And by the time the truth had finally come out about my unplanned pregnancy, they’d both left for fall semester, so they couldn’t exactly cross reference any of my bullet points.
And my mom? She hadn’t cared enough to press the issue. I knew she knew I knew. But she never asked questions. She never pushed. She just… did her thing and let me do mine.
So, it would be easy to understand why I thought Levi would do the same as everyone else—assume I had made a series of poor decisions that led to a forever kind of consequence. He was supposed to believe my reputation over the truth, just like everyone else. He was supposed to think the worst of me and let the matter drop.
Instead, he took a step forward, pointed a finger at me and snarled, “Bullshit.”
For the second time in minutes, I asked a stunned, “Excuse me?”
“That’s bullshit, Ruby. You know exactly who the father is.”
I held his gaze, too afraid to look away and let him see how quickly he’d gotten to me. Breathing through real panic, I snapped, “Get out of my way, Levi.”
He didn’t. “Why are you playing this game? Who are you protecting?”
“Stop.”
“What do you have to lose?”
“Stop, Levi.”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but you’re only going to end up hurting Max—”
I couldn’t take another second of this. I couldn’t listen to him accuse me and say my son’s name and…. and…. See straight through me. I dropped the box of Hamburger Helper and slammed my hands on his chest to get his attention, fire blazing in my eyes, a storm ten times stronger than the one outside building inside my chest. “I said stop!”
He finally blinked, the furious expression on his face melting into something no less dangerous. His hand landed on mine, covering both with the breadth of one of his. “Ruby,” he whispered.
But I was too mad for sympathy now. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hissed at him, pushing him away from me. He pressed my hands against his chest with his and my entire body moved with him. I could feel how hard his heart beat beneath my palm, echoing the same frantic rhythm of my own. “I told you I don’t know. That needs to be enough for you.” I pushed him again. He pulled me to him again and this time when his feet got their footing, I was standing so close to him I had to crane my neck upward to meet his eyes. “This is none of your business.”
We stood there, like that, my chest bumping into his torso with every labored breath I dragged in and pushed out. His warm hand stayed firm over both of mine, locking them against his body. Our eyes in a war of wills, challenging, daring, accusing.
He broke away first, dropping his head to press his mouth against my ear. “You can fool them,” he rasped, his breath as broken and ragged as mine. “They all see what you want them to see. They let you get away with whatever you want. They don’t know any better. But you can’t hide from me, Ruby. I see you.”
My world tipped, spinning off its axis and throwing everything inside me off balance. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move.
How? How did he do this? How did he walk back into town and within days completely tear apart my carefully crafted existence?
It had been seven years. He was supposed to have moved on with his life and forgotten about me. He was supposed to have found somebody else and become a different person. He wasn’t supposed to notice me anymore. Or care about me. He definitely wasn’t supposed to see me.
Not like this—not at my most vulnerable.
Finally, I gathered my wits and stepped away from him, ripping my hands from his grasp. I wanted to say something snotty, to get the final word in and declare another victory. But I couldn’t form coherent thoughts, let alone say something zingy.
Instead, I picked up the box I’d thrown to the floor and pushed past the mountain of a man in front of me and marched with my supper to the counter. Sensing my rage, Maria didn’t ask any questions besides the necessary. I paid, forgot my umbrella and fled the Pump and Pantry like the hounds of hell were chasing me.
Later that night, after Max finished his homework and we’d had supper and a special bowl of ice cream I thought Max and I both needed, I let him curl up in bed with me while rain pelted the outside of the trailer and the chilling wind pushed through the poorly sealed windows of our small home. We read books and talked about school and friends and a hundred innocent things. And when he fell asleep in my arms, I curled up next to him and held him there.
For almost seven years I’d had this life with him. And while it wasn’t perfect or necessarily ideal, it was ours. He was mine. And I worked hard to give him everything he needed.
Nobody had ever questioned me or my story. Nobody had bothered asking penetrating questions with answers I wasn’t prepared to give.
Nobody until Levi Cole.
And I’d be damned if I let another Cole boy mess up my life again.
10
Peace in the Middle of Western Nebraska
By Saturday afternoon, I was exhausted. It had been a chaotic week. I’d never really gotten a handle on life. Every morning I’d felt rushed to get to work on time. Last night, I’d worked late since the post-football game rush was busy and then I’d been back at it this morning.
Since the Huskers played this evening, the morning had been slammed with folks grabbing breakfast from as far as three towns away. I just wanted to curl up on the couch and take a nap.
“I’ll be back late,” my mom hollered as she pushed through the door, making as much noise as possible.
I put my feet up on the small love seat that fit in our living room space and kicked my shoes off. I’d put them away later. Dropping my head back on the familiar pillows that had decorated the worn fabric ever since I could remember, I stared up at the ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles.
My mom’s holler of disapproval through the open windows pulled a head turn out of me, but unless she was currently being murdered, I wasn’t planning on getting up to help her.
And even then, the best she could probably hope for was a call to emergency services. I was down for the count.
