Authors: Kelli Jae Baeli
Travis leaned back, pulling an extra eCigar from his pocket, having fallen prey to Tru’s sales pitch long ago, and shelling out over a hundred dollars for two eCigar versions of the alternative smoking device. His was regular tobacco-flavored, as he couldn’t get used to the unconventional flavors available and chose to stick with a taste he knew.
Tru mused about her lover, puffed her apple eCig, and worked toward the bottom of her fresh drink. “How come you didn’t order another drink for yourself, Travis?”
Travis expelled a lungful of vapor. “I have to drive home.”
“A Highway Hero. Commendable. We need a few more of those.” Tru studied the blond young woman in the corner, wearing cowboy boots and jeans, a leather vest buttoned tightly over her otherwise bare torso. Tru thought the woman looked like a model for western wear in one of those magazines that appear in the mailbox, compliments of the direct-marketing industry. “Travis, why do you come in here so much? I mean, it’s a gay bar. You realize you’re barking up the wrong tree, right?”
“I come here because I like the dance floor.” Travis watched the young woman in boots stride past their table and select a cue stick for a game of pool with another young woman.
“That’s what they all say.” She blew vapor at him. “I think it’s more like an irresistible urge to pursue what you can never have.”
“Who says I can’t have it?” He grinned, his attention darted toward another garbage-lid table not far away, his blue eyes flickering over a tall blond woman sharing an animated conversation with her table-mates. Tru noticed that the young woman who had captured his unwavering interest favored Brittany. But not as pretty. Tru thought of Brit, pictured her sitting with her feet folded under her on the sofa in front of the fireplace, waiting for Tru to come home, or perhaps enjoying a good book, and her time alone.
A half hour later, Travis paid the cocktail waitress and tipped, after Tru waved away another drink and announced that she had to go.
“You’re in no condition to drive,” Travis reminded her.
“I din’ inten’ to...” She wobbled as she stood next to the table, holding the edge of it for balance. “I can’t believe this...
I mus’ be more tired than I thought...”
Travis stood. Steadying her with a hand at her elbow. “You can’t drive like this, Tru. Let me give you a lift over to a hotel. The New West Inn has really good prices...”
She stared into space drunkenly. “No. S’okay...
Brit expects me home...”
“Oh don’t worry. I’ll give her a call and let her know. You have to sleep this off. You don’t want her to see you like this.” More importantly, he wanted to get her out of there before one of her fans or one of the staff noticed her condition.
“No...not like thus...” She was humored by her mistake. “Thus...” she laughed. “This. Whatever.”
“Okay, come on. I’ll drop you at the hotel on my way out of town.”
“What the hell,” she agreed, following him, maneuvering the stairs leading outside the bar with apparent difficulty, and sliding into the passenger side of Travis’ black Chevy truck.
On 28th Street, across from the University, Travis came out of the New West Inn office with a key attached to an ugly gold piece of plastic. In the passenger seat, Tru had fallen asleep. He chuckled, driving around to the room, and helping her inside. Tru staggered to the bed and flopped down, soon fast asleep again. Travis tried to revive her for long moments, then leaned on the dresser and took a few puffs of his cigar for a few moments as he studied her there. “Margaritaville...” he said with a grin. Moving toward her, he leaned down, shook her firmly. “Tru?” She did not respond, her face relaxed into the numb smoothness of an inanimate object; his grin grew into a smile.
Slowly, he pulled at the top of her 501’s and the first button popped free.
2
A SWATH OF MORNING SUNSHINE FELL ACROSS TRU’S EYES, and she came awake, aware of the sharp pounding in her head, and the television which sat silent atop the TV stand. She vaguely remembered her decision to get a motel the night before, and wasn’t sure whether she had been too drunk to remember to call Brittany and let her know. She didn’t generally indulge in over-drinking, and wondered what had encouraged her to do so the night before. She pressed both hands against her head, wishing for ibuprofen.
Tru blinked her eyes into painful focus and saw her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. Her appearance told her more than she wanted to know about how much she had had to drink the night before. And she was shirtless, braless. Also in the reflection, a lump under the blanket next to her, and she turned quickly to find the lump was a leg, and that the leg belonged to Travis. He was naked, too. Tru jerked the sheet up under her arms and stared at him, horrified. “Travis?”
