by Carly Keene
I can see her running through options in her head, but apparently she’s still smart and she knows that sooner or later I’ll win this one. She crosses her arms and cocks one hip, lifting her chin. She’s abandoned “flight” and settled on “fight,” and it’s sexy as all hell.
Go easy, I tell myself. I’m not going to grovel, but there’s no point pissing her off. “Do you have a little time to talk?”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she says.
“Well, that’s okay. I mostly mean me talking and you listening. I’ve owed you an explanation and a really huge apology for a long time.”
She blinks. Her eyebrows go up far enough to touch her hair.
“The sign,” I say, “originally read ‘Andrea I’m sorry.’” No need to remind her of how it turned out later. “I was. I was really sorry. I never meant to stand you up. I was upset I missed prom with you. But you weren’t answering your phone, and it was the only way I could think of to apologize in a way you couldn’t avoid.” I hitch my shoulders up, cringing again at the brain-echo of Mandrea the Fat Pig. “And I should have stayed with the sign so nobody could vandalize it. I didn’t, and that’s on me too.”
“Vandalize it,” she repeats, skeptical.
“Yeah.” She’s silent, waiting. “Benjy Watt and Steven Golders—they were, what, twelve that year? Maybe thirteen. Anyway, they were out to beat my prank record in middle school. It was just another prank to them.”
“That’s an excuse? They didn’t mean any harm?”
“Oh, they meant mayhem and chaos instead.” I shrug. “I kicked their asses for it that summer. Not bad, just enough bruises that I hope they didn’t make fun of anybody like that again.”
“I guess we’ll never know,” she says through tight lips. “Both of them moved away after high school.”
“Good.”
She frowns. “Why good?”
“Because I’m back in town for the foreseeable future, and I wouldn’t want to run into them again feeling the way I do now.”
“Why are you in town?”
“My dad . . . He’s going on disability because he can’t work anymore. I’m home to run the auto shop.”
Andrea—Andie—makes a sympathetic noise. “I didn’t know about your dad.”
I look at her and something in me just melts. She’s just so damn pretty. I clock her defensive stance, adding, “And I don’t want to have to keep avoiding you forever, either. You deserve the truth. And then if you still hate me and want to tell me to stay away from you, I’ll do my best.”
She breathes deep, and it does really good things for her chest. Then she takes two steps toward me, which I tell myself is a good sign. “So. Okay. You want to apologize, go ahead. I’m not promising anything.”
Grovel, idiot. “I’m sorry, Andrea. I mean Andie. I should’ve shown up prom night.”
“Why didn’t you?” She’s close enough now that I can see pink rims around her eyes.
“I . . . Um. Okay, listen, you know I did a lot of stupid stuff.”
“No shit,” she says acidly, and I blink hard. Miss Priss Salutatorian never swore, back in the day.
Here it is. “I was in jail.”
Her turn to blink hard.
“I . . . sort of borrowed Mr. Sweeney’s Mustang. To take you to prom in.” I run a hand through my hair, messing it up. “It was in the shop to have the water pump replaced, and Dad had just finished it, and I didn’t want to just drive the Buick.” I remember taking the key from the pegboard at the shop, a thrill going through me. “I thought you’d like the Mustang.”
She prompts me. “And?”
“And Officer Bruce saw me driving it through town and pulled me over and took me to jail.”
“You didn’t call anybody?”
“I got my parents’ answering machine, and Officer Bruce said that was my one phone call. I sat in jail until 2 a.m., when Mom and Dad got back from their movie in Asheville and came to get me, and by then, when I was able to call you, you weren’t answering your phone.”
She glares at me, and I just feel like the biggest asshole in the world.
CHAPTER FOUR
Andie
It’s all plausible. Assuming that he’s not lying, of course. A person this devoted to mischief is certainly able to lie.
