by L. B. Dunbar
“’That’s quite a cut,’ he said. ‘But you’re very brave.’”
“I didn’t feel brave, Levi. I felt stupid. I fell. I hurt my leg. I wasn’t speaking to anyone in the world at that time. That boy asked me if I could stand, and he held out a hand to me, offering to help me up. I was too afraid to move, and he blew over the cut, soothing the sting before lifting me. He was still holding my hand when another kid shouted, ‘Quit being a hero and come back to the game.’ But he didn’t go back. He squatted there, holding my hand, and introduced himself. ‘I’m Levi, princess.’”
“Jesus,” I hiss, staring at her, wondering how she remembers such a thing.
“You asked me my name, but I didn’t answer, and those boys said I was dumb. You called back to them, telling them to shut up. No one stood up for me like that before, and even though you used those words, I trusted you. You were holding my hand. ‘Gotta get back on the horse,’ you told me, treating my bike like the steed in my fairy tales, but you didn’t release my hand. You walked me home, called me ‘princess’ again, and I thought you were a hero.”
She pauses and takes a deep breath. “That’s the guy I know you to be, Levi. That’s the only person who needs to be remembered here.”
Sweet fuck.
“And I didn’t mean anything by asking if you were okay with AJ. I just wondered if you wanted me to hold him. I don’t mind.”
Katie’s been great with AJ, holding him every day and talking to him. I notice he’s begun responding to her, following her voice in a room or reaching out for her when she nears someone else holding him. She doesn’t even blink, just accepts his little hugs and kisses his temple like he’s hers. It makes my insides ache that his own mother rejected him so easily. I haven’t heard from Alicia since she left, and I don’t expect to. Still I feel sorry for my own son. I want him to have a mother or at least a woman who loves him like Tricia loved me growing up.
“I’ve got him,” I tell her, and she slides her foot up my shin a bit. She’s so freaking sexy, and she has no idea what she’s doing to me with her feet touching mine, rubbing against me as she is. Her words and memory also do something to me. She’s really held onto me in her heart as I’ve held onto her. Somehow, this upsets me, like we’ve lost so much time between us.
“Gonna need you to stop that.” What she’s doing to me—dragging her foot up my shin—is causing an inappropriate reaction, especially with AJ on my lap. I try to keep my tone low, but my voice cracks. Katie stills before attempting to disentangle her feet. “It’s turning me on, and it’s uncomfortable with AJ.”
Katie rolls her lips inward like she did after we kissed, and her face heats. “Sorry.”
“No, you aren’t,” I tease. “You have no idea how sexy you are. Sitting in that tube, looking like a tasty treat.”
Katie starts to laugh. “It’s scrunching up my stomach.” She’s wearing a sporty red bikini that shows off the firmness of her body.
“Totally hot.” I focus on her belly, noting her smooth skin, and wonder what she’d look like pregnant. Alicia looked amazing even though she hated every minute of it. Katie will be stunning one day when it happens for her. My thoughts drift to Dr. Derek, the dissatisfying doctor, and I don’t like the idea of him or anyone else impregnating her.
“You’re really beautiful, Katie girl,” I add, softening the compliment, and Katie’s face heats again, having nothing to do with the sunshine around us.
“You’re not bad yourself,” she says, smiling at me and reconnecting her feet to hold onto my ankle.
“Wounded and all,” I mock of myself, lifting my partial leg.
“Wounded and all.” She winks, and I like this girl more than I should.
+ + +
That night at the street fair, the crowd gathers near the band. With my prosthetic in place, I’m able to walk through the street easier than using my crutches, giving my arms a rest. Ironically, this week, the band is a military group, dressed in their fatigues and singing country songs. The VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, is a big deal in town, hosting events and activities, bike giveaways, and an annual beer tent during Harbor Days. I’m certain if I went there, I’d get recognition for my service, but I don’t want to draw that kind of attention to myself.
