Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Bax
Bea got to work, loading up two plates with both chicken and pork tamales still wrapped in their steaming cornhusk casings with all the delicious fixings that Athena had prepared and set out for us, and I sat at the table and listened to the calming sound of Bea’s voice as she talked.
“I love tamales. I’ve never tried to make them on my own, but I ate them a lot as a kid ’cause our neighbor made them all the time, and she knew how much my dad loved ’em.
We traded with her. My mama wasn’t as good a cook as Mrs. Ortiz, but she made really good greens and fried mushrooms, and she could whip up a mean Tater-Tot casserole when she wanted to. And soup.”
She smirked, reminding me of the night we’d shared, and set a plate in front of me, slid into the chair next to mine with her own plate, and then asked, “Why would Athena invite me to lunch but then not eat with me?”
Raising an eyebrow, I unwrapped my first tamale and dug into it with my fork. “I think you may have fallen victim to Rye and Athena’s matchmakin’ services.”
“But… Really? I didn’t think she’d want that. I mean, the other day when I said I didn’t like my nickname, she jumped down my throat a little about her mom’s name.”
“I haven’t said anything to her about you. I’m not sure what I’d even say. She can be protective of Candy, but she also worries about me. Maybe she saw you and thought one plus one could equal two.”
“It can’t,” she said. “I work for your brother.”
I nodded, all too aware of that fact.
“And I live seven hours away.”
“Athena’s just a kid,” I said. “She doesn’t get it.” I tried not to let the disappointment I was feeling show in my eyes hearing her say it, but I had my own reasons Bax and Bea sitting in a tree wasn’t a good idea.
But maybe Athena wasn’t the only one guilty of doing a little first-grade math. It seemed I’d gotten the answer wrong, too, because I found myself wishing Bea could stay after the cabins were done.
Maybe we could… What? She’d only been here a few days. What exactly did I want from her?
Sex for one thing. Good God, tasting her wasn’t enough. I wanted to fuck her.
Hard.
It was like that one little taste and the smooth rolling of her body over my mouth had awoken the man I used to be. Before life happened and broke me down.
“Where’d you go?” she asked, and I looked at her before I realized what I was doing.
“Huh?”
“You got quiet all of a sudden.”
“Nowhere. I’m here.”
She saw the confusion on my face. That was easy to deduce from the way her eyes got big and she looked down at her plate intently, like the answer to time travel lay tucked inside a tamale, and if she paid close enough attention, she could go back to when we hadn’t complicated the fuck out of everything.
We hadn’t had actual sex, but not having sex was just as complicated as having it.
Was I desperately attracted to Bea? Yes.
Was she attracted to me? I thought she was. I mean, you don’t sit on a guy’s face and let him eat you out if you’re not, right?
But Bea was right that the circumstances were far from ideal.
Still, knowing that didn’t make me want her any less.
Neither of us said another word as she stuffed her face, and I sat there, watching her dip bites of tamale into sour cream and verde sauce and then shovel them into her mouth, and I kept thinking about how absolutely absurd it was that I’d finally moved on from Candy’s death and her loss enough to want another woman, but now that I had, the woman I’d found myself wanting was so unavailable, it wasn’t even funny.
Bea went back to work, and I spent the afternoon trying to distract Athena from getting even more curious about Bea than she already was. She came to drive me back to the barn after lunch, and that was when the questions started, and they didn’t stop for at least a half an hour.
“Where’s Bea, Daddy?”
“She went back to work.”
“Oh. I thought she might hang out and keep you company. Do you think she’d like to go muddin’ with me? She could ride Aunt Abey’s ATV.”
“I dunno, Road Trip. Ask her.”
“You should’ve seen her earlier. One of the men workin’ on the cabins questioned her, and she handed him his a— She put him in his place. She’s so cool, and I think she’s pretty, Daddy. Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Sure.”
She drove over a big bump on the dirt path and winced as it jostled and tossed me around on the seat. “But, like, really pretty or just normal pretty?”
“I don’t know what that means, Athena.”
“Like, when you look at her, do you think ‘she’s beautiful’? Or do you just go, ‘meh’?”
The question made me laugh. “The first one.”
