Trailer Park Heart

Staring at his coffee, he paused for so long I didn’t think he’d answer me. Just when I was working up the courage to apologize for asking him hard questions, he said, “I blame my parents for Logan’s death, I guess. Er, blamed them. I’ve worked through a lot over the last few years, but for a long time, I felt like he enlisted to get away from them… to get away from their expectations of him.”

I reached across the table and laid my hand over his fingers, unable to keep myself from touching him. “You don’t blame them anymore?”

His gaze lifted to meet mine, paralyzing me in place and holding me there. “I realize now that he could have done a lot of things. Gone a lot of different places. Simply stood up to them and told them to back off. He picked the Marines. It’s not like that was the easy option. He’d always told me he wanted to serve his country, do his time before he came back to Nebraska to serve out his life sentence.” One side of Levi’s mouth lifted in a half smile, their shared joke dancing there, even while his eyes grew darker, deepened with the heaviness of his emotion. “I’ve started to believe that he was telling the truth. It was just hard for me to acknowledge that when I wanted so badly to blame someone for his death.”

I cleared my throat hoping to banish the sudden emotions and blinked rapidly against hot tears. “I’m so sorry, Levi. I’m so sorry about Logan.” A tear escaped, rolling down my cheek, giving my emotion away. I brushed at it with the back of my hand and hoped he didn’t notice.

Then I sniffled and wanted to throw myself under the table. I hated showing emotion to anyone, but especially Levi, especially about Logan.

He nodded, accepting my condolence. “You know, it doesn’t go away. The grief, the pain… It just gets… distant. Or, I don’t know, I get farther away from the point of impact. But god, it’s just as sharp today as it ever has been. I miss him.”

I laid a second hand on top of his and squeezed. Me too, I wanted to say. But I held back. I missed Logan for different reasons, ones that wouldn’t make sense to Levi. I grieved Logan for different reasons too. I grieved the dad to my son, the man that was supposed to shoulder half of the weight. I grieved the other half of my son’s life he would never get to experience.

He shuddered, turning his hands over and turning my sympathetic gesture into intimate hand-holding. “Leave it to you, Dawson, to turn my morning cup of coffee into a therapy session.”

I laughed nervously and retracted my hands to wipe at my embarrassingly wet eyes. He pulled his back and hid them under the table.

But they weren’t far enough away to erase the feeling of his hard, calloused palms scratching against mine, the warmth and the strength and the feeling of Levi Cole holding a part of me.

“It’s weird, Max reminded me of him the other day,” Levi continued. “It was like… like he was here with me again. I know that’s a strange thing to say about your son, but I just keep thinking about the way he looked, sitting in the dirt. It was Logan. He looked exactly like him.”

I laughed nervously again and prayed he couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart all the way across the table. “It’s nice you can find him in random places,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “I mean, I don’t know why you would see him in Max. That’s kind of crazy. But still, that must be nice for you.” I cleared my throat again, nervously this time, and decided I would have made a terrible spy.

His gaze sharpened, narrowing and opening at the same time somehow. “What’s it been like for you? All these years as a single mom. It can’t have been easy.”

I lifted a shoulder and buried my chin against my clavicle for a second, breathing a sigh of relief that he’d decided to move on. “It hasn’t been. But… but it’s been good too. Max wasn’t exactly in my life plans, but he’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Really?” Levi asked earnestly.

I nodded. “When I first found out I was pregnant, I panicked, obviously. And I mourned the life I had planned for myself in a big way. College, a career, a life outside of Clark City… I mean, I lost it all because of Max. But, on this side of everything, I’m okay with that. He’s changed my life. He’s given me something to live for that is so… worthy. You know? Like, yeah, my life is hard and heavy and sometimes I don’t know how we’re going to make it long term, but it’s also beautiful and so full of joy and laughter and… purpose. He’s just… my whole world.”

“I’m glad you have him then.” He leaned forward, taking my hand in his again. “You deserve some joy and laughter, Ruby. And some beauty.”

It took me a minute to form a response, but eventually I whispered, “Thank you.”

He held my gaze, searching for something with that intense, open way of his. I didn’t know what he saw. Guilt? Lies? Hope? But eventually it became too much. I couldn’t breathe with him looking at me like he was. I wouldn’t survive him.

“I need to get back to work!” I exploded out of my seat like I’d accidentally started it on fire. “Let me know if you need anything else, Levi. It was good catching up.”

I fled to the kitchen and caught my breath in the walk-in cooler. When I found the courage to show my face again, he was already gone. I felt relief. But I also felt intense disappointment.

“Did Levi pay for his coffee?” I asked Rosie.

“Yeah, and he left you this.” It was his receipt and a hundred-dollar bill. On the back of the receipt, he’d written, “It was a hell of a cup of coffee. Also, I might have ogled your ass once or twice.”

“I take it you don’t mind the ass ogling, then?” Rosie asked as I smiled at the slanted penmanship I would have recognized anywhere. “Are we charging for that now?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Inside joke,” I managed to say.

“Mm-hmm.”

Slipping the Benjamin into my pocket, I got back to work, forcing my mind to focus. It wasn’t until six hours later that I realized I’d given myself a headache from smiling too much.

13

High School Reunion

Dancing. Tonight. You. Me. Pug’s. Booze.

I stared down at Coco’s text and tried not to wince. My mom had the rare night off because the Fire Marshall had shut down Misty’s until they updated their sprinkler system. Maxine Dawson was rarely surprised by anything in life, let alone a routine inspection by the fire department. But this time, they’d caught her with her pants down.

Er, the Fire Marshall had been caught with his pants down with one of Misty’s girls. Maxine had kicked him out on the grounds that Misty’s wasn’t that kind of establishment. He’d retaliated by fining the club and demanding updated sprinklers.

She’d been hopping mad the last few days, but now that it was Saturday and she’d enjoyed her day off, she was actually starting to relax.

We were all sitting around the table for an early dinner of tater tot casserole and French-fried green beans. It wasn’t my most amazing recipe, but Rosie had sent me home with a box of food she said was left over from last week and tater tots had been one of the items.

Rosie’s leftover boxes had seen Max and I through a lot of dark times. If it wasn’t for her generosity, I was sure there would have been weeks we struggled to eat. Like when my beater of a Corolla had needed a new timing belt and I’d had to give away most of my paycheck to keep it running.