by Kristie Cook
Ty chuckled. “I miss your feistiness.” He paused, and not until I turned to face him and he could look into my eyes, did he add more quietly, “I miss all of you, sweetheart.”
Oh, dear Lord. Don’t fall for it. DON’T fall for it.
I strode over to his table and stood across from him. I placed my hands on the edge and leaned forward. “You left me.”
He nodded. “I know. And I was stupid for it.”
“No, you weren’t. You were right.”
“I was wrong, boo. Totally wrong.”
I gritted my teeth at his term of endearment. “Ty, it took me a long time to get over the hurt—”
“I’m so sorry, Beth—Bex.” His hand reached out for mine, but I moved before he could grasp it.
“Don’t be. It sucked, and I hated you for a long time, but it was the best thing for me.”
“Don’t say that, sweetheart. Please don’t say that.”
I stood up and shrugged, even though my heart was pounding painfully against my ribs. Saying this all out loud was much harder than I thought it would be, but he didn’t need to know that. “Why not? It’s the truth. You made me realize we weren’t right for each other. We never were and never will be.”
“I don’t believe that. Not anymore.” He stood and reached for my hands again. I stepped backwards, and something in his eyes seemed to crack with the rejection. “I came back for you. For us.”
I swallowed against the lump that had formed in my throat. “Well,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper, “you shouldn’t have. It’s over, Ty. There is no us.”
“Be-ex, please, boo.”
My eyes closed for a brief moment before I opened them to look into his. I had to clench my jaw and make my spine like a steel rod to say my next words. “Don’t beg, Ty. You’re not a dog.”
He stared at me for a long moment as multiple emotions passed through his expressive eyes. Then he pulled his cap down further over his forehead, threw some money on the table, and strode out the door. I stood there for a moment, trying to pull myself together. Hopefully, that was the end of the suck for the day. I’d had enough, and I needed it all to follow him out that door. But if it did, it blew right back in with the next person to walk through. Sissy.
“Ty Daniels?” she asked as she looked over her shoulder at the old, beat-up, black Ford truck leaving the parking lot. She turned back to me with her dark brows raised over big blue eyes that were just like mine. Her raven hair was pulled back in a clip, and she wore little makeup, revealing the purple half-moons under her eyes. I couldn’t believe she was out in public like this—that wasn’t the Sissy I knew. She looked as exhausted as I felt. She may have been younger than me, but she’d always had an old soul, and right now, no way did she look only nineteen years old.
“Yeah, he’s back home, but don’t worry. I sent him packin’, at least from me. You look like hell.” My sisterly way of trying to change the subject.
She didn’t take my eggin’, though. “He’s probably the best thing for ya, sis. You probably shouldn’t let him go a second time.”
My eyes narrowed at her as she stepped to the table nearest the door and hesitantly sat down. She’d seen the hot mess I’d been when Ty left. She’d claimed to hate him as much as I had.
She looked up at me and rolled her eyes at my expression. “Oh, come on, sis. Settlin’ down with Ty is a lot better than you runnin’ around and gettin’ it on with a different guy every month. Aren’t you tired of that yet?”
My nostrils flared as I blew out an angry breath before yanking out the seat in front of her and dropping into it hard. I crossed my arms on the table and leaned toward her.
“I do not get it on with a different guy every month! Quit makin’ me sound like a two-bit whore!”
She only stared at me with her brow raised again.
“Four guys, Sissy. I’ve been with four guys since Ty left me three years ago.”
She still stared silently. I squirmed and leaned back.
“Okay, maybe it was five. That’s still a long shot from one a month.”
“And is that countin’ the carnie from Atlanta?”
“I didn’t get it on with him! We made out a little, but that’s all. He kissed like a fish attacking a worm on a hook.” I shuddered at the memory.
“Still another man. And what about the surfer from Daytona? The cowboy whose truck broke down on the way to the PBR finals? Oh, and let’s not forget Punk Roberts.”
I sighed. If she counted them, her list could go on, but I’d actually slept with Punk. I really thought he’d been The One. He’d graduated as Michael Roberts several years before me and went off to become a nearly famous rock star. No doubt he would be there one of these days. He’d come home for a break for a couple of months, and we’d hit it off right away. I’d never told Sissy because she would have talked me out of it immediately, but I’d been ready to pack my bags and hit the road with him, glad to say goodbye to this Podunk town forever. Until I found out he’d succumbed to the typical rocker lifestyle on the road, fueled by drugs that hyped him up and more that forced him to sleep. I’d had enough of that bullshit in my twenty years at the time. I wasn’t about to go there with him.
Sissy fell silent, and when I looked up at her, sadness filled her eyes. She reached out for my hands and took them into hers.
“I’m sorry, Be—Bex.” That was the first time she’d called me that, so she must have meant it. “I didn’t come here to pick on you. I’m just worried about you, is all. And I know you hate Ty for what he did to you, but maybe you can find it in your heart to love him again.”
