Addison was taking a nap on the hood of his Jeep when a loud honk startled him awake.
“Shit.” He opened his eyes to see David's battered black 2-wheel drive Ford F-150 idling at the edge of the hole he was stuck in.
“You want me to pull you out or are you happy in there?” David yelled as he leaned out the window.
Addison laughed and brushed his too-long golden curls out of his eyes. His hair had always grown ridiculously fast but he'd never thought much about it until he'd found himself living in a world where some asshat could come measure the length of it and punish him if one follicle dared extend itself too far.
He'd had so many haircuts during his short time in the military that he had absolutely refused to get one since returning to civilian life. The hair on his head was now long enough that it came just past his jaw and could nearly be pulled back into a ponytail. His beard was halfway down his neck. Gracie, his kid sister, said he looked like a homeless mountain man. He didn't care. “The beer is in the back of my truck. I reckon its up to you whether you want to pull me out or slog through thigh high mud every time you need a drink,” he said.
David shook his head and shifted his truck back into gear, choosing to ease it off to the far side of the trail so that a second truck could pull up to where Addison was sitting stuck. Addy blinked with some surprise as he saw Ian's shiny new Dodge 1500 pull to the edge of the hole, nose first. A fat winch sat in the center of the big truck's sturdy steel aftermarket bumper. Ian waved cheerily from the driver's seat.
“We doing this the easy way?” Addison asked as Ian started unspooling the winch.
“Damn right.” David had parked his truck on the edge of the trail and walked to the side of the mud hole. “You better not have broken nothing. I don't feel like crawling under that thing today.” He jerked his thumb at the Jeep.
“I don't think I did,” Addison told him. “I just bogged down and couldn't get any traction. I knew I was fucked so I stopped trying and texted y'all. Figured one of you would be bored enough to come haul my ass back out of the hole.”
“You're lucky I like you more than I like school,” David replied.
“You like anything more than you like school,” Addison shot back at him with a shake of his head. “Cal's the one I wasn't sure would come, you know. He's such a damn goody-goody.”
“You want me to knock you off the hood of that truck?” Cal asked.
“You won't do it,” Addison taunted him with a grin. He stood up on the hood of the Jeep and began dancing in a slow circle, taunting Cal.
Cal eyed him thoughtfully, rubbing his hands together as if he were preparing for the tackle.
“You're drunk,” David said dismissively.
“Of course,” Addison agreed. He stopped shaking his ass and held out his hand. He gestured for David to throw him the winch cable. “Pull me out and you can be drunk too.”
“I can be drunk anytime I want to,” David pointed out. “Ian has a fifth of Wild Turkey in his toolbox.”
“Hmm. That has potential,” Addison said.
“Agreed.” David threw the winch cable to Addison. “Want to explain what you're doing out here?”
“I'm stuck.” Addison laid down on the hood of the Jeep and dangled upside down across the grill, hooking the cable to the shackles he'd had built into the front of the vehicle for exactly this reason.
David waved his hand in a circular, 'keep explaining' gesture.
“I was bored and going stir crazy in the house.”
“So you decided to go trail riding alone.”
“Yes.” Addison smiled as Ian began reeling his Jeep back to dry land like it was a particularly stubborn fish on a line.
“You're crazy.”
“No. I'm bored.” Addison shrugged his shoulders. He braced himself against the bumper of the Jeep as it began slowly inching through the sloppy mud. “You'd think I'd be used to it by now. God knows, I got a lot of practice at being bored during my four months in the Navy. Staring at walls while pretending I was anywhere else. Scrubbing floors while still pretending I was somewhere else. Getting drunk in the supply closet and screwing a very attractive brunette cadet named Sandi on the floor in between the mops and the bottles of bleach. Getting caught with my pants around my ankles and my dick in between Sandi's teeth when a senior officer ran out of toilet paper and came into the supply closet to get another package.”
“How can you be bored during sex?” Cal asked with a raised eyebrow.
“It wasn't exactly great sex,” Addison explained. “Besides, Sandi was hot but she was real uptight. She seemed to think that sex equaled serious long term commitment. Y'all know I don't do commitment.”
