35. Thirty-five
Thirty-five
I sip my coffee on Bo’s porch in the morning while George Strait sniffs around the yard at a curious skip. It’s foggy. Misty. The way the air gets this time of year in the mountains. The cool greyness of fall completely smothers out the final drops of warm sunshine from summer.
The air is clean, smelling like wet leaves and smoke from a chimney somewhere in the distance.
For the first time in my life, my mind—usually roaring like the rapids of the wildest river of Blue Ridge—is a glass pond.
Sitting in my oversized T-shirt with a blanket over my lap on a porch swing, it’s beautiful like the poetic line of a country song. An entire story in a few simple words.
Someone on the outside might say I feel this way because of the sex, but I know it’s something else. Something bigger. Like it always is with Bo: more .
He sits next to me, holding a plate of bacon in one hand, mug of coffee in the other. He offers the plate toward me. “Made from humanely raised pigs,” he says with a proud grin. “Whatever that means.”
I snort out a laugh. “It means they got snuggles,” I tell him as I take a crispy piece, devour it, then take one more.
When the dog catches the familiar scent of salty fat, he pounces over to the porch and eats every piece we don’t when Bo sets the plate on the ground for him.
“Now what do we do?” I ask, taking a sip of my coffee as Bo wraps an arm around me, pulling me into him. Snug.
“We have to get Lucy from Libby’s,” he says, rubbing circles along my bicep as he talks. “Then I thought we’d just spend the afternoon here. Make dinner.” He pauses, plants a kiss on my temple. Then, with a lower and slightly more carnal tone, “And spend the night replaying what we did last night.” He smiles against my skin before pulling away.
I bite my lips between my teeth to hide my smile, but the only thing I think is We . Every time he says it, a breeze blows through me, whipping up a pile of fallen leaves in my belly.
“And tomorrow, we’ll drop her off at Gran’s before church,” he says, sipping his coffee.
Gran .
With that, the sweet flitter of leaves within me stills, drops, and is set ablaze by flames of guilt.
Because—Veda has cancer .
Three words sit on the tip of my tongue, slapping against my closed lips. I brave eye contact. He’s happy— so happy.
“You okay?” he asks, pulling a toothpick from his pocket and slipping it between his lips, eyes narrowing slightly. “You have a funny face.”
“Way to give me a complex,” I say with a forced smile. “I was just thinking how nice that all sounds.” Before he can see my lie for what it is, I blink away, lift my mug to my own lips, and swallow down my unsaid words and guilt with another sip of coffee.
Other than the fact I quasi-hate myself for the one thing I can’t tell Bo, it’s a perfect day.
When we get to Libby’s, she greets me with a hug and a wide, red-lipped smile. She has two boys—six-year-old Jack and nine-year-old George. Her husband, John, a big guy with a wild beard and bright blue eyes, is a police officer with a contagious laugh.
I reach out my hand to shake his, but he looks at it like it’s diseased before opening his arms wide and pulling me into a hug. “At last! The famous Birdie who’s whipped our boy, Bo!”
Chickens peck around the backyard of their big white house and the boys scream from a pile of wrestling in the grass. Lucy squeals, wrapping her arms around my legs, then Bo’s neck, then takes off running with George Strait .
Growing up just me and my dad, it’s a chaos of home I’ve never been privy to. Like a family on TV, scripted to messy perfection.
John hooks an arm around my neck. “Tell me about yourself, Birdie,” he says with a friendly kind of gruffness as we walk up the steps of their porch.
I smile. “Hmm...” I want to get this right. Want him to tell Bo how great I am after I leave. “I’m a hell of a singer,” I say with a grin.
He booms out a laugh as he pushes the door open. “Lib said the same thing.” He pauses, then, “Actually, what she said was, she’s a helluva bad singer, but still better than Bo.”
I raise my eyebrows. “That bad?”
“Birdie, you have no idea,” he says solemnly.
“I heard that, asshole!” Bo says, smacking him on the back of the head with a grin as he follows behind us.
And that’s our day. Sitting in a kitchen with a family that yells at each other from separate rooms, drinks lunch beers on Saturdays, and hurls insults with the sincerity of compliments.
“I know you don’t drink often,” Libby says, opening the fridge. “But we picked these up when Bo said you were coming. They don’t have alcohol, but I don’t know about the taste.” She shrugs. “I won’t be offended if you hate it.”
When she passes me a nonalcoholic can of beer, I’m speechless.
It’s just a fake beer, but in my hand, it becomes something precious. A talisman.
I drink one, then two. Because it’s good, and being in this loud kitchen with Bo’s arm draped around me is too .
John quickly becomes my new favorite person—he’s loud and unfiltered, rough around the edges. A human party bus of sorts. He’s everything I’m not but has a way of pulling me into the conversation when I’m too quiet.
When Bo tells them, “Birdie here is a sort of George Strait expert,” John clings to this like a lifeline.
He peppers me with trivia questions, and I impress everyone by not missing a single one. Not his date of birth. Not his hometown. Not his first ten number one hits. Not the fact he eloped with his high school sweetheart—Norma—in Mexico. My mom loved the King of Country, so by default, I do too.
When he asks, “What would George Strait say on a day like today?”
I pause, grin, then tell him, “‘Here for a Good Time,’” which makes him laugh loudly in a way that makes his beard shake. The irony isn’t lost on me—I, the person who lives life by lists and calculated decisions, chooses a song that’s about life being short and having fun while it lasts—essentially my anti-anthem. But here, it’s right. Good . Like I am here for a good time.
When it’s time for goodbye, hours later, Libby hugs me, with a promise of us hanging out together soon, and John puts me in a headlock and scrubs his knuckles across the top of my head like we’re frat brothers.
As Lucy talks to the dog in the back seat while we drive, Bo’s hand finds mine with a squeeze. Then, like he knows what I’m thinking, says, “They loved you.”
And I really think they did.
Maybe because knowing Veda has cancer gives me a different lens to look at her through, but everything about her seems slightly less when we drop Lucy off at her house Sunday morning. Less weight. Less attitude. Less energy. Just less.
“You feeling okay?” I ask her when Bo and Lucy are out of earshot.
“Of course, I am,” she says with less sharpness. No doubt, a lie. “Just a little tired is all.” Then she smiles the kind of smile that everyone gives when they say they are fine that tells how not fine they are.
“Are you still good with Thursday? I can cancel if…”
She waves her twisted hand in the air. “Nonsense. If there’s some woman like Mabel in this world, I’m not missing my chance to meet her.”
Then she smiles, a real one this time, and for a second, I forget—Veda has cancer.