Chapter Three
Ayda
“You have to be shitting me.”
“I’m sorry. I hate to do it. You’re the best worker I have, Ayda, but these high school kids work for pennies, they don’t make a noise about uniforms and they always come in for extra shifts. You’re overqualified for this job.”
Rolling my feet forward and backward, I snapped my head side to side and planted my hands on my hips before looking down at the floor in consternation.
I wouldn’t let them see me cry. I wasn’t that easily defeated and I wouldn’t give this punk the satisfaction of my tears.
I’d worked my ass off every day for the last three years, and all they wanted was some mindless kid that would skate around in short shorts, pop gum and flirt with the other kids.
She could have the fucking job. That was a line I firmly refused to cross, especially for the money they were offering me.
Babylon was a stop between one big city and another.
Gas prices were decent, and that was about all we had going for us.
Those of us who lived here tended to have been born here and fought for the few jobs there were.
If you were lucky, the oil and gas companies that were littered around would offer you a job.
I wasn’t lucky. Not in any capacity.
My dad had been an engineer for one of the larger companies, which was exactly why we’d moved to Babylon to begin with.
While Mom and Dad were alive, life had been good. I’d loved my friends, I’d loved my school and I’d loved my boyfriend, Jacob. They’d been smart enough to get out while they could. Me? Well, I was called back and now found myself stuck with no other direction to go in.
I’d been so close to that complete freedom that I could have sworn I’d tasted it. I'd had big dreams—the same dreams most women my age had—but I'd had to learn to let them all go.
Standing there in front of a manager who was a year younger than I was, I felt the control start to slip from my fingers.
I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up for any of it.
I wasn’t cut out to be a parent or guardian.
I could barely look after myself. Most days I forgot to eat, and when I did it was a crappy microwave burrito, which I drowned in hot sauce.
How was I supposed to ensure the healthy nutrition of a growing boy?
How was I supposed to know how to make sure he didn’t kill himself playing football, or when was a good time to talk to him about sex, which I suspected I was a year too late for?
And how the fuck did health insurance cost that much?
It was never ending. When I fixed one problem, another one came along.
The moment that was taken care of, something else happened.
Any extra cash we had was greedily grabbed by the next shitty handout life gave us, and I couldn’t even blame Tate.
He was in the same boat that I was—he was just a little more optimistic and had grabbed a paddle, whereas I was swimming, and my arms were tiring to the point I constantly felt as though I would drown.
“Ayda?”
Steering my skates away from the manager, I pushed one to the side and allowed myself some forward momentum as I waved over my shoulder. “Yeah, I got it. You’ll send me my last check, right?”
“I really am sorry.”
I pushed out again with more enthusiasm as I felt the tears prickle against my eyes.
I needed to be in my car and away from there before they started.
The moment I was out of the kitchen, the life force that was Roller Freeze took over.
The excited chatter and laughter of the teens as they relaxed after school wrapped itself around me, insulating me from the overwhelming emotions that had threatened to break free only seconds earlier.
“Hey. You! Where’s my chili cheese fries?
” Joey shouted from his car. I’d gone to high school with him and we had a mutual hate thing going on.
He was a slimy greaseball asshole, and with one look at my face he’d have known something was up.
The opportunity to turn my bad day into an astronomically shitty one probably tipped the scale for him.
I kept moving toward my car, parked under the live oak that was the only thing between Roller Freeze and acres upon acres of farmland, the whir of the wheels drowning out my heavy breaths as I fought back hysterics.
I could fix this. I could make this work.
I could work all day at Rusty’s before going to the food mart, or I could start earlier at the food mart and maybe pick up some overtime.
It wasn’t the end of the world. Not yet, anyway.
I wished I believed my own words, because the sense of dread I'd been feeling all day spread out from my stomach and didn’t stop there.
When I eventually fell in behind the steering wheel, I clawed at the skates on my feet and dropped them in the foot-well behind me, my head banging against the steering wheel as the tears finally came.
Half of it was self-pity, the other half anger and frustration at myself. I was stronger than I was behaving. Circumstances had changed; I just had to adapt and change with them.
Gripping the wheel at ten and two, I lifted my head slowly and stared out at the Roller Freeze, letting my chin rest on top of it.
Just beyond the restaurant was the interstate, and beyond that was freedom.
How many nights had I spent sitting in that very spot and staring at the headlights rushing by as the traffic passed?
My ex, Jacob, had sat with me on the hood of his car, reading off every stop we’d hit on our way out of there—the towns, the sights, the distance between us and Babylon; he’d mapped it all out.
I’d had so many dreams, and although I hadn’t let go of all of them, there were a few that had to be pushed aside.
A few I would be too old to do when I actually had the time and money.
My first priority was Tate right now. He wasn’t going to take this well at all.
He would blame himself like he had when I had to take on three jobs.
I couldn’t let him know yet, but what I could do was food shop and wash his damn jeans for him now that I had some extra time on my hands.
