Free Back Roads by Tawni O’Dell Page A

drawers and in the mirror an unmade bed.
    “You want to sit down?”
    Her voice brought me back from the bed. I was grateful for that.
    She glanced at the table and chairs. The chairs were bamboo and had sawdust-colored cushions and the table had a glass top. The dinner dishes were still sitting on it.
    “We bought that table before we had kids,” she explainedwhen she noticed me looking at it. “So far no one’s thrown a dish through it although Zack’s been practicing.”
    She came over with a dishrag and wiped off the tray on Zack’s high chair. Their dinner smelled great, like apples and honey and charcoal.
    I couldn’t even remember what real food tasted like. My mom wasn’t the greatest cook in the world, but these days I would have given just about anything for a piece of her bland meat loaf or one of her overcooked chickens.
    “You have a nice house,” I announced.
    The sound of my words made me cringe. I couldn’t have come up with a more uninspired thing to say if I had spent all day trying. The worst character on the worst TV show would’ve come up with a better opening line.
    I knew people on TV were fake but that didn’t stop me from wanting to be as smart and funny as they were; and there was nothing like constantly falling short of unrealistic expectations to make someone feel like giving up on real life completely.
    “Thanks,” she said.
    “I never saw anyone use rocks for a floor before,” I added. “I saw brick once.”
    “It’s terrible if you drop something breakable,” she said. “Stuff shatters like you wouldn’t believe. But it’s pretty. I love this rock here.”
    To my amazement, she dropped to all fours, still holding the wet cloth, and motioned for me to join her. I got down there with her, and she pointed out a pale silver-gray rock full of glittering black and ivory chips.
    “If you look very closely, you can see a tiny vein of pink going through it. You don’t notice it if you just glance at it. You really have to look.”
    I did, and she was right. I couldn’t help looking at her too. I wondered how much time she had spent staring at her kitchen floor to notice something like that.
    She sat back on her feet, and her arm brushed against mine. I had on my coat. Skin didn’t even touch skin but a flash of heat went shooting to my crotch, giving me a serious boner. It wasn’t a good feeling though. I realized it was supposed to be, but it ripped through me too fast like fire eating up a trail of gasoline.
    I practically jumped up and took a seat at the table. She was still staring at her rock. She hadn’t felt a thing.
    “Do me a favor, Harley,” she said, standing up and taking a couple plates with her over to the sink. “Eat that last pork chop for me.”
    I adjusted myself inside my jeans. My zipper was killing me. I had pitched my last pair of underwear that morning. The money I was going to spend on new stuff I had ended up spending on a Happy Meal and a new dinosaur for Jody to keep her mouth shut about what happened with Mom.
    “No, thanks,” I said.
    “Oh, come on.”
    “I already ate.”
    “A big guy like you can’t polish off that one little pork chop?”
    I didn’t say anything. I waited for some big guy to answer.
    “Please,” she said. “Otherwise it’s going to the dogs.”
    “What about your husband?” I asked.
    “He won’t want it,” she said, kind of irritated. “He went out to dinner.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    I stabbed a fork through it like I was afraid it might escape and plopped it onto the dirty plate in front of me.
    “You want a beer?” she asked.
    “Sure.”
    She came back with a Michelob. I almost had it in my hand before she asked, “Wait. You are old enough to drink, right?”
    “Well, not legally.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Nineteen. Well, twenty. Just about twenty. I’ll be twenty in a couple months.”
    “That’s it?” she breathed out, and took a seat across from me. “My God, you’re a baby.”
    I