Chapter 4 #2
Recklessness, or maybe desperation, had the words spilling out of me. “So what if they do? There’s gay couples out there, Granger.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “Right. Because I’m going to risk my reputation and my future and my family for the sake of a—a fuckbuddy.”
I stared at him as it finally sank in that he was serious. I’d dared to think he felt the same way about me as I did about him, but it turned out that when it came down to it, he’d choose anything but me.
Granger had already given me the metaphorical punch to the gut.
This time it was a knife. An actual knife would have been less painful.
Quicker too. And then, just when I was struggling to breathe through it, the hurt was replaced by all-consuming rage.
At Granger for his narrow, bullshit views that had him afraid to take a chance, at his parents for raising him that way, and at this whole fucked-up situation where I could never, ever be good enough.
“You know, I always thought you were different from the rest of those stuck-up assholes,” I said, shoving at his bare chest and making him stumble backward. “More fool me. Turns out you’re exactly the same.”
Hurt flashed across his face. “Don’t. Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It ain’t like you give a good goddamn what I think, is it? I’m just your fuckbuddy.” I spat the word out.
He looked at me with a wounded expression, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him.
I wanted to pull him into my arms and tell him everything would be okay, except then I remembered he was the asshole here.
He didn’t get to treat me like nothing and then act like he was the victim.
I might not have much but I had my pride, even if it was battered to shit.
Fuck ’em all to hell, as Aunt Ginny used to say.
Including Granger Kelley.
Especially Granger Kelley.
“Fuck you, Granger,” I said. “I never want to see you again.”
I shoved past him to get to my bag, slung it over my shoulder without even bothering to pull the rest of my clothes on, grabbed last night’s bottle of bourbon from the table by the couch, and walked the fuck out.
And he didn’t say a goddamned thing.
Hours later, or maybe a couple millennia, I became aware of a few things simultaneously.
The first was that I was staring up at the sky, and there was a dandelion shoved halfway up my nose.
The second was that my head was lower than the rest of me.
I appeared to be lying in a ditch with my feet mostly sticking out of it.
The third was that I stank of bourbon fumes, and the fourth was that I could hear an engine idling somewhere close by.
“You okay down there, bud?” someone called.
I squinted at the man looming over the edge of the ditch. He was maybe around forty years old. Couldn’t see much of his face because it was shadowed by the brim of his cap. He was wearing jeans and a red flannel shirt.
“Yep,” I said, though that was probably a lie.
The guy skidded down into the ditch to join me, bringing a tiny avalanche of dirt with him. He sniffed. “You drunk?”
“Not enough,” I said and closed my eyes.
He nudged my ribs with the toe of his boot. “Bit early, ain’t it?”
“Not even a little.”
The nudge turned into a kick. “Kid, get the hell up.”
Muttering under my breath, I managed to sit up. There was grit in my underwear, which seemed like the least of my problems.
The guy stared down at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Walking to town,” I said. That had been the initial plan, before it had been superseded by the one about finishing the bourbon immediately.
“Come on then,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride.”
He gave me a hand up too and then pulled me back out of the ditch and onto the side of the road with an ease that was frankly embarrassing. Or would have been if I wasn’t too drunk to care.
An old blue truck was idling there, and he nodded toward the passenger side. I climbed in, shoving a plastic cage into the middle of the bench seat.
“Jim Ross,” he said.
Out of habit, I almost said my name was Robert James Merritt. But I didn’t.
“Bobby Merritt,” I slurred at last and shook his hand. Eventually, at least, because I missed it the first couple of attempts. I caught a hint of a smile and decided I liked Jim Ross.
“You staying in town, kid?” Jim asked, pulling away from the shoulder of the road.
“Nope.” I let my head sag back, closing my eyes against a world that was still wobbly around the edges.
We drove in silence for a few minutes and I only opened my eyes when the truck came to a stop.
I peered out the window and saw we’d pulled into a small parking lot in front of a tidy little house with a sign on the front that said Dr. Jim Ross DVM.
I stared blearily at the sign and tried to get my brain in gear. “You’re a… dentist?”
Jim laughed. “Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. Although I do see a lot of teeth.”
