WADE #2
"You wait," I say. "You can scroll Instagram, watch a show, play a game. Whatever."
“And you?”
“All of the above…and eat snacks,” I say, patting my stomach.
She smiles. “Got it.”
The three of us sit around and talk for a while. Mostly about Riley, and her classes, and soccer.
But by ten-thirty Riley's asleep, curled in the lawn chair with her hoodie pulled up and her mouth half-open.
She fought it for an hour. Kept insisting she wasn't tired…
that she wanted to see the wrap. And then she was out, the way only a teenager can go, powering down as if someone pulled the plug on her.
I pull her into my arms and carry her inside.
She's getting too big for this, and one of these days she's going to be too tall, too old, and too embarrassed to let her dad haul her to bed like she's five. But tonight she hooks her arm around my neck without waking up and mumbles something about soccer tryouts, and I’m grateful for the chance to still do it.
I settle her onto her bed, pull the blanket up, and close the door.
When I come back outside, Tess is still in her lounge chair, face lit orange by the coals.
Her notebook is on the cooler that we set up as a makeshift table.
The string lights I hung last summer along the fence line and trees are twinkling like stars, and the fire ticking and settling in the dark is so peaceful.
"She's sweet," Tess says.
"She's a gremlin." I ease into the other chair and it creaks. "But yeah. She's the best thing I've ever made."
The brisket's holding at 152. We're deep in the stall now and there's nothing to do but check the fire every thirty minutes and sit here in the dark.
Tess pulls her hoodie on.
“I have a blanket if you’re cold,” I offer.
“My hoodie is enough. But thank you.”
I add a small split to the firebox, grab a bag of pretzels, and sit back down.
I hold out the bag to her and she takes a handful with a nod.
She looks around my yard, crunching.
"Is that what you drive?" she asks, tipping her chin toward the bulk of my eighteen wheeler parked off the side of the house on a dirt pad past the driveway.
"That's the beast. Peterbilt 389."
"Can I see it?"
"Sure." I stand and brush off my jeans.
We walk across the yard, the grass soft under our shoes. The truck is a big dark shape against the tree line, cab glinting where the string lights shine nearby. I grab the keys from my pocket and unlock the driver’s side door, then pull it open.
I hit the interior lights. "It's a long way up,” I warn her. "Three steps. Grab the handle here."
She grabs the handle, puts a foot on the first step, and I realize about half a second too late that I should've gone up first. Instead, I'm standing below her with my hand hovering near her mighty fine ass in case she slips.
I take a breath, waiting until she climbs up. Then I go around to the passenger side and get in.
“This is so cool," she says, looking around, the dome light shining above.
It's not much to see. The sleeper's behind the seats—a narrow bunk I've spent more nights in than I'd like to count—and the dash is a wall of gauges and the mounted phone holder. The cord for the Bluetooth speaker I run my audiobooks through completes it all.
Tess’s eyes land on the manuals wedged near the passenger seat. She reaches back and pulls out Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto with the barbecue sauce thumbprint on the cover and about forty Post-it tabs protruding from it.
"You take these with you?"
"Mostly. I've got a couple more at the house, but those are the ones I use on the road. Something about a long stretch of highway makes me want to rethink my brine ratios."
She flips through it, smiling at the margin notes. Then she sets it down and studies the phone mount, the speaker, and the cord.
"So what do you do while you’re driving? Just…stare at wheat?"
I chuckle. “I listen to stuff.”
"Stuff."
"Audiobooks." I scratch my jaw.
She grins. “Oh, so you’re a reader.”
"That's not reading. That's…listening."
She frowns slightly. “Listening to audiobooks is definitely reading, Wade. What are you listening to right now?"
I should probably not tell the junior Honors English teacher at Deepwood Mountain High that I’m into a series about a man and his talking cat fighting their way through a post-apocalyptic dungeon game show. But I can’t lie.
"Dungeon Crawler Carl," I say.
She turns in the seat to face me. "Matt Dinniman?"
I stare at her. "You know it?"
"I know of it. A student did a book report on it last spring and I had to approve the selection. The writing is genuinely good, even though there's a scene involving a—actually, I don’t want to spoil it for you. Where are you in the series?"
"Book four. Carl just—” I stop myself, because I'm about to explain a plot point that she doesn’t need to hear. "Never mind. I borrow them from the Deepwood library," I say, as if that's a defense. "Through the app. It's free."
"I know. I make it mandatory for my students to download if they prefer audiobooks." She taps the sauce-stained manual between us. "Wade. You listen to audiobooks all day and you've got a stack of these that you've read so many times the pages are falling out. You’re a reader.”
"I thought you had to sit down and read literature."
"I'm an English teacher. And I'm telling you that your brain is doing the same work whether your eyes are on a page reading a manual or your ears are taking in a fictional story.
You're following a narrative, tracking characters, making predictions, engaging with language.
The delivery system is different. The reading isn't."
I grunt and shift in the seat because I never thought about it that way.
"We should check the fire," I finally say.
I climb down first, then go around to the driver’s side and reach up for her.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and steps down, and for about two seconds her gorgeous body is pressed against me—her weight coming off the last step, my hands on her waist steadying her, and then she's on the ground and she's right there, looking up at me.
Her hands start sliding down from my shoulders over my chest, and god, I don’t want to move.
I want to pull her close, those tits crushed against me, one hand buried in her soft hair.
Shit.
I let go and step back, clearing my throat.
"Brisket's probably close to moving," I say, which isn’t true. That brisket is parked at 152 and not going anywhere for a while and I think she knows it.
She nods and drops her hands. "Let's go check."
We walk back to the rig and we avoid eye contact, then sit in the folding chairs talking about the competition until the brisket moves off the stall.
It’s three-forty a.m. I check the bark, and it's beautiful, dark and tacky, exactly where I want it. Tess watches me press the probe in and asks what I'm feeling for.
"When it slides in like there's nothing there—no grab, no resistance—that's when the connective tissue has broken all the way down. The temp gets you close, but the feel is what tells you the truth."
She licks her lips. “That’s kinda erotic,” she murmurs, writing in her notes.
Just what I need. More reminders that I’m battling a hard-on every moment I’m with this woman.
“Focus, Tess,” I say, nudging her playfully with my elbow, and she stifles a grin.
By four-thirty, the brisket is wrapped and resting in the Cambro (the insulated holding cabinet), and there's nothing left to do.
The sky is already starting to change.
I’m impressed we’ve only had a few yawns between us.
She gathers her notebook and her bag and I walk her to the car since my mother raised me right.
“I'm disappointed I don’t get to taste it,” she says.
“I’ll save some for you to have next Saturday…if this hasn’t scared you off.”
“Not at all. It was fun.” She smiles. “I hope I’m turning into a decent comp partner so far.”
“You made it all night. That’s a good sign.” I kick at some of the dirt. “At the actual competition, we’ll be able to sleep in rotations. It’ll be a big help.”
“Good, I’m glad,” she says, as we reach her car.
She unlocks her door and I open it for her.
She gets in. “Will you text me how the meat turned out?”
"You bet,” I say. “See you next Saturday. Drive safe.”
"I will. Goodnight Wade.”
“Night, Tess.”
I watch her pull out of the driveway and stand there until her car disappears. The sky's getting lighter. The birds are starting up.
My insides are churning like mad.
I go inside and check on Riley. One foot hangs off the bed, and she’s drooling on her pillow.
I close her door and think about next Saturday.
And how I'm ever going to survive it.