A Simple Life: Chapter 5 (Patreon)

The next thing I knew I was in a headlock!  With my cheek pressed hard against her soft tit I feel not a hard knuckled noogie to my skull that I was used to in this position but a playful rustle of my hair.  “Ah, you little legend.”  She lets me go, leaving me flustered and reeling.  “Kayla always said you were a sweetheart.  I owe ya one Sprout.”

“Um…that’s okay.”  I say with a flattered laugh.

“Come on.”  She says.  “Let’s get’er done before my folks show up.”

As I follow along behind her back through the building I touch my cheek that had just touched her breast and admire her wide hips and big plump butt.  She called me a legend.  I didn’t even know what to do with that.  Nobody had called me a legend before.  Seeing her here, now, was so different than when I had first met her.  Back then she’d been more muted, better behaved.  I realize now that she had her public face on then and that this rough around the edges woman that I was meeting now was closer to the real Winona.  I don’t know if it was because we were alone or simply the excitement of all that was happening in her life right now made polite niceties impossible, either way I was glad to see it.

As she lowers the tailgate of her truck she says.  “If you’re done staring at my ass we can start hauling.”

“Eeep!”  She hoists out an overstuffed garbage bag full of what I was guessing was blankets and towels and jams it into my body.  My cheeks rapidly warming I hurry away.  She caught me checking her out!  How embarrassing.  Leave it to me to meet a cool girl and then instantly screw it up by perving on her.  Maybe sticking around had been a mistake.  Winona carries a small nightstand in one hand and a lamp in the other and follows in behind me.  When we get to the suite I ask.  “Where should I put it.”

“Right there in the corner.”  She says.  As I set it down she says.  “No, a little to the left.”

I slide it to the left and look back.  “Here?”  What I see is Winona with her arms crossed checking out MY behind!

My blush deepens as she winks at me and says.  “Perfect.”

With that she heads back out the door.  I stand a moment…then hurry along to catch up.  “S-so…you and your parents are going to run a garage?”

“Yep.”  She says.  “Dad and I are mechanics.  Mom’s an accountant, part time.”  This time when we reach the truck Winona unfastens the ropes and the tarp that had been securing the load.

“That’s really cool.”

“It’s alright.”  She says in an upbeat manner that told me that it was more than just ‘alright’.  “I like working with my hands.”

“Cool.”

“What do you do for work Sprout?”

“Me?”  I shuffle uncomfortably.  “Nuthin.”

She gives me a look.  “You don’t work?  Parents rich or something?”

“Oh!  No!”  I say.  “I mean, I don’t have a career, like you.  I just…I just have a job.  D-down at the grocery.  Just for now until I…um…”  My words fail me, mostly because I had nothing to say.  The truth was I worked at the local grocery store full stop.  I was comfortable there and had no concrete intention of ever moving on.  But I hated to confess that as people would always look down on me for lacking ambition.  “Until I figure things out.”

“You like it?”

“It’s alright.”  I echo her previous sentiment.

“Nice.”  She says as she moves around to the other side to pull the tarp and ropes away.  What is revealed is a tightly packed jumble of stuff.  I could see a table, a chair, a bed frame, a mattress, a desk broken down into pieces, a bookshelf, and a bevy of boxes, bags and smaller items, an entire material life distilled down to the essentials.  From one of her deep pockets she pulls out some work gloves and offers them to me.  I take them and put them on.  They were loose and the fingertips too long.  Goodness, even her hands were bigger than mine.  She claps her hands.  “Alright, let’s do this.”

I clap my hands.  “Let’s do it.”

She chuckles and shakes her head.  For the next hour Winona and I haul her possessions into the suite, taking the smaller stuff individually and working as team to move the larger items.  With her taking lead and me following that lead we actually work quite efficiently together unlike the normal dithering of other moves I’d helped with over my life.  As we haul we talk about inanities like the weather, the cats, and how her long drive from her reservation to the coast was.  It was wonderful.

We set down her narrow single person mattress and lean it against the wall.  “So you come from a reservation?”

“Yeah.”

“That means you’re an Indian?”

She had just been turning to head toward the door when she stops and slowly looks back at me over her shoulder.  “What did you just call me?”

My eyes bug out, my heart seizes, and in an instant I was hyperventilating.  “I-I-I…uh…”

“Indian?  You think I’m from India?”

“N-native?”  I scramble for a better word.  “Indigen…mmmm!”

“Excuse me!?”  She turns to face me.  Walking forward she backs me into the corner of the room and looms large over me.

