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And, to be honest, I think a part of me believed that if I learned whatever secret he was keeping close to his breast, I could talk myself out of falling for him, i.e., if he was still married. In my heart, I guess I’d known he wasn’t that kind of a guy, but a girl can hope, right? Hope for an easy, uncomplicated out?
Alas, he’d shown me his truth, and while it was painful and challenging, all it did was reaffirm that he was, in fact, a great man. Nothing that had happened was his fault. He and his son were victims.
I was in too far. This was no way to be thinking about a guy I’d met a few days ago.
Stupid Phoebe, I thought to myself. Why do you always let your heart take the lead and not your brain?
Still, I didn’t regret having sex with Carter. So long as I lived, nothing could make me regret that. And if things got a little more complicated as a result? Well, it was the price I paid for coming just a bit closer to the divine.
The desert in front of me began to appear more familiar — there was that same twisted cactus, then the abandoned gas station. Yes, we were returning to Rough and Ready.
“You’re awful quiet,” Carter observed.
“Just thinking.”
“’Bout what?”
“About you,” I replied truthfully.
He smirked. “Anything I get to know?”
“Nooope.”
There was his laugh again, thick and deep.
The rest of the drive — only about five minutes longer, really — was quiet. It is something beyond intimacy, to sit alone in a truck with someone and know that you don’t have to say a word. For my whole life, I’ve felt the need to fill up dead space. Now, I was sharing it with someone else.
Carter pulled to a stop outside Miss Keller’s restaurant and dashed inside, emerging shortly with Henry and the booster seat in his arms. The little boy was holding a small book and kissing his dad exuberantly.
“Hey, Henry,” I said as he slid in next to me. “How’s tricks?”
“Phoebe!” he cried, enveloping me in a hug with his tiny, chubby arms.
I hugged him back, feeling only a little bit strange. As much as I liked Henry, I felt a little embarrassed. Was it okay to be hugging a guy’s kid right after sex? It seemed… distasteful. Or, equally possible, I was just a prude.
“I missed you,” he said, blue eyes shining up at me.
Okay, so maybe the real problem wasn’t that I’d just had sex with Carter. Maybe it was that Henry was getting awfully attached to me, a stranger, who would be leaving town in two or three days.
God, was that right? Would it be that soon? It felt like things in Rough and Ready had only just started… my heart twitched with a pang of deep-seeded regret. Not that that was appropriate, by the way. I had no right to wish for anything else. You’re being selfish, I told myself.
Henry clung to me, even as he told Carter and me all about his day with Miss Keller. They’d played games, she’d read to him, and then he helped her greet the one non-regular customer who came in. Henry never once let me go.
I wondered if I should say something to Henry, something like, ‘You’re great, kid, but please don’t like me too much because I don’t want your perfect tiny heart to break in pieces when I leave.’ This idea was, of course, immediately nixed, because I’m not a monster. But seriously, how was I to keep Henry from growing too close? The thought weighed me down.
“Hey,” Carter said abruptly, voice rising over some folk song I couldn’t place. “We should pick up Jo-Beth and go for dinner at Miss Keller’s.”
“Didn’t we just come from there?” I asked, skeptical.
He shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s the only place in town that serves a good dinner, and it feels like we oughta be celebrating.” Carter gave me a knowing look.
“Okay, well… sure, why not. Let’s do it,” I agreed.
Besides everything else, I was also feeling pretty guilty about Jo-Beth. I had totally abandoned her. Even Carter, who barely knew the girl, had remembered. How had sex muddled my brain so much, turning it into mushy thoughts of Carter, sex, and little else?
The self-flagellation was endless.
CHAPTER 18
Phoebe
JO-BETH HAD been quiet on the ride back to Rough and Ready. We had the window open at the back, so we could talk, but she was silent and listened to Henry share what he had done that day. However, as soon as we got into the parking spot at Miss Keller’s Jo-Beth perked up.
Well, not a parking spot — that would imply some kind of demarcation. It was more like a notion of a parking spot.
We climbed out of the truck and she started dragging me to one side.
