“That’s all. I swear.”
When the box was about a foot from her hands, she lunged, snatched it right out of my hands, and dodged back toward the dumpster. She cradled the box like it was a baby and leaned into the dumpster. As she decided which doughnut to devour first, she kept one eye on me, watching, waiting, like it wasn’t a matter of if but when I’d do something underhanded to her. After settling on an apple fritter, she downed that sucker in three bites. She was on to her second fritter before I’d released the breath I’d been holding.
“If you’re going to stand there gaping at me all night, talk or something.” Chunks of doughnut shot out of her mouth.
“Talk about . . . what?” Dammit. I was seriously in the running for most moronic things to say to one person.
“Something. Anything. I don’t care. I don’t have conversations with a person on the other side that often, you know.” Two doughnuts down, on to the third.
“A person on the other side?” I might as well keep with the moron-trend. “What other side?”
“Disillusionment.” She actually stopped chewing to issue that show-stopper.
I thought over my response—I really thought it over—but one question kept sliding to the tip of my tongue. “And who’s the one on the side of disillusionment?”
“The one who’s convinced life can be a fairy tale.”
I was silent for a few moments. Maybe she mistook that as me deciding how to form my rebuttal.
“In case you’re trying to work out which one of us believes in fairy tales, let me tell you something, Girlie. Fairy tales have been dead to me since before you were even born.”
“I don’t believe in fairy tales. I believe in making my own damn tale.”
The woman laughed manically between bites. “You and every one of us at some time. It doesn’t last.”
“What doesn’t last? The idea or the reality?”
“Both.”
I suppose if our roles were reversed and I was rolling around in a dumpster for dinner, I might have been just as doom and gloom. Hell, I’d been a numb version of doom and gloom a year ago. I wasn’t that person anymore though, and I wouldn’t go back.
“And don’t get to kiddin’ yourself that because you’ve found a little patch of perfect that life’s going to keep on keepin’ on in the same way.” I’d lost track of her doughnut count, but it certainly didn’t look like she was slowing down. “Perfect isn’t real.”
“I’ve known that for a while. Perfect’s fake.” That wasn’t a revelation.
“Not fake.” For the first time, she lowered her doughnut and leveled me with a wild look in her eyes. “Just not of our world.”
That was probably the point when I should have smiled, waved good-bye, and left the woman to her doughnuts. As time proved, I rarely went with what I “probably” should have done. “Perfect’s not of . . . our world?”
She shook her head once, her eyes going up a notch on the wild scale.
“Then what world is perfect of?” It was official. I sounded like the newest member of the head-case club.
Clutching the doughnut box with one arm, she used her other to point at the ground. Her hand trembled.
“The asphalt? Perfect comes from the asphalt?” Yeah, I realized how stupid that sounded.
The woman’s head shook as she pointed more firmly at the ground.
“The dirt?” One quick shake of her head. “The seismic plates?” Another shake. “The molten core of the earth?”
I knew with each guess I was getting farther and farther off my rocker, but I wasn’t sure where she was going. For being such a chatty thing earlier, she wasn’t saying much anymore.
She stuck her finger at the ground one last time before letting out a long sigh. I was obviously hopeless. “The dark place. The place of eternal damnation.”
“Hell? Are you talking about hell?”
A nod. It was about time.
“Do you mean that in the figurative or literal sense?” I was almost afraid to have that question answered.
“Both.”
And that was my crazy tolerance point. I didn’t do the whole heaven and hell, saved and damned song and dance. She could keep up the conversation with the dozen doughnuts I guessed she had left. I was just about back inside Mojo when she spoke again.
“Just because you refuse to see something doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“And just because you think you see something doesn’t mean it’s real either.” I wasn’t racking up points in the let-crazy-be department, but something about her last words had unsettled me.
