Bittersweet Creek (23 page)

Julian

A
s I watched Romy go, I asked myself if I wanted her to come back. I couldn't blame her because I hadn't done a damn thing to tell her I was still in love with her. I'd actually done anything and everything to discourage her. Then there was the fact I'd come awfully close to sleeping with Shelley Jean myself. But knowing facts was a sight different from overcoming feelings, and her asshole ex had put some pretty vivid pictures in my mind, pictures designed to remind me of how much money he had as well as how he'd had my girl.

And I knew she wouldn't have left me in the first place if I hadn't made her.

But, sonuvabitch, I didn't want to touch her right then or even look at her. I sure as hell didn't want to
talk
.

It'd be best if I got to work, so I might as well show Beatrice her new digs.

“Beatrice, old gal, I've got someone I'd like for you to meet.”

She stomped and unloaded right there in the middle of the front yard.

“Beggars can't be choosers,” I continued as I led her to the barn. “I should've sent you to the glue factory already.”

She tossed her head at that.

“I know. I'm a sappy sonuvabitch. Ain't you lucky I am?”

About the time we came up even with the little pen, Star poked her nose through the slats in the gate to bawl at the horse. Beatrice whinnied back at her. She actually started to stamp and rock a little as I opened the gate, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of this sooner. Horses and cows weren't known for getting along, but it could still work. I'd heard of horses keeping a cow from eating or getting water, but Beatrice couldn't see where the water was. I'd seen a calf chew off a chunk of horse tail once, but little Star was desperate for companionship. As with people, we'd just see if the two of them could get along—at least while I finished the broken-down stalls inside the barn.

Walking inside to survey the damage, I saw where a couple of crude stalls had been. Faded fragments of flowery wallpaper curled on the wall, left over from when the barn had been a house. Putting my hands on a couple of the boards and testing them, I decided a trip to town would be in order. Those rotten boards wouldn't hold in a drunken llama.

Beatrice nickered and Star bawled in response. I almost tripped myself getting to the edge of the pen to make sure the twosome weren't hurting each other. Nope. They were playing. Then the calf did the damnedest thing: She led Beatrice to the trough full of water.

“Well, well. I guess you can lead a horse to water
and
make her drink,” I murmured as Beatrice gulped up water. “You two behave now, and when I get back I'll see if I can open this pen into the barn a little more so you can both get into the shade.”

As I walked down the side of the yard and toward the road, I looked back to the house and wondered how things were going between Romy and Hank.

Romy

W
hen I walked into the kitchen, I could feel Daddy's anger. If he'd been a teakettle, he would've whistled. “Rosemary Jane, we need to have a talk.”

I crossed to the Keurig and turned it on.
Coffee, sweet coffee.
“So, talk.”

“What in the hell are you thinking? When I—”

“I'm thinking that I belong here. I don't belong in Nashville. And I don't belong with Richard, always feeling uncomfortable at his soirées, always wondering if I've dressed well enough or if I'm eating with the right fork. I don't have to teach in an inner-city school to do good when my own alma mater has a significant free-and-reduced-lunch percentage. I want to teach English here, to introduce Shakespeare to kids who live in trailers or drafty farmhouses and who think they'll never get any farther in life. I want to come home. And I don't give a damn if he has more money than Julian or not.”

There. I'd said it. And I didn't even know for sure I had a relationship with Julian. I wasn't going to make any more decisions about where to live or work based on men. Not even my father.

I popped the cartridge into the machine and put a cup underneath. It was a black coffee kind of morning. Coffee in hand, I finally faced my father.

“You finished?” Daddy's eyes had narrowed dangerously, and his ears were bright, bright red. I hadn't seen him this mad since I was six and put the ladder against the tin roof of the barn and climbed up top. That was one of the three times he'd tanned my hide.

I swallowed hard. He wasn't going to spank me, but his disappointment weighed much heavier than it had when I was six. “I'm done.”

“I could give a rat's ass about whether you marry Richard or not. And if you want to move here permanently, I'm all for it, but the next time you stay out all afternoon and all night and don't answer your phone, I'm calling the police.”

