  We step over to a plain gray seating area and Gavin turns his phone over and over in his hand while waiting for me to make my case. I’m rooting for the wrong team this time and I don’t know how he’s going to react.

  “Look, it’s none of my business, but I mean, it’s three more nights. I think she’ll be okay.”

  His eyes harden against my imploring gaze, turning to granite and effectively shutting me out. “You’re right. It’s none of your business.”

  His anger thumps me hard in the chest. Okay then. I take a deep breath and speak as calmly as I can. I’ve watched enough courtroom dramas on television to know he’s risking an awful lot for someone who doesn’t deserve it.

  “Fine. But just so you know, if you do get a bondsman to post bail and then she doesn’t show in court, you’ll be the one paying that money back. Good luck with that.”

  I turn on my heel intending to leave the stubborn jackass on his own to deal with his mama drama but he stops me in my tracks. Not by grabbing me—or even reaching for me—but with his words.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. Especially not after you rode all this way with me.”

  And after what we did mere hours ago, I think to myself. Turning back to him, I take a deep breath and ask him a question I’ve wondered about for half my life.

  “Why do you do this to yourself? No, wait. Why do you let her do this to you?”

  She’s never made him a priority. At least not in the years I’ve known him. And yet, he would move hell and earth to help her.

  “It’s complicated.” He gives me a halfhearted shrug. “She had a rough childhood—one that makes mine look like a trip to Disney World. Closed-in spaces . . . they just . . . They really upset her. And I . . . I owe her this. Okay?”

  I swallow the emotions threatening to cut this conversation short. “Okay . . . Well, maybe she should see someone about that. Like a therapist. But Gavin, none of that is your fault and she’s not your responsibility. You don’t owe her shit.”

  His eyes darken and I worry I’ve gone too far, or that I seem coldhearted because I’m not accepting the excuses he’s making for her.

  “There’s more. Events that transpired while you were gone that I don’t have the time or energy to explain right now. I’m not just going to leave her here. Period. You didn’t have to come, you know. And if you rode all this way just to talk me out of it, that was a huge waste of fucking time.”

  “That’s not why I came and you know it.” My eyes narrow on his back while he walks over to the small lobby area that contains two vending machines and a few chairs and makes a call.

  I sit while he tells someone on the other end that his mother has been picked up for solicitation and needs someone to post bail.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I hear him say while I watch his jaw clench. I wish he’d put it on speakerphone so I could hear both ends of the conversation. “No, ma’am, I don’t.” He’s leaning forward and facing the floor so I can’t read his face. “Yes, ma’am, she has.”

  Between every response is a long pause and the adrenaline rush from our mini-argument is still coursing through me. This is frustrating the hell out of me. I stand up and stretch my legs.

  “I’m going to find the restroom,” I tell him quietly. Gavin nods and I make my way to a water fountain and some elevators. Beside them is a sign for the bathrooms and I glance back before stepping into the ladies’ room. Gavin is already dialing another number on his phone so I assume that one turned him down.

  Despite the severely pressing need to relieve my bladder, I can’t look away. He looks so alone. And lost. My frustration and anger evaporate, and I finally get it.

  The random waitresses and fangirls don’t see this part. They aren’t there the morning after, they don’t know about his mom, or his childhood. For them, Gavin is one-dimensional. A hot tatted-up drummer who can give them a good time. This is why he doesn’t want to cross that line with me. Because he needs me for this part, for the ugly un-fun parts of life. I wish I could make him see that I want to be both. I want to be everything. Burning bright nights and dark cloudy days. Before I take off running and throw myself in his arms like an overly emotional idiot, I escape into the restroom and pee before I burst.

  Even in the ladies’ room everything is gray, utilitarian. The tile on the floor, the concrete walls. The paper towel dispenser is even gray and has a hand crank. After I’ve washed and dried my hands, I glance at my reflection.

  Oh my holy sweet baby Jesus, I look like an extra on The Walking Dead. My skin is pale under the harsh fluorescents and my hair is a certifiable mess. I splash some cold water on my face then take my hair down and plow my fingers through it in the most comblike manner I can manage before pulling it into a high ponytail. Thankful for the toothbrush I packed in my purse, I use it and feel marginally less like a rumpled pile of dirty laundry.

  Gavin’s shirt is a size too big on me and I know I’m still a hot mess, but when I walk out of the restroom, his eyes land on me and he doesn’t appear to be the least bit concerned about how I look. He looks happy to see me so I smile. I’m glad to be here for him. Even though I know our one night is a thing of the past, a fantasy that will have to remain just that. Swallowing the pain and regret, I make my way toward him.

