I was now seeing the drawbacks of accepting the friendship Deke could offer.
I was totally down with falling asleep lying on his chest, listening to my dad serenade me.
I was down with movie-watching and bologna-sandwich-eating and banter.
I was down with examining his space and discovering in a lot of ways that there were a myriad of things to discover about Deke Hightower (including his last name).
I was not down with being separated from him.
I could push it. I knew with the way he was with me that day, all I had to do was call his name and he’d be with me in a shot. He’d climb into bed with me. He’d hold me. Or he’d not hesitate if I wandered down the hall and cuddled with him on his couch (bed was definitely the better of those two options, his bed was a decent size, the couch, no).
“Deke,” I called.
“Yeah, baby,” he called back.
Baby.
God.
I drew in breath.
But as that oxygen came in, I knew I couldn’t push it. He’d been so cool. Honored to look out for me.
God.
Deke.
I needed to look out for him too.
“We should switch,” I told him.
“Switch what?” he asked.
“I can sleep on the couch, you take the bed.”
“Entry’s here, Jussy,” he told me. “Twyla’s out there but no way in fuck you’re gonna be on this couch with you closer to the door than me.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
I told him what I had thought of. “You’re a big guy.”
“You think I haven’t passed out on this couch and not been good?” he asked.
I had a feeling he’d done that more than once.
“Right,” I said.
I grew quiet.
Deke didn’t break the silence.
I stared at the ceiling some more.
Then I called, “Deke?”
“Right here, Jussy,” he called back.
“How do you have electricity out here?” I asked.
“Generator,” he answered.
Oh.
Interesting.
“Water?” I asked.
“Fill up the tanks, babe.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to connect to a water source?”
“It would, but don’t have one out here.”
“In other words, no long showers,” I quipped.
“Not hard to fill up the tanks, gypsy princess. You want a long shower, you take it.”
God, it was like he’d give me anything, all of it beauty, which meant all of it exacerbated the yearning for the thing I most wanted that he wouldn’t allow me to have.
But with what he gave me, that being beauty, I’d take it.
“Can the water company not lay anything?” I asked. “Or the electric company doing the same thing so you don’t have to use a generator?”
“Own this land but it’s protected. Not allowed to build on it. No water. No electricity. Nothin’.”
That was surprising. I didn’t even know you could own land you couldn’t do whatever you wanted to do with it.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Uh, maybe a stupid question,” I started. “But why would you buy land that you can’t build on?”
“You see my view?”
I smiled at the ceiling.
“So what you’re saying is, it was a stupid question,” I remarked, my smile in my voice.
“Nothin’s stupid, Jussy. ’Specially with that. Just to say, me and my Airstream here, it’s about my ma.”
I felt my tight muscles tighten further at a mention of his mom before I forced them to relax, turned to the side and stared down the short, dark hallway toward the shadow of Deke on his couch at the end.
I tucked my hands under my cheek and called, “What’s about your ma?”
No pushing, he gave it to me.
“Losin’ Dad, she didn’t have it good, raisin’ me on her own. Things got tough a lot. A kid is a kid but they still feel things like that. Especially things like that. Much as she tried to protect me from it, she was my ma, it was just the two of us, so I felt it.”
I hated that he felt that.
Hated it.
I didn’t interject that sentiment and Deke kept going.
“When I was a kid, she used to tell me stories. About how we’d make it one day, build a big house on a lake. Have a boat. Go waterskiing. Go fishin’. Lots of shit like that.”
He stopped talking and to prompt him to do it more, I said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he replied, his tone softer, reminiscent. Through it he gave me a hint of melancholy and a lot of beautiful. “I got older and knew we’d never have that, but she didn’t quit dreamin’. She said she was gonna retire by a lake. Not a big house. Little cottage, she said. Not much to clean. Not much to take care of. That was gonna be the end of her days, her in a cottage by some lake. She wanted that for her and I wanted it for her. She worked hard her whole life. She deserved that.”