Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  At the mention of Hunter, New York City sharpened for me: The blue street tattooed with faded yellow lines. A building of brown brick on one side of the street and another of gray marble on the other. Small trees planted in the sidewalk, leaves already blushing red in mid-September. A shop window reflecting my hair, a blur of orange in the midst of the city. I had thought my summer here had been the experience of a lifetime, but the mere thought of Hunter intensified it—because he had almost taken it away from me. And he could take it away now.

  “Come on,” I called to Summer. “I’m going to be late.” When she trotted beside me again, three steps to my two, I explained, “David is the stable boy in my story. He is modeled on Hunter, from class. Hunter of the piercing blue eyes and dreamy good looks and the invisible horse.”

  “Oh, Hunter!” She slapped both hands over her mouth, then moved them to gasp, “How did this happen? You met him in the dorm and based this character on him, thinking he would never read it because he wasn’t in our class? How mortifying!”

  “Not exactly,” I muttered. “I mean, yes, it’s mortifying, but I knew him before.”

  She squinted up at me. “From your summer here?”

  We’d come to the edge of the park, where two police horses, a chestnut and a gray, were tied several lengths apart. While they waited, they whinnied to each other to reassure themselves that they weren’t alone in this strange city.

  I felt a pang, and a sudden drive to touch a horse, to run my fingers across a tough coat. I would get arrested.

  I turned away from the horses and swallowed. “No, from home.”

  “In Kentucky?” she shrieked. “But when he introduced himself in class, he said he’s from here. Long Island!”

  I nodded. “His dad used to work with the horses out at Belmont. That’s why my grandmother hired his dad in the first place. He and Hunter moved to our farm when Hunter and I were in middle school.”

  “You mean, they moved to your town and worked on your farm? No, you mean they actually moved to your farm, don’t you? Oh my God.”

  “Well, we have small houses for the stable hands, and it was just the two of them. Most families wouldn’t want to live on the farm, but they did.”

  “You have small houses for the stable hands,” she repeated in disbelief.

  “Hunter and I were friends at first, and then our parents had a falling-out.” I shook my head to keep from dwelling on that awful night. “He and I avoided each other for the rest of the summer. And when school started in the fall, somebody figured out that his dad worked for my grandmother, and that Hunter helped out at the farm, too, sometimes, and everybody started calling him … wait for it …”

  “Stable boy,” Summer intoned. Then she grabbed my arm. “I was right! You’re Rebecca from your story! You’re loaded!”

  “Was loaded,” I murmured.

  “But Hunter’s loaded, too,” Summer insisted. “He was wearing a Rolex.”

  “I noticed. That was a nice touch on my grandmother’s part. What happened was—”

  She looked at me as she stepped forward. I saw movement beyond her shoulders. In a flash I threw my arm in front of her just before she walked off the curb and into the path of a taxi.

  “Hey,” she complained. Then she saw the taxi. Her eyes widened. “Whoa.”

  I put my hand to my heart and breathed through my nose to calm the adrenaline rush. “Be more alert until you’re used to walking around the city,” I scolded her. “Accidents happen.”

  “Everybody at my high school talked about a girl who was newspaper editor there a long time ago,” Summer exclaimed. “She went to New York City on scholarship and got killed in a crosswalk by a taxi her first day. I was almost that girl!”

  “My high school told the same story,” I assured her. “It’s an urban myth designed to scare you and keep you at home. Just look both ways before crossing the street, okay?”

  She blinked at the traffic whizzing in front of us until the light changed and we stepped into the crosswalk. “What happened was …,” she prompted me.

  I glanced up the street again, paranoid now about speeding taxis. We were crossing Fifth Avenue. The five-story town houses grew into elegant twenty-story hotels here, carved stonework on every corner of the buildings. Ten blocks up, the Empire State Building, already glowing white against the pink sky, peeked around the shoulders of the smaller buildings in front of it.