I remember how it felt then. He asked Kara if she had a prom date in the middle of lunch, and she’d rolled her eyes and said she was going with Jared, who she’d started dating after Drew broke up with her. And then he asked Ashley, who’d dumped Drew to date Caleb on the basketball team, and she just laughed. Then he turned around to the table behind him, the geek table where I sat, and said, “How about you, Andrea? You got a date to prom?”
Stunned, I’d stammered out that I didn’t.
“Want to go with me then?”
I’d shrugged and said I guessed that would be okay. But on the inside, I was screaming with excitement. And there was a little spark in his dark eyes that I told myself was happiness. Later, of course, I would see that scene in my mind and diagnose the spark as merely the seed of mischief. But what if everything he said had been true?
The three weeks between the prom invitation and the disaster were happy for me. We sat together at lunch, Drew abandoning the popular kids’ table for the geek table. We texted after school. I met him at the town library one afternoon and we had whispered conversations in the stacks, while I chose novels and he picked books about cars. We hiked up to the falls one Saturday and sat with our knees touching in the galax growing up there, and about the time he touched my hair and leaned in like he was going to kiss me, my mom called me and told me to get back home to help her with dinner. Just like that, the moment was gone.
I’d hung my hopes on prom. On the royal blue halter neck dress with a full skirt that my mom and my older sister Alyssa helped me choose in Asheville. On the white rose boutonniere I’d bought for Drew. On slow-dancing in the gym, my too-exuberant curves pressed up against his lean soccer-player physique.
Which never happened, of course.
I’d been so devastated by his no-show on prom night that I was obsessed by pretending I didn’t care once Monday came. I’d act like nothing at all happened, I decided. But that sign taped to the wall outside the high school was on full display, and the entire bus broke into laughter. I’d never thought that people didn’t like me until that day, when freshman boys oinked at me in the halls and the popular girls in my grade kept referring to me as Mandrea. By the time I saw Drew at lunchtime, I was so angry that I refused to listen to him. Everything he’d said to me before had to have been lies, a setup for the betrayal to follow.
Ten years later, I ask what I’ve always wanted to know. “Was it a prank when you asked me out?”
Drew looks like I’ve hit him. “No,” he says, his forehead creasing up in a frown. “No, that was legit. I liked you. Then.”
“I liked you then too.”
“Before you started getting revenge.”
“Are you seriously blaming me?” I ask now, angry again.
He looks down. “No, I guess not. I think I knew it was all my fault, but I couldn’t accept it. And I couldn’t see a way to fix it, other than to tell everybody I fu—um, screwed up.”
“You can say fucked up.” I learned to swear at college, but I still have to make sure my mom’s nowhere around when I do it.
Drew looks back up, and straight into my eyes. I have to catch my breath at the intensity of it. “I’d better not say it to you,” he says, almost under his breath. “Because then I can’t control where my mind goes, and given that you still hate me, that’s just an exercise in futility.”
Did he just say he thought about fucking me? My eyes go as wide as they can.
“Do you still hate me?” he asks.
“Yes?”
When I start to say it, it’s knee-jerk reaction, but a split-second later it’s like my brain is unsure, because the answer tilts up into a question. Maybe I still hate hi
m. Maybe not so much anymore.
“I’m not convinced.”
“I don’t care,” I say, taking another few steps toward him, galvanized by the electric feeling running through my body. Drew Seaforth. Damn. “Get away from my car now, please.” I step closer to the car, closer to him, and then it happens.
He puts his hand on my arm and pulls me close to him. The other arm goes around my waist and snugs me right up against what used to be a lean teenager soccer body but is now a solid, adult, hard-muscled body. My still-too-exuberant curves seem to fit themselves against him, and a small insistent drumbeat begins at the juncture of my thighs. My purse falls out of my hand.
“Fuck,” he mutters, moving his face into my hair. All the breath goes out of me, and when I drag it back in, it comes with the smell of him: a spicy woody smell, plus a tiny hint of male sweat. That just makes things worse. My body is screaming YES! with great enthusiasm, while the rest of me is still expecting betrayal and humiliation. I push away from his chest, but he pulls me back.
