Page 21 of Nothing to Lose: Lost Trilogy: Part 1
Her voice doesn’t match the enthusiasm from a few minutes ago.
“That’s really great, Becca,” I give her a quick side hug. She is taller than me, so when I put my head against her arm, it rests on her shoulder. “When are you going?”
“Well, I have some time saved up, so I was thinking I could take a week off before Colt starts getting any serious interest for playing college ball…”
She continues talking, and I just smile and nod in all the appropriate places. Colt is her little brother. He is a senior in high school now, a great football player with a very bright future ahead of him.
“I love watching Colt play,” I tell her when she pauses for a second. “You did such a wonderful job with him, Becca.”
When I met them, Colton was fifteen, almost sixteen, and thought he knew everything. It was really fascinating witnessing his older sister pushing him in the right direction without him even realizing it.
“I was hoping you could keep an eye on him while I’m out in Texas,” Becca gives me a shy smile when she says that.
“Girl, you know you don’t have to ask me twice,” I say as I open the door to my car, and she gets in the passenger side. I drove into work today.
“I mean, he should be fine,” she continues as if I didn’t say anything. “He is almost eighteen after all, and he’ll be going away to college soon.” She pauses for a second, then bursts into a dramatic tone. “I don’t know what I’m going to do once he’s gone, Em!”
Her theatrics are making me laugh. “You’re going to make a great mom someday, girl.”
Her head pops up from the headrest of the passenger seat. “You think?”
“Duh, look how amazing Colton is turning out to be!”
“Yeah, but my parents did most the work, I just took over in the last few years,” she shrugs it off as if she did nothing.
She continues talking, but I am momentarily distracted. The way from the hospital to the expressway that goes to Sunny takes me through town around where Steve has his offices. His business has grown in the last two years, and so he moved into a swanky part of town to protect his image. Or so he said.
Now, as I am stopped at a light right by his building, I watch him walking his assistant to her car. She is all long limbs and amazing hair. And she has a face to match all that.
The way he has his hand placed on the middle of her back until they get to her car unsettle me for some reason. He’s never given me any reason to believe he’s cheating on me, so I’m not sure why I feel this way right now.
“You okay?” Becca’s voice penetrates through the Steve induced fog in my head.
“What?” I turn my head to look at her at the same time that a car honks their horn behind me.
“The light turned green,” she points to the traffic device in question.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts and smile. “Yeah, I was just daydreaming.”
“Yeah, about what?” she teases me.
I love the easy friendship I have with Becca. Due to my mom always not being well, I didn’t want to bring friends home very often. Over time, they got sick of always inviting me to their houses without me returning the favor, so the playtime requests stopped.
When I got older and could drive, other than hanging out in a super casual manner, I never bonded with anyone enough to call them a close friend.
And then, Becca came into my life. I love the way she seems to be laid back about life in general, how she can just fly off the seat of her pants. Take this insane idea she now has to travel from Montana to Texas to meet some distant relative she didn’t even know existed until recently.
I want to be Becca when I grow up, I chuckle to myself but don’t tell her that.
“I was just thinking,” I try to regroup and answer her question, “how awesome that you’re going to be in the land of cowboys.” I raise my eyebrows up and down in a playful manner.
“Yeah,” she slaps at my shoulder, “because that’s why I’m going all the way there, to find a cowboy.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you tried it,” I protest.
“I’m going to leave all the cowboys to you.”
I’m pretty sure that Becca thinks I had a long line of boyfriends before I got together with Steve. Who knows, maybe it’s my naturally flirty manner that always gets people into thinking that I’m a player.