  “Find someone?” I lower myself into the seat beside him.

  “I did.” He breathes deep, like it’s the first breath he’s taken in days. “The first two said they couldn’t do it because she’s failed to appear in court in the past. But the third guy said he just charges a higher rate in cases like hers.”

  “So . . .”

  “So I have to come up
with fifteen hundred bucks like now. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  I glance at the digital display on my phone. It’s almost nine. If we get out of here by ten and stop by to see Papa, we can be on the road by eleven and we’ll make sound check by the skin of our teeth.

  “I have three hundred dollars to my name. It’s yours if you need it.” The regret flashes in his eyes and I see the shame there. So I place my hand on his knee and squeeze. “You can pay me back later. It’s not a big deal. You’d do it for me.”

  He stares at me so intently I have to look away.

  “I mean, if Papa gets picked up for murdering all of crazy Mrs. Lawson’s cats, you’re going to help me pay for his defense attorney, right?”

  Gavin finally cracks a smile and the tension eases in my chest. “Of course. That puts us at eight hundred. I’m still short seven hundred bucks and the car needs gas.” He scrolls through his phone for several minutes before standing. “I’m going to step outside and make a few calls. You okay in here alone?”

  “I’m basically surrounded by cops and security guards. I think I’ll be all right.”

  His eyes shift as if this makes him uncomfortable for some reason, but he nods and heads toward the same doors we entered.

  Watching him walk outside, I can’t help but wonder who he’s calling. I try not to concern myself too much because if he wanted me to know he would’ve told me, but there are so many gaps in my knowledge about Gavin I can hardly stand it. The year I was in Houston, we didn’t keep in touch and Dallas’s vague comments have turned that year into a mysterious back hole that I fear I’ll never get answers about.

  There aren’t any magazines or anything, so I just curl up on the chair and close my eyes. There’s really nothing else I can do. And I need to rest if I’m driving us back to Austin in a few hours.

  Chapter 18

  THE BONDSMAN IS LATE. IT’S NEARLY ELEVEN BY THE TIME HE shows.

  Gavin is pacing all over hell and back and it’s as if he’s holding a piece of twine rapped around my insides while he walks.

  “Fuck. We’re never going to make it back in time.” He’s been cussing at his phone for the past half hour.

  I’ve texted Dallas a few times and he seems to buy my dying-from-bad-seafood story.

  “We don’t have to stop and see Papa, Gav. I’ll live. We’ll get your mom home and we’ll hit the interstate. I’ll drive ten over the limit all the way to Austin. We’ll be fine.”

  Before he can say anything, the bondsman, a short, stocky black-haired man with a military-style buzz cut and slight paunch over his belt, named Arnie, strides purposefully out of the metal doors and tells us everything is handled and that Gavin’s mom will be out in about fifteen minutes after she signs some paperwork for her belongings.

  He and Gavin shake hands and he leaves us to wait some more.

  “Do I even want to know how you came up with seven hundred dollars on such short notice?”

  Gavin closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No, babe. You don’t.”

  I do, actually, but now is not the time. I use the ladies’ room one more time, eat the granola bar in my purse after offering to split it with Gavin, who shakes his head, and follow him out to the car, where we enjoy our last few minutes of freedom from the inside of the Camaro.

  If I thought I looked rough, Katrina Garrison gives the word a whole new meaning. Her hair is greasy, black roots showing several inches above the bleach-blond dried-out strands. and the bags under her eyes are deeper and darker than I remembered. I’m not sure how I expected her to greet her son but I know a slap to the face wasn’t what I’d pictured.

  He doesn’t even flinch. He was expecting it, even if I wasn’t.

  “Two fucking days, you ungrateful little bastard. You left me in that godforsaken place for two whole fucking days. Do you know what it was like in there? No, of course you don’t. You have no idea of the disgusting conditions I just suffered through.”

  Her yellowing teeth show as she sneers at him, and I see how thin her lips have become. “Meth mouth,” my friend Cassidy and I used to call it when we’d see crackheads hanging out around Jaggerd’s dad’s garage.

  I’m still reeling from the sting of the slap that might as well have landed on my own face, when he opens the back door and tells her to get in the damn car.

  Katrina is shaking and so am I, though hers is likely from amphetamine withdrawal and my rattled nerves are from caging the urge to throttle the living life out of her.

  “Breathe, Dixie Leigh,” Gavin whispers as he opens my door next. “I’m okay.”

  “I’m not,” I choke out. “Gavin, why did she do that? You have got to stop letting her do this to you. I mean it.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that. Get in the car please. We need to get on the road.”

