Beautiful Outlaw by Emily Minton

Respect

Shay

My hands fist around the steering wheel with both fear and excitement as I drive down the deserted road.  My fingers twitch with each pot hole we hit.  “Am I doing okay?”

I don’t look at him, but I can hear the smile in his voice.  “You’re doing fine.”

“I really like driving, always did.”

“Why didn’t you get your license?”

Staring at the road, I do my best to answer honestly without going into too much detail.   “By the time I was sixteen, Mom was sick.  I wasn’t going to bother her with something that wasn’t important.”

At that time, I was too scared of the change in my mother to ask for anything.  The once vibrant woman became a shell of herself overnight.  She quit working at the library, quit making family dinners, and mostly just slept her time away.  Even as a kid, I knew enough to be frightened.  Now, I realize I didn’t know anything at all.  Nothing, not a damn thing, could have prepared me for her death.  Nothing I’ve ever gone through even compares to the pain I’m feeling and have felt since Bowie said she was gone. 

“I can understand that, but why didn’t you get your license after you got married?”

His question causes my fingers to tighten even harder on the steering wheel, turning my knuckles a ghastly shade of white.  “I had no reason for a license then. I had a personal driver to take me anywhere I needed to go.”

“What about what you wanted?”

My eyes go to him, wondering what he meant, causing the truck to swerve.  I focus my attention back on the road and ask him to explain.  “What do you mean by that?”

“You said you had a driver to take you where you needed to go, but what about where you wanted to go?”

I think about his question, wondering how to explain without giving Bowie too much information.  “I didn’t get to go where I wanted very often, so having a driver was convenient.”

“How about seeing your mom and dad?  Did the driver take you there, too?”  Something in his voice tells me he knows the answer.

“I wasn’t able to see my parents very much.”

I close my eyes for a brief second, trying to block out the pain my response brings to the surface.  I have hated Marcus since the day he showed up at my parents’ house, the day he said I had no choice but to marry him.  That hatred grew during the time I was living with him, but knowing that I missed the last years of my mother’s life has taken the hatred into something else, something dark and nasty. 

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask me why I didn’t see them, but I feel the need to explain it anyway.  “I wanted to see them, but Marcus wouldn’t let me go to their house as much as I would have liked.  Sometimes, I would go months without seeing them.  For the first few years of our marriage, before Mom became too ill to get out, they would come to Marcus’ house.  But when they came to visit me, he would make them feel uncomfortable.”

I can feel his eyes on me as he asks, “What did he do to them?”

“He didn’t do anything, really, just being himself.”

“What’s that mean?” he asks, his voice cold enough to send chills up my spine. 

I take a minute to think of the best way to answer him.  “Marcus has a very high opinion of himself, while he held a very low opinion of my family. He didn’t respect them, and he talked down to them.  That’s if he talked to them at all.”

“Your dad has worked his entire life to keep his family fed and a roof over y’all’s heads.  Your mom worked until she was too sick to get out of bed.  How the hell could anyone not have respect for the two of them?”

His words bring a tear to my eye, his opinions mirroring my own.  “You’re right. My dad did work his ass off to make a good life for us, then worked even harder to make sure Mom had the best medical care she could get. Marcus just saw the fact that he had to work so hard as a weakness.”

I blink back my tears and go on.  “My mom was the most wonderful mother in the entire world.  She hid her illness from Jeremy and me until it could no longer be hidden.  For Marcus, just the fact that she was sick was a reason to look down on her.”

“He may have more money than me, probably went to some fancy-ass college, still he’s fuckin’ whacked.”

His words are simple and to the point; they’re also true. Marcus is whacked. “Yeah, he is.”

After that we both go quiet.  He merely points here and there, letting me know where to turn.  Before I know it, we are back in the driveway of his house.  His hand reaches out to touch my face as I cut the engine off.  He cups my cheek, pulling me to him, and places a kiss on my lips. 

After the gentle touch, he pulls back and looks at me.  “I hate that he put you through that shit.”

His words shock me.  After such a long silence between us, I wasn’t expecting Marcus to still be on his mind.  “It’s okay.  He’s not part of my life anymore.”

He shakes his head.  “It’s not okay.”

I don’t reply, just look at him.  Then, I bring my lips to him and give him a soft kiss. 

He pulls back and stares into my eyes.  “I knew he was a fuckin’ whack-job the minute I heard he tried to change you.  Any man that could look at you and want someone else has to be fucked in the head.”