Sun's Up

Ice Cream

Dwayne Hoover ✪

The next day I woke up Cindy with a kiss and she helped me pack up a small suitcase for our trip to California for Olive's stupid pageant thing. I swear I saw her stuff a box of condoms in there, but it might just be wishful thinking. She read me a chapter of my book while the other people in my family took forever to get ready and it was amazing, I love it when she reads to me. 

Finally, after everyone was ready we all filed into the old Volks Wagen van (that was for some reason a shade of bright fucking yellow), Cindy was in the back next to the window and I was in the middle between her and Grandpa. As soon as people stopped talking to us, Cindy pulled out her iPod (that she had stolen from her older sister around a year ago) and handed me an earbud so we could both listen to her music. I'm so glad she had good taste in music. 

About an hour into the drive Grandpa started to complain, "Jesus I'm tired, I'm so fucking tired. Do you know how tired I am?" He asks, and since it was directed at me, I turn to look at him and he continues, "If some girl came up to me, begged me to fuck her, I couldn't do it. That's how tired I am." 

"Hey, uh, Dad? Let's watch the language," Richard calls from the front, glancing at Grandpa in the rearview, I turn to Cindy to see her opinion on this and she was just looking out the window, listening to Deftones with me. "She's listening to music," Grandpa replies to him, "Olive, I'll give you a million dollars if you turn around." She didn't, obviously, "See?" "Alright.. but the rest of us-" "Oh, the rest of you."

Grandpa smacks my arm to get my attention, "Hey, can I give you some advice?" I shake my head 'no' with a bored expression, I really didn't want to hear whatever kind of 'advice' my stepfather's drug abusing father was going to give me, "Well I'm going to give it to you anyway."

Of course he is.

"I don't want you making the same mistakes I made when I was young," He continues and glances at Cindy then to me, "Dwayne, that's your name, right Dwayne? This is the voice of experience talking, are you listening? Fuck a lot of women Dwayne." 

And that got her attention.

Cindy sort of glared at my Grandpa in a warning way, but he didn't see it, "Not just one woman, a lot of women Dwayne. And if not a lot of women, then the same woman.. a lot. Are you getting any, Dwayne? Are you two getting it on? You can tell me Dwayne, are you?" I glanced at the rearview and around the van to make sure no one was looking and I nodded slightly to him, Cindy smacked my arm and I grinned at her cheekily, knowing she wouldn't stay mad.

"That's what I thought, and how is it, that young stuff's the best in the whole world, huh?" He keeps talking despite Richard's shouts for him to stop, Grandpa turns to him, "Will you kindly not interrupt me Richard?" He turns back to me to keep talking but Cindy turns the volume up all the way and since I had the earbud in the ear facing him his voice was silenced. 

ᓚᘏᗢ ❁

We stop to eat at a truck stop diner, all of us crowding around a circular table, I had one of my hands on Cindy's thighs and we both looked at the menu in my other hand, she wasn't going to order anything. I know she has a problem with food, so I was going to just order a salad that I was going to share with her, she didn't eat dinner last night and there's a big chance she just didn't eat at all yesterday.

Everyone begins to order their food so I write down my order and show the waitress when she looks at me, and just as I predicted Cindy refused to order food when the waitress looked at her. Once Olive gives her her order, the waitress leaves and then Richard looks at her and I get a bad feeling like he's going to say something stupid and just wrong. But thank God for Frank, he speaks to her first.