"Oh she did that plenty. Still didn't change me. I’m sure by now she's up there laughing at the fact that her son is an idiot," I laughed again.
"Get," Pat called as he waved a hand and walked back toward the store. "You're giving me a migraine."
"Get home safe Pat! Don't get caught out in this storm."
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered.
I grinned as he walked back into the store. I kind of felt for the man. All he wanted to do was make sure I'd made the right decisions in life and I gave him a hard time at every turn. It was part of who we were though. He always demanded I get settled down, and I always refused.
I climbed into my truck and slammed the door before I headed off. It started to snow when I was halfway home, but my truck could handle that. I still had snow tires on and the chains that encircled them. It wouldn't be hard at all to get home.
Home was a four hundred acre ranch that was pretty out of the way. Going into town always was a bit of a drive, but it was worth it to have my own slice of heaven tucked away from the general population and any prying eyes. I liked my privacy. I liked the quietness that surrounded the place. The only sound I usually heard was mooing and barking, my chickens as they clucked and the farmhands I hired every year to help me out.
It was paradise to me.
As I turned down Miller I saw a car in the middle of the road. The lights were off and it just sat there. I frowned and pulled over to the side before I climbed out. My boots crunched in the snow as I made my way to the driver’s side door. I expected to find it abandoned. Instead, I saw a woman sleeping soundly as clouds of cold escaped her lips. They looked faintly blue and I frowned again. I didn't want to scare her, but I was more concerned she'd die if I didn't…
I knocked on the window. "Hey, are you okay in there?"
She jolted and sat up and stared at me with wide-eyes. Her fingers pushed red hair out of her face and she opened the door. I could see the way she shivered in the cold, but that wasn't what froze me in my tracks.
Those eyes. Pea-green and alert along with the red locks. Her wide-eyed stance, her pouty pink lips. They were so familiar that I stared until she narrowed her eyes at me and they flew back open.
"Peter? Peter Jones?" She asked as she stepped out of the small, silver car.
"Yeah?" I asked slowly. "That's me."
"It's me! Joanne!"
"Jo Jo?"
She nodded and my heart stopped in my chest. I hadn't seen her in so long, but when I heard that name it all came back into perfect clarity.
Joanne and I had been friends since we were babies. Our mothers went to school together, they were married around the same time and they'd raised us in the same neighborhood. I hadn't left her side for a minute through our school years, and when she left? I was devastated.
Joanne hugged me and I felt her shivering body against mine. I wrapped my arms around her instinctually. She was obviously cold, scared and alone. I pulled back and she beamed up at me.
That smile was enough to knock me off of my feet.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her. "I didn't think I'd ever see you come back." I frowned. "Oh yeah, your mom," I mumbled.
Joanne nodded. "Yeah. Did you go to the funeral?" She asked.
I shook my head. "In the end she didn't want anyone there honestly. She told us all we could fuck off and she didn't want anyone around when she finally died. I think she'd been sick for a while."
She nodded. "According to what I've heard, yeah, that's true. I couldn't make it out for the funeral, but I doubted I would have gone in the first place."
I watched her face fall. It looked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders as she stared down at the ground. Her hands gripped my jacket and I watched as she wavered on her feet. That was more than enough for me. I wasn't going to leave her out here on her own so she could really get hurt.
"What happened to your car?" I asked as I wrapped an arm around her waist.
She shrugged. "Damn thing just stopped working on me. I've been stranded here I don't even know how long. My phone died a while ago and it only made it to ten percent just now. I tried to leave it off so I could have it for a while."
"Come on, get in my truck and I'll give you a lift."
"You don't have to do that," she protested. "I'll be okay."
I knew that was a lie. She really was starting to go blue and she looked like she wanted to break down and cry. I walked to the back of her car and opened it before I grabbed her bags and popped them into the back of my truck. She tilted her head.