Starting up the engine, I took one last look at the lanes of traffic heading toward the unknown and smiled. I hoped Mrs. Bridgefort was ready to fight for that tub of ice cream because, tonight, I needed it more than she did.
After doing a food shop and spending more than I probably should have, I went home and started the laundry.
This inevitably snowballed and I found myself starting to scrub every surface within my reach.
My music was so loud, it swept me into its embrace and moved me around to its beat on auto-pilot until there was nothing more to do, other than Tate’s room, which was a hell no. I wasn’t up-to-date on my tetanus shot.
Tate knew that something was wrong the moment he walked through the door.
His eyes bounced from surface to surface, his eyebrows rising higher with each one they found clear, disinfected and sterilized.
They didn’t stop until they came across me, standing outside the bathroom with rubber gloves up to my elbows and my hair clinging to my sweaty forehead, looking like some deranged surgeon from the horror movies he liked so much.
“Okay, what happened?”
My mouth opened, closed, then opened again, but there were no words. I should have stopped at laundry and watched some shitty daytime talk shows.
“Ayda, you only clean like this when something bad has happened.”
Point made.
“No, I don’t.”
“Liar. Spill it.”
Standing with my mouth open, I finally realized that the kid knew me better than I knew myself most days. Flapping my hands about until the gloves fell to the floor, I bent to pick them up, nodded to the couch and made my way over to him.
“Tate,” I started, pacing back and forth in front of the couch, the words formulating in my head with each step I took. “I don’t want you worrying about this. I’ll find a solution, but the Roller Freeze let me go.”
“What? Why? You were the only one who actually did something there.”
I stopped pacing and let my head fall back on my shoulders, studying the ceiling. At least someone noticed. “Apparently that’s where I went wrong, kid. That and I actually wore clothes that didn’t show my coochy. Go figure, right?”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Tate. Please. Make me feel like I’m doing something right and stop swearing in front of me.”
“Sorry, A. I just hate that it’s gotta be like this. I hate that you have no life because you’re working so much. I can quit football—”
“Stop!” I put up my hands and dropped my head, shaking it almost violently. “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. This is for me to worry about, not you. I can pick up extra shifts at Rusty’s and the food mart until I find something else. We’re going to be just fine.”
“No, Ayda. The royal we doesn’t work here. You can’t do this anymore. You don’t take days off anymore. I never see you, you’re never at the games, and you’re tired all the time. I can help you.”
“You wanna know how you can help?” I asked, pushing my hair back and ignoring the tight feeling in my fingers as I balled them. “Help by keeping your grades up and getting a scholarship. That’s what I need you to do, Tate. That’s it.”
My brother threw himself against the couch with such force that it moved against the wooden floor with a scream of complaint.
He folded his thick arms over his chest and stared in my direction in an attempt to intimidate me.
He seemed to forget I changed his diapers fifteen years ago. He didn’t scare me.
Huffing out a breath, he dropped the feigned anger and scrubbed his face with both hands, looking up at me from between them. “I feel guilty all the time.”
“Don’t.”
“Like it’s ever that easy? Ayda, this isn’t living. You know that, right?”
I dropped the gloves on the coffee table before firmly planting my ass on it with a sigh that rivaled his. Of course I knew this wasn’t living, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to give him a better life.
“Listen to me, Tate. I know things have been shit since Mom and Dad died. I know I haven’t been around much, but you can’t worry about me.
Not now. I did the high school thing. I did the college thing.
Now it’s your turn. When I know you’re set, then I can do what I need to.
I’m not conceding to this. I’m not letting us get separated.
I’m your sister and we stick together, always. ”
Leaning forward, I patted his knee as though closing the debate on the topic. He really was a good kid, and I supposed I was lucky in that respect. If he’d been a little asshole, all of this would have been much harder to deal with.
I wasn’t his parent, but I was the closest thing he had and I felt responsible for him in every way a sister could.
Pushing to my feet, I gave him a smile and held my knuckle out for him to bump.
It stopped him from being embarrassed by my emotional hugs after talks like these.
I still squeezed him like I did when he was a kid, which was ridiculous considering he was much bigger than I was, but times like this called for diplomacy.
“We good?”
He nodded in response, spurring me on to pick up the gloves and go back to cleaning. He was right, it was almost compulsive for me to do it. It gave me some order in an otherwise disorderly world. Brushing my hair from my face as I reached the hall, I stopped when I heard my name.
“Ayda?”
“Yeah?”
“I always thought it was Mom and Dad that I looked up to and admired. I don’t know when it happened, but I realize now that it’s been you for a while. You’re my role model, and you’re damn good at it.”
My stomach flipped and my heart fluttered in my chest. I was about to cry, but managed to smile at him anyway. “Even if I cuss like a sailor?”
“Are you kidding? That’s a huge part of it. My vocabulary has broadened colorfully thanks to you.” He smiled and shrugged. “Love you, sis.”
“Love you, too, T.”