The Long Road Home

  I shrug. In a lot of ways I regret not watching my Dad repair things when I was a kid. He’d repair the vehicles when things went wrong. Repair all the household appliances. He even single-handedly shingled the roof on our house himself. I always blame it on the fact that I’m a woman and there are things that women do and things that men do. Now that I’m adult, I wish that stigma would vanish. And more than anything I wish I would have paid more attention to my Dad when he’d tell me that I should watch him when he was fixing something.

  I lift an eyebrow. “Well?”

  All I see is a torso. His head is hidden beneath the hood. “Easy, little miss impatient.”

  “Psh.” I roll my eyes and fold my arms across my chest. “I’m not being impatient.” Okay, so maybe I am. A little bit. Okay more than a little bit. The thought of traffic moving while my car is dead in the middle of the road looms in the back of my mind and it’s making me uncomfortable and antsy.

  “Can you turn your lights on?” His voice is level.

  The calming tone of it makes me relax a little bit. “Sure.” Taking a few steps backward, I reach for the door handle, open the door, and turn on my lights. I leave the door open and step outside, propping myself up against the side of my car. “You know I didn’t catch your name.”

  “That’s because I didn’t give it you,” he says with a hint of amusement.

  “Ohhh. Somebody’s sassy.” I shift against my car, my bicep against the strip of black lining my window. “You don’t have to get all snappy about it.”

  “Chill, Duchess, I’m messing with you. It’s Ray.”

  “I am chilled.” Literally. To the bone. My nose is starting to tingle. I’m betting there will be icicles hanging from the tip soon. “And Duchess? Why Duchess?”

  He peaks out from around the hood, a dimple rising in left cheek. His eyes sweep over me and I wrap my coat around me tighter. He’s looking at me like he knows what I look like in my underwear. Roses bloom on my cheeks and I break eye contact, feeling a little bashful. “You dress like a stiff,” he says casually before disappearing under the hood. I hear him fumbling with something. Then a pop. “With an attitude to match.”

  My eyes snap to his elongated torso stretched over my engine. “That was bold,” I scoff. “How would you like if I told you that you look like a Ray?”

  “I’d be cool with that,” he chuckles, “because my name is Ray.”

  “Well my name isn’t Duchess,” I retort. “It’s Sadie.”

  He backs away from the front of the car. “I like Duchess better.”

  I don’t. It makes me feel like he thinks I’m stuck up. Which I’m not. At all. I open up eventually. It just usually takes a while. Months. Sometimes years depending on the person. “And a stiff, really?”

  “You’re dressed like a Librarian.”

  I lower my gaze to examine my attire. Black slacks. A red wrap blouse. My eyes meet his then narrow. “So what. I like the way I’m dressed.” First off, I work in book-world where dressing a professional manner is necessary. Secondly, it’s January and mini-skirts aren’t a fashion must this time of the year.

  “Good for you then.” He wipes his hands on coveralls. “Do you have jumper cables?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He raises a thick eyebrow. “You don’t know?” He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels. “Wow. Who doesn’t know if they have jumper cables or not? Seems like it would be a smart idea to keep those handy.” A smile pulls on his lips and I think about sneering at him. Then I remind myself that he’s being a good Samaritan. He’s helping me. He doesn’t have to, but he is anyway and it would be rude of me if I didn’t remember that.

  “I’ve gotta pop my trunk.”

  “You think you can handle that?”

  My eyes flash to his for a nanosecond, narrowed into slits. “Yes.” I open my mouth then close it. I have a snippy comeback lodged in the back of my throat, but decide against using it. “I can manage, thank you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  After popping my trunk and discovering that surprise, surprise I do not have a pair of jumper cables. Ray grabs a pair from his truck, mosies on back to my car, but not before asking the guy parked next to me if we could use his truck to jump my car. The man obliges and for that I’m eternally grateful.

