by Bijou Hunter
“Stella works at the gas station by Walmart,” Colt says when I refuse to speak.
“That tiny little thing?” Jodi asks and snorts. “The first time I drove by, I didn’t even realize that place had a door for customers.”
Again, I only nod because I’m useless. I don’t know why Colt likes me at all. Of course, with him, I can form sentences and carry on conversations. Jodi, though, owns an icy blue gaze that makes me feel two inches tall.
“Gram likes dogs,” Colt says when the conversation comes to a crashing halt.
Kori stops staring in awe at him to turn her focus to Jodi. “I never had a dog.”
“I never had any growing up either. I didn’t think I’d like them, but then we ended up with a whole litter of Rottweilers and my husband trained them. Then he gave them as gifts to his friends.”
“He gave them away?”
“Yeah, but we got more. Growing up, Colton’s pop trained dozens of them. We’d sell some, gift others, and keep the rest. We always had dogs running around the house.”
“What’s a pop?” Kori asks Colt.
“That’s what I call my dad.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what he called his dad.”
“Why?”
“Because it sounded cooler than dad.”
Kori smiles because she likes how Colt is cool, and she wants to be cool too. “What do you call your mom?”
“Mom. Nothing cooler than the word mom, right?”
Kori’s smile grows, and I swear I might have to beat her away with a stick to get my man back. Colt sees her expression and smirks at me. He knows he’s got another lady wrapped around his finger.
“Gram, was this place open when you moved to Ellsberg?”
Colt sees I’m tongue-tied, so he asks a question he must already know the answer to. Now Jodi has something to talk about.
“No, they built this back in the early 2000s. This entire area was just a field. The little store next door used to be an auto parts place. The guys who owned it were idiots and smoked pot all day. Forgot to pay their bills and order supplies. Eventually, it went out of business.”
“They still like pot,” Colt says and gives me a little smile. “Two of my best customers.”
“What do you do, Rae?” Jodi asks.
“I clean the rooms at the Holiday Inn.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that?”
Realizing she can’t avoid the conversation, Rae sighs. “I can listen to music, and I work alone for the most part. There’s a routine. I have a checklist to follow, and I like how the room goes from messy to clean. There’s a system to the job, and no one bothers me.”
“Do you like your job?” Jodi asks me.
“It’s okay,” I say, shrugging. “It gets lonely in the booth when hours pass with no customers coming inside. It’d be more fun to work with people, but it’s not a hard job, and I might get more hours soon.”
Thankfully, the waitress arrives to distract us. Kori wants Colt to tell her exactly what to get but insists on ordering for herself. Kori doesn’t crave a dad. She’s looking for a mentor, and Colt is the only cool person she knows.
“Can I eat at the salad bar?” Rae asks Colt.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Aren’t you paying? Cause if you’re not, we need to change our order.”
“Yeah, I’m paying.”
“Then I’m asking if it’s okay if I also get something from the salad bar.”
“And the answer is I don’t care what you eat.”
Rae looks at me and then back at Colt. “I don’t know how much money you have. Seems rude not to ask.”
“Well, thanks for your concern, but I have enough for you to use the salad bar.”
“Are you sure?” Kori asks loudly.
Colt frowns and checks his wallet. “I think, but let me make sure.”
“He’s playing,” I tell Kori who gets that disapproving look on her face like when I use up the last of the hot water.
Kori’s face shifts into a smile. “Mom likes vegetables, and so do I.”
“Gross,” Colt says and pokes her in the side. “Weirdoes like the green stuff.”
“Nu-huh.”
This time, Kori gets how he’s teasing her, and she plays along by poking him in the ribs. Colt, of course, acts as if he’s injured, which only makes her laugh so hard she snorts.
I’m oblivious to Jodi or Rae right now. I only see Colt being silly in the sexiest way. He’s going to make such a great dad one day. I can’t imagine him wanting a kid with me, but he’ll find the right girl, and they’ll make gorgeous kids that’ll stare at him with the same joy as Kori and I do right now. He’ll hang the moon without even breaking a sweat.