“At last, we agree, Girlie.” Her voice wasn’t shaking anymore. In fact, if I hadn’t seen her before, with my back to her, I would have guessed she was a sweater-set wearing mom of three. “Just because you’ve convinced you love and are loved in a way that seems like it will go on forever doesn’t mean it will. That’s not real either. There’s no such thing as expiration-free love.”
I was really regretting not escaping when I’d gone for it. Why did crazy people have to make so much sense?
Oh, yeah. Because the world was one sick, crazy fuck most of the time.
I WOULD HAVE thought each twelve-hour trek on the good ol’ Greyhound would get easier, or less traumatic at least, but the opposite seemed to be true. When I lumbered off the bus, I was half tempted to buy one of those reliable, five-hundred-thousand miles to the gallon cars Jesse had encouraged me to pick up at the beginning of the year. Anything to keep from cramming in between a couple of linebacker-sized guys who thought eau de funk was that season’s scent.
I wasn’t last off the bus, but I still received my share of stares. I didn’t get nearly as many sideways glances when I was getting off in Seattle, but out there . . . well, my funky, dark style hadn’t made its way east yet.
In honor of Montana, I had on the cowgirl boots Jesse had gotten me last summer. Since, wonder of wonders, the weather was almost summer-like, I had on a purple shift dress, the beat-to-shit motorcycle jacket I’d found at the Salvation Army last fall, and the denim ass purse (as I’d endearingly named it). After enduring two quarters of my natural hair color, I’d colored it darker again. Not black like before and not because I was trying to hide behind it. Because . . . well, I wanted to and I could. Jesse didn’t care what color hair I had so long as I had some. Actually, he probably wouldn’t have cared if my hair fell out. He was all noble like that.
I was the second to last person to step off the bus—small victories—and took in a long, deep breath. Montana still smelt a bit like cow shit, but nothing beat the feeling of stepping onto Montana soil and breathing its air while knowing my favorite people in the whole world were within arm’s reach.
“There’s a pair of legs a man could never forget.”
Okay, some of my favorite people in the world. And some of my not-so-favorite.
“And there’s a face a woman wished she could.”
“Rowen Sterling,” he said with his dark smile. In his dark clothes. With his dark ways.
“Garth Black. Minus the enthusiasm.” I made sure not to return his smile. Garth and I had made some serious progress in the friendship department, but it was kind of a contest to see who’d blink first. Instead of blinking, the loser was the first one to smile . . . and not that curved-at-the-corners one he flashed most of the time. The emotion behind that was the opposite of a smile. We were talking about whoever cracked a real, honest-to-goodness smile aimed at the other person first. “Where’s Jesse?” He’d always picked me up. He’d always been the first person I saw when I stepped off the bus. He would beam and wave, with a new white tee and still fresh from the shower. It was actually one of my favorite sights: Jesse Walker in all his glory waiting for me.
My second favorite sight? The view later that night when everyone else was asleep.
“Emergency.” Garth lifted a shoulder and snagged my giant black duffel from the storage compartment.
I froze. “What kind of
emergency?” So many different kinds of emergencies could crop up from the kind of work he did that I’d started having recurring nightmares. Getting stampeded by the cattle, getting bucked off a horse over the edge of a cliff, and the most gruesome one of all gave away that I’d seen way too many horror movies in my lifetime—Jesse tripping and falling chest-first into a pitchfork. I woke up in a cold sweat whenever I had that one.
“Relax, señorita. No emergency involving Jesse or any part of his body you like to get freaky with.”
His reassurance, pithy as it was, unfroze me. “What happened then? Who was involved? Are they going to be all right?” I slid up beside Garth and matched his pace into the parking lot.
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t think to ask?” My eyes were scanning for Old Bessie. When I realized that would be the first drive from the bus station to Willow Springs I’d taken without the ancient rust-can, I felt a little . . . sad.
“Nope.”
“Really?”
“Nope.”
“Anything other than nope you’d like to add?”
“Nope,” he replied, his eyes gleaming.
