He took a long drag and flicked the ash from the end of the cigarette before answering. “I offered you a room when I asked you to move in, not a sofa.” There was clearly no arguing with him on this point.
“You’re more obstinate than you used to be, Boyce Wynn.” But just as protective.
“Yep.”
Several minutes of quiet followed. We waved to Randy when he pulled into his driveway across the street and watched June bugs hurtling and wheeling drunkenly, attracted to the porch light. Staring up at the sky, I felt as unmoored as the stars appeared to be, though internal nuclear explosions and gravity bound them. I wondered how Boyce figured into the way I’d always felt rooted to this place. Whether he was my internal combustion or my gravity. Or both.
Through the closed door behind us, the murmur of the television snapped off.
“She always gives us the weirdest look when we come in from sitting out here or when we’re making dinner,” I said. “Why do you think that is?”
He turned and stubbed the cigarette out. “I reckon she made assumptions about you and me that aren’t panning out.”
Oh. Oh. “Having to do with you sleeping on the sofa? As opposed to, uh, with me.”
He nodded. “That and the fact that you’re in graduate school and working to support yourself. You’re young and hot, but you aren’t using your looks to bait your hook, lure in some guy who’d take care of you. Pretty sure she thought you’d take off when I no longer owned the garage.”
I sighed. “So she thinks I’m using you.” Which spoke volumes to the worth she placed on her son for everything he’d become, apart from and so much more than what he did or didn’t own.
“I don’t give a shit what she thinks. You shouldn’t either.” He turned to take my chin between his fingers and tilted my face up. “You hear?”
“Yes,” whispered from my lips.
His touch—so unbearably soft—muted everything but the thump thump of my heartbeat. He examined my mouth from inches away, his fingers slipping down my throat, taking the measure of my pulse, his eyes dark, masked by the shadows from the dying day. I swallowed and his grip widened and caressed the margins of my neck, delicate as a warm breeze on damp skin. Goose bumps skittered down my arms and my mouth burned to be kissed.
He pressed his lips to my forehead and said, “Good night, Pearl,” before he rose and disappeared inside.
Mama drilled two things into my head growing up. The first was a goal: that I be able to provide for myself well. The second was an assertion that being alone was better than being with the wrong person. We’d been far from wealthy, but we were comfortable. Thomas—clearly the right person for her—worked hard to get her to admit it. Even when she capitulated, they argued about the size of that rock he slid onto her hand. She worried that everyone in town would think she was a gold digger. He said everyone in town would think he was a cradle robber, so they were even.
She’d taught me two things by example: to crave independence—which had sort of backfired on her when I refused to go to med school—and to fiercely, unapologetically shield and protect any child I might have. But none of that left me with any inkling of what to do when the person I wanted most to defend, to save, was a grown man.
Chapter Twenty
Boyce
Before my mother turned up, Sam had grown used to daily chitchats with Pearl when she came home from class. After dumping her backpack inside, she’d come out to the garage with cold Pepsis and let Sam show off whatever she was working on that day. I tried to put a stop to it once, pretty damn sure Pearl was as uninterested as a non-mechanic could be in the dirty details of a head-gasket repair, but she told me to hush and let Sam finish.
That night during supper, I’d told Pearl there was no need for her to suffer through one-sided conversations about transmissions and oil pumps just to keep from hurting Sam’s feelings. The kid loved cars more than anyone I’ve ever known aside from myself, but she was bright enough to comprehend that most of the time even people who brought their cars in just wanted us to do the work—they didn’t want to hear a speech about it.
“There’s actually a connection between describing something to someone and learning it at a deeper level yourself,” she said. “When I was a sophomore, I tutored a couple of my Chi-O sisters who were struggling with first-year biology. Pretty simple stuff. But breaking those basic concepts down and explaining them actually helped me in my more advanced courses.”
She’d tutored Maxfield through practically every class at the end of junior year when he’d been half a fuckup from failing out. “So you’re letting Sam bore the crap out of you to help her.”
“It’s ten or fifteen minutes.” She smiled. “Very little can bore the crap out of me in fifteen minutes. Besides, I remember you and Lucas discussing cars and car parts in high school, so animated and engaged that anyone watching y’all would’ve thought you were talking about boobs.”
“Oh, we discussed those plenty often too.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure.”
Sam had formed something between a little-sister thing and a crush on roommate, so she noticed when Pearl stopped coming home after class. “Where’s Pearl?” she asked after several no-Pearl days, all no big deal except for the way her voice rose like a cracked bell, not quite in tune.
“She’s avoiding my mother.”
Leaning into the engine next to me, Sam pulled up so fast she almost fell over. “Why?” she said, grabbing hold of the front end briefly to right herself, ignoring the way I lunged for her arm. She never asked for help. If she needed something, she demanded it. I can’t reach. Lower the lift. After she was in the truck and screwing with the radio last week, her dad told me she’d been born with a spinal disorder, adding that she’d been scrapping her way toward self-reliance since birth. Big surprise. Not.