Rivers end boxset volume.., p.32
River's End Boxset Volume 3, page 32
“Feels as hot as bacon sizzlin’ on the devil’s ass out here, huh?”
“Umm… yes. It does.” Bacon? On the devil’s ass? What? His graphic depiction of the high nineties’ temperature remained etched on her brain.
She dropped her bag, which contained everything she needed: sunscreen, towel, phone, water, beer and chips. She intended to indulge herself for several hours here. It was only two o’clock. And so hot. And still summer. Maybe her last summer here where she wasn’t working full time.
Having earned her bachelor’s degree in secondary education and a master’s in education, she planned to pursue a course of extended training in Orton Gillingham. A name few knew anything about, even those in the education community, and that was the career she intended to practice. Despite her broad background in education, she had no intention of joining the community as a teacher. No. Instead, she would become part of the small, but growing dyslexia advocacy society.
Her mother worked as a tutor for twenty years and Rose planned to join her mom’s business and become an activist for the cause. Tutoring remotely, as they lived in the middle of nowhere, today’s modern technology allowed their students to come from all over the Pacific Northwest.
And due to the shocking lack of effective remediation and providers for students with dyslexia, her mom’s client load was always at maximum capacity. Rose would have to juggle a full case load from the start, even though she would be teaching the basic levels of the tutoring program her mom once taught. The upper levels, which were more difficult, would remain in her mom’s expertise.
Rose had planned to do this kind of work for… hell, for as long as she could remember. She admired what her mom did. And decided, it was a good cause that she could support unconditionally.
There was also a personal connection: Erin. Rose’s aunt, Erin, was twenty-six years old when she was pronounced completely illiterate. Her dyslexia was never diagnosed and consequently, never addressed, treated, or remediated. Erin failed to grasp the traditional public school reading programs. And the usual special education services merely doubled down on these teaching strategies, which made any dyslexic student less likely to learn, resulting in more failure and defeat.
For Erin, the damage was already done. Erroneously believing she was stupid, Erin became hopeless and unwilling to try anything new. She feared she could never learn to read. She believed she was severely mentally challenged and incapable of learning.
End of story until Rose’s mother, Allison, offered Erin the remedy that opened up her mind, heart and brain.
She first had to convince Erin that she wasn’t stupid or a hopeless failure; she was simply never exposed to the correct therapy. Reading allowed Erin to glimpse an entirely new world, the written world. Fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, magazines, and the internet were once things Erin never could access or understand. Allison redefined Erin’s world.
And that miracle impressed Rose. She listened to the story, which was usually recounted by her dad with pride shining from his eyes. He had to push her mom, who was then working as a public school teacher, to help Erin learn to read.
First, she had to define Erin’s learning disability, or as her mother and Rose agreed to call it, her learning difference.
Anyway, her dad was the motivation and her mom found the fix. Her mom pursued an entirely new career from that experience. She saw her niche and began tutoring dyslexic students from then on. That was her mom’s career while raising Rose and her sisters. Her clients came from all walks of life: young kids falling behind in class, and middle and high school kids that were on the brink of dropping out from pure frustration.
There were also adults, like Erin. Allison managed to change people’s lives. It was slow progress and nothing happened overnight. Her program was two to four years, depending on the student, and the level of dyslexia.
There are mild, moderate, severe or profound forms of dyslexia; and some of the older students and adults were forced into traditional reading curriculums that had adverse results on their confidence and abilities. Half of Allison’s job was repairing the damage before they could start an effective learning plan.
For as long as Rose could remember, she wanted to work with her mother. She also wanted to change lives by tutoring… one hour at a time. Rose was so passionate about the subject, she could not wait to dive in and do something about it.
For the past few months, she was on a sabbatical to work online and complete her Orton Gillingham training. It was the icing on top of her two college degrees.
And why, on Wednesday at two, she could spare to be at the river. With Mateo.
“Why aren’t you at work?” Rose asked as she exaggerated her placement of things beside the beach chair.
“So damn hot. Iris and I started early to finish up before the heat of the day hit. We do that a lot in the summertime.”
Right. So that meant he could swim at their beach with her. And she didn’t notice Iris coming home wearily. Frowning, she glanced at him. He was standing in the water, staring right at her. “Iris didn’t come home early today.”
“Iris is a workaholic; she’s still there working on one of her side-gigs.”
Iris was always fixing something. Mechanically inclined, she was incessantly following their dad around. A tinkerer was what Shane often called his profession.
Rose wore a white, lacy coverup over her swimsuit. Despite any sort of attraction toward this man, she felt oddly strange dropping the coverup. Her comfortable, loose, and rather ugly but very functional one-piece swimsuit was one she’d had for years.
Eight years. She only ever wore it here at the family beach where she could be alone to relax and enjoy herself. Trolling up and down the river and rapids was a pastime she enjoyed very much.
She found meaningful purpose in the gilded colors of summer and their reflections in the warm, silky water. This, for Rose, was the essence of summer, capturing its vitality and mood. Hot afternoons and cool evenings beside the river.
