It was totally about our conversation last night. I couldn’t get it out of my head, any of it. Last night, he’d made sense.
In fact, everyone made sense, Daisy, Duke, everyone. I wanted to believe, even tried to believe.
In my heart, I couldn’t.
Deep down, I knew I had to protect myself from that time; the time that happens in any relationship, when my judgment was cal ed into question. Then, where would I be?
What would I say? I didn’t have solid moral ground to stand on and Hank was a pil ar of solid moral ground. Any relationship had to have equality. Ours did not. He was clean and good, I was dirty and, if not bad, then at least dubious. Who wanted to be the dubious girlfriend?
Not me.
That said I spent more of my time thinking about him tel ing me that I undid him than my moral dubiousness.
“I can’t believe you can cook,” I snapped, deciding to focus on something other than the matter at hand.
His smile went away and he did a slow blink. “Sorry?”
“You’re a good cook,” I said.
“You’re angry because I can make eggs?”
“Wel … yeah,” I said not caring, even a little bit, that I sounded demented. Demented was good. No one wanted a demented girlfriend.
“Sunshine, I can scramble eggs and I can cook meat on the gril , that’s the extent of my cooking skil s,” he told me.
“Feel better?”
“You make good toast too,” I made it sound like an accusation.
He stared at me a beat and then threw his head back and laughed. Out and out laughed. I’d never seen him laugh, not like that. I’d felt him laugh, and I’d heard him chuckle, but I’d never watched him laugh. He was good-looking al the time, sometimes better than others, but when he laughed he was beautiful.
This did not make me happy, so I scowled at him.
He caught sight of my scowl and snatched me across the cab, into his arms and buried his face in my neck.
“You’re a nut,” he said there.
Enough was enough. I had to end this. I didn’t want to, I had to.
Okay, so Hank didn’t get it. And neither did anyone else.
So they al thought I was a crazy person and I would disappoint a lot of people if I broke it off with Hank. That didn’t matter. What mattered was I knew what I was doing and what I was doing was for Hank.
He deserved better than me.
(I should point out that I didn’t real y know what I was doing, but I thought I kinda did.)
So I announced, “I’m moving back in with Uncle Tex.
He’s a big guy, he has a shotgun. He can protect me until this mess is over.”
Hank’s head came up and he was smiling at me, like I was being cute and adorable. “You aren’t movin’ back in with Tex.”
“Yes I am.”
“Let’s forget for a second that no way in hel would he let you, I won’t let you. First, I want to make sure you’re safe and the only way to do that is for me to make you safe.
Second, Tex is an ex-con. Something happens, he has to use that shotgun, there’l be uncomfortable questions as to why he’s got a gun.”