If anybody looked at Beatrice Baker and thought anything other than, “She’s fuckin’ gorgeous,” they were nuts. And when I pictured her handing her crew member his ass, I had to hold back a laugh. I would’ve paid money to see it.
Bea Baker was breathtaking.
Her skin glowed under the light of the sun, and she had these faint freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Her green eyes were the oddest color, kind of hunter green, kind of teal green, depending on the light, but absolutely mesmerizing either way, especially when she was speaking her mind.
She had these bangs that drove me wild. I’d never noticed much about women’s hairstyles, but dang. Athena had told me they were “curtain bangs,” but whatever she called them, they were sexy, the way they swopped down and framed her face like a painting, drawing my eyes to her high cheekbones.
She was on my mind so much that I had a hard time looking at anything else when she was around. I’d been sketching her in my down time, which was pretty much all the time lately, as long as no one was around to see the goddess I’d scribbled onto my sketchpad in graphite lines.
And her body? Fuck my life. Tight ass, tiny tits, and toned arms. I wasn’t used to a woman built like Bea. It kind of surprised me that I’d be into it since the only other woman I’d ever been with had been tall and soft.
And the warm, succulent space between Bea’s legs? Goddamn, I wanna fill that ho ? —
“I think so too,” Athena said, completely oblivious to my horny daydreams. “Does she want kids? I mean, like, do you think she’d be a good mom?”
Shit.
I made it to the barn answering the rest of Athena’s questions with a copy-and-paste answer of “I dunno,” and when we got there, Rye grabbed my crutches and helped me out of the skid steer.
He listened to Athena’s interrogation, trying discreetly to hear my answers, but finally, he stepped in and showed me a little mercy.
“Athena, can you saddle Tulsa for me, please?”
“Sure,” she said in a chipper voice, and she skipped into the barn to do what he’d asked.
“What’s this about?” he asked me, nodding after my precocious kid. Was that a guilty grin on his face? He’d been trying to conceal it, but it was plain to see. He was in on the matchmaking thing with my daughter. I knew it now like I knew my own name.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
Yeah, Athena and Rye were in on it together, but Athena’s reasoning was still a mystery to me. Was it just that she liked having a woman around? Had I fucked up the single-parent thing so much that my kid was desperate for another adult to tag in?
Rye’s distraction had worked, but Athena was quick, and as soon as she led the buckskin mare I’d bought for her out of the barn, she started up with the questions again.
Rye threw me an apologetic smile, took the lead from Athena’s hand, shrugged, and then she and I watched from the fence as he exercised Tulsa in our ring and got her ready to ride. He’d been working with her for weeks, but it looked like the horse was finally ready.
“Are you gonna ask Bea on a date?” Athena asked, peering up at me with her hand shading her eyes from the sun.
The sip of water I’d just taken from the plastic bottle hanging from a lanyard around my neck spewed from my mouth as I coughed. My resourceful daughter was worried about me getting dehydrated, and if I didn’t drain the bottle, its weight gave me a nasty ache in my shoulders.
“What? I bet you’d have fun.”
Taking the hat off my head, I dropped it onto Athena’s.
“Where’s your hat?” She shrugged and adjusted mine to shade her eyes better.
The light-colored straw material brought out the highlights in her hair that reminded me of Candy.
Soon the weather would demand my felt hat, and the smooth, dark-gray color didn’t remind me of my dead wife at all.
“Athena, I’m not really in a position to take a woman out on a date right now,” I said, trying to swipe the water off my shirt and not fall over, but even if I wasn’t reliant on crutches, her questions still would’ve made me unsteady.
“Why not? Bea could drive. I get that your manly, misogynistic view of the world makes you want to drive, but Bea’s a strong lady. She won’t mind. And then y’all could go get dinner or see a movie or somethin’.”
“Did you just call me a misogynist?” I asked, and Athena cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously? I just let my not-yet-fourteen-year-old daughter drive me in a tractor. How’s that misogynistic?”
“Good point,” she said. “I take it back. But I stand firm on the manly comment.”
“Road Trip, where’s this comin’ from? You and me, we’re doin’ okay on our own, right?”
She sighed and turned her head to watch Rye lunge Tulsa around the ring. “Sure, Daddy. We are.”
“Talk to me, baby. What’s goin’ on in that head of yours?”
She tossed her shoulders again. “It’s nothin’.”
