Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“Until you showed me a little girl’s hopes and dreams for a place just like this cut and pasted in a scrapbook.”
She shook her head, her eyes misting again, but his lips pressed to hers, and like butter warmed in the sun, she couldn’t help but melt. Couldn’t help but lean into him, take from his well of resolve.
“What do I possibly give you?” she finally breathed.
His lips mashed to hers, kissed harder, kissed rougher.
“A reason.” He deepened his kiss. “To do better. To be better. To have more from this life.” His tongue pushed through her lips, dancing with hers as he tilted her head.
“I ain’t ever had anything to offer a girl before, to make her wanna stay.
But that night … I thought of here. And I knew I’d found the perfect fit for me, if only I could be the perfect fit for you—”
And like that, this desire to override all good sense and ride the high of a perfect evening and just, give into it all, nipped at her.
Just let go and relax, as Heart would tell her to do. Ride the wave instead of overanalyze it for all the ways it could churn her beneath the undertow.
He turned her against the wall, cradling her cheeks, leaning her back against the paneling as she hooked an ankle around his calf and felt his rumble of appreciation as he pressed his groin against her hip and thigh—
“Oh, I see why y’all came inside now,” Jack joked as the screen door banged.
“Tryin’ to sweeten the deal, T.R.?” Bo added on a laugh.
“Cock blocked I swear these eff-ers,” Thad breathed against her lip, pressing his forehead into hers far more tenderly than his words implied, and she burst out laughing, pushing him off her.
He stepped back amid the chuckles of his bandmates in the doorway, loaded with used cans and plates as Thad swiped his thumb across his lower lip to push away the glaze of his kiss, and yet, he held her gaze, uncertainty lingering there.
“She ain’t convinced yet,” Thad said, eyes moving around her face to read her. “Something’s holding her back.”
“Man, Charlie, we need you,” Jack said, ever playful, and yet, sincere. “My social post is blowing up. People are real excited for what you’re gonna bring to the table.”
“I’m just a single mom who grows extinct plants and teaches about fossils.”
“And I’m just a farm grunt who tinkers under a hood who was kicked out at sixteen without a GED,” Thad said.
“And me, just an owner of an auto parts yard and a food truck, a single dad and a widow, who happens to be T.R.’s cousin through his momma,” Jack said, shrugging. “Bo here’s a rodeo bullfighter who came here as a two-year-old with no one and nothing.”
“It ain’t the big leagues we all once dreamed about,” Thad said, “but it’s ours, in defiance of all the bullshit we’ve gone through.
It ain’t about the spotlight. It’s about living the dream instead of just dreaming, even if life hands you shit and no one’s in the audience listening, because to stop playing is to stop dreaming, which lets the bad guys win. ”
She thought on their words of wisdom. Who had been the bad guys Thad couldn’t let win? His parents? Something else? Had Jack’s demons stemmed from a lost wife? And Bo, it was hard to tell. Had he been an orphan? He’d come here as a toddler? From where?
“At least…” Thad said, such boyish hopefulness on his face, it reminded her of that morning, when all he’d wanted to do was take her out for grits and had hoped she’d say yes. He leaned into her ear and whispered, “Don’t let Jason win.” He pulled back. “I’ll go get my girlie. You get her bag.”
“Better round up my boys and hit the road too,” Jack said. “We gonna jam one more time before Friday?”
Thad nodded.
Bo knocked back the last of his water bottle and crunched it into the recycling, as all three guys exited the back door, leaving her alone with her thoughts and Thad’s words on her mind.
She picked up the backpack, when a splash of lavender construction paper caught her eye. Hanging on Thad’s fridge beneath the loft, she pivoted away from the door. An empty Reese’s Pieces wrapper was taped to the card. Unicorns eating candies in haphazard colors of yellows and browns and orange.
Can’t remember the last time anyone gave me a gift besides my sisters.
When was the last time she’d seen Jason display any of Daisy’s art?
When was the last time Daisy’s made him anything?
Daisy had never delivered her Father’s Day card to him either—he’d not shown up that weekend while she’d sat by the window in the living room with the card covered in silver glitter dried in puddles of Elmer’s glue.
And yet here, in this nucleus of childhood memories, Daisy’s picture sat on display.
Just like a dad would do. Even the wrapper.
His reason, whispered the tiny voice in the back of her head that wanted desperately to trust him, to let him in.
Because when she looked at this piece of art on his fridge, it looked like a tiny root twining itself into the ground from seeds planted by a man thrown away far too young, who was tired of drifting.