With AJ in her arms, Katie dances side to side when we stop to listen to a song. She twirls him in a circle, holding his little hand like she’s really dancing with him, and I have a vision of her teaching him to dance in a living room when he’s older. Before an eighth-grade dance, Tricia did that for me, wanting me to be comfortable leading a girl around the dance floor. I didn’t think it’d be too hard to hold a girl at her waist and spin her around a few times, but Tricia showed me how to take my time and sway with the music.
Watching Katie with my son, I walk up to her, almost paralyzed by her smile as I approach. Her rosy lips curl mischievously before pressing a kiss to AJ’s little temple.
“Want to dance with Daddy?” she says to him. Although Tricia and Lys say it plenty of times, referencing me to AJ, it sounds different coming from Katie, like she’s his mother, and addressing me like a woman might call her husband as the father of her kid.
“Daddy wants to dance with AJ’s date.” It sounds wrong on a multitude of levels, but I place a hand on her hip, and with AJ between us, we start to sway to the song. I hum along eventually.
“If you tell me you can sing, it’s over.”
“What’s over?” I tease. Her face turns pink. “You saying you’d fall for me if I was a singer?”
“You cannot go wrong with a rock star.”
“Seeing as this is a country song, I guess I’m out of luck.”
Katie laughs as our hips move, and we casually bump against each other. AJ has his little fingers curled in her blond hair and her arm lazily loops over my shoulder.
“People are going to stare,” she mocks of me and my earlier inhibitions.
“Let them look. The prettiest girl in the world is dancing with me.”
Katie pinkens again and presses another kiss to AJ’s temple while keeping her eyes on me. I want those lips on me instead of him, and I’m almost jealous of my son.
“Earlier, I meant to mention I’m sorry about your brother and your father.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, looking over her shoulder to find a few people watching us, one of whom is her father. Jess’s eyes narrow, and his jaw tightens as if he’s clenching it while he’s staring.
“I haven’t had the same kind of losses as you, but I want you to know I understand, and I’m here if you ever want to talk.”
Drawing away from her dad’s glare, I look down at her. “I don’t want to talk. I just want to dance, but thank you.”
She smiles up at me again, making me feel like all could be right with the world if she always looked at me like that.
+ + +
Beach volleyball is really not my thing, and after walking through town and sampling the Riverwalk fare, I’m tired. Instead of playing, I sit on the table top of a picnic table down by the beach at the dam and watch as two families compete against each other again. Gavin and Ethan’s crew have joined us, and it’s a night of loud insults and lots of beer as the sun sets on another summer evening.
Tricia’s daughters, Liza and Maggie, are tag-team babysitting AJ this evening. They put him in the stroller to walk back to the rental. We need to clear out before dark, or the police will kick us out. Tom swears the chief won’t do such a thing, but I’m not looking to take any chances. Although the sheriff’s department doesn’t house the same men it did when I was growing up here, I’m still self-conscious of my family's reputation. My father the drunk. My dead brother the wife abuser.
I’m falling down the rabbit hole of self-pity again.
It’s been a day, and I fault myself. I shouldn’t have done what I did to Katie. She’s been strange all day because of it, and I should have apologized.
“Why so glum, chum?” Lys says, interrupting my th
oughts and slinging an arm around my shoulders as she sits next to me on the picnic table. We’re all a little tipsy, and she leans into me. I kiss her temple and feel eyes on us. Lys and I talked the other day. She and her husband are having some marital issues, and I can sympathize. She isn’t happy but doesn’t know what to do. As I’m not one to offer relationship advice, I could only offer my friend a listening ear. However, I did want Lys to know she was loved, she is worthy of more, and she deserves better.
“I’m not glum.” I laugh at her rhyme, and she turns her head, purring at me as her face comes close.
“You don’t look happy today,” she mutters, her eyes searching my face.
“I’m good,” I lie. “Don’t you worry about me.” I lean forward to tap my forehead against hers, but she leans toward me as well, and our lips meet. It’s quick, like the click of a pen, and then we pull back. We both laugh. Oops. Only I turn my head to see Katie watching us.
