Going Too Far

by Jennifer Echols

  “It’s a 3.75 right now, and I’m trying to bring it up to a 3.85 this semester.” He shook his head sadly. “The freshman flunk classes really did a number on me. I only made a B last semester in calculus—”

  I interrupted, “Let me just stop the two of you right here and tell you that you disgust me. You’re both so freaking well-adjusted. Why don’t you skip over this part and get a joint retirement fund?”

  They both turned to me with wide eyes. Then Tiffany told me she might not want to room with me after all, at the same time Will grumbled, “She’s just upset about Johnafter.” He put his arm around me and hugged my shoulders. “I wish I could tell you that it would work out between you two. But you did this yourself, before I was involved this morning. I’m afraid you got on the wrong side of his temper.”

  “What temper?” I asked before I thought. The John I’d ridden with for a week was very even-keeled, with a high threshold for suspects cussing at him, or blue-haired delinquents pushing his buttons. Then I remembered how he’d looked as he yelled at Brian and Eric at the bridge. I remembered how his knuckles had turned white on the grate in the cop car as he told me, If I had pulled Eric out of the car myself, I’m afraid of what I would have done to him.

  “Don’t do it, John,” Angie’s shrill voice called from the next room. “Eric’s just messing with you.”

  John was in the kitchen doorway. Funny, I half expected to see him in his cop uniform, but he was wearing faded jeans and a green T-shirt that hugged his chest. Maybe it was the reflection from the shirt, or his eyes really were more hazel than brown, and I hadn’t noticed when he wore his dark blue uniform. But now his eyes looked green.

  Angie clung to him from behind, making a helpless show of holding him back.

  He saw me and did a double take. But he didn’t bask in my newfound beauty nearly as long as he should have. Almost immediately, his gaze flicked to Will and hardened into the dangerous, dead-eyed look. I saw myself through his eyes: dark hair, low-cut dress, with Will’s arm around me.

  “Oh, that temper,” I said.

  Will looked up at John, stepped away from Tiffany and me, and backed up a pace. “Rashad!” he called. He looked behind him, but he was against the wall. There was nowhere left to go.

  John was across the room, on top of Will. Tiffany and I both put our hands between them before we were able to think through that unwise move. At least it temporarily kept John from hitting Will. John only gripped Will’s shirt, pulled him upward, then whacked him down against the floor.

  “Get off me, After,” Will roared, red-faced. “You have completely lost it. Rashad!”

  There was not enough room in the tiny kitchen for all these enormous boys, but somehow Rashad squeezed in and said, “Easy, big guy,” as he pulled one of John’s arms. Skip gripped John’s other elbow and said in the Schwarzenegger voice, “You’re terminated.”

  John seemed to be easing up, letting them drag him backward. Then he shook them off and went for Will again. They dove after him in a sprawl of boy on the kitchen floor.

  Finally Tiffany stamped her foot and squealed, “John, he wasn’t even hitting on Meg. He was hitting on me! Right, Will?”

  “Right!” Will’s agonized voice came from the bottom of the pile.

  “But Eric said—” John’s muffled voice trailed off. He erupted from the pile. With the briefest glance at me, he stalked out of the kitchen, brushing against Eric behind Angie in the doorway.

  “Still looking for a fight?” Eric called after him. “You’re pretty chicken without the entire police force behind you.”

  “Shut up, Eric,” John’s voice echoed. The door slammed louder than the beat of Kanye West.

  I pushed past everyone, not even noticing who I was pushing past, but I heard Will breathing hard right behind me. “What are we going to do?” Tiffany panted as we dashed through the door of Rashad’s apartment and down the stairs outside, into the cool night. “Are we going to chase him in my car?”

  “We’ll never catch him if he doesn’t want to be caught.” Will stopped dead at the bottom of the stairs. “His truck’s still here.”

  “Where would he have gone?” I cried, looking up and down the empty street.

  “He likes the fountain down at Five Points,” Will said. We all ran down to the corner and stopped again.

