Page 25 of Butter You Up
Whoops.
“Yeah, Dad, sorry. Anyway, enough about the farm. Are you going to the rec center tonight?” Dad usually goes to the veterans’ rec center on Friday nights to meet up with his buddies and play games.
“Nah, not tonight. I’ve got other stuff to do.”
“Oh? Whatcha doing?”
Dad lists a few chores and an episode of something on TV he wants to watch, but he says it all in that hemming-and-hawing way that lets me know he’s lying. Well, maybe not lying to me, but lying to himself. He does have all those things to do, but he’s using them as an excuse not to get out of the trailer.
“Those things can all wait. You should go play pickleball. You need to get out more.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
Dad makes an excuse to go, and worry gnaws at me. His meds have been effective lately, but when his mental health declines, Dad doesn’t leave the trailer much.
That’s the worst part about being on my trip. I have to remind myself that my dad is a grown man with resources, medication, and friends. I just hope all that’s enough.
I hang up with Dad and get ready for bed. All the while my thoughts keep drifting back to Alex.
I haven’t been with a guy in almost a year. That must be why I find myself reaching for my vibrator once I’m under the cover. This whole van trip has been a bit of a sexual awakening for me–not because I’ve been bringing home men, but because, for the first time, I’m not living under the same roof with my dad.
I still have to be quiet because Vaniel’s walls arenotsoundproof. In other places, I don’t need my fellow vanlifers listening in. Here, I don’t want Ethan and Lia or whoever else might be wandering around overhearing me when they walk between their cabin and the big house.
It’s not until after I turn out the lights and get myself off thinking about mountain men in flannel that I realize I didn’t ask Alex to Sunday dinner. Ethel hasn’t asked about it, but I get the feeling that she’s lonely during the day. She’s always so glad to see me when I bike up the driveway.
Saturday morning, when Alex drops off the milk, I walk him back out to his truck. “Hey, you should come to dinner on Sunday night.”
Alex looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Sunday night dinner again?”
“Yeah. It was so good last week. Ethel’s going to make fresh bread tomorrow and says she got a batch of asparagus from one of the neighbors. Did you know it takes two or three years to harvest the first crop of asparagus? And they grow right out of the ground like this?” I demonstrate with my hand and a finger.
Alex doesn’t respond to my asparagus rambling, but I can practically hear the gears turning in his head. Just before he gets to his truck, he whistles for Trixie, who comes sprinting out of the sheep palace. “I’ve still got Kit with me, and I work late sometimes on Sunday.”
“Bring Kit,” I say, hoping Ethel won’t mind.
Alex opens the door to his truck, shaking his head. “Some other time.”
“Fine,” I grumble. “See ya Monday.”
But I see Alex a few hours later. Usually, he sends someone else over to Bedd Fellows to pick up the ice chest for the milk to be refilled. The first time he sent Kit, who lingered for an hour talking to people until Ethan kicked him out for eating too many strawberries. From then on, Alex sent Perry or Jesús, but today he comes himself.
We’re alone out here. We all helped the vendors pack up, and then Colleen took the money inside. Ethan and Lia are out in the field cleaning up. I’ve been stacking buckets at my table.
I sold the last milk bottle in the early afternoon, and I’d just been thinking that Alex should bring more in the morning, and that gives me an idea. I’m not sure this is a good idea—getting involved more with the Bedd family—but I go with it anyway. I’m leaving at the end of the summer, how bad could it get? It wouldn’t be like Oscar and I and our teenaged angst.
“Hey, Alex.”
He raises a brow at me.
“Do you have another ice chest?”
He lifts it up by one handle now that he’s emptied it of ice. “This big?”
“Yeah.”
He nods.
“Fill it and bring it tomorrow. I bet I can sell it all.”
