Where Would I Be Without You (25 page)

After a long tender hug from my baby sister and a white fluffy cat meowing at our legs, winding in and out and around, we pulled apart and laughed.

"So here's how it's going to play out."  She put up her hand to stop me from talking.  I was usually the older sister in charge so this felt different.  "I talked with mom and dad; they can't fly back from the Bahamas for another two days.  I told them to finish out their golf vacation there and that you and I were going back to Alabama.  You my dear, get to come on back in my family minivan and stay in the twin's bedroom until we figure out what to do next."

"Oh I don't think so Claire.  I mean I would love to come see the girls but... wait a minute.  You drove all the way here from bama in the family minivan?  That's over thirty-hour drive.  The news just hit forty-eight hours ago."

"Hell have no furry like a pissed-off baby sister from Alabama.  By the way, silly, it takes three hours to get to the nearest airport by our house.  I flew here but I had to drive to the airport, not to mention driving through LA traffic to get here during rush hour.  Ron's got the girls covered, and I told him there was nothing stopping me from driving straight to the airport.  There was a jack knifed semi incident that held me up for a bit, but it was a straight shot except for gas, piss and go, and not all in that order.  Girls are thrilled to see you, and Ron is setting up the new trundle bed in their room.  You get Lil's bed, and she will sleep on the trundle bed that May got.  We got one for Lil too, but Ron said he would only have one bed up, by the time we got back.  So let's pack 'sista'."

"Wait.  I can't just leave LA.  I mean this will blow over soon, and I'm sure something will come up and hell's bell Claire.  Why'd I have to go and do something so stupid?"

"Honey.  Mr. Hollywood wasn't stupid.  What was stupid was Lisa and Crispin.  That is not what I call a best friend and after everything you told me about her.  Where'd you two hook up any ways, back stabbers are us?  Listen.  This is not blowing over soon.  And if it does, you can fly back anytime.  In the meantime, the girls are itching to see you; I'm dying for female company that doesn't have grape jelly on her, or talk about Dora the Explorer all day long.  Ron, well, he's always had a soft spot for you.  Says you're like a lost puppy dog waiting to find a home."

I watched Snickerdoodles climb up on my bed and land her plump body on the TV remote, which turned the TV off, as if to say let's get to packing 'sista'.  I turned to Claire and we  both started laughing.

"What about Snickerdoodles?"

"Ron says the coonhounds can stay in the barn.  We just have to keep Snickerdoodles in the house.  The girls will be thrilled.  They've been asking for rabbits, but Snickerdoodles will be the next best thing right now.  I have to tell you though, Lil is going through this phase where if you don't talk to her first over May, then she won't talk back.  May doesn't seem to mind as Lil keeps reminding her that she was first born by a minute; however, I think May is finding ways to get back at Lil by hiding her stuff and saying things like 'I have no idea where it is momma' with just the sweetest innocent look to her.  But I know.  Lil is the silent but resilient type that will get her revenge sweetly but softly, while May goes a stomping around directing orders."

Life with six-year-old twin girls could be a hectic one.  Life with a newborn and single might be too much to bear.  However, I did not have it in me to tell my sister that I was contemplating the one thing that would never allow her to speak to me again.  It was a word my family did not support nor was it a word I wanted to think about, but I knew it wouldn't be long before it was a word in a contract from Mr. Hollywood's lawyers, and I had a serious decision to make.

"Well why you are sitting there; red brimmed eyes and looking lost.  I got a special treat for Snickerdoodle's first flight, ought to put her out like a light.  Our flight leaves in three hours, which puts us back in Alabama at the airport with a three-hour drive in the dead of night."

I watched my sister feed Snickerdoodles something from her pocket, pull out my suitcases from the back of my walk-in closet, plop them on my bed and unzip each one.  She was in super charge mode, and nobody messed with my baby sister when she was in that mode.  When she had her mind made up, it was going to happen whether you liked it, wanted it, or not.

