Trailer Park Heart

I wasn’t super proud of that set of beliefs, but I also knew my place in life. I was the girl from the trailer park. The girl from the wrong side of the tracks. I was the single mom barely surviving paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t get to stand up for myself at the expense of losing money.

“He was staring at your ass, Ruby. That’s not okay,” Levi shot back, not even an ounce repentant.

Leaning closer, I dropped my voice, so the rest of the itchy-eared customers couldn’t hear. “He always stares at my ass, Levi.” I opened the black booklet, holding his payment. Flashing the twenty-dollar bill at him, I said, “But he’s a hell of a good tipper. And he’s not doing any real harm. You on the other hand are messing with things you have no business messing with. Billy could squish you. Next time stay out of it.”

His jaw flexed, a muscle popping near his ear. “You really think that overweight old man could take me?”

I leveled him with an annoyed look. “He’d crush that pretty face of yours and then you’d have to rely on your brains to get you through life. And we both know that would end in tragedy.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but he managed to keep a straight face. “You don’t have to take that. No matter what he tips. You’re worth so much more than a good tip.”

A lump that came out of nowhere lodged itself right in my throat and I struggled to swallow around it. Levi’s gaze was so intense, so sincere. His green eyes were ablaze with his conviction. He believed that. He truly believed I was better than sitting there, letting a man ogle my ass, just because he was going to give me a good tip.

Even saying it in my head shed light on how stupid it was. I knew I was better than that. Deep down. And it would be one thing if I didn’t know Billy was doing it. The man was free to let his eyes roam wherever they pleased.

But it wasn’t just the ogling. It was the occasional hand settled too low on my back when I refilled his coffee. And the disrespectful comments he’d offer as compliments. Billy and a dozen other men that came in regularly got away with a lot because nobody that worked here could afford to tell them to stop.

Me included.

Especially me.

Levi’s outrage felt good. And it also felt awful. Because I didn’t get the luxury of self-respect. All of humanity could cry out against how unfairly women were treated. But whistle blowing was an upper-class privilege. Speaking out was for people who could afford to lose their job, who didn’t have little mouths to feed. Standing up for what was right was for women with a safety net.

I was in the class of people that had to eat shit and smile.

“Thanks for your kind words, Levi.” I reached for a bussing rag and started scrubbing at nonexistent spots on the counter. “But my paychecks say differently.”

“Ruby—”

“Go find a seat, please. I’ll bring you some coffee in a minute.”

“Ruby—” he snapped more firmly.

I lifted my eyes and glared at him. “Levi, I am working. Please sit down and I will be over in a minute.”

His jaw moved back and forth, his teeth grinding together. For Christmas I was going to buy him a bite guard. His teeth were too perfect to crack.

As he gave me his back and stalked off to a corner booth, I had the strongest memory of him in middle school, a mouth full of braces and his arms and legs too long for his body.

“I get my braces off next week,” he’d said to me when we were emptying our trays after lunch one day. I was on the free-lunch program provided by the state. He’d gotten three extra pieces of pizza, a luxury I would never know.

Not just because of how expensive it was to order extra, but because I didn’t have the room to fit half a pizza.

“Good for you,” I’d mumbled, lifting my head to see if I could find Logan somewhere in the large lunchroom.

“Then my mouth will be normal again,” Levi had persisted.

“You’ll look really good, Levi.” My face flushed at the words I’d accidentally said out loud. The worst part was that they were true. He was the cutest boy in our class. By far. Even with braces. But I couldn’t let him know I thought that. So, I’d turned to face him, wrinkling my nose. “Too bad the rest of you never will ever be normal.”

His eyes had narrowed, and the planes of his cheeks had turned pink. I’d almost felt bad, except he’d hidden my backpack yesterday after school and I’d missed the bus trying to find it. He’d offered to give me a ride home on his bike, but I’d been too mad to care about his kindness.

“I’ll be able to eat popcorn again.”

Popcorn was my favorite food of all time. I ran my tongue over my front teeth, thankful they were straight. Not just so I didn’t have to give up popcorn, but also because I knew my mom would never pay for me to have braces like Levi had. If my teeth had been crooked, they would have stayed crooked.

“There’s a new movie,” I told him, deciding I could be nice about this one thing. “At the theater. It looked good. They have the best popcorn.”

“We should go,” he suggested. “My mom could pick you up.”

My cheeks heated just thinking about Levi Cole’s mom driving to my side of town. Levi’s family had money. His mom had a new Suburban. I felt sick at the idea of Levi seeing where I lived, at his mom driving her shiny car on our pot hole ridden roads. Still it might be worth it… “Is Logan going to go?”

“Logan?” Levi asked, his entire face falling at the mention of his brother.

I blushed harder, feeling like he could see straight through me. “Yeah, he’s always nice to me,” I said defensively.

Suddenly, he burst into laughter. “Did you really think I was asking you to the movies?” He laughed harder. “Get over yourself, Ruby.” Then he turned around and laughed all the way back to his table. I’d run to the bathroom and tried not to cry.

I shook my head free of that memory. It felt different now that I could look at it through the lens of an adult… now that I knew a little more about what Levi had been thinking back then.

Propelled by belated guilt and some ridiculous feeling that we really were starting to become friends, I walked over to his booth with two cups of coffee.

He eyed me curiously as I slipped onto the side across from him. “I have a ten-minute break,” I told him quietly. “Is it okay if I sit here with you for a minute? My feet hurt.”

He nodded, accepting the full cup of black coffee from me. His green eyes watched me as he took a slow sip from the piping mug.

I wrinkled my nose. “How can you drink it like that? Do you hate your taste buds?”

He lifted one shoulder. “It’s an acquired taste,” he agreed. “But work on enough ranches, you realize real fast they’re not interested in making sure you’re comfortable.”

Well, that was one thing to be thankful for. At least my job supplied creamer. “What was that like?”

“What? Learning to like black coffee?”

I smiled despite myself. “Working on ranches, dummy. Why didn’t you just come back here and work for your parents?”

He cupped his mug with two hands, his long, dexterous fingers intertwining gracefully. “After Logan died, I didn’t want to come back here ever again.”

His words were rough, ripped open, as if he’d had to drag them through barb wire to get them high enough to spit them out. But he’d answered me. That should have been enough. “Why not?”