Shifting Gears (23 page)

This place, coming into my life when I
needed it most, has become my escape. When I’m here, nothing else
matters. I feel safe. I feel loved. Even as an adult, when I need
to get away, this is always the first and only place I
come.

Holt follows me over, carrying two
shot glasses and the bottle of Jack. He sits beside me and pours a
shot for each of us. When he hands me mine, it instantly jolts me
back into the present. I grab it and shoot it down. I definitely
need some liquid courage to ease my nerves being this close to
Holt, here, like this, where I have nothing but good memories.
Sitting on this swing where I fantasized about falling in love over
and over again.

The view is much the same as it was
for me back then. The only difference now is I’m not alone. Even
though he doesn’t know it, the first man I ever loved and gave my
heart to is sitting only inches away from me.

“Want another shot, babe?” he asks,
jolting me again.

“Um, yeah, sure,” I reply, not wanting
to ruin my moment of peace. I’m almost happy, and I can pretend for
a little while, even though I know none of this is real. He’s not
mine. Never was. Never will be.

“So what was it like growing up here?”
Holt asks me as he leans back in the swing and puts an arm across
my shoulders, resting his other on his leg, with the shot glass in
his hand and the bottle squeezed between us.

“I can see you sitting out here with a
boy in the dark, and he’s taking his chances with you, hoping your
aunt doesn’t catch him. Not really liking the thought of that shit,
but I can’t hate on it. I would’ve done the same if I’d known you
back then. Hell, yeah, I would.”

If only he knew, there were no boys
out here with me. Well, at least not real ones, just the ones in my
books.

I let out a sigh. “I came here feeling
alone. Missing my daddy.” Yeah, my liquid courage has kicked in.
“It was hard, because he was all I had. We’d visited my aunt a few
times, sure, but I didn’t really know her all that well.” I smile
at the memories of coming here with Dad, remembering not quite what
to think of her in those visits.

“So when Dad died, and I was taken
away from my home and everything I’d ever known, and forced to come
and live here, I was scared. Aunt Helen opened her arms and heart
to me.

“I really thank God she was here and
willing and able to take me in, because looking back, I’m sure Dad
would’ve have been on the phone with her non-stop with my teenage
craziness. I can laugh now, thinking back on all the times I would
come home from school, screaming at the top of my lungs to Aunt
Helen about what some boy had said to me.” I laugh, seeing myself
running up the steps, huffing and puffing and madder than
fire.

“I met Cass not long after I started
school here. She’s my exact opposite and exactly what I needed. She
would pull me out of my books some nights and convince me to go to
a party, which I would, but I’d always end up in the corner,
listening to the music. I couldn’t be further away from the poster
child for the all-American teenage girl.

“I spent more time here at home with
my aunt than anything else. She helped me with the animals I
brought home, helped me nurse them back to health. We’d both spend
a lot of time at the hospital helping Doc C, and when I wasn’t
there, I was at the animal shelter in the city, volunteering on the
weekends.”

Damn it, why the hell did I just tell
him that?

Damn you, Jack
Daniels…

Now he’s going to think I was some
pitiful girl, at home crying over the boy I couldn’t have. Fuck it.
Let him think what he wants. Doesn’t matter anyway.

“If someone asked me to describe the
perfect moment in my childhood, this would be it. Sitting out here
like this, watching the lightning bugs, drinking Aunt Helen’s sweet
tea, and reading a book. I’m sure that doesn’t match your idea of
excitement and fun, but that’s pretty close to perfection for
me.”

Holt caresses my shoulder, the tips of
his fingers barely touching my skin. The sensation of his touch
surges through my body. I risk looking up at his face, only to see
him already looking intently at me. “Sounds pretty perfect to me,
babe. I think you’re very lucky to have such beautiful memories of
this place and what it did to keep you from feeling alone.” He lets
out a deep sigh and pours himself another shot. “I wish I could say
the same about me, babe.”

I wait for him to speak, begging,
pleading with my eyes, caught up in the moment and my
alcohol-fueled bravery.

“Tell me.”

“I grew up with parents and music. The
music came first—at least for my father. They both played guitar,
my mom not as well as Dad. She was more a singer, which is how she
and Dad met. They were both doing a gig on the same night at the
same bar. They became inseparable, apparently, after that first
night, and Mom ended up quitting her band to follow Dad with his.
They travelled together, played music together, partied together.
They just did whatever they wanted and had fun doing it, but then
Mom got pregnant with me.”

I watch as Holt rubs the back of his
neck, clearly tense. I’m guessing not many people, if any, know
about his childhood.

“Mom told me, when they first found
out, they were both scared because they didn’t have anything,
nowhere to raise a child. With the shows they did, they made enough
money to get them to the next town and the rest they blew on
whatever they wanted. All that shit changed when Mom decided to
keep me. They planned on saving money to get a place, and Dad was
going to get a job working for my mom’s uncle at the
garage.

“Mom stayed on the road with Dad while
she was pregnant, and by the last month before she had me, they’d
saved up enough money and got a small apartment. Dad was finishing
up the final shows they had scheduled and was going to start the
new job before I was born. Well, I had other plans.”

Holt laughs, and I can’t help but
grin. Controlling shit even before he came into the
world.

“During Dad’s last show, which was
about four hours away from Mom, she went into labor and had me. He
missed the whole thing. That should’ve told Mom something.” Holt
shakes his head and grunts.

A shiver escapes down my back at the
sudden feeling that this isn’t a happily-ever-after kind of
story.