Chapter Two

"The first time I drove all the way to LA, by myself, I might add, never seemed this long as this drive back home.  Having our flight delayed didn't help any.  I swear the minute we got in this minivan; time has come to a slow tick-tock.  Maybe it's because I am scared out of my wits of what everyone will think about me back home."  I got a 'hmm' sound out of my sister.

"I think the short blonde wig and colored contacts, along with the pj's kept the media at bay from catching on to who I was.  Thank God those tickets were in my real name.  I don't think a LA soul has any idea what my real name is.  You are the best."  I got another 'hmm' sound out of my sister as I shook my hair again from the wig and put my frizzy hair up into a ponytail with a pink hello kitty holder I found in the cup holder of my sister's minivan.  I didn't think too much of the quiet 'hum's' from my sister.  She was lost in deep thought and most likely concentrating on the dark stretch of highway heading back home.  I had a lot of my own figuring out to do and talking about random things was helping.  Some.

As we drove the long stretch of quiet darkened highway at a quarter to midnight, I saw my sister yawn, and I tried to keep her talking.  We had less than an hour to go, and I knew she could make it.  She was one determined woman when she wanted to be.  She was determined to marry Ron at the age of five, and she did so promptly after high-school graduation, exactly three months later.  Ten months later, they had the twins.  She was determined to make Ron the manager at the grain and feed plant, and he was now the manager.  She was determined to be the top sales rep at her job and did so three years running.  Right now, she was determined to get me away from my personal holocaust and bring me back home to make things right.  Who was I to argue with a baby sister that seemed to have it more put together than I did?

Her voice broke my thought and concentration.  "You know Bubba is back in town.  Has been for over a year now.  He managed a farm up in Montana for his uncle, but he's back and running a successful business.  Maybe you could give him a call."

Ok.  Here's the scoop.  Bubba was my high school sweetheart.  He was to me, what Ron was to Claire.  Bubba is a man now, but he was a boy when I fell in love with him at the tender age of ripening hormones for a girl, ten years old.  I was a scrawny-legged, ghost of a girl, as he often referred to me.  It wasn't until high school when my chest blossomed a bit that he considered asking me out.  We dated all of three weeks, two of them fighting and one of them making up by kissing and making out in the loft of his daddy's barn.

"Oh!"  Her voice sounded so excited.  "You'd never guess who Shelly Wright married last month.  This man moved to town about a year ago, and he was a hot ticket item.  Some dot-comer from New York, looking for a place to settle back and relax after selling off his business.  Shelly Wright married Mr. Wong.  Get it Wright and Wong.  Boy did we have a hoot of a time making fun of that one.  And... the Snip-N-Shoot did a remodel after moving to the new building down on Franklin Street."

The only family-owned business I know of that you can get a haircut and shave then go next door and buy a gun.

"Then the Nelson girls opened up a bridal shop down on main.  They are working in cahoots with their aunt Tilly, who has that huge estate out on Ralston Road.  They've gone and turned that place into a wedding destination.  It's actually very nice.  Mr. Wright and Wong got married there."

That is when my sister's tired laughter started in.  The laughter she got when she was really tired, and it would start and not stop.  Once she started laughing at her own jokes, she couldn't stop.  She was laughing so hard she barely got out one long breath of a sentence.  "Oh my garsh, I am going to pee my pants.  I can't stop laughing at that... Miss Wright married Mr. Wong."  She kept on laughing right on until we pulled into the Stop-N-Go, just a half hour out of town.  She jumped out and ran to the bathroom, while I slowly got out and stretched my legs.

This particular Stop-N-Go was a high school favorite stop on the way to the boondock, a party spot we all found so exciting back then.  Now, I would not be caught dead there, just like I hoped I wouldn't be caught dead in these clothes and my hair in a ponytail mess with no makeup.  In LA, these types of comfortable casual clothes were to only be worn in the privacy of your own apartment, otherwise my normal attire of three to four inch heels, and the latest fashion, was about all I was seen in and that was after I spent an hour on my hair and makeup.  I wondered if anyone back home did Brazilian blowouts.  I was due soon, and I didn't see me going back to LA without one.  That is if I went back to LA.