“Maybe you should have explained that to her before you slept with her.”
“Maybe I should have,” Addy admitted. He slid down off the hood of the Jeep as the front tires came free of the mud. “Not that it matters now. Wrecking that forklift was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
“Wrecking that forklift got you kicked out of the Navy,” Cal reminded him.
“Exactly.” Addy grinned. “But hey, I was honorably discharged. No shame.”
Cal rolled his eyes. Addison bent down next to the rear axle of his freshly freed Jeep. “Everything is muddy but I don't think anything is bust-”
Cal tackled him mid-sentence, slamming him backwards into the mud hole the Jeep had just come out of it. Addison made a brief gurgling noise and then threw Cal off of him, rolling the heavier boy backwards into the mud. Addy tried to get up, but he slipped in the mud and landed on his knees. Cursing madly, he just barely managed to roll to the side before Cal slammed him back down with a wicked grin.
“Call me a goody-goody again,” Cal dared him.
“You're a goody-goody.” Addison used his leg to sweep Cal off his feet. It wasn't the most effective maneuver. Cal did fall over, but he used Addy to cushion his own landing. A few minutes of good-natured tussling later. Addison threw his hands up in the air. “I give,” he said as he laid flat on his back in the mud. “You win.”
Cal laughed, went to stand up and slipped. He landed on his tailbone in the mud. “I think I give too. The mud hole won.”
“No shit.” Addison fought his way to his feet and began carefully making his way back onto solid ground. He offered Cal a hand up, pulling his friend to his feet. “It ate my Jeep, remember?”
Cal laughed.
“I hope you don't think you're riding home in the cab of my truck,” David said to Cal.
“Fine. Be a snob. I'll ride with Addy.” Cal made a half-hearted effort to brush the sloppy, wet mud off his jeans and then shook his head.
“Beer is in my truck anyways.” Addy walked over to the Jeep and dug around in the glove box until he'd retrieved a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and lit it, blowing smoke into the sky.
“True.” Cal went around to the back door of the Jeep and pulled the muddy door handle until it grudgingly came open to reveal the cooler inside. “Who wants a beer?”
“Me,” Ian said. He'd gotten out of the Dodge and freed the Jeep from the winch while Addison and Cal had been rolling through the mud together. He gulped down the last of the liquored up coke he'd been carrying around and then immediately held his hand out for a beer.
“Me too.” Addy held out his hand and gestured for Cal to pass him a bottle.
“What do y'all want to do now?” Ian asked as he opened his beer and took a long swallow. “I don't see any point in going back to school. Lunch will be over before we get there.”
“I wasn't planning on going back to school,” David said as he pulled his own bottle out of the cooler. He looked purposefully over at Addison. “You know, it would be easier on me if you'd wait until after 3 pm to go bury your truck in the woods.”
“You know, it would make my life easier if you would go ahead and graduate already,” Addy replied in exactly the same tone.
“Mine too,” David agreed with a shrug. “Working on it.”
“I thought you were supposed to be going back to school?” Cal looked curiously at Addison. “Gracie told me that you enrolled in Callahan Community College last week.”
Addison sighed and stuck his tongue out. “Against my will, but yeah. I'm going on to Grade 13 after all.”
“What for?” David asked.
“Mom and Uncle Frank ganged up on me. Hutch Law is retiring next year. Uncle Frank says he'll give me the Game Warden's position if I go to Callahan Community and pass their basic law enforcement classes. Its a 9 month program. I start in January. Lucky me.” Addison made a face.
“You're going to be the Game Warden?” David asked with obvious disbelief.
“Uncle Frank said that since all I want to do is drive around in the woods and play on the creek, I might as well get paid doing it.” Addison shrugged. “I don't really want the job but Mom says its a cream puff. She also says I need to take the job before she kicks me out and I wind up flipping burgers down by the interstate.”
“What does your Dad say?” Cal asked.
“Dad don't care what I do so long as I get a job. He's all the time bitching about how much money its costing to keep Granny and Grandpa Chasson in the nursing home. He says I'm lucky he's even willing to pay for my college classes after I went and got myself kicked out of the Navy.”
