Chapter 15 – Juliette
FIFTEEN
JULIETTE
We were in his truck driving into town. A normal day of chores and shit that needed to get done.
It had been a few days since the whole couch scene. (Forty-six hours and twenty-eight minutes, but who was counting?) He had been Mr. Fucking Chipper the next morning and had kissed me directly on the lips before he handed me my first mug of coffee.
But other than that, I hadn’t given much more ground.
It was becoming obvious, though, as the weeks went by, that I needed to start thinking about what winning looked like in all of this.
I didn’t hate Creed. You couldn’t hate someone who worked so damn hard every day for the success of the farm.
He studied like crazy. He wasn’t afraid to put his own money on the line.
One of the reasons we were going into town was because he wanted to replace some of our older equipment with newer stuff, along with some spare parts for the tractor.
I just couldn’t succumb to this vision he had of us. Like he literally thought we would be business partners who ran a farm, fucked around, and had kids at some point.
“Did you ever think about falling in love some day?”
It was a question out of the blue from me because I’d been silent for the first half of the ride.
One hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping at some pattern on his upper thighs, he shot me a quick glance.
“No.”
“No?” I repeated.
“No.”
“Come on, you had to think about it. As a teenager. Your first crush. Who did you lose your virginity to? You had to love her?”
“I lost my virginity to a res hooker when I was thirteen. She was thirty-two years old. There was no love there.”
“Fine. You said you went to white school. There wasn’t some pretty blonde with blue eyes who caught your eye?”
He smiled, and I thought when he did, that it made his face look funny. Like his face was not meant to smile.
“Her name was Brigid. Her parents were Irish Catholic who told her to stay away from me. She used to turn pink any time I said hi when I passed her in the hallway.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said, trying not to be intensely jealous of some bitch named Brigid. “So you had a crush on her, maybe you thought someday you’d grow up and get married and make beautiful babies together.”
He snorted. “No, Jules. I never once thought that. I was a bastard half breed from a reservation. The only thing I thought was maybe I could get Brigid to sneak under the bleachers with me so I could go to second base with her.”
“And, did you?”
“Hell, yeah. Back then, all the girls thought my chicken pox scars on my cheeks were badass. I told them I got them in an ancient Navajo ceremony.”
“You said your mother was Cree,” I reminded him.
“She is. The fuck do white kids know about tribes? What’s your point, Jules? You want to tell me you’re sad you’re not going to lose your precious cherry to someone you’re in love with?”
“I’m just asking, don’t we deserve more than this?” I made a motion with my finger between the two of us.
He pulled over to the side of the road and threw the truck into park.
“What do you want, Jules? And don’t give me that shit about the divorce and the land. What am I not doing for you that you want?”
“No, you can’t do that. You can’t make me feel guilty for wanting something special in my life. I had a shitty father, no mother, no siblings. I want to fall in love. I want at least a chance at happy ever after.”
“So, fucking fall in love with me. I’m not stopping you.”
I threw myself back against the seat of the truck in frustration. “That’s not…ugh! You know that’s not how that works!”
“Look, Jules, I get it. You didn’t go to high school so you didn’t get to have crushes and flirting. And, if I know you, you were probably downloading bootlegged versions of all your favorite romance books like that vampire dude with the pale girl-”
“Vampire what?”
“You know. Hunger fucking whatever. No, Sunset. No…”
“Twilight, you dickhead.”
“Yeah, that. But I’m here to tell you real life doesn’t work like that. It’s not some fucking fairytale. The vampire breaks her heart. Over and over again. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to wake up and be here every morning. Fall in love with me and I’ll never let you down.”
I shook my head. “You’re making a joke of something…
I didn’t have a lot to look forward to in life,” I said, and could feel the sob back up in my throat.
“Sugar beets, surprise spring blizzards, and no money. That was all my future was going to be. But I had love. Or at least, the idea of it. Can’t you see how you destroyed that? ”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, quietly. He shifted the truck into drive and pulled back onto the empty road.
“Do you even like me?” I said, trying to hold back my tears.
“You know what’s really fucked up?” he said. “I like you a whole lot, Jules. I’d choose to be on this farm with you rather than Brigid any fucking day.”
Take that, Brigid.
At least it was something.
We pulled into town and passed the hardware store, which I thought was our first stop.
Hardware store, then grocery store, so the cold stuff we bought didn’t melt before we got home.
People don’t realize how hard it is to buy and transport something as simple as ice cream when you lived an hour and a half away from the store.
Which is why growing up, I never had ice cream, but Creed liked it, so we got creative with buying a bunch of frozen vegetables so we could pack them together in order for the ice cream to survive the trip.
It was the little things like that, that made it hard to hate Creed.
Then I remembered the fact that he basically stole my legacy out from under me, which made it hard for me to even think about falling in love with him.
He told me he was a killer! He had episodes where he still might kill me in my sleep. I watched him knock a man unconscious in front of my eyes.
I was supposed to fall in love with this guy?
What the fuck did that even mean?