  The fountain was straight ahead. Behind a low circular wall, rabbits and frogs listened to the ram reading evil stories to them. I couldn’t see John’s face across the intersection, but I recognized his green T-shirt. He was up in the center of the fountain, sitting on the lap of the Devil.

  “He really likes the fountain,” Will said.

  Even Tiffany asked, “What the hell?”

  “Great,” I said. “I’m finally acting sane, and John goes crazy.” I turned to Will. “He’s not one of those big-headed cops who carries cuffs hidden on him when he’s off duty, is he? I didn’t feel any cuffs on him Thursday night.”

  “No,” Will said. “But I’ll go with you if you’re scared of him.”

  I turned back to study John, sitting motionless in the fountain. “No thanks.” Crossing the street, I called over my shoulder, “I’m no more scared of him than he is of me.”

  John watched me coming. I stopped at the wall around the fountain. He glowered down at me from the ram’s lap, arms folded. The legs of his jeans were wet from the frog statues spitting at him. An unlit cigarette hung from his lips.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth like a megaphone. “Move off the Devil, toward my voice.”

  His expression didn’t change. The cigarette quivered in the corner of his mouth as he said, “I’m trying to think like you.”

  I laughed. “If you were trying to think like me, you’d be turned around, straddling the Devil.”

  “Or Will,” he said. “Or Eric.”

  My stomach knotted again at the thought of me and Eric. Surely John didn’t believe by now that I had the hots for Eric, or Will, either. But he obviously believed Eric and I were alike. Just as I’d told him in the first place.

  I said, “I had no idea about your brother.”

  He winced. I hated to hurt him. Again. But at least his glower was gone.

  He took the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned forward with his fists on his knees. “Even if you didn’t, Meg, how could you do that to me?”

  It was my turn to wince. I stepped back from the wall of the fountain with the force of the blow. I said lamely, “I can’t stay in that town, John. But I love you, and I can’t leave you there.” I stepped forward to the wall again. “I swear I didn’t know about your brother, though. If I’d known, I would have come up with something else. Dynamited the bridge.”

  “Mmph,” he said. “I know you didn’t. Will told me you did—”

  “He was wrong,” I said quickly. “He is very sorry, and also his ass is grass.”

  “—but then I had dinner with Leroy,” John went on, “and he told me you didn’t know. So I went to Rashad’s hoping to see you, and I’ve spent the past few hours making all these great plans for you and me. And then Eric told me you were with Will.” He shook his head. “He tried for years. Eric finally got me.”

  I walked to the side of the fountain nearest the rabbit, where I was as close as I could get to John without crossing the moat between us. “What kind of plans?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, then shook his head and opened those dark eyes again, watching me. They weren’t green anymore. They were back to the familiar, beautiful brown. “I’m glad it happened. I mean, I wish it hadn’t happened in exactly that way. But something had to happen to make me see. I thought I was protecting people. When I handcuffed you, I realized I’ve let the bridge turn me into a monster. It might be good for me to get out of that town.”

  I gaped at him for a few seconds, honestly not believing at first that I’d heard him say this. Then I laughed. Really laughed. “No!” I said sarcastically.

  He grinned. “I plan to ask Will if
I can move in with him this summer. And I’m joining the university track team. I was thinking you might want to, too.”

  I gasped in horror. “Join? A team?”

  “You’re running five miles a day anyway,” he said. “You might as well join the track team and get more scholarship money.”

  “That actually sounds like”—I swallowed—“fun.”

  “I know we need money for rent and stuff. But if we can save enough, this summer or next summer, maybe you and I could go to Europe. I could show you what I’ve done, and we could discover some new places together.”

  “I do hope you mean that in the dirtiest sense possible.” I’d had enough crying for one day, so I shut my eyes and willed the tears away.

  Had I fallen into the parallel universe Will had talked about at the beach? I looked around me at the majestic church behind the fountain, the bohemian storefronts, Tiffany and Will talking under a flowering tree. The dark blue sky above me seemed infinite.

