Boone rolled his eyes. “Just because your mom says your arms aren’t little doesn’t mean they’re not. And just because your family tries to make you feel little doesn’t mean you are. People will always want to tell us what we are and who we are, but no one can tell you who you are. That’s your job.”
I watched him for a moment. I stared at him for a few more moments. “When did you go and get so smart, Boone Cavanaugh?”
He held out his arms, backing away. “When I stopped being a dumbass.”
Giving a wave, he lunged up to the bar’s entrance and paused just outside the door, looking like he was working up his courage, before shoving inside.
He’d left the truck running, and after a minute, I thought about turning it off. That was when he came out, Dolly hanging over his shoulder and looking so limp I guessed she was passed out. That solved the problem of facial recognition and explaining why I was here with Boone.
As Boone moved through the door, a chorus of cheers and shouts followed him. Clapping exploded through the bar. They were applauding. The patrons of the bar were glad she was gone. Or they were goading him. Or they were being their typical brand of prick and sticking it to someone else instead of focusing on their own pathetic little lives.
Boone left the bar the same way I remembered him leaving it when we’d been teenagers: head high, eyes cast down. My eyes burned as I watched the man before me shift into the boy I’d once loved. He’d changed some, I’d changed some, but some things never would.
Dragging Dolly out of a bar late on a weeknight never would change. The way doing so made him feel probably never would either. The way I felt watching him do it apparently never would as well. It was a strange mix, a potent blend of sympathy and intense pride as I watched him carry his mom, time and time again, out of the place she’d chosen to work out her issues. Some chose therapy, others elected for repression—Dolly Cavanaugh turned to a cheap bottle of whiskey.
When he was halfway to the truck, I shoved open the door and held it open while he came around the front bumper. Before, I’d just sat sandwiched between Boone and Dolly on the bench, sometimes with her drooling into my hair and sometimes with her trying to rip out my hair. This time though, I didn’t want to be pressed so tightly against Boone. Not with the swirl of confusion I felt around him when it came to certain feelings trying to resurrect themselves.
I was just stepping aside, about to climb into the bed of the truck, when the very passed out Dolly came to life. No kidding, it was like she’d just been struck by lightning and zapped to life Frankenstein-style. Her head jerked up, her eyes latched onto me, and if I’d seen hate before, it was redefined right in that moment.
“What in the hell is that uppity hussy bitch doing standing in front of me, Boone?” Dolly shouted, her words more slurred than said. “I might be buzzed, but I’m not so buzzed to be imagining things.”
“You were buzzed ten shots ago, Ma,” Boone said, keeping his tone even and calm. I remembered that too, his steadfastness in the face of a storm. The louder she got, the calmer he became. “Right now you’re drunk enough I’m worried if we don’t get some fluid down you other than the eighty-proof kind, you’re going to get alcohol poisoning.”
Without him asking or even glancing my way, I snagged one of the plastic bottles of water from the case he had stuffed in the bed. When I twisted the bottle open and held it out for Dolly, she took it.
And she threw it in my face. “You better not try to give me anything again with that judgmental look on your face. I didn’t tolerate it when you were a bratty teenager, and I sure ain’t going to tolerate it now with you being a bitch of a woman.”
I wiped my face, sweeping the water away.
“Shit, Ma, you’re just begging for the cops to come haul you away tonight aren’t you?” Boone backed up from me a few strides before lowering her from his shoulder. “I told you the last time I bailed you out that was the very last time. You go in again, and you’re going to be sitting in that cell for a while.”
Dolly patted Boone’s cheek, staggering enough he had to reach out to keep her from falling. “You’ve been saying that for years, sweetheart. You’re too good of a boy to leave your mama to rot. I raised you right. Unlike the other folks in this town I’m not going to name.”
“Can I do anything to help?” I asked Boone, Dolly’s back to me as she continued to sway in place.
“You can turn around, put one foot in front of the other, and don’t stop until you fall off into the face of the ocean,” Dolly snapped at me, looking ready to spit in my face. “That’s what you can do to help this family out.”
I took another step back. “Hi, Dolly. How’s it going? Nice to see you too.”
I waved at her before stepping up onto the back wheel of the truck and climbing into the bed. I didn’t want to be so close to Boone, but I didn’t want to be anywhere close to Dolly. With the way she was wound up, she might turn her murderous dreams into reality.