“Because I love her. I don’t just stop loving someone because they make a mistake, or the same mistake every other night. When you love someone, do it right and love them forever. Don’t leave them wondering the whole time when it’s going to run out or expire.”
I tilted my head back to stare at the sky. It was a clear night. The kind that made it seem like a person could see all the way to the far end of the galaxy. Whatever else was out there, I knew there was no other place I’d rather be than right here—camped out in the back of Boone’s truck after having just come to Dolly’s rescue.
“Your mom’s lucky,” I said.
Boone gave a huff. “Lucky is not a word I’d ever use to describe my mom.”
“She’s lucky to have you is what I meant.”
Boone gave another huff, this one sharper. “I’m even more sure lucky is not a word I’d use to describe someone who has me in their life.”
My eyes landed on the North Star. How many people had clung to that beacon as their compass? How many times had it steered a person in the right direction, keeping them from the wrong path? I stared at it for a moment before my eyes went back to Boone. He’d always been more of my North Star than anything else. “I would. I’d say a person is lucky to have you in their life.”
I couldn’t tell if he’d heard me, because he slid into the cab before I’d finished my sentence, but from the stiffness of his shoulders, something told me he had. Boone had never taken compliments well. I supposed he’d never had a chance to get used to them.
After he fired up the engine, he opened the back slider window and craned his head through it. “Just holler at me if it feels like I’m going too fast or your spine feels ready to snap from the potholes.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “I might have been a California resident for the past seven years, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten soft.”
Boone adjusted Dolly on the bench seat, managing to wrangle a seatbelt around her lap. She didn’t move or startle awake once; she just continued to snore.
“Glad to hear it,” he said after clicking the belt into place.
When Boone pulled onto the road, I swore he looked both ways half a dozen times before pulling out. There hadn’t been a single car in sight, but I wouldn’t give him a hard time for his vigilance, overkill or not. Once on the road, the truck kept what I guessed was a steady twenty to twenty-five miles per hour instead of the posted forty-five. For as washboarded as I remembered this road being, the ride was as smooth as I’d ever had in the back of Boone’s old truck.
Every once in a while, I’d catch Boone glancing at me, seeming to exhale when he confirmed I was still there. It was a strange thing—where did he think I was going to go when I was stuck in a truck bed going down a middle of nowhere road late at night?—but it seemed more of a habitual tic than a situational one.
Almost like he’d been looking for me for years.
It took longer than the ten minutes I remembered it taking to get from Dolly’s favorite bar to her trailer in one of the parks on the edge of town, but when we finally pulled into the Diamond Trailer Park, I saw that nothing had changed here either. The same rusted and broken swing set Boone and Wren had played on as kids was still in the community’s ten-by-ten foot “park,” looking so rusted it might just crumble into pieces and blow away with the next breeze. The same neon letters that had been burnt out the last time I’d visited here—the summer before I’d left for college—were still burnt out. The same shells of cars from decades past were decaying beside the same trailers, becoming more one with the landscape than an invention of human industry.
When I glanced at Boone, I found his expression flat and his back stiff. He hated it here. Not because it was a trailer park and he was ashamed of the stigma that came with that being one’s home address, but because of the things that had happened here. The lives that had been twisted and shattered, the moments that had been bled of hope and happiness.
Boone turned off his headlights when he was halfway through the park, creeping down the narrow road until we reached the gray trailer covered in more moss than paint. He came to a slow, rolling stop and turned off the engine.
“I’ll be right back,” he whispered through the open window as he unbuckled Dolly’s seatbelt.
“I’ll help.” I stood slowly to get my balance before heading toward the tailgate to crawl out. The drive hadn’t been particularly bumpy, just long.
“I don’t need help,” Boone replied in a louder whisper once he’d stepped out of the truck. “But thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, swinging my leg over the tailgate and stepping onto the bumper before leaping to the ground.
He paused with Dolly tucked in his arms when he heard my footsteps shuffle up behind him. “I said I don’t need any help. I’ll be right out.”
I raised my shoulders and followed him up the creaky wooden steps to the trailer’s front door. “I heard you.”