“Good to see you, Son,” she says, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek and pushing me back to look me up and down. “Your hair’s gotten long.”
She pulls off my baseball cap and messes my hair up playfully before plopping the hat back down on top.
“Can’t seem to find the time for a cut,” I say, smiling at her.
“I like it. It looks good on you. Your dad is out back waiting on you. He said there was some machine thingy you needed to look at?”
I let out a little laugh. “That sounds about right.”
“All right. You boys get to work, and I’ll see if Libby wants to make dinner with me. Let’s have a family night. Eat a big dinner and watch a movie.”
“Sounds perfect, Mom,” I say, not wanting to see any more disappointment in anyone’s eyes today.
She smiles brightly, looking so much like Libby, and then heads upstairs. I hear water running, and I assume it’s Libby taking a shower. I have to stop that train of thought. I can’t let myself imagine her naked and soaping up or I’ll end up going to my room and jerking off. Like I usually do.
I go upstairs to my room at the end of the hall and drop my bag on my bed. I don’t glance at Libby’s closed door, refusing to allow my mind to conjure up any fantasies. I practically jog down the stairs and through the house, making my way to the kitchen. Mine and Libby’s rooms are upstairs, along with a guest room. My parents have their master suite downstairs, along with an office, kitchen, living room, and dining room. The house is a big farmhouse, but my dad did a ton of work on it before and since Carol moved in. He likes making her happy, and Carol loves remodeling.
I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and an apple off the counter before heading out back to see what my dad has gotten himself into. When I walk off the back porch, I see him out in the distance at the barn, halfway under one of our tractors.
Dad hasn’t worked on the farm in a long time, choosing to lease out the land for other farmers and making good money at it. But we’ve still got a few acres we keep to ourselves and he likes to mow it with a tractor that was made before I was born. Hell, maybe even before he was born.
“You get stuck under there, old man, I’m not helping you get out,” I say, biting into the apple and leaning up against one of the shoulder-high tires.
“Don’t you know that was the reason I had you, son? To take care of me in my ancient years.” He doesn’t move out from under the tractor, but he tosses up a tool at me that I catch with one hand.
I nudge his knee with my foot and he slides over as I climb in underneath with him. I scan the tractor and see the problem right away, then reach for the right tools.
“You’ve got a bolt loose and it’s burned out your clutch. Gonna need to replace that.” I go to work on getting the broken nut off, but it’s a bitch.
“I’m glad you’re here,” my dad says, and I hear the smile in his voice.
I hate being gone from home, but I can’t be around Libby all the time. It’s too hard, and I can’t stand the pain of being so close to her and unable to have her. It’s like setting a bottle of one-hundred-year-old whiskey in front of drunk and telling him he can’t have a taste. The drunk will only last so long before he flips the table over and destroys everything.
“You said you needed my help. I’ll always be here for that, Dad.” I finally free the nut and climb out from under the tractor, wanting to look at the clutch from above.
“And I said I needed to talk to you,” he says, following me out from under it and standing up.
He reaches a hand down, pulling me from the ground, and I climb on the tractor, taking the seat. I avoid his last statement, knowing whatever he’s going to say can’t be good.
“Have you been trying to strip this thing, or did you add some lead to your foot?” I try to distract him with talk about the clutch, but he doesn’t take the bait.
“You know it makes Carol sad that you don’t come around much anymore.” He waits for me to look at him, and when I do, I see the sincerity in his eyes. “Look, Jasper, I know you travel a lot for work, but it’s not so much and not so far that it should be weeks on end where we don’t see you.”