Hate You Not

What about you? It’s what I want to text her. I think about the puppies, and I feel so damn bad. That was thoughtless. Dickish. She’s gotta be run ragged, chasing after kids and dogs and pigs and goats. But she accepted the puppies with hardly any complaint.

I have a thirty minute teleconference about cell phone towers and dispatch centers, and then I check my texts again. She’s sent nothing more…so I do.

U always been June who saves the day?

I see the dots just once before they’re gone. And for a long time, there’s no answer. I get lunch and lay my head down on my desk because my forehead’s hot, and I’m so tired I can’t see straight. When I check the phone again, she’s said, I’m not that.

Something tightens in my chest. Don’t sell yourself short.

U don’t even know me, dude.

I know some things about you. When she doesn’t reply to that, I add, I know you left high school to help your mom.

I took a break from school to help my mom die. And I didn’t go back, as you already “know some things about.”

I don’t, not really.

Of course not, she says, her hackles up now.

I want to ask her more. And, also I don’t. The idea of having a sick mother—of caring for a mother who was terminally ill, but who wanted to stay with you—makes my chest feel weird and sore and tight.

How is your ankle? I can’t believe I haven’t asked her before now. Because you’re a dick.

Almost fully healed.

How is Hot Rocket? I know the answer since I’m paying his bills, but Shawn and I have made sure June doesn’t know that.

He’s doing well.

You don’t like what I said about you saving the day, I observe.

Yes. Because it’s not true.

Is it true your dad walked away from the farm?

I watch the bubbles that show her typing for the longest time—so long my eyelid starts twitching. My dad met my mom when he was 12. And she was 13. He was dyslexic, and he couldn’t read. My mother was book smart. She tutored him in reading.

Immediately after I read the message, I can see she’s writing more.

When Mama died, he didn’t eat for four days. I don’t remember, it may actually have been five. Mary Helen made him some eggs dyed green like in that book, and told her that the kids made them, and he ate them because he felt like he had to, to make his grandkids happy. But he stopped seeing his doctor, and to this day, he won’t get checkups. And he doesn’t take his blood pressure meds, we don’t think.

I shut my eyes and keep them closed until the feeling in me passes. Then I blow a long, long breath out.

Maybe he’s a hero too, for still being around at all.

I delete that sentimental shit as soon as I type it.

I didn’t meet your dad. But I’m calling you the way I see you.

Better wear those glasses on your shirt, she fires back.

Then she sends: Snake.JUNEI shouldn’t have sent him those pajama shirts. But if I was going to, I should have only sent the Slytherin one. Make it clear that it’s a mean joke.

I think about him all night that night and half of the next day, even when he never texts me back, and so our conversation ends when I call him a snake.

Doesn’t matter. I don’t need to talk to his ass. Leah asks about him when we get lunch at the Mexican place, and I tell her I don’t know.

“The kids like to call him when I’m in the shower,” I say, dipping a tortilla chip in salsa.

Leah studies her nails, painted purple. “I know you’re lying about that night, Buggie. I have known you since we were three.”

I shrug. “Doesn’t mean that you’re a lie detector.”

She rolls her eyes before popping a cheesy chip into her mouth. “Does so.” She stuffs her face for just a bit before dabbing her lips with a napkin. “You know,” she says from behind it, “since you won’t tell me what happened, I’ve just gotta assume that you got down and dirty. Sixty-nine and all that kind of thing.”

It’s my eyes that betray me. When I try to make a neutral face, I tend to bug my eyes out just a little, and that’s what happens at our booth right at that moment.

Leah shrieks, and in about one second, two waiters coming rushing around the corner to check on us.

“We’re okay. We’re fine,” she assures them. When they walk away, she shrieks again.

“I hate you.”

“You didn’t!” She says it on a gasp, as if I just told her we ate George the pig.

“I didn’t.” I poke at my food, feeling defensive.

“What did you do?” She laughs.

I sigh. “God. Nothing.”