It was weird at first, having Eric Taylor sleeping down the hall from her. Almost as weird as sharing a room with Shelley again. So Tami avoided being home as much as possible. A lot of that time she spent hanging out with Mo, but sometimes she just wandered a trail along the lake in the dark, smoking, and thinking, or trying not to think. The time she did spend at home, she was relieved to find Eric either out at work or hauled up in his rented room. He spent a lot of time in that room, doing push-ups or sit-ups or studying or drawing play diagrams or whacking off to his tame fantasies or whatever it was he did in there. Tami didn't want to guess.
He didn't seem to mind being alone. Not a social butterfly, that one. He went out with Nicole every Saturday night and went to church with Nicole's family on Sunday mornings. That was it as far as his social calendar went. He worked Tuesday through Friday from 7 PM to midnight at the gas station, Saturday from nine to two, and Sunday from three to eight. He delivered newspapers every morning. Tami supposed he would start mowing lawns again too, in the spring, when the brown began to green and grow again. "How are you going to squeeze in spring training?" she asked, and he said he always scaled back his gas station hours during training and the football season. In spring and fall, he didn't work Fridays at all.
One morning in February, Mo called to tell Tami he was cutting school to go with a teammate to hang out in "the big city," which only meant Big Spring, and did she want to come? The problem was the teammate he was cutting with was one Tami had fooled around with. Tami carried a small flame of resentment for every guy she'd let have sex with her, every one of whom—except Mo—had promptly moved on. She hated them, hated herself, and hated her dad for not being there to stop her from doing what made her hate herself. "No. I think I need to go to school," she said.
Mo laughed. "Need to? Okay, baby doll. Whatever you want. But you and I are still on for Valentine's, right? I got something special planned." Something special meant going to one of the two sit-down restaurants in town. They'd be waited on and everything, and Mo would splurge on desert.
"Sure," she said, and when she hung up the phone, she asked Eric, who was sitting at the kitchen table hastily finishing up his math homework, if she could hitch a ride to school with him.
"Okay, but I leave in five minutes," he said, not looking up from his sheet of paper.
Tami hadn't even taken her shower yet. "School doesn't start for almost an hour."
His pencil scribbled quickly across the page. "Got to deliver papers on the way."
They left in fifteen minutes, when Tami got herself together, and not without a lot of grumbling from Eric about how he was going to be tardy.
"What do you care?" she said as she yanked shut the passenger's side door with a loud creak. Those hinges needed some serious oiling. They were rusted straight through. "It's not like you'll get in trouble for it."
"I don't like being late," he said. "For anything." He reached back and slid open the glass that separated the cab of the pickup from the bed. "Papers are in there," he said.
"Your point being…."
"Well, you're making me late. I'll drive. Least you can do is toss them out the window for me."
She muttered about it, but she did it. He'd slow down just a little at each house, and she'd catapault the newspapers out the open window. It was surprisingly exhilarating, chucking those papers with all her force, the cold February air whipping in through the window.
"Ten points if you hit that dog," he said at one house.
"What are you, a serial killer?" she asked. "You like to torture animals?"
"Just that one. Trust me, you would too if you delivered papers on bike to this house, like I did before I got my driver's license. That dog cost me a ten speed."
Tami didn't hit it, but she got close, and the dog jumped and squealed as Eric peeled off laughing. Tami found herself laughing too. When the last paper was delivered, she rolled up the window and fixed her hair. "You got big Valentine's plans with Nicole?" she asked.
"Yep."
"Proposing?"
The truck swerved suddenly in the lane, and he righted it. "What? No. I'm sixteen." He'd be seventeen this summer, a few months before Tami turned eighteen.
"Well, you've been steady with her ever since junior high, and everyone expects you to get married when you graduate."
"Everyone? They do? Who's everyone?"
She shrugged. "Mo."
"Well, no, I'm not proposing tonight. And don't go making her expect that either."
