Stupid Girl(90)
I threw my arms around my mom’s neck and hugged her so tight. Almost as if her strength could seep through her skin and sink into mine. I pressed my face against her neck. “Thanks, Mom,” I said softly. “That’s so what I needed.”
“What in the damn hell is goin’ on out here?” Jilly pushed the screen door open and it creaked as he stepped onto the porch. The Texas Rangers tee shirt was rumpled and faded; he had on his favorite plaid sleep pants tucked into his crusty old cowboy boots. When he focused on me, then Mom, he frowned. “Lil’ Bit, what the—I don’t like the looks of this. Why didn’t you two wake me up?” He nodded to our discarded coffee cups. “You got any more of that?”
Mom got up and gently pushed Jilly into a rocking chair close to the swing. “Sit. I’ll bring you a cup. And she arrived in the middle of the night, that’s why.” She grabbed ours and headed into the house.
Jilly’s aged stare measured and weighed me silently. Then after a few moments, he shook his head. “The middle of the night, eh? It’s a goddamned boy, ain’t it? Well, you gonna just sit there or get up and hug your grandpa?”
Even though I still hurt, Jilly’s gruff yet correct assumption made my mouth tug into a half grin. I got up and wrapped my arms around his neck, and sat back down. “Sort of.”
He grunted, rubbed his big, gnarled hands over his knees. “Sort of my ass. Who is it, what’d he do, and do you want me to make some calls?”
I shook my head as I looked at my fierce grandfather. Making a call meant phoning friends within the Texas Rangers. “No, Jilly. No calls necessary.”
“I swear you people are lunatics.” My baby brother Seth joined us on the porch, and he walked straight over to me and plopped down next to me on the swing. He draped an arm around my shoulders. “Does this have anything to do with your truck being vandalized? Or that guy you’re dating?”
“What’d you say, boy?” Jilly asked, then looked at me. “Lil’ Bit?”
I looked at my brother. “Big mouth.” I sighed and gave my grandfather an assuring smile. “Just a college prank, Jilly. Someone jacked my wheels and tires and put my truck on concrete blocks. Threw the tires in my bed and videoed the whole thing. Posted it on YouTube. Totally separate incident.”
Jilly swore under his breath. “Well, I don’t like how this college horseshit is going at all, Lil’ Bit.” He started to rise. “I’m gonna make some calls.”
“Sit down, Dad,” my mom ordered as she stepped out onto the porch carrying a tray of coffee mugs. “There’ll be no calls, you hear me?” Her eyes softened in that knowing, mom way. “Olivia will be just fine. The last thing she needs is a pack of ornery old Rangers showing up on campus.”
“Well I ain’t budgin’ off this porch until somebody tells me what the hell’s goin’ on,” Jilly said. “And I mean it.”
The hard lines and weathered face of my grandfather’s profound stare as he waited for my story made me know for a certainty I wouldn’t get off the porch any time soon. At least until I told him and my brother what had caused me to drive from Winston in the middle of the night. So I began, feeling a little stronger after talking to my mom, and of course leaving out some of the more delicate details that a man of any age need not hear. Especially a protective little brother and a really protective ex-Texas Ranger of a grandpa.
Jilly and Seth listened quietly—a miracle in itself—and by the time I finished, and they’d given their two cents worth a line of gold pushed at the treetops as the sun began to rise. Seth pulled me to his side in the swing.
“Nothin’ like some good ole hard labor to kick that heartache’s ass,” he said with a crooked grin. He lifted my hand, turned my palm over, and ran his thumb over it. “Man, Jilly, you should see how soft these things are.” He lifted his face, and I noticed for the first time a slight shadow of stubble patching his chin. “You can help me de-poop the stalls this morning.”
“We were all going to work on a few new colts later,” Mom added. “It’ll do you some good to ride them in the round pen. And spend time with your brothers.”
She was right.
After we all had a short nap, Seth and I hit in the stalls, and he eyed me over the back of one of the new colts. A pretty little paint, his ears were pricked forward listening to every word Seth said. My brother’s eyes met mine, and it struck me how good-looking and mature he seemed to have grown in the couple of months I’d been away.