by Clover Hart
Dammit, I don’t want her to get leaky, and it’s the last thing she obviously wants, so I lighten things up. “What can I say, Burnett? You grew on me.”
When she smiles, it makes all the difference. It turns the afternoon light up a notch. It makes me take her hand all the way into mine as we look at each other.
Finally, I say, “I’m going to give Barry a foolproof pitch about Cherry Valley, so don’t expect me to go anywhere.”
“Even if he’s a fool who’ll test your pitch to its limits?”
It’s as if she’s suddenly not worried about my leaving. Honestly, I shouldn’t be either, because I’ve got this thing with Barry in hand.
Things are looking good for FCT to settle in Cherry Valley.
Chapter 22
Zach
I say a tough goodbye to Mandy before I drive to the small airport, and I don’t really mean what I tell her — at least the bye part. I don’t plan on being gone for long.
When I do arrive in San Francisco, I’m already eager to get back to Cherry Valley.
In our small offices in the Marina District, Barry’s still as stubborn as a donkey about locating to the small town, but I exert the sheer force of my will on him, pushing my plans to buy the old grain warehouse on the edge of Cherry Valley as well as start designs for a work campus, obtain the proper permits, and begin securing temporary offices downtown during construction.
And that’s just the tip of my iceberg.
Barry has no good arguments to put up, so a week later, I take off to Cherry Valley again. During this trip, I’m going to sign a lease downtown for some small offices we can modernize while our bigger plans get set into motion, and when I leave that morning, he hardly says a word to me.
Ever since I got back, he’s been real quiet, uncommunicative except for resisting my business plans, and I can sense tension building between the two of us. But who gives a shit when Mandy greets me in her pickup that evening at the small airport?
I toss my luggage into the truck bed, then hop inside the cab. Before I can even give Mandy a kiss hello, she’s got pedal to the metal, zooming us away from the curb.
Armor alert?
She skids to a stop on the opposite side of the quiet parking lot near the route, cuts the engine, and reaches over to grip my jacket to yank herself over to me.
Hell, yeah. My mind’s a fog of flowery shampoo, soft skin and soft lips, hands, buttons, and zippers as we steam up the windows and my glasses. We can’t get enough of each other as we pant, kiss, and grope.
“Hi,” she whispers against my mouth as she drapes her leg over my lap.
My zipper is nearly busting apart as I grasp her long hair and run my mouth to her ear. I murmur a hi back against her.
“Don’t be mad at me,” she says against my cheek.
“About what?”
“Well maybe …” She gasps as I nip at her lobe. “… perhaps …” She pushes my jacket off my shoulder. “… it could be that I neglected to mention something rather important on the phone before you took off.”
My screwed-up mind rifles through all the calls we’ve been making to each other — daytime, nighttime, anytime. Then her words finally infiltrate all the steam.
Oh yeah. We talked before I got on my flight to CV.
I hold her away from me. Even through the fog on my glass lenses, I see how small she is compared to me, how delicate, even though she can act like she’s made of titanium.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Oh, it’s nothing too bad.” Her cheeks are pink from scratching against my five o’clock shadow. “It’s only that my parents are waiting at my place to meet you before they go to the Crushers football game in forty-five minutes.”
“They … are?”
And that does it for my emerging boner.
Mandy takes off my glasses, wipes them off on the bottom of her Henley, then slips them back onto my face. “I told them you were staying at your Airbnb again, but I think Dad wanted to be at my place when you got back in town to make sure you weren’t actually moving your luggage into my room. See, I’m still their darling little girl who’s never gotten any boy action in her life. Besides, this past week, they’ve been hearing some gossip about us, and when they heard you were coming back …”
As Mandy trails off, I realize something. Holy shit, she’s really my girlfriend.
Mandy has dropped her hand from my face, and she’s measuring me up with an unsure gaze. I don’t want to lose her again.
I’m the out-of-towner who won’t leave this time.
I slide my hand to her waist, rubbing my thumb over her stomach. “It’s about time I met them, don’t you think?”
Her smile is so bright that it blinds me, and I can’t stop myself from pulling her in so I can kiss her again. But this time it’s with a promise.
I’m yours, and I’m not leaving you behind.
She ends the kiss before it goes too far — and damn straight it’s about to. Then she hops back into her seat and starts up the truck again.
“I’ll take you by Miss Carney’s to drop off your luggage so my parents won’t see it, then we’ll go to my place, okay? After they leave, there’ll be plenty of time afterward to … you know.”
God, do I know. I’ve been thinking about what I know for a week, and every second that her parents are in the same room, I’m going to die a little more, knowing I’m so close yet so far from what I fucking know.
We drive by the charming storefronts of downtown, where the busted lamps flicker in the approaching night. Oddly, everything feels like I’ve come home, and I wonder why I don’t feel this way whenever I go back to the city.
After I pop into Miss Carney’s to drop off my luggage and say hello, I’m off again. Even during my first trip, she was used to my barely being there.
Then it’s time for the parents, and after Mandy lets me into her condo, I find a man dressed in jeans and flannels with a crown of reddish hair leaving a shining bald spot on his head. He stands up from the sofa along with Mandy’s mom, a fading strawberry blonde with her hair in a bun and her hands folded in front of her wool dress.
