Page 27 of 2204 Hunter Lane
Every Project’s a Breeze with the Tools of P&D’s!
It was the cheesiest thing in the world but people ate that shit up, and it was rolling in the dough so I couldn’t complain.
Actually, the business grew so much that my dad created the store’s personal “handy-man” collection which he and Payton delivered to hardware shops all around Nebraska.
They have always been happy since they’d gotten together, but now, they’d turned their business runs into staycation honeymoons which made them look like cupid shot an arrow right through both their asses.
My mom passed away when I was twenty-one, and my dad n’ Payton got together about a year later. I remember I hated my dad for it, thought he’d gotten over the death of his fucking wife like it was the easiest damn thing in the world.
When Payton came around, I never talked to her. Didn’t want to. Sometimes, I still don’t. But I can tolerate her now, knowing she treats my dad alright and he’s happy.
But I wasn’t.
Four years now she’d been gone. Four years of drinking my life away, testing fate, wondering when I’d finally crash my truck into a post or fall off a bridge. But life really loved to crucify me.
No matter how much I drank, how many bar fights I’d been in, drunk drives down the road, I came out without a scratch.
My mom on the other hand… I watched her get wheeled out of my truck. I’d seen the state of her body; the bloody clothes that stuck to the gashes in her chest, the glass glued to every part of her skin, coating her face to a point of unrecognizability. She was dead by the time the paramedics came, I knew it, they knew it. They fuckin’ knew and they still tried their damn best to save a life.
Me, well, I was trying to end mine.
???
I was in the garage giving my truck a tune-up when Payton patted the hood.
“Come help me up front, will ya? I got some handy-man boxes I need hauled into the van.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked, cleaning the throttle in my baby’s engine.
“Pickin’ up supplies.” She said, turning on her heel.
I wiped my hands on an old rag and followed Payton to the driveaway, surveying about a dozen boxes lined up near the porch.
They really did have a good thing going on, and everyone seemed a lot brighter lately. My dad even smiled more, and Lord when I tell you it was the creepiest damn smile I’d ever seen. My dad was many things, but a smiler? That’d be the damn day. And that day came, a week after Bambi brought the shop’s average sale count to fifteen-thousand a week.
I don’t know what she got out of helping the family. I don’t know why she stuck around, I didn’t care. She did right by staying elsewhere and working from a distance, because that girl was trouble. And no matter how many customers she’d pull in for my family, I wanted no part of her being in my life.
“We’re headin’ over to Kearney today. A shop up there paid big money for these.” Payton sniffed, drawing her coat tighter.
“Kearney?” I asked, lifting a toolkit into the back of my dad’s work van. “Not much goin’ on up there.”
“No, that’s why it came as a shock but hey, we ain’t complain’. Business is business.”
I nodded in agreeance, hauling boxes silently until there were none left on the ground.
It was mostly silence between us. I didn’t mind it anymore, and I doubt she did as well. She quickly became accustomed to who I was and that was something I actually commended her for.
“Anythin’ else?”
Her eyes roamed around the empty lawn before quickly shaking her head.
“Nothin’ material but Hunter,” she paused, “let me talk to you ‘bout something quick.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, spectating her little white hat and checkered jacket. Payton and I were never really alone and I’m positive my dad made sure of it. I knew he cared for her so he didn’t want to make it awkward knowing my stance on everything, so I was curious as to what she had to say.
“I was thinkin’ of asking Marley to come with us to Rivertown Bay.”
I let out a laugh before my mind could process what she’d just said. I’ve heard a lot of dumb things in my life, but that took the cake.