And kisses me.
My body takes over and boots my brain into next week. I kiss back.
“Andie,” he says against my mouth, and kisses me again, his lips soft and warm, his tongue hot and intoxicating against the sensitive skin of my inner lip. I become aware of a growing pressure between us at the hip level, and instinctively I press myself closer, feeling a rumble in his chest as he groans and deepens the kiss.
His hands are big, and they feel hot on my ass. The hardness poking into my lower belly feels even hotter. My blood feels like it’s boiling, melting me from the inside out.
We keep kissing, and I have increasingly urgent thoughts about getting his hands on me under my dress. Getting my hands on him under those jeans. I have a mental picture of wrapping my legs around his back, and that finally shocks my brain into action.
I pull back. “Stop,” I say, my voice scratchy. He kisses my throat and the side of my neck, and I moan inadvertently before I make myself push him away. “Stop. We’ll have people calling the cops on us any minute.”
“Do you have a place?” he asks, his eyes still hot on me. “I’m staying in my childhood bedroom, which would kinda put a damper on things with my parents down the hall.”
He still thinks he’s fooled me into believing him.
“I’m not sleeping with you!” I say, too loud. Body protests, silently. Brain backhands it. “You seriously think that I am falling for your bullshit again? Forget it. Now get away from my car, and leave me alone.”
He steps away, but slowly. I retrieve my purse from the asphalt and fumble with the keys. Brain is still resentful that Drew Seaforth can still turn me on, and Body is desperate to stay turned on, and the catfight between them has me shaky.
“I meant it,” Drew says.
“You meant what?” I finally get the door unlocked and open it, grateful for the barrier between us.
“That I wanted to take you to prom. That I liked you. That I’m still sorry I didn’t pick you up, and I’m even sorrier I let this shit fester between us for this long. That I never thought you were fat.”
I get in the car and start it. “I’ve already forgotten it. You didn’t matter that much. Now get out of my life.” And I pull out, still shaking.
I’m so distracted that I completely forget to drop off the deposit at the bank, until Monday morning when I’m on the way to work.
CHAPTER FIVE
Drew
She didn’t believe the truth.
Or maybe she did? I don’t know. I’ve kissed a lot of girls, but never has it felt like that. One touch of her lips on mine and I felt drunk, out of control, about to burst through my pants.
I shiver; the spring evening air has turned chilly and I’m missing Andie’s heat.
Andie.
It’s easier to think of her as Andie than to remember the way the name “Andrea” got twisted.
I shake myself out to get loose, hoping my erection will evaporate before I have to face my mother, and I start walking back home through the twilight. As much as I tried to hate Dogwood Falls while I was gone, I keep seeing things I like about the place now. The renovated buildings and the blooming spring bulbs speak a lot about the love people have for this town. I had some good times here.
Nope, I had a lot of good times here.
You could have some fabulous times here now, my crazy stupid heart whispers to me. I think she might have forgiven you already.
Even if she hasn’t—yet—that doesn’t mean she won’t.
And I am nothing if not persistent. I keep walking with purpose.
That night, before bed, I get an old notebook out of my desk, and I make myself a list.
GOALS TO ACCOMPLISH:
1. Clean up shop and modernize office.
2. Reopen Seaforth’s completely with an employee and full hours within two months.
3. Get back on Andie Schubert’s good side.
I don’t finish that sentence with “and into her pants,” because somebody besides me might see this list. But I think it.
I think it a lot. I wanted that as a teenager, and now I want it more than ever. The funny thing is, I think it could be more now.
I spend the next two weeks cleaning out the shop. I accept very few jobs other than inspections and oil changes, just bread-and-butter stuff, while I’m getting things back into shape. I throw out a bunch of old junk. I buy bookkeeping software and load it on the crappy old desktop. I get Brenda Dalton to come clean the office. I talk to Mr. Daly at the high school and get his recommendation on which former student might be a good hire. Then I hire Danny Adams. I get a part-time bookkeeping student temporarily to help my mom get caught up on learning a new system. Then I call the Dogwood Falls News-Messenger, which publishes weekly, and tell them Seaforth’s is reopening soon.