I laughed along with him and fumbled with the door handle. When it opened, I half leaned, half fell out of the truck, ending up on my ass. Again.
Jim shook his head and reached out a hand. “Why don’t you come on inside for a bit before you hurt yourself?”
I let him pull me to my feet and stood there, swaying from side to side. Jim went back to the truck and collected the cage from the front seat. It let out a hiss.
“What’s in the box?” I asked.
Jim held it up for me so I could see through the grill on the front, and I found myself looking at a bundle of yellow fluff. “It’s a gosling. Don’t know where its mama is, but this one’s been abandoned.”
My heart swelled with sympathy. “Nobody wants you either, huh?” I said, poking a finger through the bars and stroking its fluffy yellow down.
The gosling bit me.
“Ow!’” I pulled my hand back and examined my fingertip. It wasn’t bleeding, but I got the feeling it wasn’t from lack of intent.
Jim tried and failed to hide a snort of laughter. “Sorry. She’s temperamental. Now, you coming inside?”
“Sure,” I said, barely sober enough to know I didn’t have many other options and hella drunk enough to agree to anything.
I followed Jim up the porch steps and inside, into what looked like a reception area.
He waved me through and up a set of stairs, still carrying the cage.
I followed him slowly, placing my feet carefully on each step so I didn’t end up on my ass for a third time.
When we got to the top, he led me into the living room and said, “Sit down before you fall down.”
I plonked down on an overstuffed couch and he set the cage on a coffee table in front of me, then disappeared back down the stairs.
I leaned forward and peeked in the cage again and the gosling stared back, and it felt like it was daring me to put my hand back in the cage.
“You’re gonna rule whatever roost you end up in, aren’t you? ” I said.
The goose hissed in agreement. It was only a tiny little thing, but it had attitude and I liked that. I wondered what would happen to it.
I wondered what would happen to me.
But my brain was still swimming in bourbon, and how I was getting back to Richmond was a problem for Sober Bobby—and I didn’t think that guy would be showing up any time soon.
I lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling, closing my eyes when it started spinning and doing my best to fight the waves of nausea.
I opened them again when I heard Jim come back into the room.
He was carrying a glass of water, but he took one look at me lying on the couch, shook his head, and said, “Bed.”
And that was pretty much all I remembered.
I woke up the next day with an aching head and an aching heart, both competing for the prize of which one could make me feel the worst, and at first I didn’t remember where I was. I slunk downstairs like a stray cat, following the smell of bacon to the kitchen.
“Uh, hey,” I said to Jim, remembering my manners a bit too late. “Sir.”
“Morning,” he said around a mouthful of toast. “Help yourself to breakfast. Coffee’s on the counter.
I gotta run. Got a possible case of equine colic that I sure as hell hope doesn’t turn into a twisted intestine or worse.
” He snatched up a set of keys from the table.
“If you’re sticking around, do me a favor and let the goose out for a run in the yard? ”
And then he was gone.
And hell, maybe I ought to have been going too, but I sat at the table, helped myself to breakfast, then did the dishes because my Aunt Ginny raised me right, and went looking for the little yellow fluffball of a goose.
I found the goose in her plastic cage in the laundry room, peeping like she had opinions about everything she’d seen so far. I carried the cage outside and set it down on the grass, then opened the door. The goose charged out like she was on a mission.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
The grass was wet with morning dew. I sat on the porch steps and watched the goose peck at things, chase a beetle, then stop to stare at her own reflection in a puddle.
She was a ridiculous yellow puffball with an outsized attitude.
It should have felt funnier than it did, except nothing much felt funny right now.
I kept my focus on the little goose to stop myself from thinking about Granger, which worked about as well as you’d expect.
Despite the goose’s antics, my thoughts kept buzzing right back to Granger like flies to shit.
“Lucy Goosey,” I said.
She hissed at me.
“Lucille, then. You look like a Lucille.”
She didn’t hiss at that, so it stuck.
The sun was warm on my face. The yard needed mowing. The grass was up past my ankles in places, there were drifts of leaves lying across it, and a pile of branches sat by the fence line, half-rotted. I guessed that being a veterinarian didn’t leave a lot of time for yard work.