How many days and nights did she spend there in her youth? So many she could never count. The huge family: cousins, siblings, aunts, uncles and their offspring, always coming and going as they headed to and from the beach. Mostly they stayed right around the main swimhole, floating up and down along it.
But life moved on. Rose graduated high school and moved far away to college. It was something she’d always wanted to do and she felt proud of herself when she’d accomplished it.
She’d always excelled in her grades and often joined clubs and extracurricular activities that fully engaged her in campus life. She began living in the dorms and eventually shared an apartment with friends she hoped to sustain for life. She’d replicated that experience in grad school, becoming well-known, well-liked, and well-adjusted. Living away from home and her parents was not much of a challenge to Rose and her homesickness was easily tolerated.
There was only one thing she’d sorely missed and that was summertime in River’s End. Those long, sunny, summer days of unrelenting heat before melting into the river.
She always spent ridiculous amounts of time here. Not so much now, not with Mateo here to witness it.
Tugging on the hem of her coverup, she flung it off and threw it on one of the large rocks that peppered their sandy beach. It served as a natural table for their personal things. She didn’t glance back to see if he looked at her pale, white, freckled body. She had to slather on the sunscreen, reapplying it hourly in the hot sun or risk getting burned until she was uncomfortably pink and miserable.
She grabbed an inner tube and floated further away from where Mateo was. He seemed to undulate with the current. The water was only waist-deep, but he let his legs float behind him as he held onto the rocky bottom with one long arm, anchoring him. The pleasantly cool, sun-warmed water engulfed him. Natural air conditioning. Rose often did the same thing.
She kept her gaze averted from him as she floated away. Kicking her legs, she let her body adjust to the temperature. Rose let the current carry her downriver, past the rock and moving out of sight from Mateo where she stayed for hours.
Swimming and sunning herself on heated rocks, she relished the radiant rays of the sun as her skin absorbed them eagerly. Finally, when the sun dipped to the horizon, she crossed the river and walked along the edge. She was far above the beach when she saw her uncle Jack and aunt Erin swimming below.
No Mateo. A sense of relief engulfed her.
She’d waited long enough to flush him out of there. Pleased, she crossed the river and swam into it again. Jack and Erin greeted her, unsurprised when she seemed to show up out of nowhere. She always did that. Going half a mile upriver and floating in hours later to encounter an entirely new group of beach-goers.
They exchanged the usual pleasantries. The couple had obviously planned to enjoy some quiet, alone time. Jack sat in the inner tube, his legs poking out and his arms folded behind his head.
Erin swam all around him, popping up now and then. Both smiling, they laughed and spoke softly to each other. Erin held onto Jack and they exchanged quiet looks. Rose very discreetly got out, dried off and left them to their privacy. Their undying affection for each other was undeniably evident. It made her heart glad but Rose could only wonder what that would be like?
Her relationships weren’t like that. They never looked anything like that. Soft looks, secret smiles, something warm and glimmering in each other’s eyes as they gazed cow-eyed at each other… Hers were much more sterile.
Rose grew up with parents who adored each other and yet, she remained unable to find anyone who would look at her the way that they did at each other.
She didn’t know why, but something always went wrong whenever she tried to get romantic. Or sex got involved. She was the problem. Rose didn’t know how to act although she didn’t really know why that was so.
She was already home, parking her sedan within four minutes of leaving the beach. She hung her towel over the railing to sun-dry and ducked into her room to strip off her wet swimsuit. She glanced into Iris’s room, but it was empty, before wandering into her kitchen and preparing a quick dinner.
Grabbing her laptop, she began finishing the certification work that was required for her dyslexia tutoring work. She worked as the sun set, the twilight lingering for what seemed like forever in the June nine o’clock sky until she finally went to bed. She knew tomorrow she’d be doing exactly the same thing. She only hoped Mateo wouldn’t be anywhere near the beach then.
Mateo tilted the beer back, letting the ice-cold liquid slide down his throat. Emitting an exaggerated “Ahh” after the last swallow, he set the glass bottle down on the table with a slam. “I really needed that after dealing with such a bastard all afternoon.”
Iris Rydell, his co-worker, best friend and coincidentally, the boss’s daughter, laughed and emptied her beer as well but without as much relish as he displayed. Beads of condensation slid down the two bottles. The ice-cold beer and the ambiance of the River’s End Tavern were well worth it.
A red-necked place to chill, the old timers lounged on the bar stools and half the small crowd were clad in flannel shirts, jeans, cowboy boots and cowboy hats too. Not Mateo’s favorite look, even if it appeared to be the established uniform of the small ranching and farming community of River’s End.
Mateo stayed there to fix all their damn cars, tractors and machinery. The good stuff. His outfits and tats didn’t match the area. “You didn’t deal with him. I did. You grunted and scowled and did that creepy thing with your face that scares people until they are too afraid to talk to you. So I had to placate his whiny, complaining ass.”
Mateo grinned. “True. I did. This can come in handy around this place,” he said, swiping a hand over his neck tattoo. It was a firefly and there were more signs and script all over his hands and arms. He had plenty of others, but those were just the visible ones. Combined with his neutral, cool look, he managed to scare off more than one person.
