“You’re just going to stay here?” she asked, brows arched. “Waiting for me?”
“That’s the plan,” I said, knowing full well only idiots sold guarantees on the future. I could plan all I wanted, but I wasn’t a damn fortune-teller. “We’ll be together someday. When the time is right. That much I know.”
I couldn’t have Dakota resenting me someday for messing up her future or asking her to wash her hands of her hopes and dreams because we were too scared to be apart for a few years.
I kissed her that afternoon with the kind of fervor of a soldier going off to war, attempting to preserve in my memory everything about how she tasted and smelled and the way her soft cheek felt under the palm of my hand.
She pulled away from me, her eyes glassy, and she bit her bottom lip the way she did when she was stuck thinking about something.
“You okay?” I brushed a wisp of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear.
“I’m scared, Beau,” she sighed, her eyes falling to the woven fabric of the bench seat. She picked at a loose strand with her fingers and tried pulling it up. “I can’t imagine my life without you. You sure you can’t come with me?”
“Baby, you’re going to be fine,” I assured her. “I can’t leave Dad without help like that. And you don’t need me distracting you from your studies.”
Her eyes floated up to mine and her lip trembled for a split second. “Can we talk on the phone every night?”
“You can call me as much as you need,” I laughed. “But I have a feeling you’ll be so busy you’ll forget all about me after the first week.”
She scooted closer to me, slipping her arm under mine and resting her cheek against my shoulder. I could’ve sworn I felt her breathe me in.
“Just don’t go looking for a Beau replacement,” I teased, though I wasn’t really joking. The thought of her looking at another man the way she looked at me twisted my insides, and picturing another man touching her the way I touched her made my blood boil with an unstoppable fury. I pressed my lips into her forehead, kissing her and branding her all at the same time.
“There isn’t any man who could ever replace you. You know that.”
“We’ll be together again,” I promised her once last time. “When the time is right.”
Chapter Ten
“Hi, Mom…” I stepped carefully across the leaning deck and showed myself into the little blue steel trailer that occupied the last lot in the Sunrise Terrace trailer court. “You home?”
“Hi, Dakota, I’m in here,” she called from down the hall.
I stepped through the living room and ambled down the short hall, passing the little bedroom I’d shared with Addison once upon a time. The door was cracked half open, and all I could see were stacked boxes and piles of random junk covering our beds and overflowing onto every square inch of the dingy brown carpet. An uncomfortable shiver passed through me as I headed straight back to Mom’s room.
“Not working today?” I asked, standing in her doorway and peering around her messy room. The musty scent of unwashed bedding filled my lungs as Mom lay in bed under a mountain of covers with Jerry Springer playing in the background on her 20” T.V.
“Playing hooky,” she laughed as she tossed a potato chip into her mouth from a bag resting beside her. “My back hurts from filing all week. I found some Vicodin in the cupboard, so I thought I’d give myself a day off and recover.”
“Dr. Comrie isn’t going to fire you for calling in, is he?” Her flippant attitude left me with the impression that calling in sick wasn’t a big deal to her. Then again, she’d always been that way.
“He doesn’t need me.” Her eyes were glassy and vacant, her voice monotone. “He’s got his dental hygienist and dental assistants and insurance coordinator. I just file everything. All day long.”
“How’s Vince? You see him anymore?”
“Oh, God no.” She wrinkled her nose before yelling something at the T.V. as a fight ensued between two balding men fighting over a pregnant lady.
“You get your dress yet for Addison’s wedding?” I silently willed her to pay attention to me and not the T.V., but she was too tuned out. “Only two more weeks to go.”
A girl would’ve figured her mother would be more excited to see her, especially when she came home maybe twice in an entire decade. Tammy Lynn’s tuned-out exterior reminded me that she was just a shell. She’d always been a shell. She’d forever be a shell.
“She sent me a couple. I haven’t tried them on yet.” She popped another greasy chip into her mouth and wiped her lips on the back of her hand. Dirty blonde hair hung in her face and she whipped her head to move it from her eyes. Funny how a year ago she was prancing around like Betty Crocker in her J.C. Penney twinsets and talking about baking birthday cakes. Her marriage to Vince Van Cleef may have been short-lived, but it gave me a glimpse of the mom we’d always wanted to have. But she felt forcibly awkward and as foreign as a stranger who spoke a different language. In a weird way, it was nice having the old Tammy Lynn back. Out of everything that had changed in Darlington, Tammy Lynn had remained one-hundred-percent the same.
“I was going to see if you maybe wanted to get dinner tonight,” I said. “My treat?”
I glanced around the tornado-stricken mess that was my mother’s bedroom in search of anything masculine but found nothing. Her entire life, she’d barely gone a month or two without a boyfriend of some sort. It appeared as if she were actually single. Or between relationships. Addison would get a kick out of that.
“Oh, baby, that’s very nice of you, but I can’t go out since I called in sick,” she said, swatting her hand as if my offer physically lingered in the air between us. “How’s old Beaumont doing, huh?”
She turned to face me, her eyes lighting up a bit as a devious grin captured her mouth, and I cringed as I recalled her desperate attempts to flirt with him when we were younger. He always entertained her and flirted back, and we’d laugh about it when she wasn’t around.
“He’s married now, right?” Mom said, scratching the side of her head. “Some girl named Dixie. Or maybe she was a Dixie Chick. No, maybe her name was Daisy.”
“What are you talking about? He lives up at his parents’ ranch alone.” I’d have noticed if there was any hint of a wife or girlfriend in his life.
Mom pursed her lips and stared off to her left. “I ran into Ivy last year. Or maybe the year before. I’m pretty sure she said he was getting married. Hmm. Must’ve called it off.”
She shrugged and lifted the remote as the end credits flashed across the screen.
“Hmm, what else is on,” she mumbled under her breath. She must’ve flipped through one-hundred-twenty channels before settling on a Lifetime movie about an upper class alcoholic husband who pimped out his trophy wife to pay off his gambling debts.
“Okay, Mom, I’m going to head out now. I’m in town until Saturday. Call me if you need anything.”