“Your life is so tough.” The sarcasm practically dripped from David's voice.
“Damn right it is.” Addison knew better than to let David's attitude bother him. “Not all of us can be a hard ass like you. If life were a rosebush, I'd be a delicate little flower and you'd be a fucking thorn.” Addison fanned himself and batted his eyelashes at David.
David laughed so hard that beer came out his nose.
Cal shook his head and snorted. “Y'all are so fucked up.”
“That's why you love us.”
“Whoever said I loved y'all?”
David shook his head and grinned. “Lie all you want to, Walker. You wouldn't trade us for nothing.”
“Mmmm...I can think of a few things I might be pretty tempted by.”
“Y'all don't know how much I missed this,” Addison interrupted. He sounded surprisingly serious.
“Missed what?” Ian asked. “Listening to Cal and David fight like an old married couple?”
“Being able to stand around, drink a beer and bullshit without having to worry about who was standing nearby, who was watching or what the people watching were thinking,” Addison explained. “The Navy sent me to freaking Maryland. It was crowded. Busy. I couldn't breathe because there was so much smog in the air. Couldn't order a sweet tea in a restaurant. The waitresses just stared at me funny and then brought me mugs of hot tea.”
“I never understood why you agreed to enlist in the first place,” David said bluntly. “Everyone knows you have no desire to ever leave Possum Creek. Its hard enough to get you to run up to Baker County or Beauton. You freak out in traffic and we won't even talk about your love of crowds.”
“I know,” Addison admitted. “It was a bad idea. Mom just kept hammering at me about how I owed it to her and Dad to do something with my life. She kept griping about how, and I quote 'immature' I am and about how I was throwing my future away by not going to college. I figured signing up for the military would be a good way to keep her happy without having to sit through any more boring classes.”
“How'd that work out for you?”
“It took me months of bad behavior to kicked out of the military and now Mom and Uncle Frank are making me go to college. As far as game plans go, I wouldn't recommend following my example. I've been out of school for over a year and have accomplished nothing except getting bitched at by lots of different people in several different states.”
“You're probably still going to make out better than me,” Ian said glumly. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned down at the chipping paint on the hood of the Jeep. “I've already been held back once and its looking like I'm going to fail this entire year. My Mom is talking about sending me to Baker County to the Vo-Tech to finish out high school. She doesn't think I'm going to be able to graduate the regular way.”
“That would suck,” David said bluntly.
Ian nodded in unhappy agreement. “I don't want to go school anywhere but Possum Creek. I can't go all day without seeing Katie. What if she got bored and started dating someone else because I wasn't here anymore?”
“Then you can buy yourself a new girlfriend,” David replied, rolling his eyes. “Your truck is the only reason Katie even looked twice at you.”
“Fuck off.” Ian gave David the finger.
“Who is Katie?” Addison asked.
“A cheerleader who moved to Possum Creek from Beauton right after you left for basic training. Ian likes the way her tonsils taste,” Cal replied.
“She's my girlfriend and I love her.” Ian didn't look at all embarrassed. “And y'all don't have much room to talk. Especially not you, Cal. You and Gracie-.”
“Don't make out in the hallways between classes.”
“Only because she doesn't go to the high school yet.”
“Details.” Cal waved Ian's comments away, looking more than slightly embarrassed. “Y'all can quit giving me crap about Gracie at any time now. I mean, y'all never cared one way or another about me and Gracie until this year.”
“No one took y'all seriously.” David finished his first beer and immediately opened a second. “Until homecoming, that is.”
Cal's cheeks immediately began burning bright red. “Look, I'd already told Rebecca I had a girlfriend.”
“And she didn't believe you. She asked you to go out with her in front of the entire school.”
“I turned her down.”
“No shit. She tried to kiss you in the middle of the pep-rally and you shoved her onto her ass.”
“I didn't mean to push her. It was just a reflex. I wasn't really paying attention and next thing I knew, she was coming at my face with this fish-face pucker. I reacted without thinking. Badly.”
“Personally, I found it hilarious.” David grinned. “Cheerleader coming after you with a kissy-face and you knock her backwards on her ass.”
