7. Tyler
SEVEN
TYLER
"Sheesh, who pissed in your cereal?” Dad asks. I hate when he does that shit. Instead of acknowledging that I might have a valid reason to be in a bad mood, he dismisses it by poking fun at it.
I love my dad. I do. I’m glad he’s around to help with Ellie, see her grow up. But sometimes I wish he’d just shut the hell up.
And yet, I want to talk this out with him, because as much as I hate to admit it, he usually has something smart to say.
“Why does she want to play with her?”
“By she and her, I presume you mean Ellie and Becca.”
I toss my wrench down and stand back. “Of all the people for her to want to hang out with, why does she have to latch onto her?”
“Becca’s a sweetheart and you know it. She’s a bit unconventional—”
I’m not going to stand here while my dad belittles the role Becca has played in my life, and indirectly, in Ellie’s life. “She’s a bad influence, Dad.”
“Becca’s harmless,” he calls from the next bay over.
“She smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish.”
Dad goes quiet, and I know I should’ve held my tongue.
Dad’s a regular at the local bar Becca frequents, and is quite fond of her and her mamaw too.
Everyone seems to be willing to overlook Becca’s shortcomings in favor of all her winks and sassy jokes.
All I can see is the way she fucked up my life.
That doesn’t mean I was some saint. I had my vices, and those vices led me here: twenty-seven years old, a single dad, and living in the shitty apartment above my shop until I can get the shop’s finances in better shape.
If I can get the shop’s finances in better shape.
Dad’s already taking a reduced salary so I can take more for El and me.
He and my mom are in the house I grew up in, fully paid off, and Mom still works too.
Dad does what he can, but he’s slowed down a lot in his work and he never was that good at the business end of things.
Dad gave out discounts left and right and was almost always in arrears with a supplier.
While he was yucking it up with his buddies, I saw the writing on the wall.
Dad couldn’t be in charge of the money or we’d both be without a job in a year’s time.
That made me the asshole at the tender age of nineteen, because I cracked down on Dad’s lax accounting.
But being only nineteen, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing either.
Choices I made then are still catching up to us now, but I try to keep Dad in the dark about it.
The reality is, to save money, you have to have money.
I could save on bulk parts and get better rates from the suppliers, but that would imply I had the cash to put up.
I’ve talked to the people at the bank more times than I care to count, but it all comes down to one thing: not enough collateral.
I’d be putting the whole shop on the line and they’d still need more.
I could ask Dad to cosign, but I’d never forgive myself if my parents lost their house and we lost the garage.
So we continue to scrape by, and Dad continues to lightly ride my ass about trivial shit, not knowing how much I’m doing for him.
“It’s probably good for Ellie to spend time with a woman.”
Well, that’s not trivial. That’s a shot right to the heart.
Ellie spends time with Miss Kristen and her classmates in the morning, and then it's me and Dad until he goes home. Then it's just the two of us, and the constant question of whether I’m doing this right.
My parents watch Ellie on Sundays sometimes, the only day my mom doesn’t work.
She devotes half the day to church, where she always “prays for CJ.” She brings it up almost every time I see her, which makes me want to see her even less.
I don’t want Ellie to hear her mom talked about like that, and I’m honestly tired of talking about someone who’s been gone for three years.
It’s driven a wedge between us to the point that Ellie’s relationship with her meemaw is hanging by a thread at best.
I check my phone. It's been seventeen minutes since I heard from Becca. Then, it was a picture of Ellie lying in the grass on her back next to T-Bone, who was also on her back with her paws to the sky.
Ellie looks really, almost painfully happy. Is it Becca who has the ability to do that to her? My reflux flares, or is that just the ache of being a dad?
Okay, now it’s eighteen minutes since Becca’s last text. I'm about to call the authorities and report a missing child when I hear Ellie's giggle echoing down the block. "You can't put bananas on your pizza, Miss Becca!" Ellie shouts.
"You bet I can, and I will! Next time you're at my house, I’m making you a banana pizza."
Ellie laughs harder. They round the corner hand in hand, Becca holding T-Bone's leash in her other hand. I allow myself a second, just one, to take in the sight. I made my joke about Becca being too scantily clad, but there’s no denying she looks incredible.
Bootcut jeans that come below her belly button, a flannel jacket over a tank top that cuts low on her tits and high on her tummy.
A flash from my former life comes to me unbidden: that slender stomach jolting as someone slammed into her from behind.
I remember dreaming of dragging my lips over that strip of stomach.
Now she’s got more meat on her bones and it suits her.
She looks healthy, not party-girl-living-off-a-high thin.
Her skin glows in a way she previously tried to achieve with caked-on makeup.
Simply put, farm life looks good on Becca. My cheeks heat when I consider what I might be thinking of the next time I get some quality alone time.
"T-Bone and I gotta get on to our next stop, but I'm so glad I got to hang out with you."
"Stay for Taco Tuesday, please," Ellie begs.
"We gotta get on up the road, but thank you for playing with me. That was so much fun. T-Bone had a blast too." Becca kneels and Ellie gives her a big hug. "You be good for your daddy, huh?"
