Wax Night in Montana (eBook)

One

Ready For A Girls’ Night

On a typical frozen Friday evening, I’d wrestle my boys to bed, drape into my recliner, pick up a book, and settle in by the fire. But not tonight! The posse is due to get together. Tonight, we get wild and (un)wooly.

I make my way through a nightly domestic practice with excited anticipation of the evening’s shenanigans. Our little family has gathered around the table for my famous meatloaf—the kind that doesn’t taste like your mother’s—and now shifts to bedtime routines. Nick is out, tinkering in the shop. Both kids have taken showers to wash their little boy bums from a day in sweaty snow pants and itchy stocking caps, and from the grease they acquired handing wrenches to their dad as they helped work on the ’95 Mustang 5.0 they call White Lightning.

While the boys shimmy into their pj’s, I move toward the dishes and tread past the picture on the dresser. Behind the glass is an image of my mom. She has one hand under each of my infant arms while supporting my rubber neck with her fingers, our noses touching. I brush some dust from the mahogany frame with the hem of my cotton shirt, letting a thumb sweep across her cheek. Miss you, Mom.

I pass into the kitchen and sidle up to the sink to rinse the extra ketchup off the dinner plates. The muffled scrape of the neighbor’s snow shovel indicates his clearing the way for another six inches of snow forecasted to arrive by morning. It’s cold enough outside that the windows have a flourish of frost along the edges of the panes, intricate designs of a multitude of snowflakes. The last of the day’s sun splinters through the pattern on its journey to the knotty pine cupboards behind me.

The swoosh of the back door sliding open and closed signals Nick’s return from the shop. The long strides of his six-foot-four frame are echoed in the clap of his leather-soled boots. He rounds the corner and enters the kitchen sporting a faded denim work shirt and boot-cut Wrangler jeans—his everyday attire. My blue-eyed ‘long-legged cowboy’ gives me a playful grab on his way past. He stops and turns, looking at me with a glimmer, before bending down to give me a scratchy, stubble-faced kiss.

“You know it’s not sexy to swat my ass when I’m doing the dishes, right?” I flirt, with a sideways glance.

“Wanna bet?” Nick raises an eyebrow in response. He sits at the table and places the palm of his hand on the spur ridge of his leather boot. With the skill of forty-plus years of practice, he slides each of them off and stands them by the chair. Our black Australian cattle dog, Callie, who followed Nick in, now sits in front of him, vying for attention.

“Arrrrrre you ready forrrrr a rrruffin’?” he asks, reaching down to give her a good scratching around the collar. Callie is our first-born, his treasured companion. Nick has come in the house because the parenting baton will shortly be passed his way.

Moving from the last chores of my night, my seven-year-old Sammy reads Charlie the Ranch Dog aloud and I tuck him in. His drawn-out yawns and giggles from butterfly kisses lead us out of the day’s adventures. I turn off the lights and pop into JD’s room to encourage my ten-year-old not to read too late. He barely glances up from his book to give a long-suffering sigh of acknowledgement, dark eyelashes framing the eyes of his father.

I’m now ready to strip off my domestic role and shift to co-conspirator to the girls. This night has been on the calendar for five weeks. It’s time to ride.

**

Throwing on my Carhartt coat, and with a parting kiss for the hubby, I tell him not to wait up, and head out. The crescent moon is already stretching to illuminate each of the crystalline flakes, nearly weightless in their fluttering fall. I’m careful not to slip on the sheet of obsidian ice edged by the four feet of snow that has accumulated so far this winter.

The broom that lives beside the front door is designated to remove the snow off Nick’s frigid light-denim-colored Ford pickup, often my steed of choice. Inevitably, I have to stop after three or four swipes to blow warm air into my bare hands. Wish I hadn’t forgotten my gloves on the dash. I slide onto the seat of the truck and wait while the defroster melts the ice from the windshield, holding my stiff, frozen gloves in front of the heater vent before pulling them on.

Engaging the clutch and easing the truck into gear, I set out for the ten meandering minutes into the next small town to pick up Beth. She’s my fiery, musically bewitching, ever-the-life-of-the-party red-headed friend. Beth and I met at school when we were eleven. She moved here from Texas. We soon realized we lived near one another and became fast friends. She’s been my rock since, even moved back home during our college years to help guide me back from the brink of complete breakdown.