  I stepped up on the opposite curb. “When my grandmother was our age, she earned her business degree here in New York so she could run her family’s horse farm. She wanted me to do the same and take over someday.”

  “I thought you’re majoring in English,” Summer protested.

  “I am. A few days before high school graduation, I admitted to her that I did want to come to college here, but I would not major in business. I would major in English so I could write romance novels.”

  “And she freaked?” Summer asked.

  “My grandmother does not freak.” I felt my nostrils flare as I thought of her. “She waited until graduation night, when I’d come home to change between the ceremony and the parties. She called me into her office. Hunter was already there. She informed me that she didn’t need me anyway. Since blood clearly was not thicker than water, she would give Hunter my college money. He would major in business here, then run the horse farm. And when she dies, he will inherit the horse farm for his loyalty.”

  “What!” Summer squealed. But she had to step behind me, single file. We’d reached a portion of the sidewalk with scaffolding overhead so the construction workers in the building didn’t brain pedestrians with falling cement blocks.

  I kept talking over my shoulder as I entered the passageway packed with people forming two lanes of traffic. “The worst part is, I should have seen it coming. Our high school classmates would mention going to the University of Louisville or the University of Kentucky. Hunter would always shake his head and say, ‘I am getting out of here.’”

  The passageway narrowed to one lane. A huge puddle from last night’s rain blocked half the width of the sidewalk, cigarette butts and a fortune cookie wrapper floating at the edge like timid waders in a cold ocean. “So it doesn’t make sense to me that he would accept my grandmother’s offer to take over the farm,” I said as I pushed my way through the crowd around the puddle. “Yes, he’ll get a free education, and he’s getting out of Kentucky for a few years. But then he’ll have to go back. For the rest of his life. Knowing how he feels about Kentucky, I’m astounded he would agree to this plan. Even for money. Even for her.”

  It had been a while since Summer had interrupted me, which was unusual. Standing firm against people shoving me. I looked back and saw she was stuck on the other side of the puddle, politely waiting for a break in the oncoming pedestrians.

  “Go ahead,” the sari-clad woman behind Summer scolded her in a singsong accent, “else we’ll be here all day.”

  I stepped back into the current of the crowd, let it sweep me back to Summer, and grabbed her by the wrist. I pulled her roughly against the current, ignoring the mean looks of other pedestrians. My book bag socked one man in the shoulder and he told me sharply to watch it. I held fast to Summer’s hand and dragged her out from under the scaffolding. We popped into the open twilight. She sighed with relief. I suppressed my own sigh.

  “How long did it take you to change from a nice, normal Southerner to a hardened New Yorker?” she demanded.

  “A couple of hours, but I was living in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with five roommates.” I glanced at my own cheap watch—I’d left my Rolex in my jewelry box at my grandmother’s house. I was way late for work. I increased my stride, and Summer practically ran beside me.

  “During the summer, I worked two jobs and socked away money. I was too busy to dwell on what my grandmother and Hunter did. But in the past week, I’ve started obsessing about Hunter. I knew he was here. I suspected he was in the honors program and lived in our hono
rs dorm. Maybe I even entertained a little fantasy that we could hook up, which would somehow solve all our problems rather than making them worse. I wrote the story to indulge that fantasy. I had no idea he was going to show up in the class.”

  Though the coffee shop was in sight now, I stopped on the sidewalk and turned to Summer in exasperation, remembering what she’d done. “I tried to keep him out of the class, Miss ‘Can I Have Erin’s Vote’! We’ve got to develop a better silent language if we’re going to be friends. When I groan like I’m dying, that means, ‘Don’t let the hunk into the creative-writing class. My story is about him.’”

  Summer winced. “I’m sorry. And you’re sorry. You can apologize to him.”

  “I don’t care about him,” I lied. “I care about winning the publishing internship I told you about.”

  “Oh, no!” She slapped her hands over her mouth. She knew how badly I needed that internship.