THE HEIR
Stella loses her voice early during dinner. I feel like the host of a talk show, throwing questions at the four ladies to keep the conversation alive. Gram does her part by telling stories about how Ellsberg used to be a hick town with a college before growing into a thriving hick town with a college. Kori doesn’t care about those stories because she’s six. She only wants to know about dogs, money, and food. Rae regularly nods at Gram’s stories, but she’s difficult to read, and I can’t tell if she’s really listening.
I wish Stella could relax with Gram in the same way she does with me, but she fears rejection, and fear makes her shut down. I never let her wiggle free of my charms, and I never will. Gram, though, claims she’s too old to worry what people think. Of course, I know she’s full of shit. There’s no way she was worried about people’s opinions even when she was young.
“Do you like traveling?” Gram asks Stella.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been out of Kentucky.”
“If you’re going to stick with Colton, you’ll need to get the hang of road tripping with his family. We take RVs around the country each summer when Farah’s off work. Last year, Colt wore a woman’s wig and hula-danced.”
“Gram,” I groan dramatically. “I’m trying to score here.”
Stella’s laughter surprises me. I’m unsure if she’s laughing at what I did back in Kansas City or by my response to Gram. I just know she starts giggling and doesn’t stop until she’s red in the face.
“I don’t know anything about road tripping,” she finally mumbles through laughter, “but I’m ready to learn if it means I get to see him hula-dance.”
“Baby, I’ll dance for you tonight. Hell, I’ll do it right here,” I say, standing up.
Gram snaps her fingers at me. “Boy, sit your butt down. I will not have you make a fool of yourself and leave me explaining to the entire town what you smoked.”
Smiling at my grandmother, I lean forward and whisper, “I want to dance so much more now.”
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
“I wonder if they’ll kick me out for ripping off my shirt while I do my hula.”
“Colton, I’m not even kidding. Sit down and eat your food.”
“I don’t have any food.”
“The waitress is coming, and you’re going to mentally scar that child if you dance.”
“Kori’s tough. Aren’t you?”
With her mouth full of broccoli, she nods at my question. I sense she’d love for me to dance, but Gram’s weak, old lady heart—that only kicks in when she wants to guilt someone into behaving—insists I sit my ass down.
Stella’s still giggling when our food arrives. She doesn’t even look at her plate. Only seeing me, she finally settles down.
“You can dance for me later.”
“You know I will.”
Calmer now, Stella looks at Gram, and I know she’s thinking very hard at how to get a conversation going. Nothing comes out of her mouth, though.
“Rae likes to read,” I blurt out just to break the awkward moment of Stella staring at Gram who stares back.
“What do you read?” Gram asks, turning her gaze away from Stella.
Deflating next to me, my girl lowers her head and internally bitches at herself for not being the friendliest fucker who ever lived. I take her hand and rest it on my upper thigh, so her fingertips brush my dick. Her expression shifts into shock before landing on amusement when she sees my face. Suddenly, her worries are gone, and she just thinks I’m a horny perv.
My plan worked!
“I’ll read anything. I figure I’ll never go to the Amazon or see Japan, but I can read books where I feel like I’m there,” Rae explains, having taken a break from her love affair with her giant salad. “I can spend time in places from long ago. Be all kinds of different people. And most books have some kind of happy ending which is better than real life.”
“I’m learning to read. I know a lot of words,” Kori tells me because I’m her hero now. “A lot.”
“I bet I know more.”
“You’re a grown-up. You should know more.”
“What if I don’t know more?” I whine. “Now I’m sad. Thanks a lot, Kori.”
Grinning at me, the kid shakes her head and looks at Rae. “He knows more.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“I don’t,” Stella blurts out. “I’m a bad reader.”
Kori nods. “She is.”
“Reading is for nerds.”
