Trailer Park Heart

by Higginson, Rachel

  He eyed me curiously as I slipped onto the side across from him. “I have a ten-minute break,” I told him quietly. “Is it okay if I sit here with you for a minute? My feet hurt.”

  He nodded, accepting the full cup of black coffee from me. His green eyes watched me as he took a slow sip from the piping mug.

  I wrinkled my nose. “How can you drink it like that? Do you hate your taste buds?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “It’s an acquired taste,” he agreed. “But work on enough ranches, you realize real fast they’re not interested in making sure you’re comfortable.”

  Well, that was one thing to be thankful for. At least my job supplied creamer. “What was that like?”

  “What? Learning to like black coffee?”

  I smiled despite myself. “Working on ranches, dummy. Why didn’t you just come back here and work for your parents?”

  He cupped his mug with two hands, his long, dexterous fingers intertwining gracefully. “After Logan died, I didn’t want to come back here ever again.”

  His words were rough, ripped open, as if he’d had to drag them through barb wire to get them high enough to spit them out. But he’d answered me. That should have been enough. “Why not?”

  Staring at his coffee, he paused for so long I didn’t think he’d answer me. Just when I was working up the courage to apologize for asking him hard questions, he said, “I blame my parents for Logan’s death, I guess. Er, blamed them. I’ve worked through a lot over the last few years, but for a long time, I felt like he enlisted to get away from them… to get away from their expectations of him.”

  I reached across the table and laid my hand over his fingers, unable to keep myself from touching him. “You don’t blame them anymore?”

  His gaze lifted to meet mine, paralyzing me in place and holding me there. “I realize now that he could have done a lot of things. Gone a lot of different places. Simply stood up to them and told them to back off. He picked the Marines. It’s not like that was the easy option. He’d always told me he wanted to serve his country, do his time before he came back to Nebraska to serve out his life sentence.” One side of Levi’s mouth lifted in a half smile, their shared joke dancing there, even while his eyes grew darker, deepened with the heaviness of his emotion. “I’ve started to believe that he was telling the truth. It was just hard for me to acknowledge that when I wanted so badly to blame someone for his death.”

  I cleared my throat hoping to banish the sudden emotions and blinked rapidly against hot tears. “I’m so sorry, Levi. I’m so sorry about Logan.” A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek, giving my emotion away. I brushed at it with the back of my hand and hoped he didn’t notice.

  Then I sniffled and wanted to throw myself under the table. I hated showing emotion to anyone, but especially Levi, especially about Logan.

  He nodded, accepting my condolence. “You know, it doesn’t go away. The grief, the pain… It just gets… distant. Or, I don’t know, I get farther away from the point of impact. But god, it’s just as sharp today as it ever has been. I miss him.”

  I laid a second hand on top of his and squeezed. Me too, I wanted to say. But I held back. I missed Logan for different reasons, ones that wouldn’t make sense to Levi. I grieved Logan for different reasons too. I grieved the dad to my son, the man that was supposed to shoulder half of the weight. I grieved the other half of my son’s life he would never get to experience.

  He shuddered, turning his hands over and turning my sympathetic gesture into intimate hand-holding. “Leave it to you, Dawson, to turn my morning cup of coffee into a therapy session.”

  I laughed nervously and retracted my hands to wipe at my embarrassingly wet eyes. He pulled his back and hid them under the table.

  But they weren’t far enough away to erase the feeling of his hard, calloused palms scratching against mine, the warmth and the strength and the feeling of Levi Cole holding a part of me.

  “It’s weird, Max reminded me of him the other day,” Levi continued. “It was like… like he was here with me again. I know that’s a strange thing to say about your son, but I just keep thinking about the way he looked, sitting in the dirt. It was Logan. He looked exactly like him.”

  I laughed nervously again and prayed he couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart all the way across the table. “It’s nice you can find him in random places,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “I mean, I don’t know why you would see him in Max. That’s kind of crazy. But still, that must be nice for you.” I cleared my throat again, nervously this time, and decided I would have made a terrible spy.

