Shade of Avocado - Part 35
A Long Tow to Row (Avery)
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Pain at the point of my right hip roused me from sleep for the fifth time since last night. I glanced at the time on my phone since it was still dark outside and inside the van as well. Despite being well before sunrise, I would not attempt to go back to sleep again on the falsely advertised, bed-cum-dining table. Determined not to groan out loud as I moved my hip joint for the first time, I gritted my teeth as I broke through the stiffness. If Piper was still asleep, I had no intention of waking her yet, but we were in tiny quarters here.
A muffled voice came from around the corner to my right. “Avery? You awake?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was trying to be quiet.”
“No, I’ve been awake for a half hour.”
“Oh. Okay. Do you want to use the bathroom first?”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
Piper hopped out from the bedroom area and into the water closet. It would have taken me a while to traverse the three feet over there anyway. I made it onto my feet and approximated my full height, unsure if my spine would uncurl completely. Not only was this ersatz bed hard, but it was also sized for the most compact of human adults.
Once both of us had attended to our immediate biological needs, Piper and I were together again in a cramped room filled with our confusing emotions.
“I didn’t sleep very well either,” Piper told me, not needing psychic ability to see I had a fitful night. “I was still upset.”
“I was surprised how we acted. We weren’t ourselves. To be honest, I don’t know what to say. I guess there’s no chance of making coffee using a USB port.”
Piper opened the refrigerator door under the kitchen counter and found a single can of diet coke. She handed it to me and said, “This might help a little bit.”
The can was somewhat cooler than room temperature. I popped it open and took a swig. I looked at her knowing she liked coffee in the morning, too. “Let’s split it,” I said, passing the can back over to her. I saw a curl of an appreciative smile in her lips. That she drank out of the same can gave me some hope she didn’t consider me her most despised person on earth.
With the caffeine stimulating some parts of our brains, we managed to talk – and listen – to each other with some clarity. We began assuring each other our profanity-laced adjectives didn’t truly apply to the respective persons. The difficult part would be sorting out the pieces of our feelings that applied to our relationship and what was baggage we had carried in from other places.
Before we were too far into our discussion of emotional luggage, my phone rang with a call from the tow truck operator. The good news was he was on the way. The bad news was he estimated it would take another hour to arrive.
“Look on the bright side,” Piper said with mild sarcasm, “we won’t be the ones who have to drive today.”
As we waited for our rescue, we munched on some dry cereal, not sure if we should trust the oat milk from the rapidly warming fridge. We both pulled on some less-wrinkled clothes, then sat in the front seats of the van to wait for the tow truck. We had been quiet for a while, and I looked over to see if Piper might have fallen asleep. But she was gazing out into nowhere. I don’t think she realized I was looking at her when she spoke again.
“Avery, when we came back inside last night,” she began, “and we decided we should go to bed. Did it seem like we were about to…devour each other, sexually?”
“You felt the same way, too? I guess rage can cause raging hormones.”
“What do you think stopped us?” Piper asked. “If you started kissing me, I’m sure that would have been all it took. But that’s not what happened. Do you think we don’t really want it to happen, Avery?”
“I just think we were looking at each other and had an understanding. This wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the way to begin…a new phase of our relationship.”
“You do…want me that way…don’t you, Avery? You’ve done an awfully good job behaving yourself sharing a bed. I don’t want to frustrate you, but I hope I give you some…something to think about.”
“I’m a normal guy, Piper. Of course, I want you. Nine times a day, I think about it. But it doesn’t mean I have to act on it, or my head will explode. In the past, I jumped into it believing it meant something it didn’t mean. It was amazing and fun and satisfying, until I found out lovemaking wasn’t always love.”
“We love each other, Avery. We said so.”
“Yes, we did. I think once we sort all of this out, we will find a place and a time where we’re ready to say it with much more than words. Last night, both of us seemed to understand we didn’t want sex to be something cover up our anger and frustration. We want it to be the passions of our love for each other.”
“I think you’re right,” Piper agreed. “I felt the same understanding, even as my feelings were nearly uncontrollable. I connected with your feelings, then I connected with your thoughts. Then all the tension melted.”
Two honks sounded to announce the arrival of our tow truck. And even more tension melted away now we were about to escape our powerless stranding in the middle of nowhere. We got out of the van to meet the driver and handle the paperwork with him. He introduced himself as “Mick”. He was stocky, around his early 50s, with a graying beard to go with the graying hair coming out from his blue baseball cap. He appeared to be a friendly, outgoing guy who enjoyed his work. We heard him humming as he started preparing for the tow.
Mick maneuvered his rig to pull Piper’s van onto the flatbed for the trip. Once secured to travel, Mick invited us into the cab of the truck where Piper and I sat side-by-side on the bench seat.
“Where are we going to take the van for repairs?” Piper asked Mick.
“I would suggest we go to Sharon’s Garage in Flagstaff,” he replied.
“Oh, and they work on these kinds of vans?”
“Yep, all the time.”
“This place…we can trust them…not to rip us off?”
