I squeezed his fingers. “What do you think is getting you about it? Letting her go?”
He looked up at me, and his face was so haunted that my sympathy surged, and I couldn’t stand it, but slid out of my side of the booth and moved over to his. I laid my head on his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Tell me, Chance. I’ll get it. I’ll know exactly what you mean.”
He hesitated. And I knew this was our moment. It was time to do all the things couples do way before they ended up where we were. Time to learn about each other.
Chapter 45: Chance
I didn’t imagine ever telling this story to a soul. The only people who needed to know it had been there, and I hadn’t really intended on having them in my life ever again.
But here I was, in a diner with this girl I barely knew but who already carried my kid. And I was going to tell her.
Her hair tickled my neck. She had a death grip on me, like she alone could hold me up. Maybe she could. She’d already found out about a baby all on her own, and gone on a wild-hair trip to find the man who’d done it, with no idea what she’d find on the other end. She had spunk.
“It was six months ago,” I said. “And everybody was doing their typical stupid redneck shit, drinking beer and having pissing contests over every subject imaginable.”
We had all sat on the dropped-down tailgates of our trucks. It rained a lot that week, and the fields behind the old stadium were a mud pit.
Me and Redmond and about six others were all out there. My then-girlfriend Barbie was with us, and a couple other girls. Carl was cutting donuts and whooping it up. He’d already clipped the lowered tailgate of Redmond’s pickup and they’d come to blows over it.
Charlie had stopped by and yelled at us for being reckless and stupid. When she left, everybody laughed at the old lady, even though she was barely thirty to our mid-twenties. But she felt older, and certainly acted older. It was harmless fun, mostly.
Things took a turn when somebody showed up with two bottles of Canadian whiskey. We passed cups around and soon nobody was really sober enough to even get their key in the ignition.
“We’re gonna have to sleep out here,” Carl had said, falling back in the bed of his pickup. “I can’t find my own dick.”
“There’s reasons for that,” Barbie had said, all serious, and I’d snapped to attention, even as drunk as I was.
“How’d you know that, darlin’?” I asked her, still thinking we were joking.
Instead of dissolving in a fit of giggles, the way she would have if she was ribbing, she shrugged and took a long drink, looking pissed.
My blood boiled, realizing she’d slept with that asshole. Carl was newish in town, so it hadn’t been that long ago.
I jumped down into the mud and stumbled my way over to Carl, aiming to punch his goddamn lights out. But Pete had gotten between us, saying we ought to settle this like civilized folks and have a race in the mud.
“Let’s see who can hold on to the wheel long enough in a 360,” he said.
So Carl and I got in our trucks and trundled farther out in the field.
I didn’t even notice my sister, Hannah, had showed up in her little yellow Beetle as I rolled down the window and listened for the shout from Pete to get started.
The world spun even harder as I revved the engine and hauled ass across the ground, building up enough speed to start spinning.
As I moved into the first turn, the world slowed down. The wheel was solid beneath my hands. The truck made a perfect circle, dragging through the wet dirt smoothly, like the way my mother used to stir frosting in a bowl.
Both our engines were roaring. I could vaguely hear the shouting of our friends across the field. I couldn’t see much of anything with the mud slinging across the windshields. I could only see out the driver’s side, since that one was down. I hoped Carl had thought to keep his open, or else we’d slam into each other if he was totally blind.
A cold slice of fear almost made me take my foot off the accelerator. I was slamming the gas and the brake simultaneously to keep the hard turn in the spin, jerking the wheel based on experience and feel, since I couldn’t see anything but the occasional flash of headlights from the cluster of cars up near the road, where our friends waited. The glimpse through the open window was brief, and enough mud was slinging across me that I had to resist the urge to roll it up.
During one of the spins, I saw a bright spot of yellow as my headlights crossed it. My mind didn’t register what it was until much too late.