Until We Crash - Michele G Miller
Carter Cooper: Big Man on Campus at Rossview High turned football star at Oregon until injuries sidelined him.
Jessica Womick: Rossview High cheerleader turned carefree A&M coed until family issues send her home for the summer.
He's found a new direction for his future;
She's become the caretaker to a drunk.
These are not the directions they planned on taking, but when their paths reunite, they can neither deny their attraction nor their mutual need for distraction.
Finding joy in the struggle is rarely easy, and when Jess's world tumbles into the unrecognizable, Carter sets out to prove that not everyone in her life will fail her.
This one is for Jonathan who never fails to do whatever our family needs. I chose you when I was sixteen, and I’ll keep choosing you forever and ever.
Jess
There’s a strangling bitterness that creeps into my bruised and suffocating soul at having to save him over and over. It takes the shape of an impenetrable wall, adding height and depth with every bailout. After ten years, it’s an unmovable tower. No matter, I stretch to the tips of my aching toes and claw to the top—hoping this is the last time. This time he’ll notice how hard I’m climbing for him, and he’ll wise up. He never does. I rescue him, and when I’m done, I’m alone and bitter and hopeless. My battered heart cries out; I’m trying to fix him. Will anyone help fix me?
The question plays across my mind the way an inclement weather warning scrolls over my favorite television show—at the most inopportune time. I should be on a beach or at the lake with friends. Nope, I’m wandering into the land of beer and desperation for the umpteenth time. I enter, squinting and adjusting to the feeble lighting as the aroma hits my nose. Hell, bottle the stench and I’d own the perfume of every bar I’ve dragged Dad out of over the years. On the opposite side of the chipped red doors, the sunshine is abundant on this early June afternoon. Within these walls, is another world. There are no windows reminding patrons what they’re missing on the other side; there are only dusty fixtures hanging over scratched wooden tables and dank walls. Unlike the bars around A&M’s campus, the music flowing out of this jukebox is old-school country—a little Tammy Wynette “Stand by your Man.” How poetic.
This is my summer vacation—returning to Rossview and following around a man who cannot pull his shit together. Ten to one, I’ll lose the one job I found because he’s unable to hack sobriety for an hour, forget the time it requires to work an entire shift.
“He’s in the corner, darlin’.” Eddie waves from behind the bar.
Yea, we’re on a first-name basis. There are a handful of bars in Rossview, and Dad is intimate with them all. “You could refuse him service, Eddie.”
“And have a repeat of last year’s incident?” Eddie sniffs. “Sorry, he pays, he drinks.”
Maintaining a grown man’s sobriety is not the responsibility of Eddie or any other bar owner. My head shakes with disappointment as I offer up thanks.
“You called, so that’s something,” I say, steering toward the lump of a human hunched over a glass of amber liquid.
Dad.
My shoes suction to the floor with each step. Another lovely trait Dad’s favorite haunts have in common. Sticky floors, sticky air, and—come sundown—sticky morals. At this hour, though, the television in the corner flickers in and out, re-airing a football game as Tammy’s song ends and Hank comes to life. Yep, there is a tear in my beer, Hank.
Weary faces turn my way, and I tug at my skimpy work uniform. I’m a college girl and former cheerleader—I’m comfortable showing my body off, but the twenty steps across this bar put me on display. The mid-afternoon drinkers are factory workers coming off the first shift. They stop by with their buddies, have a beer, and return to their wives and kids before repeating the process. The life is one I understand well—unchanging and straightforward—but today they’ve won a free show with their liquor: Jessica Womick and her curves.
“What an exhibitionist. Like her mother.” Even if unsaid, I imagine the thoughts run through the mind of every man present.
I near the corner and Dad’s bent form. “Dad?” I struggle for a smooth voice.
He grunts into the table.
“Dad?” I inch in. A second unintelligible grunt greets me. Sweat dampens the small of my back as I poke his rounded shoulder. “Dad, time to go.”
He lifts his head, and