Chapter 7 Britt #2
“You can always come to our house later if you want, Britt,” Rainbow said.
“Maybe today isn’t the best day,” Britt’s mom said.
The room grew quiet enough for all of them to hear Steve sigh. It was the first time Britt understood that her mother exhausted him too.
“Sorry,” Britt muttered to Becky.
Rainbow knelt down so she was eye level with Britt and whispered, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. We will see you soon.”
And then they left.
Britt’s mom made a show of stomping off to the master bedroom, and Steve went after her, closing the door behind him.
Britt pressed her ear to the door and held her breath in anticipation of Steve telling her mother that she had to move out.
Britt was prematurely furious with her mother for ruining this good thing they had.
Steve did not tell her mother she had to move out, though.
Instead, he apologized for not being more sensitive to her feelings and assured her that he had no romantic feelings for Rainbow, which Britt thought should have gone without saying, given that he had literally just met the woman.
Britt’s mom’s tone changed from angry to loving, and Britt stepped away from the door, unwilling to listen to any more of their nonsense.
She was relieved that Steve wasn’t ending things, but also disappointed in him for not saying what was true—Britt’s mom was impossible.
When Steve finally emerged from the room, Britt was sitting on the couch, flipping through TV channels. He sat next to her.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“You’re too nice to her,” Britt said. It felt good to say it, to trust that Steve could handle this truth.
“She needs a lot of love,” he said. “I don’t mind giving it.”
“You’ll get tired,” Britt said. “Eventually.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. He sounded so sure.
Britt pretended to watch whatever was on TV and waited for him to leave. He stayed sitting next to her, though.
“Hey, I have an idea,” he said. “You want to go shooting with me?”
Steve was a gun man. He owned several and kept them locked in a cabinet in the garage, taking one or two out with him each weekend to shoot at an outdoor range a half hour away.
Britt had asked to hold one once before, and he’d let her.
She’d loved the feel of it in her hands, the sense of power it gave her. It was rare for Britt to feel power.
“Seriously?” Britt asked.
“Seriously,” Steve said.
“Mom will let me?”
Steve shrugged. “We’ll just tell her we’re going out for a bite to eat. She wants to nap anyway.”
This, the white lie shared between them, gave her a sense of power too.
They took his truck out to Swakane Canyon, which he said was his favorite place to go shooting. He spent the drive telling Britt about the guns he’d brought with him that day—a Steyr AUG rifle and a 1911 handgun.
“The AUG is a real special one,” he said. “Stands for Army Universal Gewehr. Gewehr’s the German word for ‘rifle.’ Came out in the seventies, but looks futuristic. You seen Die Hard?”
“The movie?”
“With Bruce Willis.”
“No,” Britt said.
“Well, that’s another thing we gotta do. But anyway, the Steyr AUG’s in that movie. That’s why I wanted one. Stupid reason, I guess.”
Britt shrugged. “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem that stupid.”
“The price tag was stupid, that’s for sure,” he said with a laugh.
“Who taught you to shoot?”
“My granddad. When I was about your age, in fact.”
Britt hadn’t thought much about Steve’s family, about the fact that there were people in his life besides Britt and her mother.
“Your dad didn’t shoot?” Britt asked him.
“Never met him,” Steve said. “Was just me and my mom.”
He took his eyes off the road for a moment to wink at her, acknowledging that they had this in common.
Nobody else was at the shooting range when they arrived. There was nothing fancy about the place—a concrete slab with a wooden roof structure over it, five designated lanes for shooters, targets off in the distance.
“Which one you want to try first?” Steve asked.
Britt assessed what was in front of her—the large, intimidating rifle and the small pistol. She surprised herself by saying, “The big one.”
Steve gave her a lesson on the different parts of a gun—stock, barrel, receiver, muzzle, action, sight. He showed her how to load the magazine, how to hold the rifle so that the butt of it was pressed into the meat of her shoulder. He warned her that she might have a bruise there later.
He put up papers with black silhouettes of human torsos as the targets, then handed her a pair of earmuffs, warning her that it would be loud. He put on a pair for himself too.
“You ready to take your first shot?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m right here,” he said. “You’re safe.”
She nodded, believing him.
He kept one hand on the rifle, one hand on her to steady her.
“Now, look through your sight there. You see the red dot?”
She could hear her blood pulsing through her ears as she said, “Yes.”
“Okay then, on three.”
He counted to three, and she pulled the trigger with her shaky hand. The sound of it, the bang, was louder than she expected, even with the earmuffs.
“Nice!” he said.
She had no idea if the bullet had even hit the target. She was too busy assessing her own well-being. Had she somehow hurt herself? After a moment, she realized she was fine—still shaky, but fine.
“Right in the heart,” he said.
That was when she saw that her bullet had gone right into the middle of the torso.
It was an odd thing to be excited about—killing this representation of a person—but she felt elated to have Steve’s approval.
It had been a lucky shot; she didn’t tell him, but she’d closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger that first time.
But she decided she could be good at this, if she tried. She decided she would make him proud.
Shooting in Swakane Canyon became a weekly outing for them. They told Britt’s mom they were going out for ice cream and then ventured out together for a couple of hours. Every time, Steve imparted some kind of wisdom—often about guns, sometimes about life.
Britt had been living in Steve’s house, with her very own room, for nearly a year when he told her, during one of their shooting trips, that he was thinking of proposing to Britt’s mom.
“Oh wow,” Britt said.
In all honesty, she thought Steve was too good for her mom.
Granted, her mom had cleaned up her act since meeting Steve.
After witnessing a bout of The Darkness, he’d taken Britt’s mom to the doctor.
Britt didn’t know what was prescribed, but whatever it was helped.
Steve doled out the pills every night at dinner, and her mother took them without a fight.
She didn’t drink as much—a beer or wine cooler a few times a week.
She didn’t have as many wild outbursts. Still, Britt didn’t trust it.
She’d never known one of these good stretches to last long.
“I suppose I’m asking your permission,” Steve said.
Britt raised her eyebrows at him. “My permission?”
She was just a kid. Since when did he need her approval?
“Well, yeah,” he said with a laugh.
She was flattered, had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling too big. It felt too vulnerable, too scary, to let him see how happy he made her.
“You have my permission,” she said with a nod.
She wanted to ask if his marrying her mom would mean he would be her dad. Would he adopt her, make it official? Just thinking about it, she bit the insides of her cheeks again.
“Thank you, my dear,” he said with a playful bow.
“When are you going to do it?”
“As soon as I get the ring. Put a down payment on it last week. Paying the rest next week.”
“Wow,” she said again.
They took a few shots—he with the 1911, she with the Steyr AUG.
“Not every woman has to get married, you know,” he said. “But I think your mother is better off with me around.”
“Oh, she definitely is,” Britt said.
“I’m quite sure you will do just fine in life with or without a man by your side.”
Britt hadn’t thought much about her future at that point, hadn’t considered marriage. She took note of what he was saying, though.
“Just look at you with the guns. You’re a quick study,” he said. “You’re smart. You can do anything you want in this life. I’m not sure of much, but I’m sure of that.”
She thought back to first grade, when she’d said she wanted to be famous. She shook her head at her younger self. But secretly, she still felt she was destined for something special, something she couldn’t quite conceive of yet. Steve seemed to see it too.
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
“Just wait,” he said. “You’re going to do big things, and I’ll be applauding on the sidelines.”