  “I don’t want Hunter to tell Gabe he is the stable boy,” I explained, “because then Gabe will think I’m not serious about this creative-writing class. All Hunter has to do is open his mouth and he will ruin every chance I ever had at that job!”

  “Don’t cry in the street,” she whispered, stepping close to me. “They say it attracts muggers.”

  That’s when I realized my voice had escalated into a hysterical wail that echoed against the glass storefronts. Businesspeople never even glanced at me as they hurried past. I looked all around us and made sure Hunter was not among them. He was not.

  “I’m meeting him at the coffee shop at nine,” I told Summer, “to try to persuade him not to say anything to Gabe about it. But I’m not like you. People look at you and want to go over to your side and help you. People look at me and want to win whatever game they’re playing with me.”

  I’d half-hoped I was wrong about this, but Summer did not deny it. “Only because you’re so strong-willed. You ask for trouble. It’s a good sign that Hunter agreed to meet you, at least. That means he can’t be too mad at you.”

  “Yes, he can. Hunter can be furious with you, but he will still be polite.” Just like my grandmother.

  I was late. I gave Summer a wave and called over my shoulder, “Thanks for listening!” as I dashed across the street and into the employee entrance of the shop. Dropping my book bag and ducking through the neck hole of my apron, I hollered, “I know! I’m late! I’m really sorry!” at the same time my boss shouted, “You’re late, Blackwell! We talked about this!”

  Hastily I tied my apron strings behind my waist and headed up front to the counter. Minimum wage jobs were a dime a dozen in New York. I’d already held seven of them. But hunting for another would cost me time and money—money I couldn’t afford to lose, especially if Hunter decided to ruin my life.

  Again.

  I STEAMED MILK AND POURED COFFEE for hours before business slowed enough for me to take a peek at the copies of “Almost a Lady” burning a hole in the bottom of my book bag. I wasn’t supposed to do homework in the shop. My boss would probably lump reading comments about my story into that category, rather than the category in which this activity belonged: the Someday When I Am a Best-selling Author You Can Take Your Soy Milk and Shove It category.

  But this time I didn’t care what he thought. He was in the back of the shop, and this was important.

  First I read Gabe’s copy of my story because his comments mattered most. I closed my eyes for a moment and allowed myself to frame what I wanted him to say about my writing. I had used this technique a lot during the summer. If I pictured myself successful, I was more likely to find success. Every time I had done this over the summer, I had opened my eyes still unpublished, still poor, living with five dirty roommates, and about to get fired from my job walking dogs. Hope springs eternal, though, and before I read Gabe’s comments on my story, I envisioned him raving about my writing and suggesting that I apply for the publishing internship. Oh, really? I would say. I hadn’t thought of that!

  I opened my eyes and flipped through my story. Not one slash of bloodred pen stabbed my prose. Page after page was clean. He’d reserved his comments for the blank half of the last page, where he’d scribbled in soft pencil:

  Erin,

  I have read many stories for freshman honors creative-writing classes. Compared with the talents of past students, your grasp of dialogue and pacing is remarkable. You have a gift, and you have worked hard at honing it. I look forward to reading what you write for the rest of the semester and seeing how far you can push this.

  As for Rebecca … I had difficulty connecting with her and caring about her because you never say what she wants out of life. It isn’t just the stable boy.

  My cheeks tingled as if Gabe had slapped me. In the back of my mind I knew he’d given me a compliment of some sort in his first paragraph, but I registered only the insult in the second. Of course all Rebecca wanted was the stable boy. That was the whole point. What did Gabe want her to want? Was I supposed to make her a girl alone in the world, struggling to make ends meet in the big city? What a Theodore Dreiser–ass laugh-and-a-half that would be.

  Feeling that I was being watched, I snapped my head up. I would have thought the shop was funky and adorable with its mismatched chairs, exposed brick walls, and art from students at my college, exactly the type of place I’d always wanted to work, except that my boss had yelled at me enough here in the past two weeks to ruin that effect.

