“No, it did not.” Rix waved a hand at his legs. “It happened to me.”
She leaned in earnestly. “It happened to both of us, honey. That’s what you didn’t get. And we need to talk about it.”
“The time to talk about it was before you gave up on me. Or, to give you some space, not long after. Not years later, Peri. But you dumped my ass two days after I got home from having both my legs amputated. From that point on, we didn’t have anything to talk about anymore.”
She lifted both hands, still holding her coffee in one, and pressed them toward him.
“We shouldn’t be discussing this in Scooter’s parking lot.” She dropped her hands. “Come over. Any night this week you want. I’ll make us dinner.”
Dinner?
She wanted him to sit down to dinner with her?
The woman liked her weed, maybe she was high.
“I’m not coming over for dinner, Peri.”
“Rix—”
He shook his head and cut her off. “No. You made your decision. It wasn’t yesterday that happened. It was almost two years ago. We’ve moved on.”
“Yes, you’ve moved on to screwing everything in Yavapai county.”
Wait.
Was this shit because she was jealous?
“You don’t get a say where I put my dick anymore, babe,” he pointed out.
“That’s not you.”
“What’s not me?”
A snap was hitting her voice. “You aren’t that guy, Rix.”
“You’re wrong. Remember? That’s why you left me. I’m an all-new guy, Peri.”
She leaned back. “I see. So you have something to prove,” she surmised. “Think on that and think on refusing to come over to have dinner and talk things through. Think on it while thinking on who you’re proving that something to.”
Yup.
No longer calm.
At all.
“Whoa.” He uncrossed his arms to lift a hand, palm her way, not pressing. “Now I get it.” He put that hand on his chest. “Sorry, we went our separate ways, I haven’t been in the loop. Guess congratulations are in order that you got your degree in counseling since you fucked off and left me,” he noted sarcastically. “We haven’t had a full conversation since the day you moved out, but still, you understand my motivations and have a diagnosis about my behavior. Well-spotted, Dr. Poulsen.”
She wrinkled her nose in irritation.
He’d used to think that was cute.
The fuck of it was, it was still cute.
“You know I hate it when you get snide like that,” she retorted.
Rix gestured to her Jeep. “Feel free to be on your way.”
She stared at him through her Oakleys.
He stared back through his Smiths.
And that was another reminder. Three years ago, he wouldn’t know dick about sunglasses, except he needed them, and he’d buy what he liked. Now, after working outdoor retail since he could get back to a paid job, he did.
That wasn’t a bad thing, his job hadn’t sucked, he got a good discount, his salary had been decent, his insurance great, his firefighters’ insurance covered his leg situation until the day he died, so that wasn’t a worry, and he could add to his 401K.
It wasn’t anything near what he loved doing.
He’d been doing what he loved doing.
And then that tree came down.
Their staring contest lasted far too long.
Though, when he was ready to end it, she did.
And she did this by whispering, “We’re not done, Rix. We’ll never be done,” and as if it proved some point, she slapped the rear quarter panel of his truck (and it sucked, but he had to admit, him turning off to have this chat instead of driving off, like he should have done, definitely proved her point).
After she did that, she whirled, her hair flying, that familiar jump in her step that was one of the first things he noticed about her, how she even walked with an extra current of electricity, and she rounded her Jeep, got in, and pulled out.
In this time, Rix did not mess around.
He was in his truck and ready to roll too.
He was pissed he had to follow her to the stoplight.
He was relieved she went left, and he was going right, to hit downtown, where their new offices were.
With the new program, they needed more space. They were relocating from the local River Rain Outdoors store that also housed the national headquarters, which was on 69 between Prescott Valley and Prescott.
The new offices weren’t ready to move in yet, but it was getting close, and after officially signing on the day before, Judge had planned for the three of them to meet up with their new finance guy at their new space to see how the renos were going and get the lay of the land.
He wanted to be excited about all this, like he’d been the last few months as he trained his replacement at the store and they started work on how they were going to merge River Rain’s Kids and Trails program with Hale Wheeler’s Camp Trail Blazer, then build more programs from there.