  His gaze sharpened, narrowing and opening at the same time somehow. “What’s it been like for you? All these years as a single mom. It can’t have been easy.”

  I lifted a shoulder and buried my chin against my clavicle for a second, breathing a sigh of relief that he’d decided to move on. “It hasn’t been. But… but it’s been good too. Max wasn’t exactly in my life plans, but he’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “Really?” Levi asked earnestly.

  I nodded. “When I first found out I was pregnant, I panicked, obviously. And I mourned the life I had planned for myself in a big way. College, a career, a life outside of Clark City… I mean, I lost it all because of Max. But, on this side of everything, I’m okay with that. He’s changed my life. He’s given me something to live for that is so… worthy. You know? Like, yeah, my life is hard and heavy and sometimes I don’t know how we’re going to make it long term, but it’s also beautiful and so full of joy and laughter and… purpose. He’s just… my whole world.”

  “I’m glad you have him then.” He leaned forward, taking my hand in his again. “You deserve some joy and laughter, Ruby. And some beauty.”

  It took me a minute to form a response, but eventually I whispered, “Thank you.”

  He held my gaze, searching for something with that intense, open way of his. I didn’t know what he saw. Guilt? Lies? Hope? But eventually it became too much. I couldn’t breathe with him looking at me like he was. I wouldn’t survive him.

  “I need to get back to work!” I exploded out of my seat like I’d accidentally started it on fire. “Let me know if you need anything else, Levi. It was good catching up.”

  I fled to the kitchen and caught my breath in the walk-in cooler. When I found the courage to show my face again, he was already gone. I felt relief. But I also felt intense disappointment.

  “Did Levi pay for his coffee?” I asked Rosie.

  “Yeah, and he left you this.” It was his receipt and a hundred-dollar bill. On the back of the receipt, he’d written, “It was a hell of a cup of coffee. Also, I might have ogled your ass once or twice.”

  “I take it you don’t mind the ass ogling, then?” Rosie asked as I smiled at the slanted penmanship I would have recognized anywhere. “Are we charging for that now?”

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Inside joke,” I managed to say.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Slipping the Benjamin into my pocket, I got back to work, forcing my mind to focus. It wasn’t until six hours later that I realized I’d given myself a headache from smiling too much.

  13

  High School Reunion

  Dancing. Tonight. You. Me. Pug’s. Booze.

  I stared down at Coco’s text and tried not to wince. My mom had the rare night off because the Fire Marshall had shut down Misty’s until they updated their sprinkler system. Maxine Dawson was rarely surprised by anything in life, let alone a routine inspection by the fire department. But this time, they’d caught her with her pants down.

  Er, the Fire Marshall had been caught with his pants down with one of Misty’s girls. Maxine had kicked him out on the grounds that Misty’s wasn’t that kind of establishment. He’d retaliated by fining the club and demanding updated sprinklers.

  She’d been hopping mad the last few days, but now that it was Saturday and she’d enjoyed her day off, she was actuall
y starting to relax.

  We were all sitting around the table for an early dinner of tater tot casserole and French-fried green beans. It wasn’t my most amazing recipe, but Rosie had sent me home with a box of food she said was left over from last week and tater tots had been one of the items.

  Rosie’s leftover boxes had seen Max and I through a lot of dark times. If it wasn’t for her generosity, I was sure there would have been weeks we struggled to eat. Like when my beater of a Corolla had needed a new timing belt and I’d had to give away most of my paycheck to keep it running.

  My mom never chipped in for groceries. Since I lived in her home on reduced rent, cooking and cleaning were how I paid the rest of my way. Groceries were my responsibility. And if Max and I had to go hungry, that was our problem. Maxine wanted nothing to do with our problems.

  Which was why I hesitated now.

  Coco thought it was ridiculous I had to pay my mom to watch my kid. But she was cheaper than daycare and usually reliable. Saturday nights were a different story though. She was usually never available, except on the occasional night off or if I needed to work, so I never asked.