  The shop was empty. My coworker for the shift had disappeared into the back along with my boss, and not a single passerby wanted caffeine at this time of night.

  I put my head back down. While my stomach was tied in a knot, I might as well read Hunter’s comments, too. I sifted through the stack of “Almost a Lady” until I came to his copy, which he’d commandeered from Isabelle and signed his name across like it was his, not hers, not mine. Paging through it, I saw there was a lot of writing in blue pen on a page near the end of the story, his scrawl almost illegible, like he’d already been in business for himself for forty-five years and if other people couldn’t read it, that was their problem. I kept flipping through and saw nothing else, even on the backs of the pages. I returned to the offending page. He’d circled “I saw a snake eat a rat once” and scribbled in the margin,

  David would not say this. It’s gauche. He would not utter a sexually loaded metaphor at the risk of repulsing a lady. In fact, he would not risk his job, his father’s job, and this “country justice” you mention for a girl in the first place. He has other girls.

  “What are you thinking so hard about?”

  I jerked my head up at Hunter’s voice. He stood at the counter, blond hair in his blue eyes, watching me. I wondered how long he’d been there, and whether my lips had mouthed “ouch” as I read.

  I shoved the stack of papers under the counter. He might have seen what I was reading and recognized his handwriting, though. So I admitted, “I was thinking I’m not going to enjoy freshman honors creative writing as much as I expected.”

  “Give yourself a break and a little time,” he said in the soothing tone girls loved. “You’re invested in that class, and you had a hard first critique.”

  What nice advice, and how innocuous. Clearly he was editing himself, just as he’d said David would have left out any sexual metaphors when easing a glove into Rebecca’s reticule.

  I could have asked Hunter what variety of caffeine he wanted. I didn’t. I shooed him to a table at the window looking out on the neon-lit street, then whipped him up a latte. That’s the drink with the foamy head that a talented barista makes a design in, like a flower or a delicate palm frond. Note that I said talented barista, not chick who had been working in a coffee shop for two weeks. I had been shown how to make a heart. The bottom of it came out too rounded, and when I turned it upside down, it looked like an ass.

  I poured a cup of black for myself, slid Hunter’s heart latte from the counter, and called to my boss that I was taking my break. I started from behind the coun
ter and across the floor of the shop with full confidence. But as I neared Hunter, I realized that besides class, this was the first time I would be facing him since graduation night in Kentucky, when he stood behind my grandmother.

  He turned from the window and focused those blue eyes on me. I slowed down. My heart thumped so loudly in my chest that I was afraid he would hear it if I sat down across from him. Note to self: I should not snag so much coffee while working in the coffee shop if the ticker went into palpitations every time a stable boy gave me a glance. As I sat down across from him with my cup of black, I pushed the latte across the table to him, ass cheeks down.

  Only then did I realize the significance of bringing Hunter a latte with a heart drawn in the foam after I had just gotten it on with him fictionally. I should have attempted the palm frond.

  It was too late then. But he didn’t notice the heart—at least, not right away. He looked out the window and tapped his toes under the table as if he was anxious to leave. This was so unlike him. He looked comfortable in every situation, whether he wanted to be there or not. The charm was always on.

  A bell tinkled. Laughing students pushed through the coffee shop door and approached the counter. Hunter followed them with his eyes and then finally, painfully slowly, looked down at his mug. He frowned at it and turned it around on the saucer, trying to figure out what the picture was. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “How appropriate. You drew me a little heart.”

  “It’s an ass.”

  He tilted his head to one side to get a different view of it. He spun the mug around into its original position. “I see now.” He winked at me. “What you mean is, it was supposed to be a heart, but you realized too late that drawing me a heart in my latte would be embarrassing after I read your story.”

  4

  He had a strange way of pronouncing coffee, with a rounded o. He’d never had much of a New York accent, not even when he first moved to Kentucky. It only came out with certain words. I found myself dwelling on this to keep from running from the shop in mortification.