Page 11 of Lone Star Longing
Shit.
Part of him was mad at himself for taking this detour. What he didn't know didn't hurt him, right? And his mother was a grown woman who could make these decisions herself to get the house taken care of, not have it falling down around her ears.
But she probably didn't have the money, probably had alienated half the town, which didn't leave all that many people, to be honest.
He was going to have to go into town to find someone who was willing to do the work.
He turned to her, where she stood defensively in the middle of the cluttered living room. “Let’s go get dinner in town.” She would probably be happy to get out of the house for a while, yeah?
“I have dinner here,” she said, taking a step back when he took one toward her.
“Yeah, sure, but how long has it been since you’ve gone to the diner? Or, I think I saw a new Mexican food place when I was driving through.”
She scoffed. “There’s always a new Mexican food place. They all taste the same.”
“Well, I haven’t had any good Mexican food for a while, and you haven’t been in town in a while, so let’s go.” He debated advising her to change out of the housedress. But that would just give her more time to come up with excuses not to go. He didn't want to give her the chance, and the housedress was clean, anyway, if ill-fitting.
God. He made buckets of money and he was taking his mom to a Mexican food restaurant while she was wearing a housedress, so he could find someone to repair her house that was falling down around her ears.
Some son he was.
“Let me get my purse,” she said finally, and she went into her bedroom, returning with the oversized bag.
He didn't ask what was in it, or what she expected to do with it. He led her to his truck, and had to give her a boost onto the running board, touching her for the first time since he arrived. Damn, what were they going to talk about on the ride into town? What were they going to talk about during dinner?
He had not thought this through.
“This is a big truck,” she said, settling into the leather seat. “How much did you pay for it?”
“I paid cash, don't worry,” he said, not wanting to name the exorbitant sum.
“And it’s good on gas? With you driving all over the country?”
“Not particularly, but I do okay.”
She made a sound of doubt in her throat. “You won’t always have that fancy job. What if your friend gets in an accident and is killed?”
“That’s why I have savings and investments,” he assured her. He did think about that possibility every time Riley got behind the wheel. He had seen some pretty terrible accidents in his time on the circuit. But his job was to make sure Riley’s car was as safe as he could make it.
“You could always go work in the oil fields, but then you’d have to work for a living.”
He wouldn't rise to the bait. He’d heard the argument often enough, how his dad was a hard working man and he and his siblings never appreciated the sacrifices he made for them.
Sacrifices, sure. Along with a backhand every now and then, a whipping more often, for things that were minor in the whole scheme of things. Sometimes Beck found himself wondering how his dad would react when Beck saw the way some kids behaved today. Then Beck chided himself for being too much like his old man, something he swore he would never ever become.
They drove the rest of the way to town in silence.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked once the tires hit actual asphalt. “The diner, the Mexican food place? I thought I saw another restaurant but I couldn’t tell what it was.”
“The diner is fine.”
They probably had more of a selection. He parked the truck up front. He was grateful because he wasn't sure how mobile his mom was. She had approached his truck with a weird rolling gait that made him think walking was hard for her.
He walked around the front of the truck and helped her out, ignoring the fact that she flinched at his touch. Weird. He kept his hand at her elbow as he escorted her inside.
He glanced from the chalkboard offering the day’s specials to the counter of waiters and waitresses clustered around the drink station near the kitchen window. Right. Janine Tippler owned this place, and local kids didn't have a lot of options to make money. So Janine hired them to wait tables, since she didn't have to pay them much because they received tips.
The result was that the townspeople paid their wages, but because there were so many waitstaff, no one made much. And since there weren’t a lot of people in Broken Wheel, there wasn't a lot of business anyway. And the kids just congregated and talked, which led to lower tips, less money.
