9. Tyler #2
I mostly stopped asking around about stuff like that, because I can’t let people around here know I’m struggling or everyone will be in my business.
I get enough of that with people feeling sorry for me: that Davis boy with that sweet little girl whose mama ran off.
Then the darker whispers and speculation that follow about how things were between me and CJ, why she left.
My mom has controlled a lot of that narrative from church, though. If I can thank my gossiping mom for anything, it’s making sure I’m painted as the victim and CJ’s the villain. I don’t need CJ to be the villain, though. It’s almost better that she’s gone. One less layer of chaos in my life.
Becca clears her throat. “Who's watching Ellie?"
I suck on my teeth and gesture to the baby monitor on the counter. "She’s upstairs."
Becca's eyes round, and god, that blue is so damn pretty. But I hate the sentiment in them. "Y'all live above the shop?"
"Just for right now," I say, getting back to work so I don't have to see the pity on Becca's face.
I expect Becca to scold me, to try and make me feel some shame about the life I’ve made for us. But instead she stands there, twisting her hands. “You're a good dad, Tyler. She's lucky to have you."
"I don't need you to patronize me," I grumble.
"I'm being serious. She thinks you hung the moon."
"No, she thinks you did. It's all Miss Becca this and Miss Becca that."
Becca polishes her nails on her tiny excuse for a shirt. "Well, I am incredible."
"You're something."
"I'm choosing to take that as a compliment!" she chirps. She struts over to the other bay, fingertips extending to drag across the hood of my LeBaron. “Is this the original? I thought you sold it.”
I puff air out my lips and lean against the work bench behind me. “I bought it back.”
“How can you be sure it’s the same one?” she asks, looking through the windshield.
I look down at my toes before peeking back up at her. “The burn mark.”
Who knows if she remembers it? The time we smoked a joint in there and she accidentally dropped it on the passenger seat. Then, so we didn’t burn the whole interior, we laid on the hood and looked at the stars.
Just me and her. Alone. She’d called me because she got in a bind and she was too embarrassed to call Dusty.
I had graduated and Becca was a senior. She talked a big game with those Denton boys from the lumberyard.
But when she was alone at their house, she changed her mind.
She called me from their bathroom. Even then, she wouldn’t admit she was scared.
“I fucked up, but I know I can stab ‘em,” she’d said. “I got my knife.”
“Don’t stab anybody. I’ll come get you.”
Lord knows you can’t trust a Denton, and I didn’t even hang up before I was in my car and on my way.
Becca’s tough, or at least she puts up a front like she is.
Bright as hell, tough as hell. I could have given her shit for even considering getting with those guys, because the thought alone made my stomach curdle.
But she was shaken up, and I just wanted to be a safe place for her.
She called me for help, not a lecture. So, I parked somewhere and smoked her up to calm her down.
And when we laid on the hood of my LeBaron, piece of shit it was, I remember distinctly how my stomach squeezed when her pinky brushed mine.
A shooting star of hope streaked across my sky, leaving a trail of light inside me that I’m still chasing seven years later.
To be wanted, appreciated. To be the one Becca turned to when things went sideways.
I thought I’d found that feeling again that one night at the cabin party, but that fizzled into nothing with her and the start of my current life as I know it.
But the desire for Becca burned on, buried deep for so long.
Now I’m torn. Do I want to resurrect it, to forgive and forget?
Or should I keep it six feet under, where it probably belongs?
Part of me wants to resurrect it. It’s the same part of me that keeps this car pristine, except for the burn mark. The burn mark stays.
She presses into the heels of her hands and pops up to sit on the hood now. Her cheeks are pink. “I still get embarrassed when I think about that.”
God, she’s hitting me with the big guns. Becca so rarely gets vulnerable, always putting up her tough girl routine. If I were softer, I’d hold her now.
I’m not softer.
“You, embarrassed?” I ask. “Didn’t know you could do that.”
“I do have a full range of human emotions,” she sighs, then laughs. “You busted in there like a big gorilla man. Where’s my girlfriend? Where’d you even get that baseball bat?”
I roll my eyes and chuckle. “I kept it in my car for emergencies.”
“What, an emergency home run derby?” she jokes.
“You should be glad I had it!”
“I was, I was,” she says, putting her hands out to calm me. “Then you threw me over your shoulder like a cave man.”
My neck feels all hot. I remember that powerful feeling, having Becca over my shoulder, having total control over her.
How I couldn’t imagine ever taking advantage of that.
How I needed to feel her against me to know she was safe.
It scared the daylights out of me to think that those guys might hurt her, and by the time I got there, my adrenaline had reached a peak.
“I had to act like I was your boyfriend. And if I was your boyfriend, I’d have been pissed a bunch of guys were trying to have you. ”
I might have been pissed about that even though I’ve never been her boyfriend, but that’s beside the point.
Becca looks pensive, cheeks still rosy and eyes glassy. She blows and pops a bubblegum bubble, but her expression remains serious. “Did you ever tell Dusty?”
It’s so far in the past now. I could have told him any number of times in the last few years, but every time I thought about it when I was with him, I didn’t want to bring it up.
It was unusual, outside of any dynamic I’d ever had with Dusty or Becca or anybody, really. This weird little mosquito moment trapped in amber that I’ve kept in my pocket for all this time.
For that night, she’d trusted me, and I didn’t want to betray her trust.
“No. I never told him.”
Her brows knit. “You could have.”
“Other things are more important.”
Why did I say it? It dismisses this nice moment we were having.
But I guess I don’t have nice moments with Becca.
“Okay,” she says in a stupid voice. “Geez. Tell me I’m unimportant, why don’t you?”
Her lips hook upward and I know she’s about to be up to something.
“Tyler,” she sighs in a breathy voice before kicking one leg over the other and popping her chest forward. “Am I still unimportant?”
She gives me her best doe eyes and twirls her hair around her finger. “I’m just your best friend’s little sister.”
For a moment, I let myself look, to drink her in. I’ve seen so much of her in the last week, and every time I’m trying not to look at her.
Because I’m afraid of how I’ll feel if I see her.
I’m afraid I’ll like what I see.
And right now, I can’t deny that I don’t just like what I see. I’m cataloging every part of her to remember later. I wish I could draw so I could capture this, her, the way her free-wheeling nature and unflappable confidence makes me feel. She’s the most self-assured person on this planet.
But it gets worse.
Becca rolls to climb to her hands and knees, looking back at me while her barely-covered ass is on display.
She bows her back to arch her hips up, and my god, this is the kind of thing only my subconscious could serve up.
The kind of dream that I’d wake up from with a raging hard-on and pouring sweat.
What would it be like to sink inside her, to palm those tits, to be the one who finally gets his turn?
But she’s not being serious. She’s using her sexiness to mock me.
She sits back on her heels and glances at me over her shoulder, popping her ass out.
A peek of her luscious cheeks that beg to be bitten hang out of the bottom of her shorts and I wonder what I’ve done wrong to deserve this.
“Is this something from one of those car calendars?”
I know I should act grumpy, but I just can’t be right now. Becca’s goofy on a regular basis, and she’s even more so now. And she’s stop-in-your-tracks stunning at the same time.
“You can’t pay for your truck work that way,” I say, but my voice is dry and crackly. I’m trying to seem unaffected, and I’m about as convincing as Pinocchio.
She sticks out her bottom lip. “You’re no fun.”
I chuckle. “You need to sober up.”