Page 64 of Dahlia Made A List

Last night someone else had driven her to derby practice. I’d known I wouldn’t survive another hour alone in the car with her. My hands shook, my gut burned. A band wrapped around my chest and barely let me breathe. She’d come to rely on me. Her mistake.

But it felt good. Savagely good.

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as I turned onto Redbud. I angled the truck into the space behind her El Camino. Ms. Lester gave me her back as she fussed with the bushes lining her front porch. Across the street, old Mr. McCluskey rocked back and forth, back and forth and for a long moment I got lost in his rhythm.

His steady sway wrangled down the heartburn in my chest, but I punched open the glove box and chewed down a couple of antacids anyway. If the last time my gut fired up like this was any example, the chalky little bastards were the only things likely to get me through today.

For weeks now, when I pulled up to her place, she’d come shooting down the stairs a mile a minute. Everything about Dahlia was a mile a minute. She’d have two travel mugs filled with her flower tea, a sunny smile and a look like everything was going her way.

I shoved out of the truck, rounded the back and stepped up onto the sidewalk. My eyes on the French doors, I caught the curtains there twitch and a moment later she came down the steps.

Only one mug.

The acid in my gut threatened and I cleared my throat to push it down. All good. I’d pushed and she’d respected the new limits. All good. All fuckin’ good.

“We’ll circle the neighborhood then take Main out to the DMV, yeah?” I said when she reached me.

“Okay.” No questions, no arguments. None of her sweet chatter.

I moved to the ElCo’s passenger side and waited as she settled in behind the wheel. My arm knocked against hers between the seatbelts, fire blasting down to my fingertips. I’d not touched her in days and my body missed the feel of her skin, the warmth of her body close to my own.

Who the fuck was I kidding. My body missed hers? I missed every fuckin’ thing about this woman like a man missed water in a desert. With a sort of intensity that could have humiliated me, but instead just pissed me off.

My heart pounded, her nearness intoxicating. Her colorful hair up in a ponytail, my eyes hungrily skated along the soft skin of her neck, to the curve of her shoulder bared by the strap of her yellow top. My fingers itched to touch her soft skin, burn the feel of her into my mind again, another memory to hold close.

Maybe it wasn’t too late for me to learn. I’d never be proficient, but I’d found plenty of tools to get by over the years and I could build on that. I could fake what I couldn’t learn. Maybe she’d never need to know.

Maybe I could give her the white picket fence and the wrap around porch, the welcome mat, the dog and the cat. And the kids. A little girl with her pretty gray-washed blue eyes and the delicate sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of her nose.

Or maybe I’d give her a son who acted out in school, who constantly fought and stayed angry and struggled and felt small and inferior and never good enough.

“Let’s go, then.” My words came out a growl, harsh and cruel and nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. Still, her shoulders shrank in, her fingers white around the steering wheel.

“You want music?” A peace offering, but she just shook her head.

She started the car and pulled out into the street. At the first stop sign, she sucked in a noisy breath and I closed my eyes. Fuckin’ dickhead.

“You’re fine, Dahlia. You got this.”

She didn’t answer, but pulled away from the stop. Over the next few minutes, she regained her confidence, smoothly moving through the neighborhood until we hit the stop sign for Main.

“Go ahead and take a left. Head on down to the DMV. No point delaying when you’re obviously ready.”

“I don’t feel ready.”

“You are.” I put my hand on her thigh, greedy and pretending I did it just to reassure her. “You know the rules better than anyone in Three Corners. Better than folks that’ve been driving for years. You’re gonna be fine.”

“You sure?”

I hated the worry in her voice. Squeezing her thigh until she turned to look at me, I spoke again. “A hundred percent.”

She set her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “Okay, then.”

A few minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot for the DMV that served the whole Three Corners area. I hunkered down to wait in the car until the examiner booted me out for her road skills test.

An hour later, she burst out the door holding up her license like a blue ribbon. Relief, joy, excitement traced over her pretty features, and I devoured each in turn. They’d have to hold me for a long, long while.

“Shamewhatanoldwoman has to do to get her own grandson to come around.”

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