My credit card is groaning, so I take out a small business loan at the bank. Dad pitches a hissy fit over my borrowing money, but I know that without some modernization and an infusion of capital, Seaforth’s will never make it. Now I’ve just gotta make it good.
And every day I do something nice for Andie, without letting her know it’s me.
I leave her potted pansies and geraniums at the candy shop’s back door. I see her heading in one morning with a cup of coffee from By the Cup, on the corner, so I drop an envelope containing a $20 bill, and a written order to give Andie Schubert whatever she wants, on the counter. I leave four anonymous reviews on her website praising the candy and service. I send an assortment of sub sandwiches from Millie’s Homestyle (again, via an envelope with written directions and cash) over to the candy shop at lunchtime. Otherwise, I stay out of her way.
At the end of two weeks, I’m ready to open up the shop again with full hours. Danny is competent, and Mom’s getting the hang of Quickbooks, and Dad’s agreed to come in and consult when I need him.
I’m ready to tackle Andie again, too. Right after five, I put my tools away, wash my hands, and take what my mom always called “an Irish shower,” with wet wipes and a little cologne. I change my shirt and ask Dad to lock up. I have a plan.
I pick up a little bouquet of cut flowers at the IGA and head into Andie’s Candies right afterward. The cheery jingle bell on the door rings, and a voice floats out from the back room. “Be right there!”
“No problem!” I call back.
In two minutes, Andie’s coming into the front room, carrying a tray of those heart pops and looking wary. “Drew,” she says.
“It’s me,” I agree.
She looks beautiful. Soft silky dark hair I want to run my fingers through. Full, soft lips I want to taste. A body meant to be held and caressed and squeezed. Blue eyes blazing with smarts and fierceness. God, I want her bad.
I offer her the flowers. “These are for you.”
She sets down the candy and takes the flowers, still wary. “Well. Thanks. But why?”
“I’m courting you, dumbass,” I say. “I’m pretty sure I can’t make up for
the shitstorm that junior prom turned out to be, or the war we had going senior year, but I was sort of hoping we could start over.”
Her crystal blue eyes narrow like Clint Eastwood’s again, and I can’t help smiling. So smart. Never put up with any of my bullshit. Still smoking hot. It seems to me like something we can build on, if I can ever get her to trust me again. If I can give her what she needs. Just gotta find out what that is.
“So that was you,” she says, one hand on her hip, “with the potted plants and the coffee and the lunch.”
“Yep.”
“Why?” she says again, intensely, and now she’s leaning over the counter toward me. “Why me? Why now?”
I reach past her and pick up a heart sucker. I lick it. “Mm. Cherry. And vanilla?”
She nods.
I hand her a fiver. She hands it right back. “I can spot you a freebie after all that coffee. Why me?”
I lick the sucker again, and I watch her watch me lick it. My dick jumps in my pants. She licks her own lip, and then looks away. When she looks back, I talk. “Because you, Andie Schubert, are still sexy as all fuck. And I still like you a lot, when you’re not trying to make my life hell and I’m not trying to piss you off. I think we could appreciate each other.”
Her eyes have gone this dark shade of blue, and she’s breathing fast and shallow. She’s as turned on as I am. I can make out her nipples under her dress, and my dick jumps again. “As for why now, Andie, it’s mostly because I just don’t want to be an asshole anymore. Not to you, not to anybody.”
Her eyes stay on my mouth, so I lick the sucker again. “Dinner? You, me, Millie’s? Or Waffle House, your choice.”
She shakes her head a little, like she’s shaking off the effects of a dream. “When?” Her voice is breathy.
“Now? Tomorrow? Whenever you say.” I shrug. Then, because it couldn’t hurt, I lick the sucker again, holding her eyes and imagining that I’m licking her nipples.