I blanched, instinctively reaching for my phone, but it wasn't in my back pocket. “Daddy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to worry you. My phone must've slid out of my pocket in the truck when we were hauling hay.”

“Don't do it again.” His voice cracked, and tears threatened. I might be twenty-eight years old, but I'd scared the shit out of my father.

“Really, Daddy, I'm sorry. I was finally getting Julian to talk, and I let time get away from me.”

“I'm sure ‘talking' is all you were doing, too,” he harrumphed.

My whole face burned. Then I remembered something. “Yeah, just like you were ‘talking' with Delilah the other afternoon.”

He had the good grace to clear his throat and turn a little pink himself. “Fair enough.”

I took my cup of coffee and popped in another cartridge for him. “Thank you for taking care of Julian. Back then.”

“Hardest thing I've ever done was not telling you what happened,” he said. “ 'Course I didn't even find him up there until you bolted out of here so fast. I thought you were sure enough ready to get rid of me.”

My heart squeezed in on itself. “Oh, Daddy, I'm so, so sorry,” I said. “I never thought beyond how much Julian had hurt me by standing me up.”

“I can see that now,” he said as he reached across the table and patted my hand. “But you'd better let me know where you are. I can't be worried you're off somewhere on the back forty getting eaten by coyotes.”

“I'll go find my phone and charge it now,” I said.

As I walked past him he grabbed my arm. “I should've told you.”

Yeah, I really wish you had.
“So I guess I'd better go see if there's a job opening in town, huh?”

Then Daddy grinned wide enough for me to see the gap just before his molars. “Damn straight you should!”

He shook my hand, pressing in who knew how many twenty-dollar bills, just like he always did. “And happy birthday, Rosemary.”

He let go of my hand when Mercutio came out of nowhere to land in his lap.

“Thanks, Daddy.” I shook my head at the two of them. If anyone had told me a month before that I'd be living in Yessum County and that my father would have both a cat and a girlfriend, I would've laughed in her face.

And then there was the question of Julian.

All I could think of was Tennyson's suggestion that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. I'd recited those words at my mother's funeral, and I'd hoped to never have to repeat them.

I still had that hope.

Julian

I
'd been to town and back and was working as hard as I could on the stable for Beatrice. She and Star were getting along famously, but I had to work the next day and needed to get everyone squared away before then.

When I heard the rustle of grass behind me, I surprised myself with the hope that it was Romy, but then I heard the creak of a wheel.

“Afternoon, Hank,” I said without even looking over my shoulder.

“Afternoon, Julian.”

I paused hammering long enough to say, “Hope you don't mind I'm fixing up a couple of stalls here for the horse I gave Romy.”

He snorted and muttered something under his breath about idiots and horses. “I reckon it's your lumber. You go right ahead.”

I turned around to face him, wiping sweat from my brow as I did. “Then what can I do for you?”

He crossed his arms over his chest, managing to look ominous in spite of sitting well below me. Kinda reminded me of Patrick Stewart as Professor X.

“Well, seems you and my daughter have rekindled your romance.”

“Yessir.”
Well, maybe, sir.

“And you remember how I wasn't too keen on the idea to start with?”

“Yessir.”

“And you remember how I was right and it all went to shit?”

“Yessir.”

“Don't fuck up again.”

“Yessir.” He could've added an “or else” to the end of that threat, but leaving it wide-open seemed worse.

Hank took out his pocketknife and a piece of wood and started to whittle. “You see, when you did your little thing, she hightailed it to Nashville and left me out in the cold, too. I'm getting old, Julian. I want to spend time with my daughter, maybe even play with some grandbabies one of these days.”

“Perfectly reasonable, sir.”

His eyes met mine as he flicked the pocketknife closed. “But that doesn't mean I want to see any grandbabies before the two of you work out whatever it is you still have to work out.”

“Yessir.”

He muttered under his breath about all the “yessir bullshit,” then turned his wheelchair with a grunt and rolled off.

The minute his wheelchair was out of earshot, I grabbed a nearby five-gallon bucket and turned it over to make a seat. Plopping down, I reached for the Coke I'd bought in town.