“Athena.”
Taking a deep breath, she chewed on her lip and turned back my way. “I dunno. I just thought… I thought maybe, if you had a girlfriend, you’d smile more. You used to smile a lot before Mama died.”
Here it was—proof of the weight of my happiness.
“I’m sorry I’ve made you worry about me,” I said. “But I’m okay. You’re right that I smiled more when Mama was alive, but I’m not un happy. How could I be with you around?”
“It’s not the same thing,” she argued.
“No, you’re right. It’s not.”
“Everybody needs someone to hug and kiss and love. Even me.”
My heart stuttered to a stop in my chest. “’Scuse me?”
Rye stopped fast in the middle of the pen, and Tulsa reared at his sudden movement. As soon as he had her back down on all four hooves, he called over to me, “What the hell did she just say?”
Athena rolled her eyes and took a step backward, out of the path of my oncoming dad tantrum.
“So, I kinda have a boyfriend,” she said, looking back and forth between Rye and me.
“This is, like, a ceremonial position, right, Athena?” Rye said. “You’re not gonna go on dates, are you? ’Cause I dunno if I can handle that.”
“Uncle Rye, cut it out,” she said with a good dose of exasperation lacing her tone.
I was speechless. My little girl going on dates?
Oh God. I can’t handle that.
I’m not ready!
“Daddy? Are you okay? You look kinda green.”
I couldn’t focus on much, but I thought I heard Rye curse and then the sound of Tulsa’s lead slapping dirt when he dropped it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught him hurdling the fence, and next thing I knew, he was behind me, his arms out and ready to catch me if I decided to fall on my ass.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I got this. I can handle it.”
Yeah, sure, you got this. No problem.
I looked at my daughter and said, “You’re grounded till you’re thirty-five.”
Athena sighed for the 107 th time today, rolling her eyes again.
“I gotta go,” I mumbled. “The physical therapist will be here in fifteen minutes.”
I turned and hobbled back to my house, trying desperately not to panic, but I had no fucking clue how to navigate teenage dating!
I made it through the evening by imbibing two shots of really cheap whiskey and by pretending the boyfriend conversation hadn’t happened.
Linda dropped off no less than five casseroles when she delivered our order later in the day, so I threw the tuna-noodle casserole in the oven and stuffed the rest in my deep freezer in the garage, which still held casseroles from three years ago, when every single unmarried woman in the county and even some that were married dropped one off.
They were probably freezer burned, but I’d never thrown them out because I figured, in a pinch, we might need them.
Which, now that I’d really thought about it, I realized was disgusting, so that’s what I did after dinner, cleaned out my deep freezer.
Rye carried four garbage bags of old food and its containers to our bear-proof cans on the side of the house, but then he brought them into the garage.
They’d probably end up stinking up the place, but it might help to keep scavengers away till garbage day.
As I supervised Rye, Athena followed us in and out of the garage, trying to bring up the boy subject at least four more times, stating passionately that Logan Jacobs’s parents were fine with them dating, so why couldn’t I be?
And every time, all I could do was shake my head and try not to picture the daughter I still imagined to be four years old in the throes of passion with some snot-nosed, fourteen-year-old sex addict.
It gave me the fucking ick!
She went up to her bedroom disappointed. I popped two ibuprofen, which maybe wasn’t the best idea after the whiskey, brushed my teeth, and for the first time since I broke my leg, made the dangerous trek up the stairs.
The physical therapy I’d started and would continue three times a week for the foreseeable future wiped my sorry ass out, which made no sense to me because I’d spent my entire life on this farm, doing much harder labor than lifting my leg two inches off the floor from a seated position in sets of ten for five minutes.
Jordan, the PT guy, said my muscles had spent the last couple weeks guarding my broken bone, so they needed to relax and get back to their regularly scheduled programming, which was why I was utterly exhausted.
When I was in the safety of my bedroom, I peeled off my T-shirt, dropped it to the floor, fell face first onto my bed, and at 8:07 pm, passed the fuck out.
At one in the morning, a knock on my door woke me.
“Athena, please go back to sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
She didn’t say anything, but my door opened and shut quietly, and then the covers rustled next to me in the darkness.
“Athena?”
“Shh,” Bea shushed me. “Go back to sleep.”