“Max,” I murmured. “Go see if your Grammy needs help.”
He had just sat down with some LEGOS I’d found at Goodwill last Christmas, but he jumped up right away.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” I heard my mom grumble.
Max, pushed through the door as loudly as my mom had. “Grams, are you okay?”
“The fucking grasshoppers.”
“Grammy!” Max scolded.
I glared at the window, disappointed in my mom’s inability to keep from cussing around my son. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “Get back in the house so I don’t run you over.”
I turned my attention back to the ceiling fan. I loved Maxine Dawson. Truly. I’d only been given one mother in this life and I was bound and determined to treasure her. But did she have to make it so difficult?
Max tumbled back through the door, tripping over the door jam and falling on his knees.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
He jumped back to his feet and brushed off his sweatpants, totally unbothered by his fall. Six-year-old boys were so rough and tumble. He was like a little pinball that bounced back and forth through life. “Grammy said a naughty word.”
“I heard her,” I sighed. “She shouldn’t say that.”
“It means something bad,” he agreed.
I caught his eye and gave him my mom stare. “Don’t you say it. Be better than Grammy.”
He grinned at me. “I love Grammy.”
“I do too. But I don’t talk like her and you shouldn’t either.” It wasn’t that I had anything against the words she said. But we were already from a trailer park. I would die of mortification if my six-year-old showed up and started dropping F bombs in first grade.
“Uh, mom?”
It wasn’t exactly a promise to refrain from cursing publicly, so I let him keep my
full attention. “Yeah?”
“We never went on the nature walk. Remember?”
In my head, I said, Son of a bitch! But out loud, because I’d just given him a lesson on language and I was a good mom, I said, “That would be a perfect thing to do today.” Okay, good-ish mom. But the important thing to remember was that I wasn’t a total hypocrite. Okay, I was. But a hypocrite in the way only parents get. The parent hypocrisy that promises their child needs to know all their math facts, even though you are acutely aware they’ll never use it in real life. Or the parent that makes your child make super healthy meal choices and then sneaks Oatmeal Pies in the pantry. I had thus far been able to hide my hypocrisy from Max.
Which shouldn’t have been a victory, but it was.
“Really?” Max asked, his eyes narrowed with distrust.
“Sure. We can walk around here, can’t we? We don’t have to go somewhere specific?” He shrugged. “Will you get me your homework assignment paper? It’s hanging on the fridge.”
He brought it over to me and I read through his homework thoroughly for the first time. His teacher wanted us to go for a walk in a nature-rich environment and record all the different things we saw. It was due Monday.
We’d had the homework assignment for at least two weeks, so it wasn’t like this was news, we just hadn’t found the time to do it yet.
I swung my legs around to sit up and rolled my neck. So much for a nap. “Okay, I’m going to change while you get your shoes on and then we’ll head out.”
He made a holler of delight. Mom guilt instantly clawed from inside my chest. I hated how this small thing that required my minimal participation made him so excited.
I should do better, playing and doing things with him, but it was hard when I worked so much. My feet were always tired, and I’d started to have a sore back in the last two years thanks to all the waitressing.
My mom did the fun things with him and sometimes Coco would take him to a movie or on a lunch date. But I was just mom. I nagged him about homework and made him go to bed on time.
He was this wild boy that wanted someone to wrestle and play catch with. By the time we got through homework at the end of the school day, it was all I could do to make dinner and read him a few books before we both dozed off.
Behind my closed bedroom door, I quickly changed out of my waitressing uniform into a pair of black yoga capris, a sports bra and a long sleeve workout tee. Pulling on some worn tennis shoes I’d had since high school, I threw my long hair up in a messy bun on the top of my head and grabbed my phone.
Ajax had texted wanting to go out tonight. I quickly sent him a message back that I had Max and was stuck at home, but thanks for the offer.
The truth was, you couldn’t have dragged me out of the house tonight. I was way too tired to dance. Or get dressed in real clothes. Or do anything but curl up with Max on the couch and binge watch cartoons and movies all night.
I had never been the kind of girl with exciting weekend plans, but things had decidedly taken a turn for the bland ever since Max.
Not that I was complaining. Netflix and chill was my love language.
Netflix and chill in the literal sense, obviously.
Besides I was officially avoiding Ajax for the rest of time. Amen and amen. If he was on drugs or even abusing alcohol there was no way in fiery hell that I would ever let him near my son. And since I was always near Max, goodbye Ajax. Hello, single and celibate life.
“Ready?” I asked him just as he finished velcroing his shoe.
“Ready!”
Our neighborhood, as rundown and poverty-stricken as it was, was nestled at the border of town next to wide-open country. Having positioned itself on the other side of the railroad tracks from the town proper, there wasn’t any civilization interested in building around us.
We were boxed in by gravel roads and corn fields and if there was anything redeeming about living in a trailer park, this was it.
