“Keep going, you’re doing fine,” he said, as if he read my thoughts.
At the first light I caught a red, and I stalled out when the light turned green. Cars beeped behind me, and I tried to cover how flustered I was, but Yvette knew, refusing to gently go to first. I suspected Stick knew as well.
“Take your time. Concentrate on Yvette. Fuck those yahoos behind us.” His voice was low and strong, and even though it came from his side of the car and was not whispered in my ear, it gave me the steadying I needed, and I got her in gear and moved down the Chesney main street.
“Yeah, peppermints,” Stick said as I made my way to the next light, which was also turning red, much to my dismay. I took a peek in the rearview mirror and saw all the same cars were still behind me. “I took ’em up when I first started smoking,” Stick said as we glided to a stop at the light, my feet feeling like lead as I tried to keep my hand light and easy on the shifter, placing it in neutral. Even dangling my wrist off the knob as I’d seen Stick do, trying to fake it till I made it.
Wait, what? “You used to smoke?” I asked Stick, his comment finally permeating.
“Yeah, since I was twelve.”
I looked over at him. “You started smoking at twelve?”
“Since eleven, actually, but not hardcore until twelve, yeah. Green light,” he added at the end. “Smooth as silk,” he said softly.
My mind was boggling on the eleven-year-old smoking bit. I mean, I’m not naive, but still, eleven years old?
I shifted into first and pulled through the green light. “Did your parents know you were smoking at eleven years old?”
I felt, more than saw, the shrug of his shoulder so close to mine, and yet not touching. “If they did, they didn’t say anything.”
Hardly one to comment on neglectful parenting, I kept my mouth shut.
“How long ago did you quit?”
It took him a few seconds, but he came back with, “Two years, four months and three days ago.” He took another mint from the roll and popped it in his mouth, then returned the roll of candy to his front jeans pocket.
“Must have been pretty momentous for you, if you can rattle the exact date off so easily.”
“It was also the day my father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Shit happens. Don’t know what he expected, being a pack-a-dayer for thirty years.”
“Yeah, that would do it.”
“Yep.”
“So…how long after the diagnosis…did he…”
“He actually hung on longer than you would have thought. Tough old bastard. I think he did it just to piss off the doctors who said he had a few months tops. He lasted a year.”
“But probably not a great year…for any of you.”
“No,” he said very quietly.
“And your mom?”
“Not in the picture.”
“During the cancer, or ever?”
“Ever.”
God, how many times had I wished that one of my parents (and it rotated which one, but mostly my father) was just…out of the picture? That they simply didn’t exist.
But was that really what I’d wanted? I guessed Stick would have liked his mother during that last year of his father’s life, even if he was, like, eighteen or nineteen himself.
