“One of you please explain to me why we’re leaving tonight and not tomorrow morning,” I yawned, hoping my question made sense.
It was two-thirty in the morning and Houston was still two hours away. Dex was behind the wheel of a big, black GMC truck I’d never seen before—he always came to work on the back of his Dyna. Slim, on the other hand, was sitting shotgun and fiddling with the radio station. Again.
For the tenth time in less than twenty minutes to be exact. It’d be the last time if I had anything to say about it.
“We have to be there by eleven to set up the booth,” Dex explained, looking at me through the rearview mirror. “I don’t wanna risk not wakin' up on time tomorrow mornin’.”
Ugh. I guess he had a point. I also guess I shouldn’t be complaining since I wasn’t the one actually driving. Regardless, I would have rather gotten a few hours of sleep in my bed—by that I meant Sonny’s guest room that I’d made my own pad over the last few weeks.
“Go to sleep, Iris,” Slim chimed in. “At least one of us can get a decent rest.”
I thought about telling him he could go to sleep because there was no way I would be able to. Even as a kid, it'd always been hard for me to sleep in a car. I think I was just paranoid that something would happen along the drive and if I'd stayed up, I could have prevented it. It sounded crazy but it made perfect sense in my head.
“You can go to sleep. I can survive on a few hours,” I told our resident redhead.
No joke, he looked at Dex for approval, nodded and promptly passed out with his forehead against the glass window within a three minute time frame.
“Well,” I muttered, looking at him to make sure he was asleep. He was. I had a feeling this was going to be a fun trip.
Or not.
How I got wrangled into it, I still didn’t understand, and I felt guilty. Really guilty.
Dex needed someone else to tag along to help set up the booth and have another person to sit there constantly. It was doable with three people but nearly impossible with only two. And Blue, damn her, rarely went. Something about her not being social enough. Considering I'd maybe only spoken about twenty words with her in a month, it kind of made sense.
Apparently, I won by default. Though I still wasn’t sure whether this was something to consider a win or not.
An hour after we made it back from the store, Gladys from Smiling Faces Daycare Center had called to offer me a job nearly a week after my interview. Fudgesicle sticks. The "yes" that spewed out of my mouth was unintentional, at least so soon. I should have thought about it longer considering that the pay was considerably less than what Dex was paying me but...
Wasn't that what I'd wanted?
I had every intention of informing Dex that I was quitting but he kept interrupting me or saying we'd talk about things later. And later had turned into later and later, and the Houston trip had fallen into my lap like an unwanted pregnancy.
We'd dropped by Sonny's after Costco so that I could pack my bag, call my brother and tell him what was going on—he somehow already knew—and haul ass back to Pins for Dex's appointment.
That was exactly how I found myself riding along in the backseat with Slim and Dex in front, deciding that I should probably wait until we got back to Austin before I broke the news. Was I a coward? Completely. Was it noticeable that I was stressing? Definitely.
Dex was glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, one hand wrapped loosely around the steering wheel while the other rested on the door.
“You buckled?” he asked me in a lowered voice.
I looked down. No. “Yes.”
Dex sighed, glancing at me again. “Buckle your goddamn seatbelt.”
"Sheesh." I usually always had it on, especially if I was in the backseat but this time I’d been so distracted and worried about driving overnight that I didn’t even think to do so until he mentioned it. With a huff, I pulled the belt across my lap and strapped in, mumbling, “Friggin’ bossy,” under my breath.
A moment later the truck swerved to the right quickly before aligning itself just as fast. In the meantime, despite the jarring motion, Slim stayed asleep while I freaked the hell out and leaned forward to pop my head between the two seats.
“Are you okay to drive?” I whispered.
He cut me another sidelong glance. “There was a dead raccoon in the road,” he explained in an equally low voice. “And I’m fine to drive, quit stressin’.”
Quit stressing. Like that would happen.
And it didn’t. For the next thirty minutes, I rubbed my hands down the length of my thighs, thanking whatever divine entity that could be listening in, that the road was surprisingly empty. There had only been a handful of cars on the highway and if it weren’t for that, I’d probably be freaking out even more.
“Would you calm down, Ritz?” Dex whisper-hissed at me.
“I’m calm,” I argued. He turned to look at me over his shoulder for a moment, which made me squeal. “Keep your eyes on the road!”
“I can feel the little panic attack you’re havin’ back there," he mumbled. "Fuck, I’m surprised you haven’t woken up Slim with how much stress you’re puttin’ out, babe.”
I sighed, turning my attention outside the window to the right. So far, besides the swerving incident, he had been a good driver. Not that that meant anything because there wasn’t any traffic but still. He was over the speed limit but not too much, and except for glancing at me a moment before, his attention had been glued to the road.
“What’s freakin’ you out?” Dex asked in that soft melodic voice he’d only used on me a couple of times before.
“I'm worried you're going to fall asleep driving or something.”
Not even a heartbeat later, Dex responded. “I'm wide awake, babe. Swear. I took an energy drink before we started drivin'.” There was no hesitation or annoyance in his tone.
I hummed in response.
A few more minutes passed by. Dex fiddled with the knobs on the radio. If I wouldn't have been paying so much attention I would have missed his quick glances to the backseat.
"Ritz."
"Yeah?"
Without an introduction or a ramp that apologized for being nosey, he asked, "What'd your ma die of?"
There was a knot in my throat I hadn’t felt in a long time—a very long time. Such a long time that it was laced in rust and spider webs, foreign in my body. In the same way I’d avoided telling people about my parents being gone, I avoided telling them how Mom died, and mostly, people didn’t ask. Mortality is a delicate subject. Most people don’t like to get reminded of how fragile and unstable life is. Mom wasn’t even near forty when she first got sick.
People asked about my family if they cared to get to know me. Most of the time I didn’t get close enough to establish that type of relationship with anyone. I liked people in general but with life and work as unstable as they were, leaving people behind or getting forgotten hurt too much. I lived the last few years of my life being friendly and cordial.
But I was tired.
And Dex had cared enough to ask.
"Breast cancer." Something that constantly scared the crap out of me but I didn't admit that.
He let out a long, suffering sigh from his nose. His free hand went up to pull his cap off his head, tossing it onto the center console. “Fuck," he groaned. "How old were you?"
Just answering pierced me a little. Just a little. I'd accepted what happened a long time ago. "Sixteen. My brother was eleven."
Dex hissed long and low. Turning to glance at me out of the corner of his eye, his gaze was heavy and curious. "Fuckin' kids," he murmured in that low register.
One kid raising another kid with only the weary monitoring of yia-yia. Even before my mom had died, she'd been sick for a couple of years. By the time the aggressive disease had gotten to be too much, I'd already felt like a thirty-year-old in a teenager's body. Deep in my bones I knew that my life would have been completely different if my dad wouldn’t have left.