Gram laughs at the expression Kori gives me. Wait, am I not the kid’s hero anymore?
“You’re a nerd,” Kori growls.
“That hurt my feelings.”
Smiling now, Kori returns to the pork salad she created with various piles of food. On the other side of me, Stella doesn’t touch her meal.
“Is the nerdiness hurting your appetite?” I ask.
“No.”
“Do you like kids?” Gram asks Stella, leaning forward to do so. There’s a menacing vibe about her tone that makes me want to laugh. I know Stella finds Gram terrifying, but I just see my short, skinny grandmother. Sure, she’s likely packing heat and could shoot up half the restaurant before anyone stopped her. No denying Gram has the balls to take on about anyone, but she’s harmless.
Except she’s a grandmother and a mother and that makes her the kind of person who rejected Stella. Gram could tell everyone in my family that my girl is bad news. Stella fears rejection way more than a simple beating.
“Yes.”
Gram leans closer. “Yes, for real, or yes, you think you need to say yes?”
“For real.”
“Do you want kids?”
“Yes.”
“You’re kinda scrawny. Don’t you think she’s scrawny, Colton?”
“Having seen her naked, I can say she has curves in all the right places.”
Stella blushes beet red, and I snicker with approval. Her hand remains snugly in mind as Gram interrogates her.
“Colton said he wants four kids because he’s a fucking copycat.”
“That’s not why I said I wanted four,” I mutter.
“It’s what you meant.”
Shrugging, I squeeze Stella’s hand. “Okay.”
“His grandfather and I had four kids, and then his pop copied us and had four kids. Now Colton wants to do the same because he’s a copycat.”
“I want all of one gender, though,” I announce, having made this decision years ago while working on a dump. “That’s something none of you have tried. Lily already has a boy and a girl, so she’s totally failed. MJ won’t have more kids because she claims it hurt too much the first time, and I’m not sure how they’d fit more rugrats in their yogurt.”
“Yogurt?” Kori asks. “They live in food?”
“Yurt,” Gram corrects, but the kid still doesn’t understand.
“It’s a tent-like house,” I explain. “I’ll show it to you later this week. You’ll think it’s cool until you realize they have no air-conditioning, and the fart smell never goes away.”
Stella smiles at the fart thing because she’s my girl, and she knows I’m a man with a giant colon to go with my other giant parts.
“What about Audrey?” Gram asks as if we haven’t had this conversation before.
“She’ll have more. My guess is only one more at the most. Though with the size of her first one, she might not survive another birth.” When Stella and Rae look at me in horror, I clue them into the family situation. “My youngest sister, Audrey, is the tiniest girl in the family. She, of course, ended up marrying the largest man in the world.”
“His father is larger,” Gram adds quickly.
“No, actually, he’s not. During a night of moonshine and shit-talking contests in White Horse, us men measured ourselves. Cap beat Angus by a centimeter.”
“How did the big man handle that?” Gram asks, snickering.
“There were tears, a tantrum, and a complete refusal to play anymore,” I lie since Angus Hayes mostly looked proud that his sperm produced a larger version of himself. “So back to Audrey and her giant man. They made a giant baby named Keith who left a giant hole in his mother.”
“That’s not how that works,” Gram says, waving off my concern.
“Okay, but I still don’t see Audrey having more than two kids in total. I’d bet money on it.”
“You’re on, boy.”
I smile at Gram, who still owes me a bunch of cash for all the other times she was wrong such as a) MJ did not name her baby “Glitter,” b) Byron does not look like Lily’s dentist ex-fiancé, and 3) I never banged Sissy Mullen. Oh, and my grandma still owes me a thousand dollars for when I faked rabies and got MJ to take care of me for a week.
“Stella and I will have however many children she, and God, choose,” I say, pretending to be humble. “I’m only the vessel for the swimmers. My opinion doesn’t matter.”
“Even I know you’re full of shit,” Stella mutters, laughing at my expression.