  But she was home tonight… and dancing sounded fun. Hell, dressing up like a grownup sounded like fun.

  I wanted something sexy with heels and makeup. I wanted to feel like something other than a mom for just a minute.

  “Spit it out,” Maxine ordered, noticing my mental Olympics.

  “Coco texted…”

  She gave me a hard look from across the table. I was an adult with a child and yet she had this amazing ability to make me feel five years old again with just the raise of her drawn on eyebrows.

  “And?”

  Big girl panties, Ruby. This was your mom, not an invading dictator, threatening to strip all your freedoms and lock you away in an internment camp for the rest of your life. “Would you mind terribly if Max hung out with you tonight? I thought maybe I could meet her in town for a drink or two?”

  She shoveled another bite of casserole in her mouth. Frown lines started to appear around the corners of her mouth and she stabbed at her next bite more forcefully. “You know, I never had help with you. I never had a mom around to watch my kid, so I could go paint the town red.”

  It wasn’t like she hadn’t gone out when I was a kid, though. She just took me with her. To the bar, to Misty’s, to the neighboring trailer. But telling her that would have been pointless.

  My stomach fizzled with dread. I shouldn’t have asked. I should have just told Coco no.

  “Please, Grammy?” Max chimed in, surprising us both. “You promised we could watch Jurassic Park next time! Please, please, please!”

  Leave it to a child to soften the ice queen’s cold, dead heart. She looked at him, her eyebrows settling back to a more normal position. “I did say that didn’t I?”

  “I have M&Ms,” he added, bribing his grandmother with candy to get her to spend time with him. I would consider that later… after I went dancing and remembered that I was a woman again and not just a mom.

  She cracked a smile at him. “Does your mom have popcorn to pop?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Always.”

  “All right, but you can’t be any trouble, okay? Grammy’s not in the mood for shit.”

  “Mom,” I growled, but Max was beaming from ear to ear.

  “Promise!”

  She threw her head toward my bedroom. “Yeah, I don’t care then. Go on, go have fun.”

  I smiled at her. “I’ll make it up to you,” I promised, meaning I would pay her later. For as hard of a woman as she was, she had let me keep it a secret that I paid her for babysitting. I couldn’t stomach the idea of Max ever finding that out.

  She shook her head and took another bite. “It’s all right. Like the kid said, we’ve been wanting to watch the movie.”

  Surprised tears wet the corners of my eyes and I jumped out of my chair before she could see them. If I thought it was awful to show Levi emotion, it would have been a thousand times worse to break down in front of my mom.

  “Thanks, Mom. Seriously, thank you.”

  She waved me off. “Just don’t come home pregnant again.”

  I threw myself into my bedroom, already texting Coco back to let her know I would meet her at Pug’s. I had already brushed my mom’s comment off because that was crazy talk, when I heard Max say, “Does dancing get you pregnant?”

  Oh, god.

  My mom answered, “In your mom’s case it does.”

  Well, I would have to clean up that mess later. But first…dancing!

  Forty-five minutes later, I walked into Pug’s in a strapless romper I’d grabbed from the Target clearance rack. It was my favorite article of clothing I owned, and I hadn’t had a chance to wear it yet. It was a little chilly out to be running around with half my body exposed, but I looked hot, damn it.

  It should also be noted, that we didn’t have a Target in Clark City. The closest one was in Kearny, an hour away. I’d picked it up in August when Max and I had gone back to school shopping.

  It was a trek to go spend money somewhere, but Max had outgrown everything he owned over the summer. And Kearney had a Target and a Wal-Mart.

  Pug’s was packed for some reason tonight. I had to squeeze through bodies almost as soon as I walked in the door. I stood on my tiptoes to find Coco, but the place was packed.

  I pushed through to the bar and found a place off to the side. I pulled out my phone and texted her. Where are you?

  “What can I get you?” the bartender shouted over the roar of the crowd.

