Well, I’m glad I did shoot him down then.
We ate the best and messiest ribs I had ever tasted in my life. There was nothing elegant about them at all. I couldn’t help but think about Drew eating something that messy. He would have had his little servant there picking the meat off the bone for him.
I had a good time with Dawson, and we talked and laughed about nothing at all. That too made me think about Drew. I had never in the six years that I was married to him, laughed with him. Yes, I am sure that I faked many laughs, but this was different. Dawson was just a charming funny guy, and so much fun to be around.
Dawson had no sooner dropped me off when Lauren walked uninvited through my front door.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going out with Dawson?” she spouted.
“I didn’t know that I was,” I replied.
“Levi called me. He said you blew him off to go for Dawson.”
“Levi wanted to take me on a date. Dawson and I are just friends.”
“Do you really believe that, Ry?”
“What?” I asked surprised, “that we are just friends?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I believe it. There was nothing romantic about it.”
“Yeah okay, whatever.”
“There wasn’t, and I am not dating Dawson, Levi or anyone else. Now stop it.”
“Let’s go to the bar,” she said letting it go.
“Um, no. I am staying home.”
“Come on, Ry. Don’t make me go by myself.”
“I just saw Joel on your porch. You’re not going alone. You little conniver.”
“But I don’t want you to sit here alone.”
“I like being alone. I am going to change and veg out on the couch. I’m tired. I worked harder than I am used to this week.”
“Fine, party pooper, I will talk to you later.”
I did veg out on the couch and dozed off by ten. It was the first night in almost a week that I dreamed, and again I was taken back in time to being a little girl. My mom had just gotten home from her shift at the truck stop. I was twelve, and Justin was just a tiny baby, maybe two or three months old. He was sick and burning up with a fever.
I was trying to give him a bottle and rock him and do everything that a twelve year old child would know to get him to stop.
My mom took him from me and was mad because I let him get sick. I was crying and trying to explain that I had told my dad to stop and tell her that he was sick on his way to the bar, but she wouldn’t listen and slapped me across the face for back talking her.
That was the first time that I was ever alone. She took him to the hospital, and they kept him for three days. I knew he was in the hospital because my dad had come home long enough to shower and leave again for his weekend bar routine. He never came home that night, and my mom never came home. It was the dead of winter, and again I couldn’t keep the only heat source burning. It was freezing in the trailer, and there was no food in the cabinets or freezer. I ate a bag of microwave popcorn the first night and dry cereal for the next two days. I was afraid that nobody was ever coming back, and by the third day I was hungry, scared and freezing.
My parents came home together with Justin, and again I was in trouble because the fire was out. It was so cold in the old trailer that there was ice on the inside of the windows. My dad bent me over his legs on the sofa, no, he didn’t bend me over, he threw me over his legs. My mom stood there and watched him hit me over and over until she finally told him that was enough.
I woke up to Justin crying in my room a few hours later. I waited for my mom to come and get him, but she didn’t come. I left him crying in my room while I heated a bottle. I hated my parents and neither one of them deserved me or Justin. I could hear the bed creaking and both my parents moaning and going at it in the next room. I put Justin in bed with me after changing his diaper and covered us both up.
I didn’t wake panic or scared with this dream. I felt pain and neglect and my heart ached for Justin, hoping that he was doing well. I wanted to go there and find him, just to make sure for myself, but I didn’t dare. I knew that Drew had somebody staked out there, waiting to see me. I wiped the single tear from my eye and got up. I didn’t have to open the shop for another two hours, but I dressed and went anyway. I would rather have been working then alone with my thoughts.