I try not to blanch at the thought of them in the same room where Mandy and I first got it on.
Mandy hangs back. “Dad, Mom, this is Zach Hamilton.”
I go to shake their hands. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Mr. Burnett is affable, but maybe a little reserved because of Mandy’s history with the first out-of-towner who dumped her. He works on farm equipment for a living, and he shakes my hand as if it’s a pump.
“Good to meet you, Zach,” he says. “We’ve heard so much about you from Abby Peters’ blogs and positive word around town.”
Mrs. Burnett says, “Yes, we’ve heard a few things, no thanks to Mandy.”
This woman, who raised Mandy and Penny as a career, is as no-nonsense as they get. She’s worse than a TSA agent at an airport checkpoint, running me through her own detectors as I shake her hand, too.
She reminds me of Mandy during her own no-nonsense moments, and I smile at her.
She smiles a little bit at me. “It’s so good of you to keep Miss Carney company during this visit. Do you enjoy staying with her?”
In other words, You’d better be sleeping in the bed you rented after we leave this room, young man.
“Miss Carney’s the best,” I say. I’m almost in another time here — an era when Ma and Pa got out the shotgun if the stranger in town took advantage of their innocent daughter.
I get it, because it was the same when I was growing up in my own small town in Montana. I’d even do that for my own kid, too.
Mrs. Burnett is looking at me as if she expects more chatter about Miss Carney.
“I very much enjoy her place,” I add. “Before I left a week ago, she wrangled me into a few chess games, and we still have to finish the last one.”
Mr. Burnett rumbles out a laugh. “Good old Jonette Carney. I think everyone in Cherry Valley ha
s played a game with her. Mandy even used to beat her a time or two before all those science classes at the community college sucked up every free hour she used to have.”
Both parents glance at Mandy, who looks away. She’s told me about how her parents aren’t that supportive of her veterinarian dreams — too ambitious, too much to do when she could already be earning money in town.
“Mandy’s acing every class,” I say with some pride.
She glances up at me with a grin, then looks at her mom.
I think there’s a message that passes from mother to daughter, because Mrs. Burnett links her arm through her husband’s and starts leading him away.
“How are you for dinner the evening after tomorrow, Zach?” she asks.
“Wide open.”
“Then we’ll expect you at five.”
Five is early. In the city, I don’t usually have dinner until eight, but I’m on Cherry Valley time.
“I’ll be there, ma’am,” I say.
As they leave, Mandy sees them out, as if she’s already told them everything about me and promised them that I was a nice clean-cut wonderboy, even though I’m one of them. A strange city guy.
After they’re out the door, I waggle my eyebrows at her. “Did I pass?”
“The first part of the test. I’ll coach you for dinner, though.”
“Coaching, huh? What kind of drills are you going to put me through?”
I’m already walking toward her, and when my phone sounds off in my pocket with a Peter Gunn ringtone, I mutter a heartfelt fuck.
Mandy rolls her eyes. “Barry-interruptus?”
“I’ve got to take this or he’ll be pissy.”
“If you want to talk in my room, go ahead.”
I give her a quick kiss, then take out the phone. As it keeps ringing, I head down the hall and close the bedroom door behind me. Just before I answer, my gaze sweeps around the plain furnishings, plus all the books Mandy cracks to study for her classes. The lingering scent of her makes me grin.
I put my phone on speaker. “What’s up, Aaronson?”
“We’ve got to talk.”
His tone makes my grin disappear.
“Listen, Zach,” he says, “I just got off the phone with Jerry Franklin, and after taking one more look at your virtual presentation, he’s not feeling Cherry Valley. If we don’t get some money from Franklin Funding, then—”
“There’ll be other investors.”
“And there’ll be other pieces of ass if you’d just pull your head out of yours.”
This conversation has escalated in record time, and I don’t say anything.
Then Barry pulls back. “Forget I said that. What I mean is that I’m not feeling Cherry Valley either, and you’ve always known it.”
Goddammit. But Barry doesn’t bullshit — not to me. Ever. He’s the CFO of our company for a reason, and even if he’s being a prick, I have to respect that.
He goes on. “It took a discussion with Jerry Franklin for me to really take another hard look at your pitch. I looked at everything through his eyes. We might’ve been fooling ourselves about the kind of work force available in the area. We need sharp minds and skilled labor, not farmhands, ranchers, and lumberjacks.”
“We also need people with a sterling work ethic. Cherry Valley’s full of possible workers who not only need jobs, but want them. We’d be building up a community.”
“Tell that to Franklin Funding. Their research indicates that you might be wrong about the work force, and if we don’t have Jerry on board—”
“You already said that.” I rest my fingertips on top of one of Mandy’s books — Mandy, who puts her heart and soul into all her ambitions. I’ve seen a lot of folks like her around here — people who take pride in their raw materials, whether it’s cherries or lumber or animals, plus the money they bring in to bolster this little town that’s fallen on hard times. “The thing is, Barry, this place has more potential than you give it credit for. I can’t put my finger on why. I just have a feeling about it.”
