Heck of a kiss

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

When I arrived home and Lesley caught sight of my face, I was subjected to an interrogation that would have made the FBI proud. Grimly, Lesley scrounged every detail out of me, her full lips pressed together, and her hands clenched in her lap.

“You realize you’re going to have explain the bruises to your co-workers at the hospital, how are you going to do that?”

Nonchalantly I shrugged, “I’ll just say I got roughed up at my other job.”

Narrowing her blue eyes, Lesley asked; “Do they think you run a bar?”

Painfully I grinned, however it quickly turned to a grimace as my swollen mouth protested. “No, they know I work at the rodeo, and they think it’s very violent anyway. My story will fit right in with the image.”

Before Lesley answered, she gave me a smug smirk. “Somehow I don’t see Tasha falling for that excuse; you better come up with a better tale by morning.”

“I’m sure I’ll come up with something, now can I please go to bed?” I shot her a Bambi eyes look. “I’m really sorry that I got into a fight and my face really hurts.”

After informing me that it was all, my fault and I deserved the pain, Lesley dismissed me, turning to her laptop with an eager smile. Briefly I wondered what she was doing, but then the call of my bed won and I headed upstairs to sleep.

                                                ~~~~~~~~

            In the week that followed, life returned to normal. As it turned out Lesley was right and Tasha didn’t believe my story, but when I kept dodging the questions she eventually seemed to subside. Slowly my face healed and by Saturday, I only had a faint bruise on one cheek. My lips had returned to their normal size and it didn’t hurt to breathe through my nose anymore.

That Saturday was free; the next rodeo was scheduled for the next week so I had the whole weekend to play. On an impulse, I decided to make it a day in town, dedicated completely to having fun and forgetting our worries.

Tromping into the house after working the horses, I threw my sweaty hat onto the counter and popped my head around the door of the Living room. Lesley was sitting with her feet propped up on the couch, her laptop sitting on her lap typing. Mila was lying on the floor drawing on a piece of paper with a pink crayon and talking into a toy phone which kept falling off her shoulder. Swooping in, I picked up Mila and swung her up onto my hip.

“What are you doing?”

Looking up almost guiltily, Lesley closed the lid of the laptop. “Just chatting online, how did they do?”

Noting her change of subject, I let it slide and said. “They did good; I wish I had someone who could help me work them both together, Dancer always pays better attention when he is trying to outdo another horse. Anyway I’m going to take a shower then we are going to go into town, I figured maybe we could take Mila to a movie or something. You’ve been cooped up in the house forever.”

Lesley seemed about to protest, but thought better of it. When Chad was still alive she had loved going into town, Lesley was a very friendly person and she thrived in busyness. I was more reserved and since I almost never had time, I never thought about how much she probably missed her social life. Her laptop and our elderly neighbor’s bible study were the only ties to the outside world she had.

Twenty minutes later we were driving down the road toward town, the windows rolled down and the radio blaring. At first Lesley was tense. Sometimes, going out into public with her wheelchair was hard, because her injuries were invisible and people made assumptions. Usually they kept their opinions to themselves but other times they would state their opinion to their friends just loud enough for her to hear. When this happened Lesley had been hurt badly sometimes to the point of tears. I didn’t blame her for being tense, but I was determined not to let anything like that happen this time.