  John sat up, took a deep breath, and sighed. “So you like my plans?”

  “I like your plans,” I said. “I like having plans with you. Now come down off the Devil. It’s illegal.”

  He jumped from ram to rabbit, paused to balance the cigarette in a turtle’s mouth, stepped on a spitting frog, made it to the wall in front of me, and jumped down beside me.

  And then I heard a low hum. I glanced around desperately. When the blue lights and siren burst on, the cop car was already bearing down on us in the intersection.

  “Let me do the talking,” I yelled to John over the wail. “I have a way with cops.”

  “Yes, you do,” he growled at me as the cop car blew past us and kept going up the hill. “They weren’t after me. You don’t use your siren for college students in the fountain. Thanks for taking up for me, though.” He wrapped one arm around my waist, pulled me close, and ran his fingers down a lock of my hair. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” His dark eyes gave me the loving look. The look I’d longed for.

  I shivered at the chill that traveled from my scalp through my body and all the way down to my toes. “You haven’t told me what you think of my hair.”

  He chose another lock and twisted it around his finger. “I liked it better cyan.”

  “Really? Then that was a complete waste of six dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

  “No, not really,” he laughed. “Are you kidding? Now everyone can see what I saw all along.”

  He wrapped his big arms more tightly around me and leaned down. I caught the scent of his cologne. His warm, sensitive lips met mine.

  And the rest is happily ever After.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, JOHN CAME TO the diner around ten. Watching him park the cop car, I tried to look cool and aloof behind the counter. But considering what we’d done with each other after Rashad’s party, there was no way. I grinned like an idiot as he hung his leather cop jacket on the coatrack. When he turned around, he grinned back at me, showing his dimples.

  This cop was my boyfriend. Weird!

  He squeezed between two bar stools and came right up to the counter. I stood on my tiptoes and leaned forward to kiss him. His lips touched mine, pressed harder. The tip of his tongue grazed my lips, so slowly. I shuddered. Even though Bonita was in the back clocking out and I had only two customers sitting over at the Princess Diana table, we couldn’t very well get into it here in the diner, with John in uniform. But I’d never wanted someone so badly, and I could tell he felt the same.

  He broke the kiss, set his forehead against mine for a moment, and finally pulled back. “Didn’t you work all morning? I was afraid you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I thought you might come in at the beginning of your shift. I didn’t want to miss you.”

  His lips pursed ever so slightly. He reached across the counter to stroke my hair away from my face.

  I actually giggled. God! “You’ve got me so whipped, I can’t think of a single sarcastic thing to say.”

  “That makes me feel powerful and manly. Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He glanced at the chalkboard on the back wall. “What’s the Meg Special?”

  “Cobbler.” I nodded to a bar stool. “Have a sit-down so we can talk while I cook.”

  Already taking a step toward the Elvis table, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Sorry. Can’t have my back to the window.”

  “I dare you.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “You dare me, huh?” Biting his lip, he slid onto the stool.

  “I can see out the window,” I assured him. “I’ll watch for perps.” To make good on my promise, I leaned to one side to look past his shoulder at the parking lot. A car pulled into the space beside his cop car.

  He watched me closely. “I can’t stand it. What is it, perps?” He turned around to look.

  “My parents.” They’d parked here rather than at the trailer because the suspense was killing them. They needed to make sure I hadn’t burned down the diner while they were gone. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I gave my dad a thumbs-up.

  He stared at me. My mom turned to him in the car, asking him, What? What is it? He kept staring at me. My brown hair was an even bigger shock for him than I’d expected.

  I smiled and waved at him and mouthed, “Welcome home.”

  He put his hand to his eyes. He knew I was finally cured.

  Available July 2011

  Love Story

  by Jennifer Echols

  1

  Almost a Lady

  by Erin Blackwell

  Captain Vanderslice was something of an ass. He took Rebecca’s gloved hand and kissed it at the lowest point of a deep bow. “Miss O’Carey, you are blooming into quite the young lady.”