He stirred, his eyes fluttered open, and he smiled warmly. “Morning, Sugar.” He ran his hand down her arm.
Tru jerked away, grabbing the sheet and drawing it around her as she got up. “What the hell are you doing here?” she rasped, swallowing the cotton that seemed to be growing abundantly on her tongue.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position, his face filled with a boyish grin. “Enjoying the morning after, Sugar—”
Tru coughed involuntarily and pressed a palm to her head. “Travis, we didn’t—I mean, I don’t—please tell me we—I don’t remember what happened last night—”
He lifted one eyebrow in a smirk. “I won’t ever forget it. I never suspected you of being such an animal in bed. You even—”
“Holy Christ! What have I done?!” Tru searched for and found her clothing heaped upon the floor by the bed, and began to dress beneath the sheet.
“Hey, why so uptight?”
“Why so uptight?” she squeaked. “Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what sort of mess this is? Oh, my God...she’ll kill me, I am dead meat. She’ll never understand this, I don’t understand this—” Tru dropped the sheet and began to button her shirt. “Travis, you have to swear you’ll never breathe a word of this. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing—” she babbled.
“You most assuredly did know what you were doing. I can’t remember the last time I stayed that har—”
“Travis!” she shouted, groaning and holding her head, then more softly. “Spare me the sordid details.”
“Don’t worry, Tru. Your secret is safe with me. I wish you could stay a little longer—” He reached toward her and she lurched away, grabbing her socks and shoes and making a quick visual sweep of the room, before she headed for the door, hopping in place as she shoved the sneakers onto her bare feet.
“Where’s my Cherokee?” she asked, her hand on the doorknob.
And where’s my sense?
Travis folded his arms. “Still at the club.”
Tru dug in her pockets and came up with twenty-five dollars, lifting her eyes to him, quizzically.
“I paid for the room, Sugar,” he admitted.
She slammed the door behind her, and hurried to the front office to call a cab.
Travis reclined, his fingers locked behind his head, admiring his reflection in the mirror. He flexed his pectorals and began to sing an old Carole King tune, “
It’s too late, Baby, now it’s too late...
” It had been remarkably easy. Remarkably. He checked his image in the mirror again, rubbing his chest with both hands, absently, and he began to whistle.
3
TRU SPENT THE ENTIRE TRIP BACK CONCOCTING THE STORY she would tell Brittany. On the 3rd, she had run over some debris on the road, and had blown a tire. Her call to Triple A Roadside Assistance had saved her. She had stuffed the receipt in her glove box, and somehow never thought to mention it when things got busy. Now, she was happy for it, because all she had to do was change the number three on the receipt into a number eight, which was today’s date, and she had proof the incident happened today. Then she had to think about her excuse for not calling. She decided she needed a dead phone, so she turned the battery upside down.
She pulled over just before her driveway and grabbed the jack from the trunk, placing it in the floorboard in the back of the Cherokee. Then she drove up to the garage, used the remote to lift the door, drove in, and got out quickly to retrieve the jack and place it on the workbench.
Brittany opened the garage door at that moment, as Tru turned to get her guitar out of the back.
“Tru! Where the hell have you been?” Brittany said she had been up all night. She had called the bar. She had called Macy. She had called the hospitals.
Tru pleaded for forgiveness, and quickly told her the contrived story.
“I had a flat on the way home and no jack.”
“Why didn’t you have a jack?”
“I used it in the garage to push apart those boards from the barn roof, when I was patching that hole, remember?”
“No...
but...” Brittany’s eyes scanned the garage and fell on the jack, sitting atop the workbench. “Well, why didn’t you call Triple A?”
“My phone was dead. I had to wait until someone came by that I could flag down, and ask them to call. The first one that would actually stop didn’t have one. I got back into the car to warm up and fell asleep. Then when I finally got someone else to stop, it was an old lady, and she didn’t feel okay about handing her phone over. So I didn’t ask her to call you, too...
then I had to wait for Triple A to show up.” They both stepped into the kitchen. Tru set her bag on the table. “So...here I am.”
Brittany considered this and then held out her hand.
“What?”
“Where’s your phone?”
