Terrified.
“Talk about scared straight,” she had said.
Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Chapter 9
SIERRA ATTENDED A couple of meetings and they helped. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but she always came away with a feeling of peace and comfort as if her decision was reaffirmed. It hadn’t always been that way. In the early days she fought it hard, got all stirred up and anxious, but eventually she looked forward to a good meeting, knowing something would be said or done that would set her right.
She stopped at the Leadville bookstore and bought a copy of Wuthering Heights, more determined than ever to have it now.
One day she took Molly with her to a meeting, but she wiggled so much they had to leave. “You’ll never pass that one off as a service animal,” Moody said.
“No kidding,” Sierra agreed.
When Sierra and Molly were alone together, the dog was calm and quiet and so sweet. One thing that troubled Sierra was that there were times, though rare, when she lifted her hand to pet Molly and Molly flinched a little. Ducked. And Sierra was sure she knew what that meant.
When it was Sierra, Sully and Beau around her, Molly was quiet and only a little playful, trying to nudge Beau into some frolicking or leaning up against Sully to beg a pet. Molly was a cuddle bug. She now had her own blanket that Sierra spread on the bed to keep all those golden hairs off the comforter and it became hers, so that wherever the blanket was spread, whether on the porch or the backseat of the pumpkin, Molly thought of it as her place.
Of course Molly was young and still got in trouble. She got into Sully’s garden and ravaged some vegetables, digging up to her shoulders before Sully caught her. Luckily there weren’t many fatalities and she hadn’t gotten Sully’s prized tomatoes. She ate a few more socks, kept jumping in the lake and coming out all full of mud and weeds, and barked too much when she was left alone. “She has separation anxiety,” Sierra told Sully.
Sierra and Molly took comfort in each other. They were both in need of a friend, a safe harbor, a confidante. Sometimes Sierra told Molly secrets and Molly listened attentively, showing Sierra those sad, deep eyes, indicating she understood and sympathized.
Sierra and Molly were in the hammock together, Molly’s head in the crook of Sierra’s arm, gently swaying, when Connie snuck up on them.
“Are you reading to that dog?” he asked.
Sierra and Molly both jumped in surprise and Sierra closed her book while Molly started wiggling and struggling to get out of the hammock. But Connie just started petting her behind the ears and settled her.
“She likes it when I read to her,” Sierra said.
“Do you, Molly?” he asked the dog. But the traitor dog just leaned into Connie’s big, loving hands and moaned in ecstasy. “What are you reading to her?”
“Wuthering Heights,” she said. “Bet you don’t even know what that is!”
Connie sighed. “Okay, so it wasn’t my imagination—you’re cranky. You’ve been moody all week and I’m done having fun with this. Is something wrong? You have PMS or something? You mad at me?”
“No,” she said, a little meekly. “No to all of that, but yes, I’ve been a little on the quiet side because I’ve been thinking. About you, as a matter of fact.”
He grinned like he’d just won something. “Is that so? Can’t get me off your mind?”
“Not exactly,” she said, making a face. “If you can be serious, I’ll confide in you. If you’re going to screw around, I have nothing more to say.”
He walked around to the front of the hammock and squeezed onto it, pulling all sixty-five pounds of Molly onto his lap. He leaned back, settled in and said, “Stop being so bitchy, Sierra. I didn’t do anything wrong. And you know it.”
She sighed. She knew it, he was right. She took a breath. “If we’re going to be friends, there are a couple of things you should know. For starters, I’m not like the other girls you’ve dated.”
He shrugged. “We might put that in the plus column.”
“The Jones kids have always known we were different. I was born in a bus, for God’s sake. Well, not officially—officially I was born in a clinic. Being the fourth child, I guess I was in a hurry and Marissa, my mother, hated to leave my father for even a little while—he could go off the deep end if she wasn’t around. So when she was about to drop me, she went into the free clinic and...well, I didn’t grow up the way most people do.”
“I think none of us did,” he said.
“And also...well, I’m an alcoholic.”
“Oh?” he asked. “I’ve never even seen you drink.”
“I’m recovering. Just recently made a year of sobriety. That’s it,” she said. “You should know that.”
“Why?”
“It’s a significant part of who I am.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. “How’s that likely to affect our friendship?” And then he added in an undertone, “Such as it is.”
