Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(59)
Now I told Emma, “Would you dump Paul if you could get Bobo Segrist to dance the mattress jig with you?”
Emma giggled behind her hand. “You think he’d want me? I’m so much squarer than these sugarbutts.” But since just hearing “dance the mattress jig” was causing Emma conniption fits, I doubted she would.
“Sweetbutts.” There were only a few sweetbutts at my party because old ladies were also invited. Old ladies, historically speaking, didn’t like to see the chicks their old men were probably f*cking. “Sure, Bobo would give you a hot roll with cream.” I was getting all of these terrible euphemisms from Toby. He wished he could park his yacht in Hair Harbor. Although lately he’d been getting a lot more action due to being a hang-around of The Bare Bones.
“I don’t know,” said Emma. “Lately I’ve been sort of bored with Paul. All we do is watch TV, and then I see you guys. Every night of your life is some death-defying excursion, some exciting run. That, or you’re going on Toys for Tots runs, doing good for the community, teaching archery to Boy Scouts.”
“Emma,” said Ford, grabbing a chair and slamming it down between me and Emma. “Good to see you. I’ll see you at the policeman’s dinner next week? You’ll be with Paul Goodhue?”
Emma visibly deflated. “Yeah,” she said unenthusiastically. She worked at City Hall too, so she’d been seeing Ford at the policeman’s function for years. “I’ll see you and Madison there.”
Ford said, “And Lytton and June. Right, June?”
“Oh, sure.” Lytton hadn’t actually asked me yet, but I didn’t want to admit that to Ford.
Ford’s tone changed now. “And how’s your mom doing? I should go visit her at the hospice.”
“Don’t bother. It’s spread to her lungs and peritoneal cavity. It’s metastatic, and we’ve stopped chemotherapy.”
Once Ford had found out that Ingrid had pancreatic cancer and we’d moved her from the drug addict hospice to the more expensive, nicer one, he stepped up to the plate too. He actually got mad at Madison for not telling him that Ingrid needed money. He said he would’ve stepped up a lot sooner even if it meant going against Madison’s wishes. Maddy was the holdout, the embittered one holding the massive grudge against Ingrid for how she’d treated us.
I was a believer in the adage, “Your parents make you what you are, but it’s up to you to change it.” I tried not to carry on a vendetta against our mother. People say “oh, she tried, to the best of her ability,” but that wasn’t true. Ingrid truly didn’t “try.” If she had “tried,” she would have reigned in her awful, nasty temper. She wouldn’t have beaten us for tiny infractions. Most of all, she would have found a way to provide for the three children she’d brought into the world. Nobody had forced her to have us. There is such a thing as birth control. She made us all feel as though we weren’t worth a damn.
But I didn’t want to regret anything when it was too late. So maybe it was still selfish that I moved her to the nicer facility and let Ford and Lytton split the bill. Maybe it was their way of feeling better about their own mothers, both drug addicted alcoholics from the same tribe who might have even known each other. It certainly had given the two brothers something to bond over. I was really relishing their new friendship.
“I still want to go. I’ll go tomorrow with Maddy on her day off.”
“Oh, Maddy wants to go?”
Ford grinned adorably. “She does. She just doesn’t know it yet. How is it working up at Leaves of Grass? Driving Hawk paying you a decent salary?”
“More than the Peace Corps paid.” Helium Head had actually been the hydraulic engineer, taking care of the watering, irrigation, and the recycling for all the plants. It was a hell of a way for me to get my job. It might sound weird or callous, but I just took over his duties seamlessly. I worked with Toby and Crybaby, the cultivator, but was rarely stuck working with Lytton since he was spending most of his time downtown at the dispensary. It worked out perfectly.
I’ve never understood those couples who delight in working together. Don’t they get sick of each other? I was glad I didn’t have to work with Lytton, and at the end of the day it was a gorgeous drive down the mountain where I could stop and see him at The Joint System. Sometimes we’d go to The Hip Quiver, where Lytton was brushing up on his nerdy high school sport of archery. He was even helping Kneecap out by teaching some kids. I couldn’t shoot due to my facial injuries, but I hoped to, soon. And Lytton usually brought some edibles to Slushy in the range’s back office.
“Well, I’ll tell you, June. I don’t blame you for moving into Lytton’s new house, but I’ll sure miss you around ours.”
I was confused. Lytton hadn’t said a word to me about moving into his new house. Ford must’ve just assumed that. “Oh, well, he’s barely laid the foundation so far. It’ll still be a few months.” It had kind of been bothering me that Lytton hadn’t asked me to move in. I thought it had something to do with how ugly I looked with the scary metal arch bars on my teeth. I knew I should give him credit for deeper feelings than that. After all, he’d given me a gorgeous diamond and garnet choker to replace the plain leather cuff he’d given me on the spur of the moment. This signaled his ownership of me. I was his property.