“Things were good for a while after I
was born. Dad came off the road and started working for Uncle Lou.
But Dad was missing performing and travelling and being with the
band. He begged Mom to let him go back out, and she let him. That
was her second mistake. It started out slow. He was gone a few
nights then a week, then two weeks, then a month, then four months.
It got to the point where Dad was on the road more than at home
with us.” His hand goes back up to his neck, rubbing it, and I
instinctively drop my hand to his thigh.

“Mom did the best she could with me. I
wasn’t like you, babe.” He looks up at me then with a sly grin. I
can only imagine what kind of hell he put her through. Jesus. As if
hearing my thoughts, he says, “I gave my mom a lot of shit, even
before I hit puberty. I was always drawing or listening to music,
not paying attention in class. I cared more about stringing a new
song out so when Dad came home I could impress him with it, and
maybe he’d let me go with him on a gig. Yeah, that’s all I wanted.
Just some time with my dad. I wanted to be just like him. So when
the punks at school talked shit about him, I beat the fuck out of
them. It got me kicked out of school over and over
again.

“The years alone took their toll on
Mom—raising me on her own, having to work full time because the
money Dad sent home didn’t amount to shit. She started begging him
to come back off the road, but he refused. He was sending her
money, what more did she want? She told him she didn’t care about
the money, she just wanted him. She loved my dad. I could see it
when she talked about him, the way her face lit up when she told me
the stories of them on the road.”

I tighten my hand around his thigh.
It’s clear he was close to his mom. Having to watch what she went
through because of his dad had to have been hard. Even for an adult
it would be.

“When we knew he was coming home for a
few days, I would watch her go through all her clothes, putting on
and taking off, back and forth for hours until she was satisfied
with how she looked. She would sit in front of the mirror in her
bedroom, staring at herself in a kind of daydream while she put on
lipstick and sprayed perfume on her neck, smiling at her
reflection. My mom was beautiful but my dad...he took her pretty
away. Just threw her in the trash.”

I swallow the hardness back forming in
my throat. The tears fighting to come out.

“Mom was lonely, and when Dad refused
to come back to stay for good, everything went bad for us. She
started sleeping all the time, some days never even getting out of
the bed. Lost her job because of it. The days of her teaching me a
song to strum out on my guitar while she sang it to me were gone.
Her voice was just as beautiful as she was, but when she finally
realized Dad was choosing the road over her, over his family, it
was all gone. Music was dead to her.

“I was there the day she walked down
to the dumpster outside our apartment and threw her guitar in the
trash. She never knew I followed her, dug it out the garbage, and
hid it, keeping it for myself.”

I don’t dare ask, but I’m dying to
know if the guitar he keeps in the trunk of Sex on Wheels, the one
he used that night to sing to me, is hers.

“She started drinking more, and when
that didn’t help, she started with the fucking drugs. At first I
didn’t know, I didn’t realize, but then I snuck out of my bedroom
one night and watched her shoot up. I was twelve.”

I cringe at the thought and can’t help
but compare my childhood to his. When I was fourteen, I was
depressed because my father had died, and I felt so alone. Holt,
though, was only twelve when he had to watch his mom stick a needle
in her arm. The only person he had in his life. Jesus.

“Dad came less and less, maybe three
or four times a year. I didn’t know what the fuck to do to help
her, but I thought maybe if I got a job or something and stopped
getting in fights at school, it would make her happy again. I
started working nights for this trucking company, helping unload
shipments off the docks and getting paid under the table. That’s
where I met the guys I got hooked up with to drag.”

The tone of his voice changes a
little. Probably this part of his life is when he first felt happy,
excited about something.

“Uncle Lou had the Buick sitting
around the garage, and I asked him one day if I could buy it off
him. It was a piece of shit, broken down, ragged out. He couldn’t
understand why I wanted it and ended up just giving it to me. Took
me a few months to gut it and get it running, but over time, with
my uncle’s help, we brought it back to its original condition. I
added some shit to it and by the time I was finished, it could
fucking fly. And it was mine. First fucking thing I ever owned. I
started racing then, late at night after work.”

A little surge of excitement hits me,
visualizing him behind Sex on Wheels, racing. Fuck. And it makes
total sense now why he keeps it so immaculate. He’s proud of it,
his first accomplishment.

“Loved that shit, babe, and I was good
at it, fucking owned the road and rolled a lot of money from it.
Every single fucking penny I took home to Mom. For a while, it
seemed like shit was getting better. I didn’t know if Mom was still
doing drugs or not, but she seemed happier, so I figured she was
better. I was wrong.”

Just as fast as the excitement came
across his face, it’s gone.

“When Dad came, he had to know the
shit I didn’t know, the shit I didn’t see because I was a kid. He
never did a fucking thing to help her though. Not one fucking
thing. By the time I was sixteen, I was living on the streets. I
couldn’t take being at home anymore. As I got older, I knew what I
was seeing. Mom had turned into a fucking addict.

“All the money I gave her went right
to her fucking dealer, and when she didn’t have money, she’d let
him fuck her. I walked in on that shit one night, and that was the
last night I stayed there. I stopped giving her money and started
paying her bills myself. I was making enough money on my own,
working the docks and winning on the nights I dragged, so I made
sure she wouldn’t be living on the fucking street.”

For the first time since he started
talking, he looks down at my hand on his thigh and slowly rests his
hand on top of mine. He weaves his fingers between mine, and the
simple, intimate act stirs me. I’m a clusterfuck of emotions, from
this building desire to agony over the image of his
mother.

“I went to Mom’s every day, and I
walked in that door every single fucking time, wondering if I would
find her dead with a fucking needle in her arm. I lived like that
for two fucking years, until her thirty-sixth birthday. I’d brought
her a birthday cake. I didn’t see her at first, but when I put the
cake on the table, I looked down. I can remember not even rushing
over to her because I knew. I fucking knew. I just stood
there.