I groaned. Of course I’d be stuck with the most cryptic cowboy ever created when the words Jesse and emergency had come up. Again. It wasn’t the first time those two words had been joined. Even though it didn’t involve him directly, I hoped I’d never have to hear them combined again.
“Listen, before you go and start ripping out that once-again dark hair of yours, here’s the deal. Jesse called me a couple of hours ago, said there’d been an emergency and he might not be able to get here soon enough to pick you up. He asked if yours truly,”—Garth stuck his thumb into his chest—“would swoop in, save the day, and pick you up. End of story. Any questions?”
I felt a little better. If the emergency Jesse was a bystander in could be fixed in a couple hours, lost limbs, pints of blood loss, and bullets wouldn’t have been involved. I hoped. “That’s all he said? There wasn’t anything else?”
We stopped at the tailgate of an older Ford pickup. From the color, I had a pretty good guess who its owner was.
“Yeah. There was something else.” Garth lifted his brows and waited.
“I’m dying here, Black.” I crossed my arms and leaned into the truck.
“He said to keep my hands, booze, and cock to myself or he’d rip me a new one.”
I crossed my arms tighter and gave him a stern look.
“Fine. He didn’t say cock. Only a real man with a legitimate one uses cock when speaking about what swings between the knees. I think Jesse said little willy or wee one or something like that.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re way too fixated on what you wish swung between your knees?” I lifted a brow at him.
He lifted two at me. “Here’s a secret, Rowen. All men, every single one, are fixated on their johnsons. Anyone who tells you they aren’t are full of bull—” Garth stopped himself, bit the inside of his cheek, and seemed to be working out something. “Full of it. Yeah, they’re full of it.”
“Thank you, edited version of Garth Black.” I shot him a curious look. “If there’s nothing else you’d like to add to this scintillating conversation, mind if we head out?” I started for the passenger door when Garth dramatically cleared his throat.
“Actually, there is something I’d like to add.”
Of course there was. “What?”
“Wanna repeat that night of booze, lawn chairs, and moaning over an almost kiss?” His smile was so wide, his teeth lit up the night.
“Wanna keep your testicles?” I smiled a just as fake and overdone smile as the one coming at me.
“Only on days that end in y.” Garth chuckled and tossed my bag into the bed of his truck. It didn’t make the thumping sound I was used to hearing when my bag was tossed into the bed of a truck. No, it made something more muffled, almost noiseless. I peeked in the back as I stepped up inside of the cab. Well, that would explain it.
“Dost my eyes deceive me or is that a mattress in the bed of your truck?”
“Your eyes dost not deceive you.” Garth slid into the driver’s seat.
“Why?” I asked needlessly, twisting around and fastening my belt.
Garth grinned into the windshield. “What do you think a guy like me would be doing with a mattress in the bed of my truck?”
My nose curled. “Filthy things, me thinks.”
“The filthier the better.” Garth waggled his eyebrows at me before peeling out of the parking lot. I might have missed Montana every minute I was away from it, but I did not miss the drivers.
A rare few minutes of silence passed. The dark roads and the truck’s gentle vibrations were lulling me to sleep. Since I’d closed the night before at the doughnut shop, I hadn’t gotten home until almost two in the morning. My bus left at seven, so that left three, maybe four hours of sleep time . . . which I had gotten maybe fifteen minutes of thanks to the crazy lady crawling out of the dumpster and saying bat-shit crazy things that kept me up all night.
“So? How are the nuptials coming along? Picked out your colors yet?”
I cranked the window down halfway. It was getting a little Garth heavy inside the cab. “So? How’s your right hand? Fed up with you yet?”
“I’m left-handed.”
I rolled my eyes. “How’s your left hand?”
“Truthfully?” He lifted said hand and turned it over, inspecting it. “A little neglected.”
“What poor girl are you seeing this month who’s going to get a restraining order next month?”
