one with between one and seven people living inside. Don’t ask me to do math at this time of night, though. I’m guessing about what? Forty people?”
“Wow, so forty people all living on one plot of land as one big happy family?” I simply can’t imagine it. “This is something I have got to see for myself.”
The words are out of my mouth before I even realize it. Colton studies me.
“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me or if you’re genuinely interested.”
“Interested,” I say. “It sounds about as opposite from how I grew up as you can possibly get.”
“I know it sounds weird—“
“You keep saying that like you feel you need to apologize,” I say.
He shrugs, but I can see the embarrassment in his eyes. It’s the first time I think I’ve ever seen him look uncomfortable. “A lot of people don’t understand it,” he says. “They think we’re crazy or some kind of redneck cult or whatever just because we all settle down on the family land. But it’s not like that at all. I mean, yes, my great-grandparents had some ideas about conspiracies and the government being up in everyone’s business, but it’s not like we hold anti-government rallies in the backyard.”
I try to imagine what it would be like to live that close to forty of my own family members and come up empty. Other than Knox coming back to town, it’s been me and my daddy alone for years. I don’t even know where my mom is, and I haven’t seen her since I was five years old. For all I know, I have sisters and brothers out there I’ve never met.
Truth be told, Knox and my dad are the only family I have in this world, so trying to imagine forty or more is next to impossible for me.
“So where do you fit into the Tucker family trailer park situation?”
“I’ve been living in one of the smaller trailers on the property the past year or so,” he says. “It’s not mine, though. It belongs to my cousin Tammy, passed down to her from my Aunt Carla when she moved to Kentucky a few years back. But then Tammy met some guy on the internet and took off to Texas, so I moved in.”
“What happens if Tammy decides to come home?”
“That’s a very timely question,” he says. “Because she’ll be back in about two weeks, newly engaged to the Texan, who is coming with her.”
“Ooh, you’re going to have to move out, I’m guessing,” I say.
“Yes I am,” he says. “And the thought of moving back in with my parents gives me nightmares.”
“Why don’t you get your own place?” I say. “And I’m not talking about a trailer. Why don’t you get an apartment here in town so you can be closer to the bar? You’re here almost every night anyway?”
“I guess I never really thought about it,” he says. “It might be nice to have a little privacy once in a while. I wonder how expensive those apartments near campus are?”
“I think Leigh Anne said they were about six hundred a month,” I say.
Colton whistles and shakes his head. “No can do. Not without a few more nights like this,” he says.
Daddy comes out of the back room smiling like a loon. “What a night,” he says. “I think we should turn on some music, because I feel like dancing.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me out of my chair, spinning me around like a ballerina. I laugh and wrap my arms around him.
“I see you two started the celebration without me,” Dad says. “Pour me one and then let’s call it a night. I’m exhausted.”
“Me, too,” I say. “One more to toast the best night Rob’s has ever had.”
Colton grabs another glass and pours three more shots. “To Rob’s,” he says.
“To Rob’s,” Daddy and I say in unison as we all clink our glasses together and throw them back.
It’s one too many for me, and by the time the liquor has reached my brain, I’ve apparently lost all sense because I turn to Colton and say the dumbest thing I’ve said in a long time.
“You should move into the apartment over our garage.”
I know it’s a dangerous thing to offer, because the thought of him living just a few steps away from me gives me hives, but I can’t help myself.
“What’s going on?” Daddy asks.
“Colton was just talking about how he’s about to be homeless, so I was thinking about how Knox