"When do I ever talk to Nicole?" Tami looked back at the bed of the pick-up. "Where do you guys manage to have sex?" she asked. "You don't have a back seat on this piece of junk." Not like Mo's leather-cushioned Camaro. "Do you put sleeping bags in the bed or something?"
A crimson flush clawed its way across Eric's cheeks. "That's not really your business."
"Nicole has a car though, right? It has a backseat I suppose."
The red in his face was draining and his knuckles were whitening on the steering wheel.
"You two do have sex, haven't you?" she asked.
"Is there a reason you think any of this is any of your business?" He yanked the steering wheel abruptly to the left and rolled into the school parking lot. Sliding into a space, he jerked the truck into park.
Tami laughed. "You're so easy to provoke."
"Glad I can be your soft target." He turned off the ignition and opened the door.
"Soft?" she said with a smirk, and then laughed. "Ironic choice of words given the circumstances."
Instead of getting out of the truck, he slammed the door shut and turned on her, eyes burning. "What is with you, Tami? What have I ever done to insult you? It's like you want people to hate you. It's like…like you're trying…"
"Trying to what? Tell me, Dr. Freud, what am I trying to do? "
He sighed. "Let's just try to get along. We have to live in the same house."
"Well that's your fault, not mine. I didn't invite you through the door. What's so bad about living with your dad, anyway?"
Mr. Taylor had called the day Eric moved into the Hayes household. Tami had answered. Eric was fixing dinner—it was his Monday off—dinner duty day—so he'd been standing right there next to the kitchen phone, but she'd said, "I'll have to check if he's available." She'd covered the mouthpiece. "It's your dad." "Not here," he'd said. "Sorry, he's not here," Tami said into the phone. Mr. Taylor called again the next Monday, and the next, but Eric was never available.
When Eric didn't answer, Tami repeated, "Really, what's so bad about living with him? You're willing to live with my criticism, but not his?"
Eric rubbed his forehead. "See, difference is, Tami, I don't need your respect." He threw open the door with the force of his shoulder and slid out of the truck.
She sat there for a moment longer, watching her classmates flood into the school. Of course he didn't need her respect. Who would he feel the need to earn the respect of Tami Hayes? She didn't respect anyone. Not even herself.
She climbed down from the pickup, slapped the lock down, and grabbed her backpack. Time to go through the motions at school. Such a waste of time, since she wasn't planning to leave with a diploma.
[*]
Mo wined and dined Tami on Valentine's day. He told her to get a dinner salad and order the flank steak, and they split a fudge brownie sundae on top of it all. His gift to her—a sexy pair of red panties. Apparently he'd bought them on his school-cutting journey to Big Spring.
They didn't stay out overly late. It was a school night, and she'd told her mom she was babysitting. Mo barely came to a stop outside of Tami's driveway when he returned her and sped away before she even had her key in the door, so Mom wouldn't know she'd been with him.
When she got in, the house was dark, except for the light streaming from under the door in the room she shared with Shelley. She went to the kitchen to get a drink of water and, through the window over the sink, saw Nicole's car pull up. Eric usually drove on their dates, but tonight Nicole had apparently driven for a change. Maybe it was a backseat sex night. Nicole's special Valentine's gift to Eric.
Tami saw Eric lean over in the passenger's seat and kiss her. Tame. Just as Tami had suspected. Sure, the kiss went on and on, but it looked tame. Eric would make a boring boyfriend.
Tami looked away.
When Eric came in, he went straight to the kitchen to grab a glass of milk. He always had a glass of milk before bed, like a little kid. He didn't say hello to her. She slid into a chair at the table and began to pull on an ice-cream coated spoon Shelley had left out until it had become congealed to the vinyl tablecloth. "Sorry I've been such a bitch to you," she said. She'd been thinking about his words that day in the school parking lot. She'd been feeling…what was this feeling? Guilt? Remorse? "You don't deserve it."
He set his glass on the counter and put his hands palm down but didn't say anything.