She had hoped she wouldn’t ask, but she had covered the possibility. Tru first pulled out the Triple A receipt, dropping it on the table, and Brittany grabbed it and saw that it was indeed from that day, and then took the cell phone from Tru. Brittany eyed her suspiciously, flipped it open and held down the on button but the screen would not appear at all.
“Where’s your car charger?”
“I gave it to you because yours broke, remember?”
“Oh. Yeah. But I thought you were going to buy another one when you went into town?”
Oh, think fast.
“I got busy. I just forgot. So...it’s like the Universe is conspiring against me today.”
Brittany rubbed at her cheek, and sighed. She handed the phone back. “Okay...
well, I’m sorry, but I was so worried and I couldn’t figure out why you hadn’t called.”
“I’m so sorry I worried you, Baby.” Tru hugged her, kissed her, and went to the refrigerator for a Yoo-Hoo, craving something with vitamins in it, that also tasted good.
“Don’t ever leave here with a low battery again. I had to take a Xanax.”
“I’m so sorry, Brit. I promise I won’t let that happen again.”
“Next time you leave here, you will go straight to the store and buy another charger. And, go out there right now, and put that jack in your car.”
Tru didn’t balk at the parent-like reprimand. She did as she was told, relieved that her story had been an acceptable explanation, and that she would not have to tell Brittany what had really happened. She hated the way it felt. She had never lied to Brittany about anything, and she didn’t intend to make a habit of it now.
Tru had always been trustworthy. Her father and mother owned and operated Morgan’s Mercantile and Outfitters, a hunting and fishing shop in the outskirts of Grand Junction, Colorado. Her father trusted her with the store, and often left her in charge. The customers trusted her opinions about the best hunting and fishing sites. The county Sheriff trusted her to clean and service his sidearm. From an early age, Tru would serenade them with her guitar, and customers would linger by the wood stove on cold evenings, drinking coffee or more spirited libations, while she sang to them.
So Ben and Clara Morgan trusted Tru when she told them she needed to get out of Grand Junction and do something different with her life.
But when her trek to Denver and Colorado Springs only garnered her a history of odd jobs and dead-end opportunities, it forced her to examine what she really wanted from her life. If she couldn’t do what she loved, then what was the point? To work for her parents and never see anything but a little corner of the world? Or to go after a degree, and a job in the corporate sector, work herself into retirement so that she could get a gold watch? Neither choice could be enough for her. So she made a plan. That plan began with enlisting in the Army Reserve, to toughen herself up while still getting a paycheck, and then going after her dreams.
During the eleven weeks of Advanced Individual Training after Boot Camp, Tru met Brittany Jabot.
She pegged her immediately as one of the “untouchables.” Not like Elliot Ness who took down Al Capone, but as formidable.
Feeling that her gift for music was her best tool, Tru had invited Brittany to a performance on Base one weekend, and managed to compromise her defenses. Eventually, the defenses were shattered when they shared a liaison at the Comfort Inn in Hopewell while on weekend furlough.
When Tru returned to Colorado after AIT, she knew they had shared something more meaningful than a fling. The thought that she might never see Brittany again was a melancholy niggling that appeared in her dreams at night and left her glum over morning coffee.
Ben and Clara Morgan knew that something had saddened their daughter, and they wanted her to be happy. They were proud of her for attempting to make something of herself, but they understood that she would not be marrying a man who would provide a home for her. Signing over the house on Castle Mountain was their way of expressing understanding. It had been an investment for her father, but he never seemed to have time to fix it up and re-sell it. Tru was capable and delighted to do it.
Having a home-base, Tru immediately immersed herself in the music communities throughout the state, forcing herself to forget Brittany. She spent the three weekends out of the month she wasn’t at Drill, playing music wherever she could. In her off-hours, she worked on the house, renovating and improving it.
Meanwhile, Brittany sought solace in the concentrated discipline of the Military, hoping to become a photojournalist. When it became clear she was to be relegated to a secretary for other male officers and photographers, she began to reconsider. And there was Tru. Without the focus of pursuing photojournalism, her thoughts wandered to the young woman who had disarmed her so completely with a mellow voice and dancing eyes. In a moment of careless whimsy, that sprang from still-another insult about her place in the pecking order, Brittany had confessed her sexuality to her platoon sergeant, and was summarily released under a general discharge.
A week later, she had appeared on Tru’s doorstep.