Page 23 of Colt
“No thanks. But I will watch some TV. If you’ll get the remote for me. Since you’re here to care for me and all.”
I’m doing it to be annoying, but that’s when I realized that I really don’t want to hunt for the television remote, because itwould require me moving, and now that I’m down on the couch, I don’t especially want to get up. I don’t like that feeling at all. The feeling that moving would be so much more effort than staying still. It’s just not me.
It’s really not.
She doesn’t respond to it either way; she just grabs it off the console and throws it in my direction.
“I’ll come get you when dinner is ready.”
Baseball is on, and I can work with that. It’s not my favorite sport, but hell, I’ll watch golf if it’s the only thing that’s on. Football is my drug of choice, but it’s not that time of year yet.
So I’ll watch the Dodgers walk all over another team for a few hours.
I can hear her moving around in the kitchen, and I find it oddly soothing.
For all that I hook up a lot, I’m not one for cohabitation-type stuff. It just makes me feel… I don’t know.
The idea of permanence makes my skin crawl.
I know marriage was great for my mom, honestly. But everything that she went through before that… It was just terrible. I had to be the man of the house at a really young age, and all the stuff with my dad… It just put me off. And I stay off of it.
I’m never going to be the kind of man who can’t take care of a wife and kid. So I just won’t have one. That’s easy enough.
My mom and dad were never married, of course. She got pregnant, and at that point, she already had to track him down. She was open with me about that. And she got really candid about prophylactics.
She was only nineteen when she had me. And I feel like it was brave of her, the way she weathered it. Honestly, whatever she did would’ve been brave. She chose to keep me, and I’m grateful to her for that. I’m not grateful to my dad for a damn thing.
And I’ll never, ever be him.
I turn my thoughts back to the game, but it’s a blowout, and it’s not holding my attention. Still, before I realize it, Allison has appeared in the doorway with two plates of spaghetti. “I’m just going to bring it out here,” she says.
“No, I can go in there.”
“No,” she says. “I’m super into… baseball.”
“You have never watched a game of baseball in your life.”
“Sure, I have.”
“No,” I say.
“Go team,” she says.
“Which team?”
“I just hope everyone has fun.”
She goes and grabs a TV tray from behind the chair in the corner, sets it up in front of me like she’s my good and proper nurse. But I’m starving, and in no position to get irritated at her when she’s cooked for me. I mean, I could, but it would be petty. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not petty. And I’m going to do my best not to project all of my angst onto her. It’s not fair. She doesn’t deserve it.
She puts a Coke on the tray next to my plate of spaghetti. I’m more grateful than I want to show, even if I don’t want to be a jerk.
But I open the Coke fast enough that I’m sure she can see I’m excited about it.
She doesn’t sit on the couch near me; instead, she sets up her tray in front of the chair.
“Your mom said she’s been texting you?”
Shit. I haven’t even looked at my phone.