I pull into her driveway and punch down the parking brake with my boot. A shoulder bump and the pickup door opens with the creak of cold joints to the smell of wood smoke hanging in the frozen air. The squeaky crunch of snow beneath my boots signals temperatures below zero. There’s no need to knock as I reach Beth’s door; we haven’t knocked on each other’s doors in more than twenty-five years. It would be offensive at this point.

As I waltz in, Beth and her boyfriend, Rod, are settled on the couch in front of the TV. I refer to him as ‘Hotrod.’ He doesn’t seem to mind the title. Although Hotrod chooses to join his better half on the couch, I can tell he’s disenchanted with the show, drumsticks in hand, battering out a rhythm on the canvas foot stool. He’s the drummer in their band, and Beth is the lead singer. I sit beside them, lay my head against the plaid throw pillow, feigning we will be here long enough to get comfortable, and stretch my legs up over Beth’s lap with my angora socks doing a little dance over her leggings—the red flowers, green leaves, and yellow accents spreading a collage across her thighs. How can she wear floral leggings! Dreadful.

“Watching your favorite show, I see,” I toss in Rod’s direction after seeing The Housewives is on. He glares over his shoulder in a mock standoff, holding my gaze, not missing a beat.

I can’t help but stir the pot a little. “Such remarkable examples of the real-life women we all strive to be.” A wry grin is returned by this man of few words. “So attractive with all that plastic and plaster. And the cat fights? Riveting.”

Pushing red curls behind her ear, Beth gives me a wide smile. Her eyes dance with the pleasure she finds in Rod’s tolerant support of even the mind-numbingly-painful things she enjoys. He’s much more tolerant of them than I: both The Housewives and the leggings. Beth loves them both, equally. Rod is a mellow, laid-back personality; he’s her person, the one she’s connected with on a level never reached with anyone else.

With a snicker and a squeeze of his shoulder, I bounce off the couch, grab Beth’s hand, and nudge her toward the door. She’s not one to be easily whisked away. We bundle up to brave the still-plummeting elements. Beth pulls on fawn-colored Ugg boots, negating the need for socks. She wraps a scarf around her neck and grabs fur-lined gloves. I, too, have cozy and soft leather gloves (now that they’ve thawed), but I’ll never wear a scarf. Even the thought of wrapping my neck makes my stomach clench. I stay warm enough without one.

We jump into my still-running truck and crank the music even before I drop into reverse. It doesn’t matter which song is playing. We love music, period. We belt out “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith and Beth’s voice carries a tune whereas mine sounds more like the retching one might hear at a karaoke bar. I can keep time though, so don’t count me out. We relish the moment all the same and our enthusiasm elevates steadily with the beat.

Just outside Beth’s subdivision is a gas station. The truck clamors to the left and claims a parking spot as close to the door as possible. We pull back our seatbelts but make no move to exit, turning to each other we burst out the final lyrics and finish the refrain in laughter.

When the song hits its closing notes, we make a dash into the store for girls’ night necessities: drinks, smokes for Beth, and lemon juice for Lynn’s vodka chaser. The steam from our laughter freezes in front of us. We stamp our boots and head directly for the beer coolers, weaving our way through the aisles and back to the checkout line, where we run into a good friend, Evan. He asks what we’re up to. Beth dishes out the minimalist version of our plans.

“Can I join you?” he asks. He bumps into a chip display and gloms onto a small bag of Fritos in hopes of making his blunder look purposeful. We girls shake our heads.

“Will there be a pillow fight?” Evan is hopelessly enticed by the picture he surely carries in his head of such an evening. He glances down and fiddles with his chips in an attempt to mask the excitement in his eyes. It is evident on his face, nonetheless.

“Do you have boobs?” I flatly reply.

“Yes, in fact, I do,” he returns with a wide grin and an Oscar-worthy thrust outward of his barrel chest. “So, you’re saying there’s a chance?”

The lilt at the end of his sentence assures me this will be a hard-fought debate. “Nope. Let me rephrase. Do you have boobs capable of sustaining the life of an infant?”

“No, no I don’t,” he pouts. “But I feel like this is some sort of sexism.”

The left...