Leaving Amarillo(4)
Looking out over downtown Amarillo and watching gray clouds roll quickly across the sky, I feel the weight of time passing, slipping through my fingers faster than I can hold on to it.
Tossing up a silent prayer to our parents or to anyone who’s listening, I beg for a chance. For a break. For a shot at making it.
Please, please let us get to live our dream.
Chapter 2
“BIRDS GOT ANYTHING GOOD TO SAY TODAY?”
Gavin’s voice pulls me from my deep contemplative moment on the roof. “Lots of gossip. Think I’m going to use it for lyrics to a somebody-done-me-wrong song.” I turn and face him, leaning up against the retaining ledge.
He glances over the ledge quickly and winces before propping his elbows on it. He’s always been slightly afraid of heights. But Gavin Garrison has never been the type to let fear stop him from staring the devil straight in the face.
“Yeah? Well, let me know when you’re ready to lay them down.”
My eyes travel up his heavily inked arms to his expansive chest. I let them drift up to his masculine neck and around the outline of his strong jaw. Dark tendrils of thick hair curl outward beneath the edges of the gray knit cap he’s wearing. He has an almost imperceptible dimple in his chin that matches the shallow one in his left cheek when he grins. Lord the things that happen to my body when he grins and that dimple shows. My pulse quickens just thinking about it.
“Um, lay what down?” My mind scrambles to snag a coherent thought. Unfortunately they all scattered upon Gavin’s arrival on the roof.
When we’re playing, it’s electric. It flows perfectly and we complement each other in every way possible. But take away the music and the noise and my brick-wall barrier of a brother, and I am a mess of epic proportions.
“The lyrics,” he says slowly, side-eyeing me warily.
“Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll keep you posted.”
He sighs loudly from beside me. “Look, I know you’re upset about breaking it off with what’s-his-ass, but trust me, guys like that—”
“I’m not upset about that. About Jaggerd.”
The second the words leave my mouth, though, Gavin’s dark eyebrows dip lower, and I kind of wish I’d gone with his incorrect assumption. It’d be a lot easier to explain.
“Oh. Well, that’s good. You just seemed kind of distracted in there. And your brother was more on edge than usual.”
“Papa’s had a string of rough nights. And . . . it’s been ten years, Gav,” I say softly. I can tell by the crease in his forehead and the pinch of his lips pulling together that he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “Our parents. Ten years since they—”
“Oh God. I didn’t realize . . . I’m an idiot.” He looks so distraught that I forget my own pain in the overwhelming urge to comfort him. He gets the Look, as I’ve begun to think of it. The one that says I’d really like to take your pain away, take you to bed and make it all better with my dick, but your brother would kill me so I’ll just stand here awkwardly while trying to figure out what to do with my arms.
“It’s okay,” I tell him, to ease his suffering. “Just weighing on me more than usual today.”
Little does he know, the Look comforts me. Because even though he can’t put his arms around me, can’t whisper sweet comforting words in my ear, or soothe my pain with kisses or more, his eyes tell me that he wants to—or he’s tempted to, at least. And for right now, it’s enough. The knowing. I just don’t know how long it will be enough.
Gavin pulls a soft pack of Marlboro reds from his pocket and deftly slips out a cigarette. I frown.
“Thought you quit?”
His eyes cloud over, his stormy gaze pressing against mine. “I can only deny myself so many things, Bluebird.”
As irritated as I am at catching him smoking, the nickname he gave me when we were kids still sends a wave of warmth right through me.
Dallas and Gavin mowed lawns the summer I turned thirteen. Dallas was saving to buy a truck and Gavin was . . . well, I don’t really know exactly. Probably hoping to make enough money to provide for himself so he wouldn’t feel like Nana and Papa’s charity case.
I was living smack in the middle of the in-between—mind of a child, budding body of a woman. Feeling very much both and neither all at once.
Nana sent me a few streets over to where they were mowing to let them know supper was ready. Fighting the urge to skip so as not to get all sticky and sweaty and gross in the Texas humidity before sitting across the dinner table from Gavin, I walked as calmly as I could manage, letting my hands dance on the breeze and trying not to get distracted by flowers I was tempted to pick.
When I arrived at Camilla Baker’s family pond, where the boys were mowing, they were huddled together and staring at the ground. Thinking one of them had been hurt and might be bleeding or possibly could have lost a foot or some toes at the least to the mower, I broke into a sprint until I reached them.
“Shh,” Dallas said, raising an arm that barred me from stepping on what they were staring at. “I think it’s still alive.”
“What’s still alive?” I whispered, entranced by the stillness of two boys who I knew firsthand hardly remained still or reserved this type of reverence for much of anything.