“You’re twenty-five, Parker. Give this some time.”
He slugged me in the shoulder. “You sound like an old man. Like, all the time. And you look like an old man. Even your pants are high-water. Why are you wearing white socks with black shoes?”
“These aren’t high-water. I’m squatting down.” I stood to prove I was right, but my coveralls only hit my ankles. Dang it. I’d grabbed the wrong jumpsuit from the stacks. We had them professionally cleaned along with the rags to get out things like oil and brake fluid.
“Looking good, Clay,” Evan said, giving me a low whistle. He came over to hover, and I ignored the two of them and went back to working. Their conversation was just background noise.
Evan nudged my shoulder after a few minutes. “You coming?”
“To what?”
“My house tonight. You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said, have you?”
“Give me the short version,” I said. Evan should be used to people ignoring him. He never shut up.
“My girlfriend is out of town, and we’re playing Madden NFL on my PlayStation. It will be a lot more fun than hanging out here all night.”
“Okay, whatever.” It wasn’t like I had other plans on a Monday night. “Now, you two go get work done and leave me alone.”
“See you at seven.” Evan wandered off to go find other people to bother.
Parker left me a few minutes later after giving me more details about the ownership meeting I didn’t need to know. I had to admit, though, John knew his stuff when it came to the business. He didn’t pretend he couldn’t be hit by a bus tomorrow. He had his family’s future mapped out. My future was a blank canvas, now more than ever.
The only good thing about yesterday’s phone call? Neither John nor Lauren so much as looked at me, or at each other. We were this triangle of avoidance. I should have let her take the phone from me and let him have it. I’d gone over every bit of that conversation in my mind, wishing I could have ended it before John revealed just how little he planned to stay out of things.
Yes, Boyce had been a disaster. John loved the guy. Boyce had been a truck whisperer, honest to a fault, humble, patient, friendly, the perfect employee. Basically, the only guy I knew worthy of Lauren, the only one I hadn’t made fun of.
In that case, I hadn’t needed to. Lauren had been young, barely twenty, and I think she got a little scared of how much Boyce liked her. Maybe he told her he loved her. Maybe he even asked her to marry him. Those were my own theories. All anyone knew was that Lauren ended things. Broke his heart. And he quit the next day. No two-weeks’ notice. Nothing.
John mourned it all the more because Lauren didn’t seem to care. She wasn’t broken up over the guy at all, at least on the outside. Some of the guys at work had whispered ‘heartless’ behind her back after that. John saw it as immaturity on her part, a lack of emotional depth. But looking back, I think she just got careful about who she let really see her.
I wanted to take back all the stupid things I’d ever said about her boyfriends. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Lauren was as buttoned-up as I was. There was a whole world behind the mask she wore, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to understand her motives. Maybe even let her see mine.
But we couldn’t even be friends.
16
___________
Lauren
I drove to Melissa and Connor’s house immediately after work. It was one thing for my dad to have conversations with Clay behind my back, but my sister-in-law? No. It wasn’t happening.
Melissa answered the door with a crying Jax in her arms and Raelyn hanging on her leg. She looked ready to sell her kids to the circus.
“Lauren!” Raelyn released her mom’s leg and dragged me inside. The house smelled like burnt popcorn and despair. I bent down to give her dogs a scratch. Sarge looked up at me with his large soulful eyes. His black fur was mostly gray these days. Poor baby. Buster turned circles, so excited to have someone new to sniff.
“Bad day?” I asked, looking over my shoulder at Melissa.
“Uh, you could say that. Raelyn dumped my hair serum all over the bathroom counter and tried to wipe it up with toilet paper. Besides being outrageously expensive, it’s on backorder and my hair won’t behave without it. I know that sounds ridiculous.”
It would have sounded ridiculous if I hadn’t noticed Melissa was having an extremely bad hair day. I’d always envied her corkscrew curls, but I wasn’t aware of the effort behind getting them to look that way.
“Jax is running a fever, and he’s so cranky. The doctor thinks it’s just teething. He wouldn’t nap today, not even in the car. Oh, and he blew out his diaper on the way home from the doctor so I think the teething theory is complete bunk. You should leave now while you can.”
I took Jax from her arms in answer, even though it only made him cry harder. It didn’t help when Raelynn chose that moment to dump out an entire bucket of Duplo Legos on the hardwood floor. Both Jax and I startled, only I didn’t begin to wail.
“Come on, little guy. I know you love me.” I rocked him gently while I walked around, dodging Legos and stopping occasionally to let him look at family pictures on the wall. Melissa had their whole lives chronicled in perfect square canvases. “Where’s Connor?”