“It wasn't one of my finer moments,” Cal said. He shook his head. “Momma was horrified.”
“Not that horrified. She did admit Rebecca was a slut.” David crossed his arms over his own chest and leaned back against the side of the still-clean Dodge. He mimicked Loretta Walker's gravelly voice and haughty posture. “Not the kind of girl I want you kissing anyway, Calvin.”
Ian laughed. Cal blushed even redder.
“Hey, y'all leave Cal alone.” Addison shook his head at David. “I don't do commitment, but I damn sure want the guy who's sleeping with my baby sister to be a firm believer in it. Cal gets a pass in my book. He's loyal to Gracie. If he'd let that girl kiss him, I'd have had to whip his ass for it.”
“Gee, thanks Addy.” Cal carelessly tossed his empty beer bottle into the woods on the side of the trail. “For the record, I'm not sleeping with Gracie.”
“You're not?” Addison looked baffled.
“She's thirteen,” Cal reminded him.
“And?”
“And I'm not in that big a rush.”
“What are you planning on doing, waiting for marriage?” Addison gaped at him.
“No,” Cal shook his head. “I'm just...not sleeping with a middle schooler. Don't get me wrong, I'd die for Gracie, but I'll wait until she at least hits high school for the sex. Thanks.”
“You're serious?” Addison had an amused look on his face. “You're really telling me that Gracie is still a virgin?”
“Isn't that what I just said?” Cal threw up his hands in a sign of surrender. “I'm not sleeping with her. I love her, but we haven't had sex yet. Y'all can make fun of me all y'all want to.”
“I'm not making fun of y'all,” Addison said with a shake of his head. “I'm laughing because Mom thinks y'all are screwing like rabbits in the front seat of that truck of yours every time y'all are alone.”
“Does she really?” Cal asked, startled.
“Hell yes. She was complaining to me about it the other night. She says I'm a hopeless slut and Gracie's followed in my footsteps. She says Gracie must have inherited her morals from me. She says its going to be my fault when Gracie gets pregnant before she reaches ninth grade.”
“How would it be your fault?” Cal demanded.
“Because you're my friend,” Addy replied.
“That's pretty screwed up,” Ian said quietly.
“You've met my mother,” Addison reminded him. “She's not the understanding type and she always thinks the worst of Gracie.”
“I know,” Cal admitted. “She pisses me off but I can't exactly say much to her. She is y'alls mother.”
“I'm sure you'll get plenty opportunities to share your feelings,” Addison replied. “I told her this morning that she was a psychotic controlling bitch. She threw a bowl of cereal at me.”
“Before or after you called her a bitch?”
“Before.” Addy shook his head. “I'm moving in with Granny Peal. She has that old one bedroom apartment above the shed and I'm fixing to do some work on it and get it livable again. I can't take Mom's crap any longer.”
“What about Gracie?” Cal asked. “She was miserable while you were gone last time.”
“I'll be two miles down the road, not two states. She'll either work it out on her own or she'll abandon ship and come stay with me.” Addison shrugged. “I can't deal with Mom any longer. She's gone off the deep end and Dad's never home. She was off work today and I lasted all of 10 minutes awake before I had to get out of the house. How do you think I wound up stuck out here with a cooler full of beer before 11 am?”
“Speaking of being out here, are we going to stand around talking all day or are we going trail riding?” Ian asked. “I was kind of hoping to see how my new tires pull in the mud.”
“Hole is right here.” Addison pointed at the mud hole he'd been pulled out of.
“Yeah, and your Jeep is right there.” Ian pointed at the offending vehicle. “I don't have a clear run until you move it.”
“Consider it moved,” Addy replied. He grabbed two more beers out of the cooler and shut the back hatch on his Jeep. Passing one to Cal, he walked over to the driver's seat. “Before you put that behemoth in the hole, I'm going to have one more go at seeing if I can get through it. Who wants to ride?”
“I'll go.” Cal took both the offered beer and the passenger's seat in the Jeep. A moment later, they were right back where Addison had started the morning. Stuck in the mud.