“Not whatever, Deke.”
He glanced at me before looking back to the road and ordering, “Calm, Jus. Not bein’ a dick. Just looking out for you and that truck is thirty years old, it’s a day.”
“You’re correct. It’s also the truck my granddad owned when I was two and my family was visiting him and we took our first special just-grandfather-granddaughter trip to go get ice cream. That first being the first of many. Something that was special to me for years, but started off special, if the story my folks and Granddad often told that, when I was three and he said he was getting a new truck, I demanded he give the old one to me. I guess I was pretty adamant about it and made an impression. No matter how many trucks came later, we never went for ice cream in anything but that truck. He kept it for decades. The last time we went to get ice cream, I was twenty-nine, and it was in that truck. And he left me a lot when he died, most of that really good memories. Part of that was that truck.”
When I was done telling my story, Deke had no reply and the interior of the cab felt strange. Not good. Not bad. Just strange.
And I guessed I wasn’t done laying it out because I continued to do so just as I’d been doing, sharply with unhidden temper.
“On the sad day that truck dies, I’m parking it in my front yard, filling the bed with dirt, and planting flowers in it. In other words, I’m keeping that truck forever, Deke. Forever. And ever. And ever.”
“Baby, calm,” he urged softly, not taking his eyes from the road.
I sucked my lips between teeth and felt the sting of tears hit the backs of my eyes so I turned my head immediately to look out my side window.
Baby, calm.
And with just that, I was calm.
About what he said about Granddad’s truck.
Everything else that was Deke, I was not.
God, why didn’t he remember me?
Why could he not be mine?
Why couldn’t I have his voice in my bed in the morning, feeling that in my cunt when he could do something about it?
Why did I have a life that gave me so much, so fucking much, all of it meaningful, all of it amazing, and yet the one thing I ever saw that called to my poet’s soul in a way that I knew only it could feed it, nurture it, give it peace, I could not have?
Baby, calm.
“Shouldn’t’ve said dick about your truck, Jus. Wasn’t cool,” Deke said quietly.
I drew in a deep breath and replied, “It’s okay. You didn’t know.”
“And sorry you lost your granddad.”
God, seriously, he just had to stop.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
Deke said no more.
We got home. I brought in the paint. Deke brought in the other stuff, doing it while the skies sprinkled water.
It wasn’t until five minutes later, when I was behind closed door in my bedroom, when the heavens opened.
I sat on my bed sideways, staring out the two-story slanted wall of windows into the storm, thinking the visual I had was sheer beauty and hoping I never got used to it at the same time counting my blessings, the only two I could come up with at that moment was that I had that view and that I had a roof.
Then I got my shit together, opened my nightstand, and took out my leather-bound notebook. A different one than the one Deke saw me scribbling in when I wrote a gold record song about him seven years ago.
I’d filled that one up. This one was new.
I flicked the band from around it, opened it to where the pencil was wedged into the page and I stayed cross-legged on the bed, head bent, letting some of what I’d just felt pour onto the page.
It was past time. My agent had phoned weeks ago saying Stella Mason (her stage name was her maiden name, Stella Gunn) of the Blue Moon Gypsies wanted another song.
She and the Gypsies had turned three of mine multi-platinum in the last four years.
They’d always only recorded their own stuff along with a number of kickass covers. It was an honor they’d branched out to me.
But Stella was also a friend. She was killer talented, so amazing onstage, it was hard to believe. She’d loved my album. Loved it. Got her hands on it and reached out to me before it was even released to connect about how much it had moved her.
And she was that one shining beacon in the life that didn’t let that life in any way consume her, chew her up, take pieces out of her.
She had her shit together. She also had a man who hung the moon for her. Not to mention, they made two babies who they doted on.
It was like that life didn’t touch her, even as entrenched in it as she was, as crazy as her band was (and they were all nutcases, lovable ones, but extreme ones).
She had the love of a good man, of her family, of good friends (some of whom I’d met) to keep her safe.
So she stayed that way.
I finished the lyrics, had set the notebook aside and was tapping them into a text to Stella when I heard a knock on the door.