South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [61]
She looked Up and caught him watching. She winked. “Gonna take me out for a ride tonight, mister?”
Paul was so tired. But he was psyched, too—business was good, the Fourth was tomorrow, he had a girl. Sure he’d go out. “It’s gotta be the Fairlane, Madeline’s got my truck.” Randi loved riding around in his truck. Once in a while he thought she liked it as much as she did him, but that wasn’t fair. Randi was different than he’d always thought. Sweeter, more grown-up.
“I don’t care. As long as it runs.”
“It’s runs great, a classic like that, what are you saying?”
“It just looks old to me,” Randi said, but she was laughing. Paul went back to figuring out the till, smiling.
He’d splurged on the Fairlane two years before. He’d run across the ad in a Hemming’s Motor News and once he called and had the owner send pictures, he couldn’t resist. The car was a good deal, and practically in mint condition. Paul told himself he worked hard, he needed a treat. If he couldn’t have something he wanted now and then, what was the point? It probably would have worked out except that the truck he’d been driving ever since he moved to McAllaster—nursing along, really—died exactly one week after he got the Fairlane. The Fairlane was fun; a truck was essential.
The Chevy Madeline was borrowing was overkill—bigger and newer and nicer than he’d gone out looking for. But it was solid and super-clean and the financing deal on his credit card had been great, four point nine percent for the life of the loan. He’d convinced himself he could make those payments and keep the car.
He did make the payments, no matter what, because if he was ever a minute late the interest rate would jump to twenty-five percent overnight. Bottom line, the car, the truck—they were both consolation prizes for the way his life felt these last few years. Dead end, frustrating, confining. (Like the lives of the prisoners he fixed food for, wasn’t that ironic?) Lately Paul had been staring down some hard facts. He couldn’t go on the way he had been. One thing he really should do was take the truck back to the dealer and switch it off for something more economical, something older and more basic.
“Now what’re you frowning about?” Randi asked, coming to lean against him, twining an arm around his neck and nuzzling his ear.
“Not a thing,” he said, exasperated with himself. Why’d he plague himself this way? He pulled Randi around to kiss her. She tasted good, like mint. “Ready to go?”
“I have to pick Up Grey from Jo Jo’s pretty soon.” Jo Jo was a girlfriend of Randi’s who babysat sometimes.
“So let’s go get him. He can come too.”
“He’ll be asleep.”
“He can sleep in the car.”
Randi kissed his neck—a quick small dart of affection—and acquiesced, smiling. “Okay.”
A wave of tenderness washed over him. Randi was happy, he was happy, his situation probably wasn’t as bad as he told himself sometimes. Probably she was exactly what he needed and life was simpler than he always tried to make it.
Another wave of tenderness swamped him as he carried Greyson out of Jo Jo’s and bundled him onto the backseat of the car. Paul had always liked Greyson, but now that he’d spent more time with him, he was starting to find him irresistible.
Randi had dropped Greyson off late last night, on her way to do a fill-in shift at the Tip Top. Paul had bitten back his hesitation—when the pizza place was busy, there was just no place to put somebody who wasn’t a worker or a customer, especially a five-year-old somebody who needed not to get tripped over, spilt on, or burnt—because Randi said she couldn’t find anyone else at such short notice.
Fortunately—sort of—there hadn’t been a lot of late orders, and it had worked out all right. Greyson sat on a milk crate in the corner and played with a video game. When the batteries ran