Page 26 of Dahlia Made A List

Today brought home the stark differences between us. No one else could have walked away from the confrontation with the police officer without handcuffs.

“You up for these stairs?”

I nodded, wrapping my fingers around the wooden handrail and pulling myself up as much as walking. I stumbled on the third, falling backwards into the immovable wall of Wyatt’s chest. He grunted and a second later, my head spun as he lifted me with one hand behind my knees, the other across my shoulders. He powered up the rest of the steps, plopping me back to my feet on the landing.

This time when I swayed, it wasn’t the brain fog or confusion. The sudden, inescapable heat of Wyatt surrounded me, chasing away the cold night air.

I’d moved out of my parent’s home for college as soon as possible. And when I left college, degree unfinished and full of disappointment, I didn’t go back home. I waited tables and scrimped and saved to pay for the courses I needed to get a cosmetology license. Grateful for the tiny studio apartment in a dump complex in Richland, but on the bus line so I could work in my first salon.

Alone. Always alone. Living in my own head. Worried if I would make the rent and whether I’d ever have enough clients and when I’d reach that point in my life when I could breathe. When I could practice some of that self-care I heard about. When I could stop being terrified of what the next day would bring.

It’d been a decade since Jae died and just as long since anyone cared what my day was like, much less if I was struggling.

The warmth coursing through me scared me. Terrified me in a way I was completely unprepared for. It stirred a yearning I couldn’t afford and didn’t deserve. Not with a man like Wyatt Weston.

I scrambled for the key for the new deadbolt and silently unlocked the door. With a muttered, “thanks,” over my shoulder, I left him on the landing.

Chapter Eight

Wyatt

AnyotherTuesdaypriorto the last, I’d be out at the drive-in. Working on the Firebird or fiddling in the projection building. Maybe have some of the guys from the car club over for a beer.

Instead, this Tuesday, I once again sat alone in my grandmother’s kitchen. Half of another roast beef sandwich in front of me, a bag of chips open beside my plate. I now knew Salt and Vinegar were not my preferred flavor. And also just like last time, every few minutes the cackling from the group in the living room penetrated my sanctuary and I couldn’t help but grimace.

But this time, I wasn’t just battling embarrassment about Grams. I was thinking about what Dahlia had read this week to prepare for this little shindig. Wondering what parts of the sexy books she’d enjoyed.

I picked up the tall glass of tea I’d poured from the fridge. I’d have preferred a beer. Or something more potent to level me out. But I’d be chauffeuring a certain cotton-candy headed woman home soon, so alcohol was off the menu.

Despite the initial success of her driving the Firebird around the T.C. Strip’s back loop, she froze up the instant she spotted another car on the road. I hadn’t risked her on the street since the incident with that dickhead, Wes. He’d been a hotheaded idiot in high school and the police academy hadn’t done him any favors.

Until that day, I’d never seen a full-fledged panic attack, live and in-person. But even in my ignorance, I’d recognized the terror overtaking her. Getting her home and into the safety of familiar surroundings trumped making nice with Wes. I’d suffered an earful from J.T.and Grams, but I wouldn’t change my actions.

Seeing the fear take her over; seeing the sparkling, dynamic woman I was coming to know turn into a fragile, confused shadow of herself . . . Her frailty hit me like a boot to the gut. Roused protective instincts I didn’t know I had.

A speck a mile in the distance, or idling beside her, didn’t matter. In her mind, other cars meant danger. Death.

The mechanics of driving gave her no trouble. She handled the manual transmission smooth as silk on the back loop at the airstrip. I spent my time in the passenger seat hard as a fuckin’ nail. And responding to her off-the-wall comments. And staring at her hands, her delicate little fingers wrapped around the gearshift. Imagining those fingers on me, wrapped around my dick with the same confident competence.

Streets opened up a different can of worms. Left turn lanes were impossible. Dahlia shook at just the idea of turning left across oncoming traffic. So far, we’d managed a lot of right turns in the neighborhoods and still got some practice in down at the big Baptist church. The parking lot gave her a sort of controlled exposure to cars passing on the street and occasionally turning into the lot for church business. But mostly an empty lot where she could practice starting and stopping, checking her mirrors, parking. All things, she told me, the DMV test would require. She rattled off the meaning of every sign, of every change in the paint on the road, every detail about driving that had long faded into my subconscious.

A foreign sense of pride filled me with her unwavering determination to conquer her weakness.

“You’re gonna have to get over this fear of oncoming cars to pass the test,” I told her last night as I took over the driver’s seat to navigate through Weston Mill and get her home.

“I know and I will.” She put her fingers over mine on the gear stick. My skin burned where she touched me. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Jaelynn and her grandma and my parents and it’s just . . . You know how Minerva calls you just to chat? My mother would never. When I first moved out here, I used to call them every Sunday. Thought it could be a cool tradition between mother and daughter that we could have. I wasn’t here a month, and she was rushing me off the phone.”

She looked up at me, wide gray-blue eyes expectant. I nodded and she grinned, satisfied. And I turned away, no wiser for the interaction, but a pleasant rippling awareness just below the skin.

Sun went down early this time of year. Her eyes turned more of a smoky blue in this light, but there was no mistaking their glassy sheen.

“Jae and her grandma were the only family I really had. And they loved me. I knew back then and looking back now, it hurts so much more, because I haven’t had that kind of connection since they died and I want that feeling again so bad. I want a family, to be part of a unit. I keep lookin’, obviously. But I kinda figured out I’m not so good at spotting the real thing.” She wiped beneath her right eye, smearing a dark line of makeup to her temple. “I’m making a mess.”

Dahlia embraced every moment like it was her last, skipping from one to the next. But little flashes of vulnerability surfaced the more time I spent around her, hinting at a different woman than the one she showed the world every day. And as much as I wanted to be angry at Grams for forcing my hand, it wasn’t Grams I was thinking of when I planned out Dahlia’s driving lessons or settled my ass down at her table to eat an overcooked meal.

I was stuck on where I could take her to minimize the number of cars but still get her on the real roads with real exposure so she could beat down this fear she battled. I’d keep thinking on it and a solution would present itself in time. Meanwhile, I sat in my grandmother’s kitchen enjoying a fine roast beef sandwich.

They’d be winding down soon. I inhaled the remaining bite of my sandwich, set Grams’s fancy ass plate in the sink and moved to the passage leading into the living room.

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