The problem was I’d never stopped loving him. But only as a friend. He’d been the rock in my life, but now I couldn’t count on him anymore. Maybe that was it—I couldn’t trust him. And if there’s no trust, there’s no relationship.
“So you knew he was comin’ back home and you didn’t tell me?” I asked, bitterness filling my voice. I yanked my hands away from her. “Left Mama’s side and came all the way here to convince me to take him back? Did he put you up to this?”
Sissy pressed her hand to her chest and shook her head. “I had no idea he was back, I pinky swear. I just saw him and thought he’d be good for you. He’s always been a good friend to us, and we kinda need that right now.” She folded her hands on the table and dropped her gaze as she picked at her fingernails. “But no, there’s somethin’ else. Did you get my message this mornin’?”
“Yeah, Liz’beth told me. I was goin’ to call you back before I went to my other job.”
Sissy’s face lifted, looking even more exhausted than she had before, and I felt bad for my jab at her. Sorta bad. I thought she sometimes forgot who was working her ass off to support us and pay for at least some of Mama’s medical bills. Someone had to do it after all, and sometimes she became quite the martyr, never letting me forget who does the caretaking of Mama.
“You need to see her,” Sissy said, her voice soft and quivery.
“I’ve got no need to.”
“Beth …” She sighed. “Bex … she only has a few more weeks. Maybe a month or two, but the doctors reckon it’ll be shorter.”
I stared at her for a long moment, and then looked away, out the window, although my mind barely registered the trucks and cars passing by on Central Street. It was trying to process everything that Sissy’s words meant, but failed.
“She’s your mama,” my baby sister reminded me.
“We may have came out of her hooha, but she’s never been a mama,” I whispered. Sissy was only eighteen months younger than me, but she may as well have been five years sometimes. She’d been younger enough to not remember a lot, and I’d sheltered her from most of the rest. And, I’d admit, she had a bigger and more forgiving heart than I did.
“Don’t be like
this. Not now. Mama needs you, just to see you again, to say her apologies and goodbyes, so she can go peacefully.”
My heart squeezed, and my throat suddenly felt like a peach pit had lodged in it. I didn’t know that she deserved to go peacefully, but I also knew that was a shitty thing to think.
“I don’t think seeing her will give either of us peace,” I managed to say.
Sissy reached for my hands again and grasped them firmly. “I need you to do this. If you can’t bring yourself to do it for her or for yourself, then at least do it for me.”
My gaze came back to Sissy’s face and her pleading eyes. My heart contracted again. I’d always done everything I could for her, but I didn’t know if I could do this.
“I don’t know when my next day off is,” I said. “Working three jobs doesn’t really give me time to drive all the way to Orlando, you know.”
Sissy closed her eyes and inhaled a long breath that caused her ample chest to lift—at least Mama had given us something to work with. Our looks and figures came from her. Of course, they hadn’t really been her gift, since she had no say in the matter. That was all God’s doing.
Apparently, Sissy’s calming method didn’t work. She stood up and glared at me with her hands on her hips. “Where’s your common decency? Your mama is dying! Maybe you should make your family a priority for once!”
I jumped to my feet, too, knocking my chair over. “Oh, hell no! Don’t you pull that one on me. The only reason I work three jobs is for you and that bitch who’s done nothing but hurt us and leave us for dead. You really think she’d give two shits if the tables were turned?”
Sissy huffed out a breath then stomped for the door. As soon as she grasped the handle to pull, she looked over her shoulder at me. “Well, in a few weeks, she’ll never be able to hurt you again. And for that matter, I’ll be outta your hair, too.”
I stared after her as she left with my mouth hanging open.
“You tryin’ to catch flies?” Elizabeth asked behind me. I snapped my jaw shut and went back to work cleaning tables and checking condiments.
Elizabeth stepped behind the register and flipped through the lunch tickets. “She’s right, you know.”
I let out a low growl. “I don’t need it from you, too.”
“I know how you feel about your mama, including that you’re torn right now on what to do. Which means you know what’s right, but you just don’t wanna do it.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head, daring me to call her a liar.
“There’s been a dark energy around this place for months,” she said.
“Maybe it’s Papaw Willy angry at your music again,” I half-joked, trying to relieve the tension. Papaw Willy was the original owner of the building and one of the ghosts that hung around to mess with us. That’s what Elizabeth thought, anyway. We’d all witnessed a few bizarre happenings that convinced us someone was around who shouldn’t be, but only Elizabeth could feel his presence and put a name to him. He tended to throw his fits when Elizabeth played her heavy metal rock.
“It’s definitely not Papaw Willy. I don’t know what’s causin’ it, but it’s heavy and full of sorrow. And I’m sure any of us showing some extra love and forgiveness wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe give a little light to the blackness hanging over us.”
I had no idea what she spoke about and figured she was just trying to take a different angle to talk me into doing the right thing. The dinner shift distracted me well enough, at least until afterward, when I went into the bathroom to clean it. A little, red plastic dinosaur sat on the edge of the sink, left by one of the kids who’d been in earlier, and it taunted me with its reminder of childhood. I picked it up, turned it around in my hands, and blinked back the tears that threatened.
