Learning to Live

Chapter 19

I volunteered in a local shelter about once a month, sometimes more if I felt like it.

Hunter picked me up that Saturday morning early. I drove us to the shelter.

He was sitting quietly in the passenger seat. That wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the cigarette between his fingers. It was unlit, but it'd been a while since I last saw him smoke.

"Stressed about something?" I asked, merging the car into the non existent traffic. Saturday mornings were very slow in our small town.

"Why?" He asked.

I nodded my chin to his hand, resting on the window sill.

"Oh." He looked at the cigarette, twirling it between his fingers. "I haven't bought cigarettes for a few weeks now. This is the last one from the last packet I had."

"Want to savor your last cigarette?" I asked.

"No. Trying to see how long I can last without smoking it," he said.

"Challenging yourself. Very commendable," I said, stopping at a red light. Hunter grunted.

The streets were empty as far as the eye could see, but I didn't play around with traffic laws. They were there for a reason.

The weather was gray today. It was growing colder. The trees on either side of the streets wore their auburn fall wigs, shedding most of their colored leaves on the ground.

I glanced at Hunter's attire of black sweatshirt and jeans. A very rookie mistake. I grinned. "You're going to need a lint roller for your clothes after we're done."

He brushed nonexistent dust off his sweatshirt sleeve. "Fur?"

"Yep. Fur. So much fur."

The light turned green and we drove forward. A car drove past us, blaring music first thing in the morning.

"Rude. It's Saturday morning. People are still asleep," I mumbled, glaring in the rearview mirror at the noisy car disappearing down the road.

"We never turn on music," I told Hunter.

"Do you want to?"

I considered it. "No. Not really."

The silence with Hunter was always comfortable. He never felt the need to fill it in with unnecessary chatter. Sometimes, I did. But mostly, our rides were peacefully quiet.

Peaceful. That was a word I never thought I'd associate with Hunter. He made my stomach flutter with how he looked at me sometimes, and his smiles sent my heart into overdrive, but beneath it all, there was a layer of peace whenever I was with him. It was nice.

"How long have you been going to the shelter?" He asked, turning his head to look at me.

"About as long as I've been going to the gym," I said.

"With your dad?"

I nodded.

"You did a lot of things with your father," he said.

"Yep. I was a proper daddy's girl." I smiled. The knot of guilt and grief not nearly as tight as it used to be.

Hunter shifted in his seat. "What about your mom?"

My hands tightened around the steering wheel. "What about her?"

"You don't talk about her much," he said. "At all."

The knot tightened, growing bigger until it pressed against my heart. We rarely spoke about our dad with my brothers. We never spoke about our mom.