I decided to fill up my sister's blue minivan for her while she was inside tinkling her laughter out of her.  She did not let me pay her back for the plane tickets, and I was not a charity case.  I had a good handle on my finances and knew that I had at least six months' worth of expense money to get me by.  If I sold my condo in LA, I could get by for at least two years but that was far from my radar.

With my luggage tucked neatly in the back of the minivan, I decided to take a peek for the very first time inside the car that my sister practically lived out of for her job.  I was too tired when I crawled into the passenger seat after the airplane ride to notice before, but now as I opened the sliding back door, I noticed the world from which my sister lived in.  The world I was about to thrust myself into until I got my wits about me.

There in the minivan was two pink booster car seats or what was once pink but now multiple shades of 'is that grape jelly' I said aloud to myself.  There were unmatched pink or yellow shoes, various kinds of socks, none of which appeared to match.  There was an open DVD case to a Dora The Explorer movie and three bags from fast food, still with food in them.

I reached my hands above my head in a yoga stretch, and my pink tank top rose above my belly.  I then bent down to touch my toes and let out a long breath.  There, while I was bent over examining my need for a pedicure in my pink flip-flops, was the edge of a cowboy boot in my vision.  I could almost sense who it was before I stood up.

"They all wear pink pj's with kitties on them over there in LA, or you starting a trend here in 'Bama'?"  His words were like a honey in one sense and nails on a chalkboard in another.  I had always had this push-pull feel with Bubba Champ, but leaving 'Bama' put him far off my radar.  Living the life I did in LA, had put Bubba in the far recesses of my brain until the minute my sister had mentioned his name, and my skin felt the feel of his hand brush over my skin without him being here.  That is what Bubba did to me.  It turned my brain to mush, my senses on high alert and my mind back to the last time we were necking in his daddy's barn.  The night I told him that I was saving myself for someone special when I got to LA to start my acting career, not some hillbilly like Bubba in 'Bama'.  The night I tried to push him so far away from me emotionally, that I could head on out to LA without a guilty thought to what I was doing.  A huge part of me wanted Bubba to convince me otherwise that night and come running after me to stop me from leaving 'Bama', but he didn't.  Little did I know that there was no one special in LA, just a casting director and an old leather couch that smelled.

I slowly stood up and turned to face the man whom I fell in love with long ago but just didn't know how to get along with.  I had a hard time not letting my eyes roam over his now very mature manly body.  Those weren't high school muscles he was packing anymore.  His dirty blonde hair was looking long as it curled up a bit under the edge of his hat.  He had a goatee beard going on, and it might be sexy, but I didn't like my men with hair on their face.  Ok, on him, it was damn sexy.  His blue eyes that I loved were hidden among the shadows of his hat.

"Why I do declare if it's not Bubba 'da' Champ.  How's rodeo life or farming life or whatever it is you redneckers do around here?"  My voice was laden with soft sexual undertones; my eyes twinkled with hope, but I knew how to piss em off just right.  In one fair swoop, I wanted to swoon Bubba and smack that sexy dimpled grin right off of his face.  Instead, he looked right at me with sorrow, the last thing I wanted from him.  Then he told me that he was doing all right.  That his momma was looking forward to me stopping by for a sweat tea.  Then he walked over and stopped the gas pump just as it was about to overspill.  He pulled out the pump and returned it to its place.  He put in the gas cap to the minivan and walked back around to me, tipped his tan dusty cowboy hat, wished me a safe drive on home and sauntered over to his brown dually Chevy truck and climbed in.  I stood there like a deer caught in headlights.  Then a sound of a camera cell phone caught my attention as that sound had me on guard.  My sister looked at the picture she just took of me, and she was off and laughing again.

It wasn't until we were five minutes away that I got that phone out of her hand without causing a wreck and saw the picture she took.  I looked horrid.  Brunette hair all a mess.  My face pale, my eyes still a bit red and puffy and my pink lace bra showing from my tank top that was all off kilter.  Lovely.  Just friggin lovely.  I swore to myself that the next time Bubba Champ saw me; I would look LA hot and every man in Alabama was going to want me.