Becca boops her nose and stands while Ellie smothers T-Bone in a hug. I guess I was wrong about the dog being a wolf. She's actually really good with El. My heart pangs thinking that a pet is another thing I'm not giving her.
“Mr. Davis, will I see you at bingo this week?” Becca calls.
My jaw feels like I chewed too much gum. I'm biting down too hard. More reflux splashes in my throat and some pull in my stomach doesn’t want her to go. Am I getting sick?
“I’ll be there.”
“See you then,” Becca says. "Alright. Later, alligators."
She spins on her heel, but my mouth decides it's time to talk. “Hey, Reba?”
She stiffens at the name, turning slowly to look back at me.
In high school, Becca tried dyeing her blonde locks red with Kool-Aid, and I joked that she was Reba McEntire.
I think she thought I was dogging her, but I never meant it unkindly.
Sometimes I even called her “Fancy” after the Reba song.
Becca lifts a brow and waits for me to go on.
"How are you getting around?"
She tosses all that hair over her shoulder. “I have my ways," she says with a smile that makes something below my belt stir.
I cross my arms. "Like what?"
"Well, T-Bone's a sled dog," she starts and cracks up at my frown. "I got my ways.”
"Okay. I'll call you when I know more about the parts coming in."
“Alright. Thank you.”
She's gone in a flash of blonde hair, and I can’t shake the feeling that I should have said something more.
I already see her outside the shop window, the weight of the world coming back into her expression. An ache like a poked bruise. I feel that ache sometimes too, and wonder if she feels it the way I do.
But my moment of humanizing someone I’ve demonized stops short. She pulls a cigarette from her jacket pocket and pops it between her lips, shielding the lighter from the wind as she lights up.
Becca Martin is still, underneath it all, a hazard.
I line up my fingers with the football’s laces and throw it high.
Dustin drops back to catch it and gives me some lip about the bombs I’m passing these days.
It’s hard to keep up friendships when you’re a single parent, but Dusty and I get our girls together in the park every Wednesday.
We toss a ball and catch up, and it’s one of my favorite things about living in the town I grew up in.
Dusty and I were inseparable growing up, always up to something we shouldn’t have been.
In our teens, we did odd jobs together for extra cash, cash that fed into our bad decisions.
“Hey, guess whose truck is in my shop?”
“Who?” He throws the ball back to me, and I glance over at the girls playing in the sand on the baseball diamond. No one’s eating or throwing dirt, so we’re good to keep playing catch for a little while longer.
“Your sister.”
Dusty’s expression darkens. “Wait, what’s wrong with her truck? How’s she getting around? She should know how to fix anything—”
“She does. It’s the timing belt. Said she can’t do it on her own.”
Dusty grunts as he catches my throw. “Are you playing nice?”
The corner of my lips lifts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He cocks his head at me before throwing the ball back to me. “You usually make a buzzer noise when I start talking about her. It’s actually pretty shitty of you—”
“Language!” I scold him right as Ellie comes running over.
“I want to go on the swings, Daddy!”
I point at Dusty with the football. “Yeah, see? It’s time for the swings anyway.”
He’s undeterred. “Why do you hate Becca so much?”
Ellie whips around where she’s leading us to the swings. “You hate Miss Becca?”
I put my hands out. “I don’t hate anyone. Hate is a very mean word.”
Her eyes start to fill with tears. “I love Miss Becca.”
Dusty rounds his eyes at me and pouts his lip. “I love Miss Becca too. Tyler, can’t you love Miss Becca?”
I glare at him. “Of course you love her. She’s your sister.”
“I want a sister,” Ellie says and I sigh. Add “sibling” and “loving woman figure” to my list of fatherly shortcomings.
“I know, shug.”
We arrive at the swingset and I lift Ellie into one of those bucket swings. My thoughts darken, and all I can think about is all the things CJ said Becca told her. That she wasn’t fit to be a mom. That she was too messed up. That she “had options.”
Well, I guess Becca’s prophecy fulfilled itself in a way. CJ tried to be a good mom, but ultimately left anyway. But did Becca plant that idea in her head, or was CJ already destined to fail?
I push Ellie in her swing and Dusty pushes Ada, his two-year-old daughter. We’re godfather to each other’s daughters, and I could probably do a better job of playing with Ada.
“I want to go to Miss Becca’s fall fest,” Ellie declares. “I’ve never been.”
“Tyler,” Dustin gasps. “You haven’t taken my goddaughter to my sister’s pumpkin patch?”
I sigh and lean back on one hip, crossing my arms. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t, I just haven’t.”
“Push higher!” Ellie reminds me and I put my hands back out.
“Geez, I’ll take her if you won’t. We love the pumpkin patch, don’t we, Ada?” Dusty grins as he holds his daughter’s swing back, listening to her giggle her head off waiting for her dad to let the swing go.
“I’ll take her! Gosh! Y’all act like we don’t do anything fun!”
Dustin holds in a laugh.
“What?” I demand. “What’s funny?”
“Becca would say we can’t do anything fun with you around.”