  I rev my engine when instructed to and when it turns over I think about clapping for joy. Maybe even doing a little happy dance. Relief runs through me like the fast current of the Ohio River. Ray closes my hood and I open my door. “Thank you, thank you so much. I can’t even tell you how much I appreciate this.” That’s not a lie. It’s so hard to meet good and decent people anymore. I make a mental note to take down the guy who donated his truck engine’s information or something so I can send a thank you or some kind of small gift basket.

  Ray stops at the side of my door grinning. I reach into the interior pocket of my purse and pull out some money. I hand it to him and he raises both hands. “No, I’m not taking your money.”

  I shove it at him. “Please just take it. You didn’t have to help me and you did.”

  His eyes light up. “It’s no big deal really. I never mind helping a pretty girl.” I fight the smile pulling on my lips as he goes on, “Besides, I have a great idea on how you can repay me.”

  Both on my eyebrows shoot up and my eyes widen. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  He winks. “How about that cup of hot chocolate?”

  I take a deep breath, laugh, and shake my head. “You don’t give up do you? You’re pretty persistent, aren’t you Ray?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “What if traffic starts moving?”

  “I think we’re good for another ten or twenty minutes.”

  I slouch in my seat. “Alright then.” I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, my eyes locked with his. “A cup of hot chocolate sounds nice.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ray arrives at my car door with a green metallic thermos. The moonlight pirouettes off the shiny steel lid and it glistens in spots. Quickly, I toss the junk in my passenger seat into the added collection of junk I have in the back seat and open the door.

  Ella is used to this. When we go places, if I’m not running late, which I usually am, I’m hustling to my car first so I can remove the junk from my back seat before Ella gets to the door. This is a customary ritual of mine. I’ll say, “Wait…Wait! Let me clear off the passenger seat.”

  I throw the last few papers onto the back seat as Ray starts to sit down. He glances curiously into the back seat then looks at me half-smiling. “Quite a collection you have back there,” he comments. “Just a few more items and you could be your own junkyard.”

  I aim my pointer finger at him. “Hey, now…” I know I’m not the most organized person. I don’t pretend I am. My mother and grandmother are always spouting off random rants at me about it my mom will say, “Oh my God, Sadie!” and my grandmother will say, “My mother always told me that a person who doesn’t make their bed everyday has no pride.” I let them talk and brush their comments off my shoulder. I know they love me. I know they are just trying to help. But my priorities will never be the same as theirs. They have this 1950’s picture of how life is supposed to be.

  Still…

  Even though it’s the year 2013.

  Don’t get me wrong there are things about that era that I wish were still common nowadays. Like having dinner on the table every night. Families eating together. No one does that anymore. It’s sad to me that important family values seemed to have gone out the window. People are more focused on convenience. As a kid, my mom worked like most women do, but she’s still old-school when it comes to the dinner on the table every night thing. It didn’t matter whether she was home or working, she still had dinner on that table every day. Then my Dad would come home and we’d eat as a family. Every day. That’s something that has stuck with me through my 28 years of living and that’s something I hope to instill in my ow
n children one day.

  Nonetheless, I’ve been making mental notes to hire a maid for a while, perhaps now is as good a time as any. “If my car isn’t suitable enough for you, you can always stroll on back to your truck and drink your hot chocolate alone.”

  “Easy, Duchess,” he laughs. “Easy.” He puts the thermos between his legs with his right hand while palming a white, Styrofoam cup in his left. “Seriously though, what’s your story?”

  “My story?” There’s a questioning tone to my voice.

  “Yeah,” he says, peaking up at me while he pours hot chocolate into the cup. “Why are you so uptight? And bitter?”

  I glare at him incredulously. “I’m not,” I bark out.

  He reaches into his jacket pocket and fumbles around for a second. “The snappiness would indicate that you are.” He pulls a small bottle of Peppermint Schnapps and puts a splash in my cup.

  I go to slap the bottle away. “You can’t put that in there!”

  He extends his arm back and smirks. “I just did.”

  “I have to drive!” I exclaim. “I still have another two and a half hours.”

  “Relax,” he says and shakes his head. “It is not even a teaspoon.” He hands me the cup. “You need to lighten up. For real.”

