“She does me. That’s why I will do anything for her now. Her asthma’s been real bad for a while now and I send her medicine with the help of Red and Roadkill. They’ve given me samples to send to her. To Red, the drug reps are vultures, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them right back.”
Her impression of Red made him smile as his finger wiggled between part of the cross over and knot. With a big exhale, he arched his back.
The action made Topaz nearly double-over herself.
“That’s why you were in the clinic the other day?”
“Yeah. But you didn’t give me a chance to explain. You just teased me.”
“It’s my way,” he said. “When people hate me, I try to find ways of putting them at ease.” His confession was more to himself than her. “Plus, you’re easy, it’s like you have zero fucks left by the time you get to me and…well, if I piss you off, at this point so be it.”
“You do. But it’s because you remind me of someone.”
“Who is this someone?” Onyx worried they didn’t have much time alone, so he picked up the pace.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Sounds like he’s an asshole,” Onyx surmised.
“Fuck you,” she replied.
“You’re the one not about to dredge up the past. Got some other place to be?”
“Yes, by the way, I do,” she replied. “Anywhere that isn’t by you.”
“Hey, how long have you been up?” he asked.
“I don’t know, why?”
“Trying for a timeframe, I’m still bleeding a bit, but that could be the damn aspirin a day regimen I’ve been on for a while. Oh and let’s see, we’re in a cabin somewhere in bum-fuck Montana. Doubt we were put here to Netflix and chill,” he continued, a little ire spiking his tone. “You wake up with just yours truly? Or did you hear voices? Shoes? A door? What woke you?”
“You snore,” she stated plainly. “Or more snort at times.”
“Thought you had to check my breaths,” he countered.
“Well, when it goes from road construction to a quiet nature path it takes a bit before you can hear the crickets.”
“Not me,” he replied. “Those little assholes are loud and annoying.”
“Really? I love them, they can be so soothing at night.”
“Yeah, but you grew up in a holler somewhere,” he joked. “Little Rock? You from Kansas, Oklahoma? Wait, is that in Tennessee?”
“Arkansas and don’t play dumb with me,” she replied. “I know most of the country has no idea where I’m from, but you’re not that person.”
“What makes you say that?” he questioned.
“Beno,” she stated plainly. “I saw you with him the other day.”
“Must have been someone else,” he joked, remembering the little game of name the state the nearly four-year-old was playing with him while he put together a puzzle.
Dreamer had ordered a number of puzzles for the elementary school she was organizing in town. Onyx had helped with some of the demo to combine classrooms, since there weren’t enough kids for a whole grade. Instead, she went back to the one room school house style of learning. Now, they called it homeschooling, but she was putting her teaching degree to use in a very different way. One that was making the parents of younger kids look at staying in Turnabout Creek, instead of heading west to Berrington.
“You didn’t just help him, you talked with him about every state.”
“What can I say? My mama said there was more to the world than Los Angeles.”
“Funny, never thought anyone from there believed anything existed in fly over land.”
“Well, in Cali it’s hard to think about other places,” he admitted. “We’ve got everything because the state’s so damn big. We go from nearly subtropical to snow. Deserts to giant lakes and farmland.” He mused thinking about his old home. At times, he missed traffic jams that were more than three guys on bikes trailing a semi. Warm weather, near perfect temps year round. But the snow was thicker and lasted longer in Montana. Not to the point he’d be going crazy, but he now understood the idea of cabin fever.
“But you really talked to him,” she said. “The kid isn’t even four and you were telling him stories about the states. Like the reason Florida is shaped like a gun is so you can fight off the alligators trying to move from Louisiana swamps. And here I thought it was a panhandle.”
“Can’t be a panhandle,” he said with a surety he even believed. “Florida’s too long, now a pot sure. Just be glad I could have told him it was like his ding-a-ling and that’s why there’s so much water at the end.”
“Let me guess, The Keys are really kidney stones?”
“Obviously, you’ve visited them,” he joked as they had the most civil conversation ever between them. “He’ll remember Iowa is short and fat because it’s like a pig more than me telling him it’s between Minnesota and Missouri. It’s not like I did it with every state.”
“Did you teach him a power fist for Wisconsin?”
“Okay, so that one wasn’t my fault,” he stated. “There was a meme that was shared, kinda like Michigan is a mitt. Who knew?”
“The man who comes from the backward J state.”
“Right? See, and everyone knows Italy because it’s a boot. No other European countries are known, but Italy, everyone knows them.” He smiled, the knot loosening a bit more. “They have a great marketing department.”
“And Arkansas?”
“No so much, what’s your nickname again?”
“The Land of Opportunity,” she said, as if a little bit of pride was warming her chest.
“That why you left?”
The silence was back. Cold and harsh.
“Topaz?” he asked a bit softer knowing not only was he a daily reminder