  I do as he says, because he sounds so desperate and because I know Dallas will be flipping out if we’re late.

  The second Gavin is inside, Katrina starts in on him but her tone has changed completely—from enraged to whiny. “I need twenty bucks, baby. I owe someone ten and I have no food in the house.”

  “I just gave everything I had and then some to a bondsman to get you out of there, Mom. I don’t have twenty bucks. I’ll barely even have enough gas in this car to get it back to its owner.” He snorts out a harsh sound. “And I grew up in that house, remember? I know good and well you don’t give two shits about keeping food in it.”

  My soul splits open at the reminder of how neglected he was. How Nana made him stay for dinner and a bath every night because she knew he wouldn’t get either at home. I can hardly breathe for the fist barreling through my chest.

  “Um . . . are you holding? Or do you have anything we could take to Lippy’s?”

  Lippy’s is the pawnshop in Amarillo and I know from overhearing him and Dallas that she’s hocked everything from their television set to the bicycle Papa bought Gavin for his twelfth birthday to pay her dealer. But holding? I don’t know much about drugs, but in my heart I know that’s what she’s referring to. Why in the hell would Gavin have drugs?

  My eyes are wide when they meet his narrowed ones as he glares at her over his shoulder.

  “No. To both. Say another word, Katrina, and I will put your ass out on this road and you can fucking walk home.”

  “Does she have anything?” she asks, nodding to me but not actually addressing me directly.

  “Do not fucking look at her or talk to her or go anywhere near her. Ever,” he barks in her face.

  She makes an irritated sound in the back of her throat. “That’s no way to talk to your mother. Don’t forget, I’m the one who bailed you—”

  “One more motherfucking word, I swear on everything holy and unholy, I will remove you from this car and you will walk your ass home.”

  I flinch back from the weight of the hatred and venom-laced anger in his voice. My mind can’t reconcile it with his constantly rescuing her.

  We ride the rest of the way to his house suffocating in tension and silence. I swallow hard as we pull up to their trailer, a rundown one off the highway that makes where I grew up look like a mansion. I’ve always known where he lived but I’ve never been inside. The gravel complains under the tires as we pull in and I relocate myself to the driver’s seat while he walks his mother to the door.

  She’s screaming at him, waving her arms wildly and I can see how thin she’s becoming beneath her oversized white T-shirt and faded black skinny jeans. How this woman gave birth to something as beautiful as the broad, healthy man across from her is beyond my abilities of comprehension.

  The scowl on his face turns to surprise when he walks away from her and sees me sitting in the driver’s seat. I meet his stare with defiance through the windshield, daring him to argue. He needs rest so badly he looks like he could fall facedown in the driveway and sleep for days.

  Shaking his head, he walks around and slides into the passenger side.

  “You know the way?”


  I nod and shift the car into reverse. “I put it into the GPS on my phone. Two lefts and a right. We’ll be there in no time.”

  My heart aches as if it’s being pulled when we pass the road that leads to Papa’s but I know there’s no time so I don’t say anything. It wasn’t the best idea since this is a covert operation as it is.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to see him,” Gavin says quietly.

  It hurts too much to discuss so I change the subject. “You should get in the back and lie down. Get some real rest before tonight.”

  “You sure? I can navigate.”

  I hold my phone up. “I got it. Promise. At least try to sleep, Gav. Please. For me.”

  He acquiesces, and climbs over the seat. I barely even check out his ass as it goes past me.

  I lean forward to turn the radio on but stop, because there is something I have to say first or I’m going to scream.

  “Gavin?”

  “Yeah?” My eyes rise to the rearview mirror and meet his while he packs his duffel beneath his head.

  “We are going to talk later about why your mom asked you if you were holding. And you will explain her comment about bailing you out. But more importantly, if I ever see her lay a hand on you again, I will slap her the fuck back. Hard.”

  “Dixie—”

  “Go to sleep, now. I just had to get that out.”

  I focus on the road for the next eight hours. We’ll be late, but I know I look like someone who actually has food poisoning. It’s a hell of a lot more believable than the truth.

  Gavin didn’t get as much sleep as I would’ve liked. His phone rang half a dozen times. Two calls were from people who he had to promise he’d get their money to within twenty-four hours. I know from the tidbits I could hear that he’s already promised the cash from a month’s worth of gigs to cover money he borrowed to get his mom out of jail.

  Before I can open my mouth to ask once again why in the world he does this for her, his phone rings again and he tells the caller her car will be parked at our hotel. He laughs a little and says, “No, nothing like that. It’s . . . a lot more important than that.” His eyes drift over to me, and my face heats for some reason. Is he talking about me?