“I go to AA meetings and I don’t drink alcohol. For a long time I didn’t even use mouthwash that had any alcohol content.”
He sat forward in the hammock a little and Molly instantly put her head on his chest so he could pet her. “Hey, is that why you wouldn’t take the pain meds?”
“That’s exactly why,” she said. “But it worked out that I was just fine with the anti-inflammatories and ice. But see—I’m not just your average girl. I had a complicated childhood and as it turns out, I have a complicated adulthood.”
“Okay,” he said. “Is this worrying you?”
“What?”
“Telling me this stuff?”
“Yes. No. I mean, think about it—we don’t have much in common.”
He scratched Molly behind the ears, and she snuggled closer. Molly moaned almost seductively.
“And if my dog likes you better than me, you are banned!”
He couldn’t help but laugh at her. “Is this why you’ve been so cranky? Because you thought we should have this heart-to-heart?”
“I thought you should know some of the more private and personal stuff about me before you get in too deep. And it’s just not easy to do, okay?”
“So you were almost born in a bus, you don’t drink or take pain pills, you go to AA meetings and you’re very particular about who your dog loves best. Feel better now?” he asked.
“Not very,” she said.
“Are we going to get in too deep?” he asked hopefully.
“You really don’t get it, do you? I’m not like you!”
“Why would I want someone like me? Oh—hey—does it bother you if someone has a drink around you? Like should I be careful not to drink a beer because it might—you know—make you drool with longing or something?”
She rolled her eyes. “It only bothers me to be around people who are getting toasted and obnoxious. Sully has his bedtime drink at night and I have tea and we’re very compatible. In fact, he’s the best friend I’ve had in a long while.”
“You have good taste,” Connie said. “Sully is good people. So, now can we go on a date?”
“What for?” she asked.
“For something to do,” he said, turning Molly a bit so he could scratch her tummy.
Sierra started to scratch her tummy, too, and Molly stretched her neck and back legs, offering more of herself to be massaged. “I feel like you’re not taking this seriously,” Sierra said. “I’m an alcoholic with a very untidy history who has had troubled relationships and you’re just a guy who wants a date with the wrong girl. Think. Use your head.”
His hand stopped moving and she looked up. Those blue eyes were boring into her. “Thank you for telling me. It’s brave of you to tell me personal and private things. But here’s what I’d like. I’d like to go do some fun stuff so we’re having a good time while we get to know each other better. I like what I know about you so far and you like what you know about me because you act like it and because it put you in a terrible mood worrying about telling me personal stuff. I figure that’s because it’s important to you that I like you. And I do, so let’s not worry about that anymore. And after we have some time together and you believe that I like you for yourself, your totally unlike-anybody-else self, who was almost born in a bus and can’t get near liquor, then maybe we’ll get closer and make out like teenagers. That would be good.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Oh, that was smooth, Conrad.”
“I guess I’m not like the other guys you know because I’m not real smooth with the girls,” he said.
“Sully said you’ve always got a girl,” she informed him.
“That’s not true at all. I mean, I go out with girls sometimes. Okay, I go out with girls a lot. But they’re not, you know, relationships.”
“Do you have sex with them?”
“I haven’t had sex in so long I forget which armpit it’s under.”
She burst out laughing in spite of herself. “That could be your problem...”
“I’d like to have it with you, though,” he said.
She looked at him in wonder. “Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“I told you. You should know that by now—I’m pretty much an open book. No good moves. But here’s what we have in common. We both had some bad experiences with the opposite sex, even though I don’t know what kind yours were. But you told me—you can’t pick ’em. Me either, apparently. I figure that’s a really good place to start.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. We’re two people who really like each other but are a little unsure about things like getting involved. Because we’ve had some bad luck. So here’s how I think it should go. We’ll hang out some more, kiss some, maybe hold on to each other for a while and get all worked up and decide, what’s wrong with taking it a little further? It’ll be soft and sweet and we’ll get wrapped around each other till we can’t breathe. If it was winter and if we were in the truck—that little car of yours is out of the question—we’d steam up the windows big-time. It would be better if we were somewhere private, lying down, though. So then we’ll do it. If we do it, it will be so good we’ll talk about it for years because we were two people who thought we might not ever match up but we did. What do you think of that?”