Page 27 of Roads Behind Us
A wavy, nauseating memory slammed me in the head of the night I’d met Bea, and of her getting right in my face to put me in my place after I’d drunkenly made a comment about her taut backside.
I winced. She was still pissed about that comment, but it seemed like the intimacy of our current situation had flipped her confidence on its ass. “Bea?”
She froze and stared at me.
“I’m sorry about that. I should’ve said sorry that night. It’s no excuse, but I was way too drunk. I swear I don’t make a habit out of gettin’ shit-faced like that, but it was the first anniversary of— But what I said to you that night was inappropriate and probably demoralizin’. And I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said, but she averted her eyes away from mine. “Now fill the cup again.”
For the next ten minutes, I sat there in silence with my eyes closed, listening to her breathe, blindly refilling the cup again and again when she handed it back to me. She left the hot water running but pulled the plug so the yellow paint swill could drain. What the bubbles didn’t cover, I hid with my hands.
I was freezing my ass off, but after she stoppered the tub again and added more body wash to the water, I endured the chill while the bath filled back up and she rinsed my hair one last time. And when she was done and she massaged in shampoo, my hands splayed wider and I leaned forward, because, oh God. I hadn’t been touched like that in over three years.
The slow, soft strokes of her thin fingers over my scalp were like nothing I’d ever experienced. I never wanted her to stop touching me. I couldn’t totally hide the erection that had grown hot and hard beneath the quickly dissolving bubbles, not in five inches of water, but when I looked at her, Bea’s eyes were closed as she touched me.
The rhythmic caresses of her fingers became slower. She moved them gently over my hair, applying firm pressure occasionally and scrubbing with her fingernails to get the paint out.
“That feels good,” I whispered.
“Mm-hm,” she hummed, but her eyes stayed closed.
I had to try to start a conversation. If I didn’t have the distraction, I was afraid I’d pull her into the tub with me, and then what? Bea didn’t want that. Did I want that?
I did. Or I thought I did, but what would Candy?—
Candy wouldn’t say anything. Candy was dead. She’d been gone three years.
Mumbling, I asked the first question to enter my head, “So how’d you end up in Sheridan workin’ with my little brother?”
Bea sucked in a breath, like I’d startled her. “Oh, um, I’d just moved there. I got lucky the day I walked into his office for my interview. He’d had one of his foremen at the time doin’ interviews, but that guy had gone to lunch, and I’d gotten the time wrong, so Brand interviewed me himself. I guess we just hit it off. He offered me a job on the spot, and it was a good thing, too, ’cause if he hadn’t, I probably would’ve ended up gettin’ my meals from a soup kitchen.”
“You were in a tight spot?”
“Yeah, you could say that. I left my ex-husband back in North Carolina. I’d been skippin’ from town to town for a few years, lookin’ for somethin’ steady, but I didn’t find it till I met Brand. He changed my life.”
“You mean you ran away? Did he… Was your husband abusive?”
“No.” She scoffed. “He wishes he had the balls. If anybody was gonna hurt anybody, it would’ve been me. He’s a chauvinistic idiot. He knew I was through with him.”
Her sometimes brusque nature was starting to make more sense to me now. “Good for you.”
She nodded. “I haven’t heard from him since I left, which was exactly one day after our divorce went into effect. Hit the road and never looked back. But I’d never been out of North Carolina, except to South Carolina once when I was little with my parents. We went to Myrtle Beach. My mama grew up around there. She always talked about takin’ me there, but we only went the one time.
“Anyway, when I left, I didn’t know where to go. I had a high school diploma and some construction certifications from when I worked for my dad, but most of those were out of date. I had a little money saved up, but that doesn’t go far on the road.
“I tried out a few places: Nebraska, North Dakota, southeastern Wyoming, but nothin’ fit. I’d never felt so alone in my life. So I kept goin’. I got a flat tire outside Sheridan and stopped there for the night. I saw elk the next day, grazin’ next to my motel, and they were so beautiful. They seemed like a good sign, so I found a place to buy a new tire and stayed. I met your brother a week later.”
“Wow. You’ve got guts. I don’t know if I could leave my home like that.”
“I needed to. All that’s left there for me is heartache and misery.”
“Your parents are gone? No brothers or sisters?”
“No. Only child, and my dad died when I was nineteen.”
“Your mama?”
Bea paused, her fingers stilling in my hair at the back of my neck. “She passed when I was Athena’s age.”