  I take the cup and purse my lips. In truth, I kind of find it ironic that he drinks hot chocolate and Peppermint Schnapps. My family has it every year for Christmas. My uncle even puts candy canes on the edge of the mugs. “You shouldn’t be drinking this either,” I say. “I’m sure your drive is just as long as mine if not longer.”

  “It is longer,” he states as he puts the lid back on the bottle. “Which is why I’m not putting any in mine.”

  “Well that’s nice.” I make quotes signs with my fingers. “Corrupt the stiff, why don’t ya?”

  He cocks his head to the side, wearing a salacious grin. “I think the stiff needs it.”

  “No…the stiff needs to make it home without hitting a tree along the way.”

  Ray stuffs the bottle into his pocket and pours himself a cup of hot chocolate. “I think she’ll be fine.” He measures the amount with his fingers and makes a face. “Not even a teaspoon.”

  “Fine,” I mutter and take a small sip from my cup.

  “So let’s get back to your story,” Ray says, taking a sip from the thermos lid.

  “Let’s not.” I smile. It’s a fake, bright smile meant to let him know that ‘My Story’ is something I prefer not to talk about. Mainly because I feel like the last couple hours have been blissfully painless and I’d like to keep it that way. “I don’t have a story,” I tell him.

  “Lies. Everybody has a story, Duchess.”

  “Not me.” He raises an eyebrow and gives me a look that tells me he’s not buying my closed off attitude at all. “Fine,” I cave. “Broken heart.” And that’s all he’s getting. He’s lucky he got that much.

  Another sip of hot chocolate down. “Oh,” he draws out the word. “Those can be brutal.”

  Brutal is an understatement. It was a soul-crusher.

  A life vacuum.

  A ruthless pit of hurt, agony, and despair.

  “Yeah.”

  Sometimes it still is.

  I keep telling myself that you can’t climb a mountain like that over-night. I keep telling myself that when I wake up every morning that it’s a new day. That I’ll feel better. That I’m healing. I’ll start to forget soon. But that’s the thing about love and heartbreak, you can forgive, but you’ll never forget.

  “I think everyone has had their heart broken a few times in their lives.”

  I swallow the hot chocolate in my mouth. “You?”

  “Psh,” he scoffs. “More times than I can count.”

  I sigh. “Sometimes I wish it would get easier.”

  “It does. Give it time.”

  Time.

  He’s full of shit.

  I’ve given it plenty of time.

  Still…

  I’ve been wrecked and ravaged since August. I’ve been pieces of debris lying on the floor in a vacant, rotting house. I can feel those five excruciating words stabbing me while I think of my past. My head is tingling, my heart hollow. I squint, hoping I can shut them out.

  I can’t.

  They never go away.

  More than anything I wish that those words weren’t the reason that I’m so beautifully broken.

  My heart bleeds with sorrow.

  Weeps with remorse.

  Hurts remains like a throbbing tumor.

  Sighing, I pinch the bridge of my nose and face the window. I tilt my chin down as tears pool in the corners of my eyes. For God’s sake, what’s wrong with me? It feels like the last six months have been a tidal wave of emotion.

  Raspy breaths.

  Choking on sobs.

  I’ve never been too much of a crier. Sure, every now and then I feel everyone needs a good, long one. Even me. And when I would cry, I would feel better. Like a weight had been lifted. It was a miraculous feeling. Everything in the world was bright and sunny again.

  One thing I’ve learned over the years is that internalizing all of that pent up emotion and frustration never helps. It balls up in the pit of your stomach like an infected wound, festering, pussing, branching out through your nervous system. It takes over your body slowly.

  It suffocates you.

  Hour by hour.

  Day by day.

  Then the moment comes where the floodgates open and you crack. I hate when I crack. It makes me vulnerable. Being vulnerable scares the living shit out of me. Because when I show that side of me, it means that I’m susceptible to being hurt. It means I’ll welcome pain into my home like a friendly neighbor and allow it to stay as long as it likes.