Besides, love, the real thing, was a two way street. Which meant if I loved him, he had to love me, and the sad truth was, I didn’t think he had it in him.
Creed was too practical. Maybe his mother loved him. Maybe his father loved him, but given that he’d left both lives for something completely different when he was eighteen told me that love didn’t register with him.
If he never believed he’d been loved, I didn’t see how it was possible he would even entertain the emotion for himself.
Him liking me over some phantom girl name Brigid was the best I could probably hope for.
That, and sex.
Although…the sex was kind of fun.
But it wasn’t. I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself. It was urgent and frustrating and awkward. It was touching things I’d never touched and experiencing sensations that I didn’t even know I liked until I thought about it afterward and it made my whole body hot and shivery.
Sometimes I thought about the future. Like, ten years from now.
I’ve sold the farm. I’m living as a…marketing analyst for an advertising firm?
In Seattle. Because, always Seattle. I’m on a date at a restaurant with cloth napkins and five pieces of silverware lined up on either side of the fancy plates.
The man across from me is a…lawyer? And we’re sharing our day over after dinner espressos, having just shared a tiramisu.
He’s thinking about taking me back to his place and I’m thinking about going.
In that situation, it would be normal and healthy that I’d had a prior sex life.
That I would feel comfortable getting naked, having him go down on me, going down on him.
All of it. Two sexually mature adults who were just enjoying each other’s company and exploring if we wanted a committed relationship.
If I said I didn’t want to take my shirt off, because I was nervous about being naked, what would…Chad?...think?
Which is why it made sense to continue to explore sex with Creed. He got something out of it, obviously. I got something out of it, beyond just the short term orgasm. I was setting myself up for my future.
My sophisticated Seattle future where I dated lawyers, had dinner at fancy restaurants, ate fucking tiramisu…
“Jules,” Creed snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Jules? Are you hearing me?”
“I was dreaming about my future life,” I admitted to him. “There was espresso and tiramisu.”
“Snap out of it,” he said. “We’re here.”
He’d pulled up in front of the bank. Farmer’s State Bank. “Why are we here? Oh, let me guess. My father left me a secret trust that would be all mine once I turned twenty-one and you want me to sign it over to you before I’m of legal age.”
“How did you guess?” he asked, innocently. Then he popped open the driver’s side door and got out.
I admit to having a somewhat active imagination.
I hopped out of the truck and followed him inside our local branch. He said a few words to the guy behind the counter and then we were shown into the only office in the small building. It was empty and there were two chairs in front of the desk. We sat in them.
“Seriously, what are we doing here?” I asked him.
“Listen,” he said, grimly. “I thought a lot about this.”
“Good morning, Mr. O’Mara.” Walt Healy, who I knew was the bank’s manager from my dad’s dealings with him, walked around the desk and sat down. He stretched his hand over the desk toward Creed and Creed shook it. Mr. Healy did not offer me the same courtesy.
“I called earlier about adding another debit card to the account. Jules needs it to handle some of our expenses.”
Wait. Time out.
“Yes,” he smiled, again still focused on Creed. Then he pulled out an envelope from the top, right drawer. “You know we encourage our customers to get familiar with our online features. You could have added a second card right from your computer.”
“Don’t trust that shit in the mail,” Creed said, as he took the envelope. “She can have her own pin?”
“Yes. Just take that card to the bank counter and they’ll set you up.”
“Obliged.”
“Always happy to be of service, Mr. O’Mara,” Walt said, with a congenial smile. Like he’d been doing business with the man for years instead of months. Creed’s fifty-thousand dollar account was no joke for a small, regional bank like this.
I got up and followed Creed to the bank counter, not entirely sure what was happening. Creed explained to the clerk what to do and the next think I knew I was being asked to key in a six digit number.
I picked the day, month and year of the horse auction. Seemed fitting, and it wasn’t a day I was ever going to forget.
We walked out of the bank and the sun hit me in the eyes. A reminder that the season was changing again as we made our way toward summer. Soon I’d be trading in my overalls for shorts.
“Here you go,” Creed said, handing me the neon orange card.
“Works like a credit card if you need it for online shit. Works as a debit card at the ATM if you need cash. You can only take out up to three hundred dollars a day and I’ll see every transaction you make.
So don’t get cute with it, yeah? You’re not going to be able to steal anything I can’t see. ”
“Why are you doing this?”
“This is your reward. For handling your shit and doing right by me with Tank. I figured a little financial independence was something you might appreciate.”
I glanced down at the card in my hands. It was money. It was three hundred dollars a day. It was a plane ticket if I wanted to buy one online.
“This is trust, Jules. You get that?”
“Trust would be adding me to your bank account.”
He laughed. “Well, then I guess I don’t trust you that much. Come on, we’ll go get some pie at Ruby’s. You can pay.”
He wrapped his arm around my neck and tugged me into his side. More like I was a little sister than a wife, but I appreciated the gesture because it hid my sudden tears from him.
This might have been an even better present than the phone.