Garth swung around a corner at such a hell-raising speed, I checked to make sure we hadn’t lost my duffel. “You change that girl to the plural form, and I’ll give you a list of names. The ones I remember.”
“Wow. Someone’s really taken their exaggeration tendencies to a whole new level.”
Garth tilted his head back and laughed a few hard notes. “I don’t know what we do without you, Rowen. My confidence was almost back to its prior glory before you stepped off that bus and started firing insult after insult my way.”
“Someone has to keep that Zeus complex of yours from getting out of control.”
“Getting out of control?” Garth’s tone gave me the verbal equivalent of a nudge.
“Getting more out of control,” I clarified.
“Speaking of getting out of control, that reminds me . . .” I was already cringing. I’d learned that when “that reminds me” came out of Garth Black’s mouth with that level of sarcasm, nothing good could come of it. “Jesse mentioned a T.A. slash friend of yours who hooked you up with some last minute sweet art gig . . . show . . . rodeo . . . thing.”
“Art rodeo? Really, Black?”
“I don’t know what all you art people call your snooz-fest get-togethers. Give me a break, Rowen. I don’t speak Lame.”
“And I don’t speak Idiot,” I grumbled. Next time Jesse couldn’t pick me up and Garth Black showed up in his place, I was hitching a ride back to Willow Springs. Or hoofing it.
“Your eagerness to dodge the topic leads me to the conclusion that you’re uncomfortable talking about a certain T.A. slash friend.”
Oh, dear sweet Jesus. “Jax?” I twisted in my seat. “Are you talking about Jax?”
“Yep. That’s the one.” Garth snapped his fingers. “That’s the little fu . . .” Garth froze with his mouth open. The skin between his eyebrows came together. “Fu fu, fu, fu-fu-fu . . .” He was truly at a loss. It was a rare moment to witness with Garth Black. I was going to bask in it.
“Fu, fu, fu . . . fucker? Is that the word you were going for? Because that’s one of the few that always seems to be on the tip of your tongue.”
“That’s the one,” Garth said, able to form words again.
“And you were having a tough time saying it because . . .?”
After a few moments of deliberation, he hit the stee
ring wheel. “Because Jesse and I made a bet.”
“A bet?” Oh, great. That ought to be good.
“Yes. A bet. We’ve been sitting a lot of night-watches in the fields, and I guess he was worn out on my proclivity toward profanity and I was bored as all fu—” He caught himself again but just barely.
“I don’t know whether to be more impressed that you haven’t said your favorite word in the past twenty minutes or that you just used—correctly—the word proclivity.”
“Be impressed by it all. There’s plenty of it to go around when I’m close by.”
“Enough self-trumpeting. Get back to this bet.”
Garth sped through Willow Springs’s front entrance so fast I almost missed it. “What’s there to get back to? Jesse bet me I wouldn’t be able to give up cussing for a whole month, and I bet him that he wouldn’t be able to give up . . .” A lopsided smile twisted into place.
“That he wouldn’t be able to give up what?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out. The important part is that I will be declared the victor come morning because there is no way Walker will be able to hold up his end of the bet tonight. The past couple of weeks, no big deal, but tonight? He’s totally fu—” That was getting old fast. “Foiled. Tonight he’s totally foiled.”
“Foiled? What the hell, Black? Who are you and where did the hick go?”
“Oh, Rowen, finally. My self-esteem is back in the sewer where it belongs. Thank you.” Garth slammed the truck’s brakes in front of the house. The porch lights were glowing, and soft yellow light streamed from all of the windows. Even the one at the top, next to the chimney. I smiled, remembering dozens of the nights worth remembering. “Oh, and thank you for real for being the reason I’m going to wake up the winner of this bet. I owe you one.”
“No, you won’t owe me one. Now that I know about this bet between you boys, I’ll do everything I can to make sure Jesse comes out on the winning side.” I threw open the door and set foot on Willow Springs soil. I had to fight the urge to get down and kiss it.