  “Are you okay?”

  Ray’s fingers skim my shoulder and I jump, surprised by the warm gesture. “I fine,” I mumble, blotting the remaining wetness from my eyes. I gulp down the rest of my hot chocolate.

  “You don’t seem fine. Seems like he really did a number on you.”

  “That he did,” I say.

  What I don’t say…

  What I can’t say…

  Or won’t say…

  Is how bad that number that he did was.

  I clear my throat and wet my lips. “He’s not a bad guy. Things just fell apart, you know.” In the worst possible way they could. “Maybe it was supposed to happen that way. Everything happens for a reason.”

  I’m a firm believer in that. People come in and out of your life and teach you things. Lessons, whether good or bad. The ones who are meant to stay, stay. The ones who were never supposed to be there in the first place don’t. I half smile, but it’s not firm. My lips quiver so I press them together.

  “Sometimes things have to fall apart for things to fall back together,” he says smirking.

  “Marilyn Monroe said that,” I add. Or something along those lines. Almost all of her quotes are epic. “I love her.”

  To me, there’s always been something about the movie stars in that era that always made me love old movies. Even as a kid.

  They were glamorous.

  Timeless.

  Classic.

  “She was definitely hot,” he comments with a self-assured nod.

  I scrunch my nose and purse my lips. “I’m not a fan of that word.”

  An astonished look crosses over his features. “What?”

  “Hot. I’m not a fan of that word.” Never have been.

  “I’m sure a lot of women would consider that a compliment.”

  I shrug. “Well I’m not a lot of women.”

  I prefer compliments with a little more effort or meaning.

  Like beautiful.

  Ravishing.

  Stunning.

  The English language provides a plethora of words that can be used to give a woman a compliment and in my opinion, “hot” isn’t one of them.

  It doesn’t take much to impress someone like me. Seriously,
little things make me over-the-moon excited. If I was with someone and he showed up to my door-step with a flower he picked from my neighbor’s yard I’d beam brightly and clap my hands. I don’t need elaborate gifts or to be wined and dined. Yes, I feel like some effort on the guy’s part is necessary, but like I said before, it doesn’t have to be much.

  “Yeah,” Ray clears his throat. “I can tell.” He coughs out, “Stiff.”

  I playfully slap his shoulder and force out, “Stop calling me that.” Actually, it’s growing on me. I’d rather him call me ‘Stiff’ than ‘Duchess.’ “Hey I happen to think having class is a good thing.”

  He drains the rest of the contents in his cup and twists the lid back on his thermos. “It is…but there is such a thing of taking it too far.” He turns to face me.

  My mouth drops open. “I don’t take it too far.”

  Ray reaches up behind my head and flicks my ponytail. “Do you ever let your hair down at all, Duchess?”

  “Psh,” I scoff. “Yes.” Well, I used to. When I was a teen I went through a rebellious phase where my parents were the devil and staying out until four A.M. on a school night was way cool. Of course I grew out of that phase and by the time I was twenty one I was over it.

  “Well, what do you do for fun then?” Ray questions.

  “I read,” I tell him. “And hang out with friends.”

  He rolls his eyes and chuckles. “Wow…Sounds like you’re really living the dream.” He lifts his chin at me. “You catch the sarcasm in that?”

  “Screw you,” I snap and he laughs. The laughter rolls from his throat like the loud claps of thunder hidden behind walls of gray during an intense storm.

  It’s deep.

  Booming.

  All that’s missing are the colliding flashes of lightning.

  I sneer at him. It comes off like he’s mocking me. “What’s so funny?”

  “You.” He catches his breath. “You need a life.”

  “I have a life,” I tell him. “Just because it’s not one that falls into your standards of living doesn’t mean that it’s not a life.”

  I happen to like the way I live my life. I don’t like the bar scene. Or partying. If I’m gonna kick back and have a drink, I want to do it in a calm, laid-back type of atmosphere. Truth be told, I’m kind of boring, but I like myself that way.

  “Don’t you have any hobbies, Duchess?” he inquires.