Yeah, I'd fucked up. When a man had
been
fucked up, it stood to reason he
would
fuck up. Ironically, Hank's little talk cheered me up. He hadn't told me to stay away from his daughter. In fact, didn't his warning mean he cared? Don't fuck up again was as close to getting Hank's blessing as I'd ever come. Now, how sad was that?

Not too sad.

And Hank had reminded me of something: If I'd fucked up, Romy had kinda fucked up. I mean, not really, but still. Didn't that make us pretty even?
Except for the part where you didn't run after her like you should have, sure
. But she could've come after me, too.

Aw, hell. We both messed up. Like people do. Wasn't what we did from this point forward more important than anything we'd done before?

Both Beatrice and Star ambled over to the fence to see what I was doing. Star peered at me through the slats, and Beatrice sniffed in my general direction. Already thick as thieves.

“What are you two looking at?”

I knew she was speaking horse, but it sounded all the world to me like Beatrice said, “One happy sonuvabitch.”

And I'll be damned if I wasn't smiling.

Romy

T
hat night I rushed Hank through supper and through the dishes. He hollered, “What's your hurry?” but there was enough of a twinkle in his eye that I knew he was only feigning irritation. I'd given Julian about all the time I could stand to give him. I needed to know where we stood. The last day or two had been too full of ups and downs.

After grabbing a little something I'd picked up for Julian in town, I tripped out the front door into the pink dusk, frowning at the Mustang I had yet to move.

No, it was still my birthday, and I wasn't going to think about that today. Like Scarlett, I could just think about that tomorrow.

I was huffing by the time I reached Julian's door—not because I was out of shape, but because I'd run up the road in the heavy steel-toed boots he'd given me. A pretty beagle with a wagging tail appeared almost out of nowhere and jumped up on me. I scratched behind her ears while I waited for Julian to come to the door.

I'd meant to give him his gift first, but, when he opened the door, I melted into his arms instead. He crushed me to his chest.

I started crying in spite of myself.

He pulled me out to arm's length. “What the hell, Romy?”

“I guess I was afraid you'd kick me out,” I sniffed. I was mad at myself for being so invested in him again, but there it was.

“After all the things I did to you? No way.”

He drew me close again and rested his chin on top of my head. I could tell that peace he'd made was going to be a little harder than he'd first imagined, but I could feel it nonetheless.

I disentangled myself. “I brought you a present.”

“But it's
your
birthday,” he said as he drew me in and closed the door behind us. The beagle whined in protest at being left out on the porch.

“Yes, but it's my fault you lost the other one,” I said as I drew the finely woven straw cowboy hat from behind my back and placed it on his head. He grinned, and it took my breath away.

“I'd lose that hat and a million more like it if it meant you'd come back to me,” he said as he kissed me.

“I've got other good news, too,” I said between kisses as he pulled me in the direction of the bedroom.

“Oh?”

“Yes, it's too soon to say for sure, but they may have a position open at the junior high, so I put in my application. It's not ideal, but it's a job. They promised they'd put me on the waiting list for the high school but that would probably take a few years. I'm officially moving home.”

He groaned, which could've been from my good news but was more likely related to my hand squeezing his ass as we reached the end of the bed. There was no more talking from that point, and he'd managed to relieve me of both my shirt and my shoes with ample promise of service when we both heard the gunshot.

“The hell?” He ran for the door as I struggled into my T-shirt. By the time I got to the living room, the front door was open and he had crouched down beside his little beagle. Blood covered her front, but she was still whimpering. Julian reached for her, and she snapped at him.

“Get me a towel!” Julian growled.

I ran to the back closet and tossed out linens, trying to find the oldest ones then giving up and bringing a stack. When I got back, Julian held her mouth closed with one hand and had the other pressed just above her front leg.

“I'm gonna hold her, and you're going to drive,” he said. “Keys are by the door.”

I grabbed the keys, stealing glances over at a now blood-soaked Julian, who'd let the beagle's mouth open but was still pressing the towel into the wound and murmuring to her. I called the vet while I drove, and he said he'd meet us there even if he wasn't all that happy about it. We were over halfway to Dr. Winterbourne's when I realized something.

Julian wouldn't meet my gaze.