“I-I-I’m sorry!  I…I…I’m sorry.”

Her chin rises, her chest puffs forward, and she stretches to her full imposing height.  “I…am…LAKOTA!”

“I’m sorry!  I-I-I didn’t mean…”  I huff.  “I didn’t mean…oh no…”

Her proud bearing cracks into a burst of laughter.  Giving my chest two hard pats she laughs.  “Dude, I’m fucking with you.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah I’m an Indian.  What the hell else would I be?”

I turn my face away from her and whisper.  “I’m sorry.  I-I-I should go.”

Her laughter fades when she sees how shaken I am.  Her hand comes to rest on my shoulder.  “Avery, chill.  It’s cool.  It’s all cool.”  Her eyes narrow and her head tilts slightly to the side as she studies me closely.  “You okay Sprout?”

I nod rapidly though my fast, shallow breathes give my nerves away.  Try as I might I could not pretend to be okay.  “Sorry.”  I whisper.

She takes a step back…and smiles.  “Let’s take a break.  Can you stick around a little more?  We’re almost done.”

If not for that warm smile I would have run for the door.  As it was…I nod.  “I can stick around.”

“Awesome.”  She says.  Spinning the one dining chair that she owned around she points to it.  “Take a load off Sprout.”  Walking to the kitchen she pulls out the one mug and inspects the inside.  “This looks mostly clean.”  Turning the tap nothing comes out.  “Shit.”  She puts the mug on the counter.  “Hold on.  I have some water in the truck.”  Again she points to the chair.  “Sit.  You take it easy.  I’ll just be a sec.”

As she leaves the room I sheepishly walk forward and take the seat.  My hands clasped together I close my eyes and concentrate on slowing my breathing.  God that had been so embarrassing.  Despite how nice she was being she must think me a basket case by now.  I was really starting to like her too.  Why oh why did people have to be so hard?

A minute later she is walking back in with a big bottle of water in one hand and a tube in the other.  The tube she sets on the edge of the mattress.  Walking to me she says.  “Put out your hands.”  I look at her, confused, but I do as she asks.  She opens the bottle and dumps a little bit of water into my palms.  “Splash your face.”  I hesitate again as I look down at my wet hands before bringing them to my face.  I scrub my face then look back up at her.  She passes me the bottle.  “Feel better?”

“Uh…yeah.”  I say.

“Drink.”  She motions me.  I take a sip and swallow.  With the water cooling on my face and my throat quenched I really was starting to feel better again.  She takes the bottle back and has a long, chugging drink herself.  “Ahhhh.”  She passes me back the bottle.

As I sit quietly, holding the bottle in both of my hands, Winona starts digging around in a box.  She soon finds some tape then from the tube pulls out a rolled up poster.  On the north wall she unrolls it to reveal a black and white poster of Johnny Cash flipping the bird straight at the camera.  I giggle at the unexpected rudeness of the picture.

“Why is he so mad?”

“Who knows.”  Winona says as she smooths it out and tapes it at the corners.  “I like to think he’s sayin ‘fuck you’ to the haters.”

“Yeah, I think so too.”  I take another drink.  Swallowing hard I muster my courage.  “Sometimes I…I get nervous…around people…that I don’t know well.  Sometimes it gets too much.”  I even surprise myself with that over-sharing confession, but I felt that she deserved an explanation for her kindness.  “Sorry about that Winona.”

“It’s cool Avery.”  She strolls over to lean back and rest her back against the wall.  She takes off her glasses and slides them in the front pocket of her overalls.  “We’ve all got our shit to deal with, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”  She takes the bottle from me again for another drink.

“Lakota.”  I say softly just to feel the new word in my mouth.

“That’s me.”

“I never knew a Lakota before.  It sounds…cool.”

“I think so.”  She says.  “And I think you’re pretty cool for a white boy.”

I shake my head.  “I’m really not.”

With a chuckle and a little slap to my shoulder she quips.  “Dude, you are never gonna get any pussy with an attitude like that.”

“Pfff.”

“Be proud of who you are Sprout.”  She nods to the poster.  “And fuck the haters.”

“Fuck the haters.”  I say with an unintentionally girlish titter.

“Ha ha!”  She gives me a rough shake.  “Ready Sprout?”

I nod eagerly and pull the work gloves back on.  “I’m ready.”

She lifts me to my feet and swats my bum.  “Then lets gooo!”

Before I even knew what was happening I was running back to the truck and laughing like an idiot the whole way.  I might have felt silly had Winona not been right behind me doing the same thing.

Chapter 6