He toned it down sometimes with nicer, more polite people, the ones he preferred to deal with. But if his desire were lacking, his sheer demeanor could effectively shut anyone up and he rarely had to say the words out loud. “Half these farmers almost piss their pants when I give them my steely-eyed prison look.”
Bless Iris, she merely rolled her eyes in reply. “If they only knew what a true wimp you were. And please stop with the ‘prison look.’ All it does is give me more picky people to deal with. You hide under the hoods of their cars and leave me to listen to all their bitching and whining. Not appreciated.”
He drank a gulp of a fresh bottle. “So works for me. I love hiding under the hood. I’d love my job even more if I never had to talk to people.”
She rolled her eyes. “At least a quarter of our job revolves around customer service, jerkoff, and I don’t appreciate getting stuck with yours.”
“But Iris, I’m so damn scary…” He gave her a cool, hard look, one that could intimidate grown men who were bigger and physically far more fit than Mateo. But Iris never spent a single moment feeling intimidated by him.
“I’m not Rose, doofus. You just look constipated to me.”
Mateo couldn’t restrain the laugh that nearly forced his mouthful of beer to spew from his mouth and nose. He rubbed his nose and covered his mouth. “Rose is afraid of me. Any idea why? Did you say something about me to her?”
Iris yawned, over-exaggerating it. “Why the fuck would I talk about you when I’m away from you? I’m too busy trying to forget about you.” She fluttered her eyes sweetly.
“Well…” He leaned forward. “We both know that you’re only covering up your secret desire for me… but seriously, why is Rose so afraid of me?”
She snorted. “Mateo, I would no more fantasize about you than I would a billy goat. But as for my sister? You act really stupid when she’s around. You glare at her and barely utter any words, and she’s too polite and genteel to call you on it, so of course, you scare her.”
“She is polite.” That was one of the things that first drew his attention to Rose. “But she acts like I’m about to assault her or maybe she’s worried about the shop getting robbed.”
“Well… why don’t you ask her? She just walked in. What the hell? She never comes in here,” Iris muttered as she rose to her feet and waved her hand to capture Rose’s attention.
Mateo glanced back, straightening at Iris’s words. Damn. The fastidious, prim Rose was standing in the doorway. She remained tucked back as if she were too timid to even take a look around. She might have been a native of this town, but she looked like more of a transplant than Mateo.
He focused his gaze forward, taking his beer in his hand and trying to appear casual.
Stay steady. He would not show anything towards the woman he may have purposely sought out at the river. Her river. Her beach. He knew she spent all her spare time there. She always did every single summer.
Iris had granted him permission to go there anytime he chose from the start. But Mateo was unable to swim and afraid of the water, so he avoided it like the plague for three years.
This past June was the first time he actually forced himself to face the river that flowed behind where he lived. It took days before he dared to venture beyond his knees. The swishing current of the water as it flowed downriver scared him most. He worried that he would be swept away.
But he also knew the exact location where Rose preferred to hang out. And he was… what? Planning to hang out with her? After all these years? Maybe. Yeah. Exactly that.
Her unsubstantiated fear of him was already getting old and he was freaking tired of it. Iris, her sister, was his best friend, yet Rose shunned him as if he were a serial killer. As always happened when Rose was near him, all of his senses went on high alert.
The freaking hair on his arms seemed to stand straight up and turn towards her. She symbolized everything that wasn’t his type; and yet, she totally captured his attention and interest. Way too intensely. He rarely cared how others perceived him, neither from his appearance nor his personal history.
Why should he? He refused to defend himself to assholes who could never understand who he was or where he came from. They would judge him no matter what he did so he never sought their approval. Rose’s reaction to him was not unusual.
Iris and her dad, Shane, had the atypical response. They simply accepted him and offered him a real chance to start his life over. No judgmental remarks or snobby looks about his appearance or his past.
Still, Rose’s reaction bugged the shit out of him. He couldn’t accept it. His customary I don’t give a damn attitude seemed inadequate. He felt strangely compelled to convince her to move past her own biases towards him. That was why he learned to fucking swim. Him. Swimming in a moving body of fresh water. Terrified of any body of water, large or small, never mind the idea of swimming against the river’s currents, Mateo convinced himself to do it anyway. It was a great excuse to spend more time around her.
To what end? So Rose could see him in a different light? Why? To possibly arouse her interest in him? He almost snorted out loud. Even if she managed to get past his outer appearance and give him a fair and equal chance, she would never truly find him sexually attractive or even someone she’d choose to be friends with. He was stupid to be so interested in pursuing her.
Yet he couldn’t deny or end it no matter how hard he willed it to stop or tried to ignore it.
Her hand was on the chair beside him, gripping the back of it. A spray of freckles was splattered on the back of her hand. She wore a silver ring on her middle finger and a chain bracelet hung on her wrist. He snuck a fleeting glimpse of the curve of her torso, pausing over the soft mound of her left boob and slim shoulder. The ends of her thick, red hair were loose and free, ending near her elbow. Then he looked at her face. Her soft, heart-shaped face had such deep blue, beautiful eyes, like the depths of a vast lake.
