Where Would I Be Without You - By CJ Hawk Page 0,83

her laughter out of her. She did not let me pay her back for the plane tickets, and I was not a charity case. I had a good handle on my finances and knew that I had at least six months' worth of expense money to get me by. If I sold my condo in LA, I could get by for at least two years but that was far from my radar.

With my luggage tucked neatly in the back of the minivan, I decided to take a peek for the very first time inside the car that my sister practically lived out of for her job. I was too tired when I crawled into the passenger seat after the airplane ride to notice before, but now as I opened the sliding back door, I noticed the world from which my sister lived in. The world I was about to thrust myself into until I got my wits about me.

There in the minivan was two pink booster car seats or what was once pink but now multiple shades of 'is that grape jelly' I said aloud to myself. There were unmatched pink or yellow shoes, various kinds of socks, none of which appeared to match. There was an open DVD case to a Dora The Explorer movie and three bags from fast food, still with food in them.

I reached my hands above my head in a yoga stretch, and my pink tank top rose above my belly. I then bent down to touch my toes and let out a long breath. There, while I was bent over examining my need for a pedicure in my pink flip-flops, was the edge of a cowboy boot in my vision. I could almost sense who it was before I stood up.

"They all wear pink pj's with kitties on them over there in LA, or you starting a trend here in 'Bama'?" His words were like a honey in one sense and nails on a chalkboard in another. I had always had this push-pull feel with Bubba Champ, but leaving 'Bama' put him far off my radar. Living the life I did in LA, had put Bubba in the far recesses of my brain until the minute my sister had mentioned his name, and my skin felt the feel of his hand brush over my skin without him being here. That is what Bubba did to me. It turned my brain to mush, my senses on high alert and my mind back to the last time we were necking in his daddy's barn. The night I told him that I was saving myself for someone special when I got to LA to start my acting career, not some hillbilly like Bubba in 'Bama'. The night I tried to push him so far away from me emotionally, that I could head on out to LA without a guilty thought to what I was doing. A huge part of me wanted Bubba to convince me otherwise that night and come running after me to stop me from leaving 'Bama', but he didn't. Little did I know that there was no one special in LA, just a casting director and an old leather couch that smelled.

I slowly stood up and turned to face the man whom I fell in love with long ago but just didn't know how to get along with. I had a hard time not letting my eyes roam over his now very mature manly body. Those weren't high school muscles he was packing anymore. His dirty blonde hair was looking long as it curled up a bit under the edge of his hat. He had a goatee beard going on, and it might be sexy, but I didn't like my men with hair on their face. Ok, on him, it was damn sexy. His blue eyes that I loved were hidden among the shadows of his hat.

"Why I do declare if it's not Bubba 'da' Champ. How's rodeo life or farming life or whatever it is you redneckers do around here?" My voice was laden with soft sexual undertones; my eyes twinkled with hope, but I knew how to piss em off just right. In one fair swoop, I wanted to swoon Bubba and smack that sexy dimpled grin right off of his face. Instead, he looked right at me with sorrow, the last thing I wanted from him. Then he told me that he was doing all right. That his momma was looking