Page 57 of Bad Decisions & Back Roads

TIMOTHY

I movedthrough the motions of making the coffee I desperately needed.It might’ve only been five-thirty in the morning, but I hadn’t slept since Gia bolted.

Instead, I’d spent the night doing what any emotionally stable man would do after having his soul ripped out through his chest—violent manual labor.

I knocked out every barn project I’d ignored for weeks.I rehung the stall door that needed new hinges and replaced the splintered boards on another stall that one of our horses had cribbed on like he was auditioning to be a beaver.I scrubbed buckets until they gleamed like surgical equipment.

When I ran out of chores there, I wandered over to the dairy operation and started tackling problems.Disaster number one: the bull who had decided he wanted to kill all humans.That meant I needed to schedule his removal.Just to confirm he was still homicidal, I checked on him myself.The bastard charged me.Now he got to spend his final days locked in the back barn, where he could reflect on his poor choices and rage in private.

Disaster number two: one of the newer hands somehow managed to drive a tractor into the sawdust shed wall, which took a special kind of talent considering the shed was large, stationary, and had been in the same spot for thirty years.I cleaned up enough sawdust to make room for the repair crew coming later.Then I spent the rest of the night elbow-deep in one of the tractors trying to figure out why it wouldn’t turn over.It never started.By five a.m., I briefly considered setting the whole damn farm on fire and taking up accounting.

Throughout the whole night I kept the baby monitor close.Sofia, for once, hadn’t woken up a single time.Maybe, like me, it felt right to have Gia in her life.

Not that she was.The woman left me.Again.

I poured coffee into a mug and sat at my kitchen table.Alone.

Sofia would be asleep for at least another hour before I had to start the prep for preschool—breakfast, clothes, snack, hair, shoes.

For the hundredth time, I replayed flashes of last night.The way Gia had looked at me, the sounds she made when I touched her, and how for a while every wall between us had fallen clean away… I’d thought I knew everything about great sex.Turns out I hadn’t known a damn thing.

Before Gia, it had all been mechanics.Angles.Timing.Knowing what to do and how to do it.Then Gia happened.Hours later, I could still feel her, as if she'd reached inside my chest and wrapped herself around something vital.

Then it all shattered.

One minute she'd been curled against me, trusting me with every vulnerable piece of herself.The next, she'd gone still, braced for impact, waiting for me to become another man who hurt her.

What the hell was I supposed to do to prove to her I wouldn’t?

Everyone who had gotten their hands on her before me had left fingerprints I couldn’t erase.

The back door opened.Without a word, Dad came in, poured himself a mug of coffee, dumped in a quantity of sugar that Mom wouldn’t have approved, and sat across from me at the table.

I’d forgotten to go down to the cow barn at 4:30 this morning.I rarely missed morning milking.

That would be a red flag to my father that something was wrong with me.

I glanced at the mud caked on his boots and the trail he’d tracked across my clean kitchen floor.For one brief, shining moment, I fully understood Mom’s lifelong boots-at-the-door campaign.

In silence, we drank coffee and stared at each other.

His silence had weight to it.The kind of weight that asked questions, judged your answers, and called you an idiot without ever opening his mouth.

Finally, he said, “Did you get the manure tractor going?”

“No.”

A second sip of coffee.“Did you fix the bull?”

“No.”

Dad hit me with a look so loaded with disappointment it could’ve come with subtitles.

“And,” he said slowly, “you fucked it up with Gia.”

I straightened.Dad never used the f-word.After years of my mom riding him for bad language, he gave up real curse words and, like her, used ridiculous alternatives.

“I did notfuck it up.Gia…” I dragged a hand over my face.“She bolted.”