“I blame your girl Mandy for that ‘feeling.’”
I lower my voice and switch off the speakerphone. “Fuck off with that shit, Barry. I mean it.”
“Zach, are you telling me that your mind has been a hundred percent clear since you met her?”
“It’s been clearer than ever.”
And it has. I’m surer than ever that I’m making the right call with this town because I’ve always been the intuitive one in this business. Barry knows his numbers and wires, but I’m all about the ideas that make those wires sing.
I can sense my partner simmering on the other end of the line, and I don’t want to say something that’ll make things worse, so I hold up my hand and walk away from Mandy’s books.
“Before you pull this idea out from under me,” I say, “let me put together more of a pitch for you and Franklin Funding, run more numbers, gather more data, especially about the work force. I just need a couple of days, then I’ll be back to meet with you and Jerry.”
“Shit, Zach.”
“Barry.” I’m about to put a fist through a wall. “If you ever had any fucking trust in me whatsoever, give me a little bit of it now.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then sighs roughly. “Okay. But in the meantime, I’m going to see if I can drum up a better location to present to Jerry.”
“I’ve got this.”
“So do I.”
We hang up on each other, and I’m about ready to hurl the phone, but I pull back instead, shaking my head and blowing out a long breath. A few minutes go by, and then I’m finally calm enough to walk out of the room. I have no idea what I’m going to tell Mandy.
Then again, I don’t think I have to know, because as I open the door, I see her standing just outside, waiting for me with her hands thrust into the front pockets of her jeans, her eyes dark and full of caution.
Before she goes full armor, I want to tell her that I’m not going anywhere, but that might be a lie. Instead, I walk over to her, pulling her against me, everything around us silent as I wait for her to push me away.
But she only sighs, then wraps her arms around me so tight that I don’t know if I could get away even if I wanted to.
Chapter 23
Mandy
On the night before Zach leaves, we spend our time in my bed, then just lie there afterward. My head is on his chest with my arm slung over him, our skin warm and bare.
I’m afraid to hold onto him too tight, because from what I overheard on that loud speakerphone call with Barry the other night, Zach might be out of here for good. I don’t want to be like the roots of that potted plant in the Aroused film, tangling him under the surface, choking him. I also don’t want to be obvious about all the fears that instinctively make me want to hold on and never let go, because even though I tried not to feel anything a few years ago for that first out-of-towner, I ended up feeling way too much. Afterward, I crashed. I didn’t think I’d ever be here again.
Talk about repeating a different yet same story with the same actors — Aroused might as well have been my own personal movie about the ups and downs of giving into heightened emotions, whether it was with Matthew or now with Zach.
I never did feel as much with the other guy, but does it matter now?
Zach runs his fingertips over my back. My skin tingles as I fix my gaze on my desk with all those books piled on it. The computer he gave me stares back impassively.
When he speaks, his voice vibrates through me. “Dinner with your parents wasn’t so bad after all.”
Mom and Dad weren’t out the door a minute before Zach and I ended up back here without any talk. We couldn’t wait to get at each other. “I thought my mom would never leave. Her master plan was to stay and do the dishes so she could give me the third degree while Dad interrogated you in front of the TV. I had to give her a big no on that.”
“Is that why the dishes are still in the sink?”
I laugh ag
ainst his skin — soap, musk, him.
I hold him closer, then remember to ease off. His fingers stop tracing circles on my back.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “They like you.”
“As much as they liked Matthew?”
I don’t want to talk about him, but I need to say something. “They never had dinner with Matthew. He was always too busy to do much more than get what he could out of me, and that should’ve been my first clue about how things would go. Or not go.”
This whole time, Zach hasn’t asked much about the only other guy I’ve been even remotely serious about in my life. And after that call Zach had with Barry, I’m not sure it’s worth discussing. It’s true that Zach has assured me he’s going to bat for Cherry Valley with his partner, but there’s a dark pit in my stomach anyway.
Right now, he might even be thinking about that phone call, too, because he goes quiet.
Maybe things are already over with us.
I think of those bonobo chimps again, and how, after the females give birth, the males don’t have intense, one-man-one-woman relationships with them. Yeah, they still hang out with mama and baby, but it’s more of a communal, hippy kind of thing where a lot of chimps live together. Due to the ladies’ promiscuous sex habits, the guys can’t be sure the babies are theirs, so they don’t invest themselves, and none of the bonobos seem to complain about the arrangement.
Maybe the only reason the male bonobos don’t leave is that they don’t have tech firms to get back to.
There’s a gnawing silence between Zach and me, and I can’t stand it. “You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
Zach tickles my side, and I squirm, laughing. He always knows how to make me do that when I need it.
I sigh and snuggle against him again. “I thought I’d be glad that Barry doesn’t like Cherry Valley as a potential location, but it turns out I’m not glad at all.”
This is the first time I’ve admitted that Zach might’ve been right about everything. He pulls me closer so that my chest is against his and he can look at me through the glasses he’s put on again. Not too long ago, he might’ve looked smug at the way I’ve come around to his way of thinking, but he only keeps listening.
