Page 68 of Roads Behind Us
The guys wouldn’t start till nine this morning, so I’d had time to eat chocolate-chip pancakes with Bax, Athena, and Shaylene. The girls snarfed down their breakfast in record time and had gone back up to Athena’s room to talk boys and clothes before Shaylene’s mom came to pick her up.
Bax had managed to make the pancakes without falling over, but he was covered in flour and batter, and the kitchen was a disaster. I told him I’d come back after work to help him clean up. He said he could do it, but I was betting the cooking and all the mischief we’d gotten up to last night had worn him out, and I had a feeling when I got back, he’d be asleep on the couch.
It felt really nice to know I had a warm home to come back to after work. Even if the kitchen was still a dusty pancake disaster and the floors needed the kiss of a mop, Bax’s house would be filled with silly laughter and family, and I realized I hadn’t had that since I was Athena’s age. The house itself was nothing special, but it was what it held within that made me feel safe and… hopeful.
Athena had asked if I’d help her shop for a dress for her dance, the one she would be attending with her boyfriend, who, if the look on Bax’s face told me anything, he wanted to murder.
I’d agreed to help after work. Although, I wasn’t sure what kind of assistance I could provide. I’d never been to a town dance before. But I’d been a friend, and something told me that was what Athena really needed.
Turned out what Athena had actually needed was a buffer and a wingwoman.
After I’d finished my half day and had sent Brand a text to fill him in on the crews’ progress, I stuffed a microwaved and lukewarm tamale in my mouth and chewed as I drove Bax and Athena along the western edge of Wisper till we hit the highway and then to Jackson.
Tourists were out in droves on every road, trying to force themselves to enjoy time away from their busy lives in the mountains. All the businesses’ parking lots were filled to the brim, no matter what they sold: western hats and boots, scenic helicopter rides, hiking and horseback tours through Grand Teton.
Closer to Jackson, traffic was a bitch, congested and annoying. The day was warm enough for sweatshirts, but snow showed on the tips of the mountains surrounding us when they peeked in and out of the low clouds. In a few weeks, we’d need winter coats.
Sitting tucked between Bax and me, Athena chittered away the whole drive about her boyfriend and how perfect she thought it was that the dance fell on her fourteenth birthday. It had to be fate, she’d said. “Written in the stars.”
Bax hadn’t said a word except to grunt at me when I needed to turn. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but I had a good guess. He sulked as Athena and I walked and he hobbled behind us from my truck to the second dress store after we’d parked near Town Square.
The antler arches surrounding the square were weird as shit, but kind of beautiful beneath the colorful cottonwoods and aspens, which I’d recently learned the locals called quakies after their scientific name, Populus tremuloides, meaning “poplar that trembles.” The common name, Quaking Aspen, had grown popular in the area, and it was fitting. The aspens’ yellow fall leaves shivered in the wind as if an earthquake shook the ground beneath.
“How ’bout this one?” Athena said, pulling the skirt of a floor-length aqua-colored dress out from a rack stuffed with fancy silks and lace.
Bax had insisted on accompanying us, though I was sure Athena had hoped for a girls’ day of shopping. We’d found a cute little boutique dress shop, but Bax was right when he complained that the store seemed geared more toward women than it did young teenage girls. But the formal shop we’d tried first only had plain, satin getups, and Athena hated every single one.
“It looks like somethin’ a mermaid would wear,” Bax said, his eyes wandering the small store and landing on a menagerie of sequins and high stiletto heels displayed on clear shelves bolted to the wall behind us. Again, I couldn’t decipher the look on his face; it was either fear or dismay at the thought of Athena going on a date. Or both.
Athena frowned. “Okay,” she said, dropping the blue fabric and pulling a different dress from the rack. She held it up in front of her. “This one?”
The sleeveless, deep-red, formfitting dress had a thin sheath of lace covering what looked like silk underneath. It was a little skimpy for a not-yet-fourteen-year old, but it was pretty, and I had just been about to suggest Athena wear a sweater over it or a pashmina or something, until Bax opened his dad mouth.
“Are you twenty-seven?” he asked her.
“No,” Athena said, confused.
“Are you Ariana Grande?”
Athena and I both rolled our eyes.
“No, Daddy.”
“Are you Taylor Swift?”
Athena huffed her annoyance.
Bax crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged one shoulder indifferently. “Then no.”
“Well then,” she said, exasperated, “you pick! You’ve shot down seven dresses. Do you want me to wear jeans to the dance?”
“Yeah,” Bax said, sitting up straighter in the chair the saleswoman had dragged from the office in the back for him to sit on. She’d done it with a flirty smile and shy laugh. For the love of Pete, the man got hit on everywhere he went! “Or better yet, don’t go at all. Why don’t you stay home? We could do movie night instead. Invite all your friends. I’ll order pizza and get some of those gooey chocolate-donut things you love from the new French bakery in Wisper. That sounds like fun, right?”
Athena’s face was quickly becoming the color of a tomato. “They’re called éclairs, Daddy. And all my friends are going to the dance. It’s on my birthday. I’m goin’ to the dang dance on my dang birthday!” She turned toward me. “Help?”
Okeedokee then.
Fixing my hands over my hips, I took control of the quickly spiraling shopping trip. After all, on the Bea-Baker personality scale, I was a #1 Man Bosser. “Bax, how about you pull that hat down low over your eyes and take a nap? That’s what dads are supposed to do in these situations. Nobody wants your opinion.”
