Page 14 of Beside the Rolling Waves
“Oh shoot, babe. I didn’t get you anything. You want something?”
He had a beer in one hand and his chili in the other, and even though he asked her, he kept walking toward the stands fast enough that she had to take a couple of jogging steps to catch up.
She never answered him, and he never asked again.
“Hey, there’s the gang. We want to get that front-row seat right there. There’s two left. Actually, there might not be quite enough room for you. You can sit behind me, babe. That’ll keep me warmer anyway.” He grinned down at her and then leaned forward and slid into the front-row seat, assuming she’d take the seat behind him without looking. Once he was seated, he reached back for his nachos. “Want to eat these before they freeze,” he said, snickering like it was funny.
She was pretty cold by the time the race was over. Rick had had five supersized beers and made four trips to the restroom.
She was pretty sure he stood by the tire and peed again before he got in the truck, but she got in and started it, beingcareful not to look, loving the feel of driving a vehicle that started the first time she turned the key and luxuriating in that.
Regardless, she was going to be long gone by the time morning came around and would not know whether there was yellow snow beside the tire or not. One of the great mysteries of life that she was content to not solve.
Rick was not a loud drunk, but it had been a big evening, and after he climbed in the cab—on his third try—he promptly fell asleep, snoring loudly.
She would get out at her place, and he wouldn’t even wake up. She’d let the truck run so he wouldn’t freeze to death overnight. It was old enough that it didn’t have one of those automatic shutoffs after twenty minutes. Whoever designed those didn’t have a drunk boyfriend apparently.
Actually, she knew what the rest of the world did with their boyfriends, but…that wasn’t her.
At least it never had been. But she supposed she’d been skating closer and closer to that line for a while now.
It wouldn’t surprise her if sometime Rick tried to come in after one of their “dates” just because he thought it was his right.
Thankfully, by the time the dates were over, he was usually too drunk to try to kiss her, which suited her just fine. But as she was driving home in the dark, with the white Michigan landscape stretching out as far as the headlights shone, she thought that if she was going to be raising her sister’s twins, especially if something happened to her little sister and it became a permanent thing, she didn’t really want them in this kind of environment. She didn’t want them with a guy who got drunk every time he went out, who was addicted to nicotine, and who had the manners of an alley cat with the spitting and the peeing and the disregard for the barest of gentlemanly conduct.
How was she going to raise children to be different if that’s who she hung around?
But she was going to be doing it with Rodney, and having Rick between them would be a buffer. It would let him know that she wasn’t completely disposable, like he had acted. The way he ditched her without a word. That someone actually did want her. Even if it was someone like Rick.
So, she had her vanity, where she wanted to keep Rick around, just so that Rodney would know she was worth something, but what would be best for the twins would be to ditch Rick as quick and fast as she could, never see him or his cronies again. Not if she wanted to raise those twins right.
So, she had a decision to make, the same as selling her horses.
And she knew, as much as she didn’t want to, she knew what she was going to decide. She had to. She just couldn’t do anything else. It would practically kill her to list her horses for sale, but it was what she had to do in order to do the best for the twins and her sister. So, when she parked the truck, she got the four quarters out of the ashtray, and then upon further reflection, she took one more. Maybe it was stealing, or maybe it was payment for the ride home. That’s how she wanted to think about it. She didn’t like to think that she’d stolen anything, even $0.25. But she pulled out the pen that she always kept in her wallet, and then she grabbed a check out of her checkbook. She wrote “void” on the front and then wrote a small note on the back.
I took $1.25.
I can pay you
back if you
want me to.
She chewed on the end of the pen. Rick snorted, shifted, and then went back to snoring.
She held her breath until the snores were even again. She really didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t feel like she was exactly breaking up. As far as she knew, the entire time they’d dated, Rick hadn’t dated anyone else. He really was a good guy, just had some bad habits and none of the finer graces. If that’s what they were. He wasn’t charming, but he was what he was.
She tried to find a way to thank him for the evening, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She kind of wished she’d just stayed home and spent a final few hours with her horses.
I have a
responsibility
that I’m going
to need to take
on, and I’m not