Glancing away from me, Katie says something to her mother before stalking off from the beach, and I hate my body even more as I can’t chase after her.
9
[Katie]
“You okay, Katie bug?” I’m lounging on an Adirondack chair on the stone patio when my mother calls me the endearment she gave me as a child. I’ve been looking out at the full moon’s beam rippling over the dark water of the lake.
“Mom, I need to tell you something.” While I’d like to talk to her about Levi, I think it’s best to call that what it is—nothing—and stop thinking about him.
“What is it, baby?”
“I broke up with Derek.”
“What? When?” The shock in her voice, along with the softness, rips me in two. My family likes him. They thought he was good for me, but we weren’t good, and I explain how I’ve felt.
“We’ve been together so long, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I know we lived together, and I think we just grew comfortable with one another, but not comfortable enough to make a plan for the future.”
“But we all thought he was going to propose this weekend,” she says.
“He’s not,” I state. “He gave me earrings for our fourth anniversary last week, and I broke up with him.”
Mom covers her mouth with her fingers. “Are you sure about this? Maybe you were just upset about the earrings. You’re wearing them. Let me see them again.”
I swipe back my hair, and she takes a glance in the dark. “Those are nice.”
“That’s just it. Derek is nice. He’s wonderful. He’s great, but he’s also . . . boring. I don’t need adventure in the great wide somewhere, but a little spontaneity would be nice.”
Mom’s brows lift.
“I mean, he does nice things for me and treats me like a princess, and I sound selfish and shallow that it isn’t enough, but I just don’t think I’m attracted to him anymore. He’s just so clinical and—”
“I get it,” Mom interjects, noting my hand swirling over my lower region. “You know, before I met your father, I dated lots of men.” Unlike me, who has dated only a few, I know my mother played the field, as the saying goes. “And I never thought I was good enough. Why wasn’t I ever asked to be the one? It was always the next girl. But then, I realized it wasn’t that I wasn’t the one for them, but they weren’t the one for me.”
I look over at my mother, who still looks so young at fifty-four with her blond hair and blue eyes. You’d think I was biologically her child, and many people do. We let it slide and chuckle like we have a secret.
“If Derek isn’t the one, you can’t force it. You know I believe in fairy tales, so someday your prince will come,” she teases.
“What if he came, saw me with Derek, and kept going?” I’m joking, but I’m also a bit serious, too. What if I’ve missed my Prince Charming?
“Then either he’ll be back knowing you needed to learn Derek wasn’t your man, or he wasn’t your Prince Charming. The right one is still out there, waiting on you.”
“I’m getting old.”
“Hardly.” She laughs. “You’re only twenty-seven. You have a long time to go.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” I admit.
“No one ever does, baby. And you aren’t really alone, but maybe lonely. It will take time to let Derek go, if that’s what you really want to happen, but you’ll bounce back. Remember, you’re stronger than you know.” She winks at me, reminding me so much of how she changed the course of life for my dad and me, and I love her with everything in me.
“I love you,” she tells me.
“I know. I love you, too, Mom.”
“I’m going to check on your father. At the rate these men are celebrating Tom turning sixty, your dad isn’t going to make it to his sixtieth.” She’s teasing, but they have been acting like twenty-one-year-olds. I’ve never seen someone so happy to be sixty, and it feels like a lifetime away for me.
Mom stands, brushes back my hair, and bends to kiss my temple.
“Night, Katie bug.”
“Night.”
Only a few minutes pass before I hear the click of crutches and spin to find Levi helping himself to Mom’s vacated seat.
“Hey,” I whisper, not sure what to say to him.
“You ran off earlier.”
Yes, I did.
“What you saw wasn’t what you think,” he begins, and I fight the urge to roll my eyes. We aren’t teens. Lys and Levi can conduct their lives however they wish, I guess. “It’s not really my place to explain things, but Lys and her husband are having issues. He’s a douche, if you ask me, and Lys deserves better.”