A bit of the puke green vinyl pulled off the table cloth when Tami pried the spoon loose. "I guess it's kind of like you said. You're just a convenient target or something." When he didn't respond, she continued, "I don't know. I just...sometimes I feel like I really need someone to hurl shit at. Like it gives me this temporary sense of relief or something. But you don't deserve that. You're a good guy."
He lifted the glass and drank from it, but he still didn't say anything. She looked at the spoon and heard the faucet turn on. They didn't have a dishwasher, so he always washed his dishes by hand and put them away immediately. He didn't want to risk raising the ire of his landlady. Tami heard the cupboard close. Would he please just accept her apology, damn it?
Finally, he spoke. "You have a good arm," he said.
"What?"
"The way you were chucking those newspapers the other morning." He walked to the entryway between the kitchen and living room and turned to face her. "Good arm. You should play softball. Mo said you used to play volleyball at your old school, but you quit for some reason. Maybe you should try softball instead. The season starts soon, but you can probably still get on the team. Sports are a good way to work out some of your rage. Football helps me anyway."
She watched him walk away. What did he know about rage? Sure, his mom had died. That probably pissed him off. It wasn't fair. But it's not like he found her lying in the back yard, the shotgun just beside her, the blood turned black, so it looked like oil on mud. It's not like Eric's mom had died before he'd even had his first date. It's not like she died in anything but a normal, expected way.
And sure, his dad criticized him, rode him hard, expected the best out of him, but at least he thought Eric was capable of the best. Mr. Taylor hadn't written off his son as bound for after-life detention in a fiery pool. And at least Eric's dad called. Even after Eric had stormed out of the house, Mr. Taylor had called, every week, until it was clear Eric wasn't calling back. Eric's dad was there-or at least tried to be-in a way Tami's mom never was. Eric had never had to move to a new town to avoid a flood of creditors. He'd never been forced to take care of his little sister because his dad had blown his brains out and his mom had buried herself in the never-ending cycle of work and wine.
Who was Eric Taylor to think he could understand her?
[*]
Tami asked the softball coach for a late try out. She wasn't sure why she did it, other than that she couldn't seem to shake Eric's suggestion. What if he was right? What if softball did help? What if she didn't have to feel so angry all the time?
Last season, the team had lost all but one of its games. Coach Baldwin didn't care that Tami didn't even know the rules, or that she was only a junior. She saw how hard and fast Tami chucked that ball, and she replaced the senior pitcher on the spot. With Tami pitching, the team might actually manage to win a few games.
Mo laughed when Tami told him she'd joined the softball team. "Fantastic," he said. "I can't wait to see you in those shorts." He winked. "Be sure to wear your new panties under them."
Mo may have mocked her decision to join the team, but he came to her games. He let out a loud "Raaaah!" whenever she struck out a batter. It wasn't as if her mom was there (she couldn't get off work for the games, of course), but Mo was.
And Eric was right. Sports did ease the rage, at least a little, not just because the training let her work out the anger, but because the games took her mind off it. She had to concentrate to play, and she couldn't be distracted by the injustice of her world.
Eric didn't say anything when she told him she'd joined the team. He just nodded. But in May, he did come to the last game of her season. He sat next to Mo in the bleachers, just sat there, the whole time, with his arms crossed over his chest, watching. He didn't stand and cheer and scream and rah when Mo did. He just watched. Tami didn't pitch as well as she normally did. The team lost. Mo came over after the game and told her, "Sorry, baby doll" and kissed her cheek. "But Golden Mo still loves you."
"Golden Mo is going to get his ass kicked by Irritated Tami if he doesn't stop talking about himself in the third person," she replied, and he laughed and said, "That's my girl. That's my girl. Just take that sass to the backseat, baby doll." Tami looked over Mo's shoulder and scanned the bleachers for Eric, to see if her game performance disappointed him or merely cemented his expectations of her, but he was gone.