Why couldn’t we have had a normal childhood? A normal mama who cared about us and provided for us instead of making us live on the streets because she was too proud to face her own mama, but not too proud to make her daughters sleep in abandoned cars? Someone who loved us for who we were and noticed that Sissy would want the Dollar Store makeup and I would have been excited for a little red, plastic dinosaur? She didn’t notice at all, or, more likely, she didn’t care. Her gifts for us came from her grabbing whatever she could quickly stuff into her bag or pocket when no one was looking. Always stupid stuff like fancy scarves—we lived in the hellpit of Nowhere, Florida!—or sparkly pins. What were we supposed to do with those? Would they somehow make our third-hand, grimy clothes look newer and nicer?
Didn’t matter. Everything she gave us always disappeared anyway. She blamed thieves until I was old enough to watch her exchange the items for little bags of white powder or brown pill bottles of something that made her sleep for a full day or longer. When I cried about it, she misunderstood my pain. It wasn’t the pretty but useless presents I missed when she sold them for drugs. It was my mama I missed.
I squeezed my eyes shut and didn’t open them again until I’d pushed the memories aside. The bathroom window had darkened since I’d been in here, and nightfall meant time to change and head to my other job. I gave the sink another quick wipe, grabbed the dinosaur for the lost-and-found box up front, and removed the trash bag to take out back. One job down, one to go, and then maybe I could relax a moment and figure out what I was going to do about Mama.
Throughout my hours at Sullivan’s, the truck-stop bar, I still couldn’t decide if going to see Mama was really the right thing. Every time I imagined seeing her face, I wanted to throw something at it. I wanted to hurt her, to make her feel everything she’d put Sissy and me and Grams and the rest of her family through.
As I walked home from Sullivan’s through the RV side of the park to our side, where the permanent trailers sat, the lights on the silver Airstream caught me by surprise. It had been dark for months, and I’d already forgotten that couple had returned. I turned away from my usual path that crossed in front of it, afraid they might be outside, and passed between two other campers and into the clump of trees that separated the two sides. My heart stuttered when I saw a large figure sitting on the steps of my trailer house, but then relaxed when I recognized him.
I exhaled a tired breath. “What are you doing here, Ty?”
I didn’t have the energy to deal with him again. He grasped a brown bottle in one hand and held another up to me.
“I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know everything goin’ on with you and Sissy. Thought you could use a friend.”
Tears pricked my eyes at the kindness. I took the peace offering, sat on the step below him between his legs, and took a long pull on the cold beer. He wrapped a strong arm, thicker with muscle than it used to be, across my chest and pulled me backwards. I leaned my head against his hard stomach.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I’m here for you now, boo,” he murmured as he finger-combed my hair away from my face. “However you need me, I’m here.”
And the thought of how badly I needed him right now should have scared me. Instead, against my better judgment, I took him up on his offer and let him be my friend. He did what he’d done so many times before: held me while I cried over my mama.
Chapter 8
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. My heart pounded a beat hard enough for a Godsmack song as the elevator rose, racing with the thought of what was about to come, as well as with the memory of my first elevator ride. It had been in a fancy hotel in some big city I didn’t know then and couldn’t remember now. Mama had smiled at Sissy’s and my excitement, chattering on about how beautiful the hotel was as it raced by through the glass walls. Her hands shook so bad, though, I’d thought she’d been scared.
When we reached our floor way up high, she led us down a corridor that smelled good, like expensive soap, to a door that a strange man answered. I didn’t like the look he gave us as
he ushered Sissy and me through a door in his room to another room exactly like his but with two beds instead of one. Mama told us to watch TV and be good while she visited with her new friend. They closed the door, and we had to turn the volume on the TV way up to drown out the man’s icky noises coming from the other side of the adjoining door. It lasted all night, except for a while when Mama came to see us, wearing the hotel’s robe. We got room service—our first meal in a week that hadn’t come from a McDonald’s dumpster—and slept in real beds, and Mama got her drug money. At the time, I didn’t know that’s what it was, but I knew she suddenly had a wad of cash in her purse, we still didn’t eat again for two days and went back to the car to sleep, and she’d stopped shaking.
My stomach squeezed at the memory, and I forced myself not to retch.
Maybe I should have taken Ty up on his offer to come with me. Nah. I needed to do this alone. And I needed somebody to stay on my side, to not see her in her weakened state, but to remember her like I always had: a selfish druggie who’d abandoned her young daughters. I’d see Ty tonight. Elizabeth had given me the entire day off, and I hadn’t been on Sullivan’s schedule. I had a few things to do for Uncle Troy when I got back, but after that, Ty had promised me dinner. I kept telling him it wasn’t a date—reminding myself as much as him—and he insisted he was still just being a friend. He said I’d need it after today, and he couldn’t have been more right.