Max and I walked along the gravel road that led toward the highway, noticing the grasshoppers that caused my mom to cuss, along with butterflies, dragonflies and mosquitoes and all the other forms of creepy crawlies that populated the planet. We’d stop every once in a while, so I could help him mark things down on his homework sheet. He was getting better at writing and spelling, but he still needed my help to make it make sense.
When we were about twenty minutes from home, we’d covered the homework front and back and had a great time together.
“Okay, should we head back and start thinking about supper?”
“No!” he said adamantly. “I like this walk.”
“Me too.” I plopped my hands on my hips and turned in a circle. “We could go this way for a bit. Go all the way around the block.”
“What’s a block?”
I blinked at him. I guess we didn’t really have that concept in our neighborhood. “Um, well…” Before I could answer, a runner turned the corner up ahead of us in the direction I’d told Max we could go. His shirtless body moved with athletic expertise, his long legs stretching out before him, eating up the road between us. His muscular arms pumping and pushing him to work harder, he would be in our space in seconds if I didn’t think fast.
I blinked at him, trying to make him make sense here, in my part of the world. Why was he running these roads? As far as I knew, people around town used the high school track or the treadmills in their basements. Or just didn’t run.
There were a lot of people in this town that did not run.
I was proudly one of them.
Apparently, Levi Cole was too good for any of those options. Apparently, he was stalking me. For the love.
“Like a building block?” Max was asking.
I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. “No,” I answered absently. “Let’s go… this way.” I practically threw him in the opposite direction of Levi. Grabbing his hand, I hurriedly tugged him after me.
“I thought you said we could go around the block?” he asked as I tugged him after me. “Whatever that is. Is this the block?”
“We’re going to find a different block. Any other block.” I glanced at the tall stalks of corn to my left. They would be plowed soon, but right now they would make excellent cover.
Heavy footsteps pounded behind me. He was getting closer. Making a squeaking sound I wasn’t proud of, I quickly turned Max and I down a dirt inlet that led to the corn. “I think I see a toad, Max. We haven’t marked that down yet.”
“We saw a frog,” he grumbled. “Mommy, where are we going?”
“Where are you going?” Levi called from the road.
I straightened from my ridiculously bent over posture as I pretended to scan the dirt for toads. Slowly turning around, I gathered the tattered shreds of my dignity and faced a shirtless Levi.
“I know you!” Max declared. “You were at Mommy’s restaurant.”
Levi focused on Max, offering a kind smile. “That’s right. I was there. You were too.” Max grinned at him.
“Because he’s stalking us, Max. He’s a big weirdo.”
Levi focused on me and his smile stretched. “Hi.”
Unnerved by the gentle greeting, I shifted back and forth on my feet and thrust my hand out in an awkward wave. “Hi.”
Struggling to swallow around the toad-size lump in my throat, I willed my eyes not to look at the rest of him. He was ridiculous like this, completely shameless. But did my eyes listen? Pfft. No. No, they did not. And why would they? A body like that shouldn’t be ignored.
It wasn’t that I was objectifying him… I was just… appreciating God’s creation. In the male form.
I had an embarrassing flashback to when Coco and I were still in high school and we’d “accidentally” forget something in the girl’s locker room once a week during varsity basketball practice.
We were women of principles and we could hardly tolerate any of the jocks that ran the school’s social hierarchy. But damn, there was something about shirt
less, sweaty boys that made it easy to set our convictions aside for an eye full of man candy.
Which sounded totally lurid and insane. I know. Believe me, I know.
And yet, with Levi standing in front of me like this, low slung shorts showing off a tapered waist and a six pack and God, those tanned biceps and the smattering of hair across his chest that had not been there seven years ago, it didn’t feel so insane. It felt natural. I couldn’t help but ogle him.
And he was slick with sweat! And oh, my god, he couldn’t be real. A body like that had to be the product of my overactive imagination.
“Remember when you and Coco used to sneak into basketball practice and watch us?” Levi asked, totally throwing my memories in my face and calling out my ogling. “I’m glad to see you’re still as perverted as you were back then, Ruby.”
I folded my arms over my chest and glared at him, wishing I was at least wearing a real bra, with real support and not this boob smasher thing I had on. “Those are false allegations.”
“Mommy, what’s pre-fert-ed mean?” Max asked.
I glanced at my son before bugging my eyes out at Levi. He stifled a laugh. “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” he immediately relented. “Ruby, I’m sorry.”
Rolling my eyes, I waved him off. Honestly that was a tamer word than usual. And Max was unfortunately used to grownups saying words he wasn’t supposed to hear by now. “I’ll tell you later, okay? Why don’t you go find a great big stick and let Mommy talk to the scary man.”
Max tilted his head at Levi. “I don’t think he’s scary.”
“Ha! Looks can be deceiving,” I mumbled to no one in particular. “Go on, babe. Find a stick.”
He looked up at me like I’d grown a second head. “Then what?”
“Then… then whack that cornstalk with it.”
“Why?”
“Because it needs to be whacked.”
“Why?”
Levi walked closer. “Just pretend it’s Darth Vader and you’re on a mission to save the galaxy.”
Trailer Park Heart Page 12