“You’re right. It’s not my business.” However, my heart hurts for Lys. She really is sweet and deserves every bit of happiness. I just don’t want it to be Levi, which sounds petty and mean and adolescent.
“Nothing’s happening between us.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me.” I stare out at the dark water, flat and still with that beam of moonlight stretching toward me.
“But I feel like I do,” he says. “Because of last night.”
“We can pretend last night didn’t happen,” I say, still not looking at him. I can’t believe how easily I spread my legs and let him do what he did to me. I don’t even fault him as much as I do the book, my libido, and my still-present crush on this man as a grown adult.
“Is that what you want? You want to pretend it didn’t happen?”
“Don’t you? You kissed Lys.” It’s so childish I want to strangle myself for speaking like this.
“It was an accident.”
Looking over at him, I glare as I recall those exact words when it came to him kissing me at seventeen.
Fuck. It was an accident, he’d said to the person who interrupted us. After he’d been sweet and encouraging, telling me I was looking at him like I wanted to kiss him and then asking me that question. Did I want to kiss him? I wanted to send him off with a hero’s kiss and my own romantic dreams.
Ha. Kissing me had been an accident.
I push myself out of the seat, but Levi catches my wrist as I attempt to pass him.
“It’s hard to chase you,” he says, holding me in place and glancing down at his leg. “But I will if that’s what you want. I heard what you said about princes and waiting, and I’m not going to miss out on you again.”
I stare down at him. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“I was listening.”
“That’s eavesdropping,” I retort.
“Katie, do you remember what you said to me in that alley after we kissed?”
I pause, knowing he’ll tell me if he remembers.
“You asked me if I was a hero yet, and then you told me you’d be waiting on me. If it’s a hero you want, you won’t find him in me. I’m not that boy with the bike. But if it’s me that you meant, I’m here.”
He didn’t even know what he was saying. He’d kissed Lys an hour ago, and he didn’t even live in this state.
“You’re drunk, and I’m going to bed
.”
“I’m only drunk on you,” he says, and I laugh. It’s such a line I can’t take him seriously.
“You’re so charming, Levi. I remember that about you, too. Maybe that’s why I always had a crush on you. It wasn’t just the bike story, which certainly started everything for me, but it was just you, all the time. You were nice to me. You were sweet to Lys and Tricia and even Lena, but you were a flirt, and I didn’t know better then. You called our first kiss an accident, Levi, while I was young, and it hurt. But I’m a big girl now. I can take it and call what we did last night a mistake. I’ll admit it hurts to say that, and it hurt to see you kiss Lys so casually. I’m . . . I’m too raw right now with Derek, and I just . . .” I’ve said too much, and he’s just staring at me. “I’m going to bed.”
Levi struggles to stand, not releasing my wrist. He hops once on his single foot, and I reach out to steady him.
“I can’t be a prince to your princess, but I’m not dismissing last night or the day before or even seven fucking years ago when you kissed me in an alley. I’m sorry I called kissing you an accident at Leon’s house when I was still young and stupid myself, but it was never nothing to me. I told you the other day that the kiss in the alley was one of the best kisses of my life, and that wasn’t me being a flirt or charming or even wanting in your damn pants. That was the honest to God’s truth. That kiss saved me. It kept me alive when my leg was bleeding out, and I thought I’d die because I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. I had a girl waiting on a question, and she had no fucking clue she was a hero to me. She saved my life for some reason. I’ve already told you I don’t know why I lived, and they didn’t. All of them. Poof! Gone. But here I stand before the woman I’ve held in my dreams, forcing away the nightmares as much as I can, and I’m just asking for—” Levi stops abruptly as tears stream down my face. We’re both shaking with the intensity of this moment. “I don’t know what I fucking want.”
The words crash down around me, and my heart hammers while my stomach pitches. Of course, he doesn’t know. It’s only been days, and I think we’ve both just been wrapped up in the novelty of here and the nostalgia of memories. It’s too much.