“Yeah, Sharon’s honest. She’s fair to everyone and that’s why people come back to her garage. She takes care of all our trucks, too.”
“Okay,” Piper said. “That gives me some confidence.”
The three of us rode along the highway for a while, not doing much talking. Piper asked how long it would take.
Mick answered, “About another two hours, I reckon. You’ll be glad you got the extended towing coverage, ma’am. A lot of people don’t want to pay a bit more for it and then they go off and break down in the wilderness. End up paying for fifty years’ worth of extended towing coverage in one go. But you’re golden.”
“Yeah, that’s what the people I bought the van from told me.”
Another period of quiet miles ensued. Every so often, Piper and I would turn and look at each other. We’d smile uncomfortably, with everything we needed to say to each other building up in our heads. I couldn’t wait any longer to talk, and I spoke as low as I could against the rumbling of the truck’s diesel engine.
“Piper, I’m sorry I walked away from our…discussion yesterday. It wasn’t that I was trying to leave you. More than anything, I wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything else I would regret. I regret some of the things I did say enough.”
Piper squirmed with embarrassment that I was discussing this with the tow operator just to her left. But not so much she didn’t answer. “I’m sorry. I was acting pretty juvenile when I started calling you those nasty names. Actually, I think I was calling my ex-husband those things. I was afraid you were going to do the same thing. My head said you wouldn’t, but I had all these feelings come up.”
Mick started humming as though to cover up that he was hearing everything Piper and I were saying.
“I believe you trust me,” I said to her. “It just didn’t seem like you did at the time. My feelings got hurt and I got angrier.”
“Avery, we need to let our relationship be our relationship. We’re not the people we were with other people before. I’ll do my best to not paint you with the same brush.”
Mick cleared his throat. “If you want to, you could always hold off on this conversation and talk where you can be more, say, free to be open in your discussion.”
“We’re sorry, Mick,” Piper said. “We don’t mean to make you uncomfortable by talking about this. We had our first really awful day, and we are going to be miserable until we work this out. We’ll try to keep it down. I don’t think we’re going to start yelling again.” Piper took a glance at me, and I agreed by nodding.
“Now I don’t mean it like you’re embarrassing me,” Mick replied. “I only want to be sure you aren’t dialing it back and hesitating about being direct. You gotta say what you gotta say or you don’t solve nothing.”
“Okay,” I said, “so, you don’t mind us talking then?”
“No, no…I’ll keep on driving whatever you two do. I mind my own business.”
I appreciated his indulgence. “Great, thanks. Now Piper, I don’t remember how I managed to lose track of your address, and at the time, I was moving around a lot, too. Stuff got misplaced, I’m sure and other things in life got in the way. I feel very fortunate that I happened to find you again, two years ago.”
“Oh, Avery, I was as much at fault when I didn’t hear from you anymore. But now we’re back together, I realized I was pissed we missed all the time not knowing where you were and how you were doing.”
“But we’re together now,” I told her. “That’s what matters. And neither one of us has other relationships to get in the way.”
Piper still asked for one more dose of reassurance. “Not even…Brooke? Right?”
“No, Piper. My relationship with Brooke is not going to interfere with ours. Brooke is a good friend and that’s all.”
Both Piper and I stayed silent for a couple of minutes. Mick shifted his eyes a few times in our direction while maintaining a close eye on the road ahead. Apparently, he had a unique approach to minding his own business.
“Piper, Avery. Me and my Suzie, we’ve been married thirty-two years now. Believe me, we know it isn’t always easy. We’re going to get into a row, every now and then.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Was this tow truck driver offering counseling services, too?
“Suzie and I have our fights,” Mick went on. “We have ‘em and we’re done with them. It’s because we learned to fight fair.”
“Fight fair?” Piper asked.
“That’s right,” said Mick. “When we were first together, Suzie and I would have some ugly fights. Sometimes they'd be out of hand. Stay mad at each other for days and start a new fight before the old fight was done. We talked to the minister at our church one day, and he taught us it was okay to argue, but if we expected to stay married, we needed to learn to fight fair. It’s pretty simple. Start with ‘I’, not with ‘you.’ Everyone gets to have feelings, but it doesn’t make them wrong or right. Stop bringing up the past that’s over and done with. If something’s happening again that shouldn’t be, deal with that. The one who yells loudest is probably not the one who’s right. Don’t make it worse by getting personal. Stick to the issue. Don’t assume; ask. Remind yourself you love this person; you are only angry at their behavior. If they can change their behavior, you have nothing more to be angry at. We all make mistakes; we need to admit them, and we need to be forgiven once we do. If we can’t fight fair, get help.”
“Whoa,” Piper sighed. “That was incredible, Mick. I think you just resolved ninety-nine percent of what was hanging over us in two minutes.”
“I guess you never know where you’re going to find the help you need,” I remarked. “Thanks for sharing that with us, Mick. I think we’ll be able to work the rest of our problems out now, don’t you, Piper?”
“I'm sure we will,” she answered.
“Expect it will take some practice, now,” Mick added. “Stick to the fairness rules and try again.”