  Trying to hide my inability to order drinks—I didn’t actually have that much experience hanging out in a bar or with drinking in general and whenever I went out with Ajax, he’d ordered for me—I scanned the bottles of liquor behind him.

  I leaned forward, recognizing him. He was a few years younger than me, but I couldn’t remember his name. “What do you recommend?”

  His half smile was cocky. “What do you like?”

  I waved my hand around the bar without touching the sticky, glossy wood. “I’m not much of a drinker. I don’t know what I like.”

  He stepped closer, the other side of his mouth ticking up to join the first. “Then you’ve come to the right place. I can help with that.”

  Warm arms wrapped around my middle and pulled me back against a solid chest. A scruffy face brushed against mine and I inhaled Ajax’s woodsy, whiskey scent. “She wants a shot of Fireball.”

  The guy looked at Ajax and frowned. “Are you sure that’s what she wants?”

  Ajax chuckled, tightening his grip on me. “Don’t worry about it, I know exactly what she likes.”

  Were we still talking about my drink?

  I wanted to shake off Ajax, but I didn’t. He turned me around and kissed me enthusiastically. I could tell he’d been drinking for a while because his kiss was sloppy, and he tasted like booze.

  This time I did step back, leaving his lips to follow insistently after mine.

  “H-hey,” I said, letting him know I was done. “What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing here?” He took my hand and spun me around, taking in my entire outfit. “What are you doing here, mamacita? And looking like fire. Did you do this for me?”

  I cleared my throat and dodged the question. His eyes were unfocused, and his button-up shirt and designer jeans had a disheveled look about them. “I’m meeting Coco,” I shouted over the blaring country music. “We came to dance.”

  The bartender handed him the small glass of golden liquor and he held it up for me. “Dance? Sí. But first, this.” When I hesitated, he dipped his head, so I could hear him better over the music. His lips touched my ear and he shouted, “Liquid courage, Rubita. It tastes like Red Hots.”

  Taking the drink from him so he would give me space, I knocked the shot back and braced myself for the burn. To my surprise, Ajax had told the truth, it really did taste like Red Hots. I licked my lips and tried to pretend I didn’
t like it as much as I did.

  He took the glass from me and set it back on the bar top, then grabbed my hands and led me to the dance floor. I felt my phone vibrate on my hip, where it rested in my small crossbody bag—also from Target—but Ajax had pulled me against his body and started to move, not waiting for my permission.

  His body was familiar. Any time I’d gone dancing before had been with him. So, this should have felt familiar. It should have felt nice.

  But it wasn’t. It felt… wrong for some reason. And only partly because I could tell how drunk he already was. It was only nine and he was a big enough guy that it took a bit to get him like this.

  How long had he been drinking?

  Regardless, I turned around and pressed my back to his chest. I needed to survey the room and try to find Coco. Ajax loved the new position, his hands landing on my hips and tugging me closer to his body. I let him move against me, not wanting to fight or make a scene.

  I couldn’t tell if I was being smart or a coward. Regardless, he was beyond out of it. I didn’t know if my protests would make a difference. Which scared me.

  Finally, Coco’s waving hand caught my attention. She was on the other side of the bar, next to the jukebox and popcorn machine—one of the reasons I loved Pug’s so much. Emilia was with her and some of Emilia’s fan club.

  Coco’s expression said WTF and I couldn’t help but agree with her. She knew I was trying to quit Ajax, as gently as possible. Obviously, grinding in the middle of a sweaty dance floor wasn’t the right way to do that.

  I leaned back and let my arm curl around Ajax’s neck. “I see Coco,” I yelled in his ear. “I’m going to go say hello!”

  If he said something, I didn’t hear him. But I did feel his hand try to grasp onto mine as I slipped into the crowd, away from him. I pushed through the smashed bodies, relentlessly trying to reach the other side of the dance floor. Where had all these people come from?

  Did they even live in this town?

  Was this what Pug’s was like every Saturday night?