“Fine. Then we’ll have four. I want all boys or all girls. Basically, whatever we have the first time is what we need to have for the rest. Can you make that happen?”
“No.”
“I’m sure there are instructions on the internet. We’ll look into it after the first one comes.”
“You’re going to have a baby?” Kori asks, shaking her head. “Is it going to live in the motel?”
“No, it’s going to live with Stella and me.”
“You live with your parents,” Rae points out helpfully.
“I’m aware of that.”
Refusing to pretend to care about my fake anger, Rae takes a bite of salad. “Stella is good with babies. Our neighbor at the trailer park had a baby who cried all the time because he was gassy.”
I look at Stella and smile since our safe word is “gassy.” She laughs at my reaction but then focuses on the praise from Rae.
“She bounced Marky for hours and hours, so the baby’s mom could sleep. I didn’t have that kind of patience.”
“Me either,” Kori says, exhaling loudly. “Mom and I walked around the park, so we didn’t have to listen to all the crying.”
“He was a sweet baby,” Stella says and—finally—eats something before her food gets cold. “Once he got out his burps and farts.”
“I’m the same way.”
While Stella and I share a smile, Gram announces, “Colton’s good with kids. He turns them evil, though.”
“Thisbe isn’t evil,” I balk.
“I meant Keith.”
“Oh, yeah, he’s a little evil, but some of that is genetics.”
Gram nods. “Byron’s a good baby. I’ll babysit him any day, but Thisbe wears me out.”
“Where does Audrey live?” Stella asks, and I smile at how relaxed she’s gotten since the conversation turned to babies rather than books.
“Tennessee with her giant man. They live in a stupid house in a stupid town with barely any stupid good barbecue.”
“White Horse has one good place,” Gram says, insisting on correcting me.
“Yes, but, Gram, everywhere has one place.”
“Shasta doesn’t.�
�
Thinking of the hick town to end all hick towns up north, I nod. “Oh, yeah. Not a decent BBQ joint in the entire town.”
“What’s in Shasta?” Stella asks.
“A few of my friends live up there, running a chapter of our club, but I don’t know how they survive without decent pulled pork.”
“They have a good chicken place,” Gram mumbles with her mouth full since she’s done interrogating the women and just wants to eat.
“When were you there?”
“Last summer, Bailey wanted to spy on the town to make sure hers was better.”
Wrapping an arm around Stella’s shoulders, I explain, “My aunt is competitive because she has two badass older brothers and a cuter younger sister.”
“Sawyer sure was a cute little girl,” Gram says, smiling nostalgically. “Bailey was too, but she was a pain. Still is. That’s why I like visiting her. My daughter’s always entertaining.”
“Lily said I should move to Conroe and join their club.”
“Of course, she did. She’s always trying to lure people there. She nearly convinced one of the Rogers kids.”
“Which one?”
“A younger one,” Gram says and shrugs. “A blonde one.”
“They're all blonde.”
“Exactly. Who needs to know their names when they’re all the same person?”
Shaking my head, I smile at Stella. “Conroe already has a club president, and I don’t know if I want to take orders from my cousins.”
“You’d be awful,” Gram says immediately. “The worst. I don’t think you’d last a week.”
“Thanks.”
“I’d lie if I didn’t love you so much,” she says and winks.
Winking back at her, I jam a substantial amount of food into my mouth before speaking. “Shasta doesn’t need a president either, and I don’t think I’d want to get stuck in the middle of the love affair between River and Shane.”
“Plus, no pulled pork,” Stella says without missing a beat.
I stop to admire her calm demeanor. Despite her fear of rejection, I can’t imagine anyone not wanting her around. Her family must be complete fucking losers to not see what she has to offer.
Fortunately, the Johanssons are full-time winners, and I know my parents—even Pop once he gets over his tantrum about Rod—will love her as much as Gram clearly does. Hell, I don’t have to ask about the garage apartment because her casual demeanor says it all. She tested them with her bitchy questions, and they passed.
