I make your dick hard and you repay me by ignoring me?
I start to type out a response, but Jameson snatches the phone out of my hand and powers it off. “Fuck you.”
“You’ll thank me in the morning when you realize I didn’t let you tell our little sister’s best friend you’re in love with her, or something else just as stupid.”
“‘M not in love with her.”
“I know that,” he says. “But you had to go to a bar to drown out your sorrows after Kenny spilled the beans that your little firecracker won’t be around much longer, so I figure you’re probably a quarter of the way there and just drunk enough to say something that’d make her run faster.”
The time it takes to make sense of his words makes my head swim in a way that reminds me why I don’t fucking drink like this anymore. There was a day I could stay out all night, fall into bed at two, and wake up at four for morning chores with nothing more than a slight headache. Now it feels like recovering from a couple of beers is a week-long affair.
I don’t remember telling him what Kenny told me, but he isn’t wrong. I’m not sure exactly what I’d been planning to say to Austin, but itwouldprobably have been something that would send her running.
Something like,Why the fuck are you leaving the town you’ve lived in your whole life after making me feel hope for something more than monotony for the first time since my dad died?
Or,What can I do to convince you to quit the cam shows and sleep in my bed every night instead?
Maybe even,What happened that made you become so jaded about men, and is it as bad as I’m thinking it is? Is there anything I can do to prove to you I’m worth taking a chance on? Planting roots for?
My sigh is loud in the quiet cab.Deep thoughts for such a shallow mind,Dad would say when one of us would sigh like that and it’d always pull us right out of our heads and make us crack a smile. God, I miss him so much I can’t breathe because of it sometimes.
“‘M not in love with her,” I finally say again. I’m not sure who I’m trying to convince—Jameson or myself—but even just repeating it proves his point.
EIGHTEEN
AUSTIN
Maddox is mad at me.
That’s only half as concerning to me as the fact that I actually give a fuck about it.
I kind of make it a point to not care what men think of me. Actually, I go out of my waytopiss men off sometimes, so why is that grumpy old cowboy any different?
It’s just the whiplash of it all. One minute, he’s buying me lingerie and praising me over text and the next, he’s ignoring my sexy-as-fuck selfie and not logging in for my show.
Regardless, I can take the hint of three unread text messages in a row. I stop texting and so does he.
He doesn’t log on to my next show either, or the one after that. Pretty quickly, it becomes apparent that he’s not only avoiding my shows, but avoiding me in real life as well, since I see Jameson and Theo at the bar—and even Bailey one night—but never Maddox. I’d like to be able to say it only sucks because I’m missing his outrageous tips.
I skip Sunday dinner the next couple of weeks when Kenny invites me, choosing to do extra shows instead. Getting out of Cedar Creek feels even more enticing than it usually does. My skin’s damn near itchy with the urge now.
Dad always seems to know when I’ve got a bit more determination to get out than usual because those are the weeks he stays home as much as possible. The house is a fucking mess. He doesn’t believe in trash cans and just leaves his empty beer cans on the coffee table until it gets overcrowded and they fall on the floor. He seems to think we live in a self-cleaning house because after a few days, I always get tired of the mess and the bugs and clean up after him like he’s a fucking toddler. It’s no wonder I don’t want kids.
“Can you at least take your boots off outside so you’re not trudging slush all through the house?” I demand, like he didn’t just beat the shit out of me last month. February gave way to March since Maddox and I last spoke, the spring storms and muddy slush almost as annoying to deal with as the wishy-washy cowboy who won’t leave my mind. With any luck, by the time May arrives, both will be a distant memory.
I've never been very lucky.
Dad grunts, putting the 24-pack in the fridge. The only thing he’s left his recliner for the past week was his daily beer runs. “What’re you making for supper?” he asks, looking into the pot.
“Spaghetti.”
“Again?”
I don’t respond. Yes,again. Because spaghetti is cheap and easy and it feeds us for several meals. That’s how I have to shop for groceries. What I want to eat doesn’t matter much, it’s the cost of the items versus how many meals we can get out of them.
“You’d think all that fucking money you’re making flashing your tits on the internet, you could manage to get us steaks every once in a while or something.”
“I don’t make a ton of money flashing my tits. They’re not that nice.”
