snapped, in probably the worst effort ever to get a person to open up.
“With me?” Joan asked.
“Yeah, you look like shit.”
“What got you in a snit?” she asked with a smile that indicated my bad mood was entertaining.
“Life, Joan. Life got me in a snit. Now why do you look like—”
The front door of her trailer opened and out walked the guy from weeks ago. The hairy guy with the skeevy wink and smile. This time, though, he wasn’t winking or smiling.
“We’re good,” he said to Joan as if answering a question I didn’t hear her ask.
“Fine,” Joan said. “See you.”
The guy left with barely a backward glance toward me and Joan took a long drag on her cigarette like nothing was the matter.
Fine. We all had to pretend something, didn’t we? Out here in this shitty trailer park. We all had to pretend something so we didn’t look too hard at what a mess our lives were. We were all excellent editors of our own selves.
“I’m going to town,” I told her. “You need anything?”
“You’re not working?”
“It’s fucking Saturday, Joan. I’m taking a day.”
Joan held up her hands like I had a gun but she was still grinning at me. “I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t need a thing.”
I barely nodded at her and I walked over to Ben’s trailer and pounded on the shitty screen door.
It took a few minutes but Ben showed up. He looked better than he did yesterday, largely because he’d changed his shirt. He wore one of his unwrinkled tee shirts today and he’d showered.
“You look better.”
“I feel better.”
I remembered all the reasons why I was supposed to stay away from him. The warnings. But I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. My entire life I’d spent caring…soaking up every mood, decoding every silence. So attuned to everyone else around me that I’d practically evaporated.
And I was done with that.
“You need anything?”
He shook his head and I nodded, swallowing back my need to be sure he was all right, to take on his illness like it was my own despite all the shit I thought I knew about him.
“Okay, see you.” I lifted my hand in a wave and jumped down off the small step, but then I turned back around.
“Ben,” I said. “Have you seen a doctor?”
The screen was a shadow over his face. “Yeah. Lots of them,” he said and closed the solid door.
Right, I thought. Not my business.
I got in my car and drove off to town with the windows down, my hair blown back by the wind.
I drove past The Velvet Touch and considered that I didn’t need Dylan. I didn’t need him at all. I had done all that stuff myself. I’d walked into that place on my own. Ordered that piña colada, watched Renee and that guy. Me. All by myself.
Those were my own hands on my body. Every goddamn time.
But you would never have done that if he didn’t ask you, a little voice whispered. Never have considered it if you’d never answered that phone call. You would have stayed locked up in that trailer, waiting for something that was never going to come.
“Shut up,” I muttered to the little voice and turned the radio up louder.
In the grocery store I bought stuff I usually never bought, Pop-Tarts and a bag of chips.
I still had Dylan’s money burning a hole in my pocket. Forty bucks could buy a whole bunch of stuff.
Oranges. The expensive ones.
A can of olives. I loved olives. I was going to eat olives for dinner.
I stopped in the wine aisle, looking for a bucket-o-something, but couldn’t find any. So I grabbed the largest amount of white wine for the cheapest price. It came in a box.
It was box-o-wine night at my trailer.
At the library I checked the Oklahoma papers. Nothing about me.
Though there was a front-page story about more windmills going up in the western part of the state. That’s where we were. Hoyt must love that.
And then I sat there and tried to be better than my instincts. Tried not to fall into some trap of girlish, woman-scorned curiosity. It was over. And I’d come to a good place in my head about this last night. Finding out about Dylan wouldn’t change anything.
Other girls do this—not you.
And somehow that was the argument that put me over the edge. And he wasn’t just Dylan anymore. He was Dylan Daniels and he’d dumped me.