  “And you, sir, look as fine as always,” Rebecca lied, watching him straighten before her. Tall and dark, he might have been handsome but for a stray bullet that had caught his cheek during the War Between the States ten years before, burrowing a thick scar from nose to eye.

  Rumor had it that the visible wound wasn’t the only one he’d suffered during the war—and that despite his status as a bachelor in a border state deprived of many of its young men by the ravages of war, this disappointment with regard to offspring was the main factor that had kept several ladies from accepting his hand in marriage. However, the prospect of the bloodline ending mattered not to Rebecca’s self-centered and business-minded grandmother, who thought the match advantageous, for someday it would merge Captain Vanderslice’s vast horse farm with her own.

  It mattered to Rebecca. She racked her brain for something to say to the captain that would be neither rude nor an encouragement of his amours. “Wasn’t Colonel Clark’s derby a delight! He talks of making it an annual event.”

  “It will never catch on,” said the captain with hauteur, swirling the mint julep in a tumbler in his gloved hand.

  “Oh! I’d consider the races a success, with ten thousand in attendance,” Rebecca maintained. She continued to exchange unpleasant pleasantries with the captain while her eye roved about the rich ballroom, searching for an escape before the captain’s small talk turned to courtship, as it had at every social gathering of late.

  Luck was not on her side. At a typical country dance, one of her friends from the neighborhood would have strategically interrupted the exchange, drawing a grateful Rebecca away from the gentleman’s attentions. This was no country dance. Colonel Clark had organized a race of the area’s finest three-year-old colts on the outskirts of Louisville, and this exclusive ball in his mansion included only the richest families. In a gathering of perhaps a hundred, Rebecca was alone.

  Almost. She spied movement out of the corner of her eye. Framed by the arched window that let in the cool May night, beyond the patio, David’s dark jacket blended with the shadows, but his golden hair and crisp white shirt glowed in the soft candlelight reflected from mirrors in the ballroom.

  She had asked him to meet her. She had retreated to this corner of the ball
room with a view of the garden early in the evening, and had glanced casually through the archway in search of him after every dance for four quadrilles, three reels, and a round dance. As she spied him at last, she felt as if her heart with its insistent throbbing were actually moving the lace of her bosom.

  “Miss Rebecca!”

  She started, nearly bursting from her tightly laced corset in surprise. But it was only the elderly Mr. Gordon, stepping between herself and Captain Vanderslice. She smiled gratefully at him for the interruption. Recently on a turn about the garden at her grandmother’s estate, she had shared with him her opinion of the captain and her grandmother’s plans. “Mr. Gordon.” She bowed and gave him her hand.

  “Gordon,” the captain said shortly.

  Mr. Gordon merely nodded to acknowledge the captain. To Rebecca he said, “I was most pleased with the performance of your horseflesh in the third race today. I hear you trained this filly yourself?”

  “You trained!” the captain gasped, aghast at Rebecca.

  Rebecca kept her eyes on Mr. Gordon, which seemed a good policy if the captain was intent on merely being shocked by everybody instead of participating in the conversation. “You heard this from our stable hands,” she said, “but they give me too much credit. Our young David Archer has done most of the work. I merely took an interest.”

  “And picked this filly out of the barn to train,” Mr. Gordon prompted her.

  “Well, yes,” Rebecca said, “after discussions on the subject with David.”

  “Young, you say,” Mr. Gordon mused. “Looking for a place of his own, out from beneath the long shadow of his famously talented father, perhaps.”

  Rebecca’s heart throbbed again, this time with alarm. She knew Mr. Gordon was only making conversation to distract the captain from wooing her, and she appreciated his efforts. If only she could keep her servant-lover from being hired away from her grandmother’s farm in the process. “Well, I don’t know that Archer is all that,” Rebecca backtracked. “I probably have more of an eye for horseflesh than I give myself credit for. It is not ladylike to accept the accolades.”