It wasn’t Carrie’s birthday but she liked to celebrate birthdays. If they didn’t do hers, then they had to celebrate his—which he hadn’t done since Jacob left.
Char had brought a roll of quarters and they loaded up the jukebox with ’80s hair-band songs, and then they sang each and every one word for word. Char had them using spoons for microphones and she even got up on a table to dance—until her boyfriend and Cedar Ridge equipment manager, Marcus, got her down.
“Enough beer for you,” he said.
Char beamed at him. She and Carrie were a huge hit and it took another hour to get them out of there.
“Best birthday ever,” Carrie said on the way home. She always said that.
When Hud got her tucked in, she smiled hopefully.
Hud dropped a wrapped present in front of her and she clapped in delight. “Oh, baby! You shouldn’t have!”
She always said that, too, every single week. The presents he gave her ranged from her favorite candy bar to movie tickets to a preloaded Visa that she could use online, though right now she had his credit card—which he needed to get back from her. They were going with preloaded from now on.
She squealed and nearly pierced his eardrums. She’d opened the iPod that he’d filled with her favorite music because she refused to listen to music on her phone. She saved her phone battery for “talking and shopping.”
“Oh, Hud!” she cried. “You shouldn’t have, but I’m so happy you did!” She shook the thing and he realized she had no idea what it was.
“It’s an iPod, Mom. For your music.”
“Well, I know that!” She stopped shaking it and held it up to her ear.
He found a smile. “Want me to turn it on for you?”
“No, I’ve got it. I love it, Hud.” As she always did, she carefully folded the wrapping paper into a square and untangled the ribbon, both of which he’d stolen from Kenna’s desk drawer.
He stood to leave, watching while his mom turned the iPod over and over. “The power button’s on the side,” he said, and tried to show her but she clutched it to her chest.
“I’ve got it!”
He had to laugh. He and Jacob were both stubborn to the end. The apples hadn’t fallen far from the tree. But this part of the visit with his mom always made him feel awkward. They hadn’t done presents when they were little. She’d never been able to keep dates straight. So that had meant no birthday celebrations, no Easter. No Christmas. At least not on the correct dates. He and Jacob had done their best to keep some semblance of normalcy, but they’d had their hands full with things like making sure bills had been paid and that they had food and a roof over their heads. Holidays and birthdays had been a luxury they’d never given themselves.
Which reminded him what he’d seen on his Visa bill. “Mom, did you order water balloons from Amazon?”
She pretended to be vastly interested in something on the iPod. He was pretty sure she still hadn’t gotten it turned on but there was no way she’d admit it. “Mom?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t think so. Why would I do that? You’re a grown man.”
Okay so she was with it tonight. Or at least at the moment. And if she was, then he had another question for her. “And cigars?”
“Of course not,” she said, now shaking the iPod like it was an Etch A Sketch. “You can’t smoke at your age.”
And there went the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reality portion of the evening…
Bailey got out of Denver on Friday heading toward Cedar Ridge only to get stuck in mountain traffic, all of them slowed down by unexpected icy conditions. It stressed her out making the drive at night on the windy mountain roads, and she white-knuckled it the whole way. By the time she got to Cedar Ridge, she literally fell out of her car and into her unit.
And slept straight through until her phone beeped an incoming text from Aaron the next morning.
You never texted me that you’d arrived in C.R. last night. Let us know you’re safe or I’m coming up to find you.
I’m fine, she quickly texted him back, hating the royal use of the “us”—which in this case meant Aaron and her mom.
They were quite the pair.
It drove her nuts in the worst way. She felt like such a jerk, but she hated that Aaron was still close to her mom. He’d friended her on Facebook and she kept him up to date on all things Bailey.
She got that there’d been a time when the two of them had needed each other, when they’d been each other’s support system, when they’d taken turns going to the doctor with Bailey and compared notes on everything from her mood to her temperature to her numbers to her damn bodily functions.
But these things weren’t necessary anymore.
She was fine.
She was more than fine. She was alive and planning on staying that way.
And yet they still maintained that unhealthy link, even now when she and Aaron were no longer seeing each other.
It didn’t work for her on any level. She was tired of trying to convince them both separately and as a team that she was not working herself into an early grave, that she was loving her choices. They both meant a lot to her, a whole lot, but she and Aaron had broken up for a reason.
He was a saver.