Page 45 of Roads Behind Us
I was speechless. My little girl going on dates?
Oh God. I can’t handle that.
I’m not ready!
“Daddy? Are you okay? You look kinda green.”
I couldn’t focus on much, but I thought I heard Rye curse and then the sound of Tulsa’s lead slapping dirt when he dropped it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him hurdling the fence, and next thing I knew, he was behind me, his arms out and ready to catch me if I decided to fall on my ass.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I got this. I can handle it.”
Yeah, sure, you got this. No problem.
I looked at my daughter and said, “You’re grounded till you’re thirty-five.”
Athena sighed for the 107th time today, rolling her eyes again.
“I gotta go,” I mumbled. “The physical therapist will be here in fifteen minutes.”
I turned and hobbled back to my house, trying desperately not to panic, but I had no fucking clue how to navigate teenage dating!
I made it through the evening by imbibing two shots of really cheap whiskey and by pretending the boyfriend conversation hadn’t happened.
Linda dropped off no less than five casseroles when she delivered our order later in the day, so I threw the tuna-noodle casserole in the oven and stuffed the rest in my deep freezer in the garage, which still held casseroles from three years ago, when every single unmarried woman in the county and even some that were married dropped one off. They were probably freezer burned, but I’d never thrown them out because I figured, in a pinch, we might need them.
Which, now that I’d really thought about it, I realized was disgusting, so that’s what I did after dinner, cleaned out my deep freezer. Rye carried four garbage bags of old food and its containers to our bear-proof cans on the side of the house, but then he brought them into the garage. They’d probably end up stinking up the place, but it might help to keep scavengers away till garbage day.
As I supervised Rye, Athena followed us in and out of the garage, trying to bring up the boy subject at least four more times, stating passionately that Logan Jacobs’s parents were fine with them dating, so why couldn’t I be?
And every time, all I could do was shake my head and try not to picture the daughter I still imagined to be four years old in the throes of passion with some snot-nosed, fourteen-year-old sex addict.
It gave me the fucking ick!
She went up to her bedroom disappointed. I popped two ibuprofen, which maybe wasn’t the best idea after the whiskey, brushed my teeth, and for the first time since I broke my leg, made the dangerous trek up the stairs.
The physical therapy I’d started and would continue three times a week for the foreseeable future wiped my sorry ass out, which made no sense to me because I’d spent my entire life on this farm, doing much harder labor than lifting my leg two inches off the floor from a seated position in sets of ten for five minutes. Jordan, the PT guy, said my muscles had spent the last couple weeks guarding my broken bone, so they needed to relax and get back to their regularly scheduled programming, which was why I was utterly exhausted.
When I was in the safety of my bedroom, I peeled off my T-shirt, dropped it to the floor, fell face first onto my bed, and at 8:07 pm, passed the fuck out.
At one in the morning, a knock on my door woke me.
“Athena, please go back to sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
She didn’t say anything, but my door opened and shut quietly, and then the covers rustled next to me in the darkness.
“Athena?”
“Shh,” Bea shushed me. “Go back to sleep.”
Chapter Fifteen
Bea
Bax sat up, and his boxsprings squeaked. “What’s goin’ on? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You said I could stay here if I was more comfortable, and tonight, I’m more comfortable.”
His room was pitch dark, but the moon shone in the window just enough for me to see his outline.
