Free Me (bxb)

Part 37

It's only twenty minutes after Keith leaves when Rose shows up. She has a car now so that makes it easier for her to drop by whenever she gets the chance to. Griffin, honestly, sometimes feels a little suffocated by her constant presence, which isn't something he should feel around his girlfriend, but he does, and he can't help it. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.

"Hey, baby," she greets him, just as warmly as always. He wishes hearing her voice and seeing her gave him that weird feeling in his stomach that Keith's always does, but it never has and he doubts it ever will. "What's your dad making you do this time?"

"Turkey shoot stuff," Griffin answers, hammering in the last of the nails with a sigh. "I've got to go get these signs up now. Hope you don't mind walking around a little bit."

"Not exactly what I had in mind, but sure, I'll tag along. Let me just get my sunglasses from my car," Rose says, and she hurries back to her car while Griffin gathers up a few signs. When she gets back to him, she helpfully grabs a sign from him and follows him over to the driveway where people will be able to see them.

They talk about nothing important on the way over to where Griffin has to put the signs up, but he's used to the empty conversations with her by now. They never really talk about anything he's interested about, and even when they do, she rarely engages since she has no idea what motocross is about. At least when Keith pretended to be into it he did more than nod along with whatever it was Griffin was saying. Griffin mentally kicks himself for comparing Rose to Keith; the two shouldn't even be comparable. Rose is his girlfriend that he's been with for... two years? Keith is just... he's a dangerous boy that Griffin can't stop wanting to kiss, but he's not like Rose. He can't be like Rose.

When Griffin is hammering the post into the ground, his phone starts buzzing in his pocket, but he ignores it. It's either Chad just complaining about his mom again or sending another meme, or it's Keith telling him that ignoring him won't make any of this go away. He can't deal with any of that right now.

"Wanna know something?" Rose calls over to him from where she's sitting on one of the picnic tables, and Lukas flips the hammer over a couple times in his hands as he walks over to her.

"Uh, I've gotta finish this Rose. It's just... you know my dad." He sets the hammer down next to her leg and leans in close to her as he begins to mimic his dad, lowering his voice and slipping in an exaggerated country accent. "'Turkey shoots tomorrow, boy. Better have all these signs up."'

"But it's so tacky!" Rose says, cutting him off and gesturing to the metal turkey's beside her on the table. Just from that one sentence, Griffin can tell she's not going to be staying in Tivoli much longer, despite how she says that she's not planning on leaving her family. Rose hates everything that makes up the country, and Griffin can't really blame her; he wants to get out just as much as she does.

"Yeah," he relents, "but it's tradition."

She gives him a bored expression as she says, "Old people standing around shooting birds?"

"Yeah, I mean, they've been doing it for a hundred years. They're not gonna stop now."

"Why do you care?" she asks him, her face going from bored to teasing in a matter of seconds.

"I don't care," he rebuffs, even though he kind of does, and he knows Rose can tell by the way she gives him a disbelieving grin. "I don't care!" he says, smiling back at her as he reaches down to poke her in the stomach a few times.

"Why do you care?" she repeats, much more playful than the first time and laughing along with him.

"You don't even know, you don't even know! It's just like, that's how they've been getting people ready to go to war here." With his explanation, the teasing mood dies down and Rose just hums with a little nod. Griffin kind of misses it.