by Kat Baxter
My hair is a mop of wet ringlets by the time I pull my car into my parents’ driveway. The only other car here is a big black truck I don’t recognize. But I head into their house.
“Mom, it’s just me, I think I left my phone here last night.”
Brock steps out of the kitchen like he’s been waiting in there since I left him last night. I stop walking just before I run into the wall. He’s dressed in different clothes and I can’t help but appreciate the way his faded navy blue t-shirt molds to his broad, muscular shoulders. Or the way his worn jeans hang low on his narrow waist, accenting the muscular width of his thighs. He was always fit—he played football in high school. He went to France to go to college and study art history, yet he looks like he just worked out the whole time and perfected his already impressive form.
Then my mind catches up and I pause. “Wait a minute, why are you here?”
“Morning to you, too.” He hands me my phone. “You left this here and no one could get in touch with you. Your mom didn’t want you finding your phone and all the missed calls and messages while you were alone. Your dad is in the ER and I’m here to take you up there.”
My heart plummets and my stomach knots. “Oh my God! Does my sister know? Did anyone get in touch with my brother?” I look blankly at my phone, and see the barrage of notifications, then I glance up at Brock to see nothing but concern on his face. “What happened?”
He reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “He had some chest pains. They’re evaluating him. He never lost consciousness or anything and your mom said he was flirting with the EMT’s, so I think he’s probably okay.”
My heart slows enough that the pounding disappears. I intentionally deepen my breathing to calm myself. I will not be helpful at all to my mom if I get to the hospital and I’m in a panic. “I’ve got to get to the hospital.”
Brock hands me a travel coffee mug. “I took a guess at how you like your coffee. Hope it’s okay.”
I nod numbly. “Thanks.”
“I’m not sure if your mom got a hold of Holly or Kris. He’s kinda hard to get in touch with though, isn’t he? He’s still in the military?”
“Yeah, I’ll see if Holly can send him an email. Though maybe I should wait until I know more. No need to worry everyone until we know what we’re dealing with.”
He wraps one of his long arms around my shoulders and guides me to the front door. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”
“That’s your truck,” I say stupidly.
“Yes. We might need a pole-vault to get you up there, Short-stuff.” His voice is teasing, but there is still nothing but honest concern in his eyes.
I realize with alarming clarity that this is not the same Brock who used to tease me in high school, nor the boy I used to play with. This is adult Brock. Man Brock. He’s a stranger to me now, and I’m not really sure what to do with that realization.
He pushes a button on his remote and a running board drops down. I step up on it, but it’s still too low for me to reach the elevated seat.
“Dammit, being short sucks.”
“Maybe it has its perks.” And with that he lifts me up by the waist and sets me into the seat. His hands are so hot I can feel them through the cotton of my shirt. I suck in a breath, but try to not have any other sort of reaction. He does not need to know that he’s the first man to touch me in months.
“Thanks.”
Then he’s in on his side and we’re driving to the hospital.
“He’s still young,” I mumble.
“What?” he asks.
“My dad. He’s still young. I mean I know he’s in his sixties, but that’s not that old.”
Brock reaches over and puts his hand over mine, gives it a squeeze. But he doesn’t move it away, just leaves his giant hand across my much smaller one, and I find the weight and warmth of it incredibly comforting.
“He’s going to be okay,” he says. “When your mom called me, I could hear him laughing in the background.”
The last bits of panic inside me ease and I close my eyes for a moment. “Thanks for waiting for me.” Then I take a sip of the coffee and moan at the sweet, creamy flavor. “This is perfect.”
He glances over with a smile. “You always did like sweet things.”
“Why do you remember that?”
“I remember all kinds of things about you.”
His admission could mean just about anything, but the words—like the coffee—warm me from the inside.
“You’re different than how I remember.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “How’s that?”
“Do you not remember putting frogs in my locker freshman year? And not just any frogs, but all the partially dissected ones from biology lab.” I shudder at the memory. “I had to switch lockers because the formaldehyde smell never would go away.” I glance over at him and he’s unapologetically laughing. Still his hand is over mine. He squeezes me again.
“Or what about the time you dressed up like me for Halloween? You wore that ridiculous Ronald McDonald wig. My hair is not orange.”
He moves his hand from mine, but to wipe the tears leaking from his eyes as he continues to laugh.
“I was such a dick,” he finally says.
“Yes, yes you were.”
“I’m sorry, Gingerbread. I don’t even have an excuse other than to say that I was an idiot. That, and teasing you was the only way to get you to talk to me. Otherwise, it was the cold shoulder as if we’d never known each other. As if we hadn’t spent our childhoods climbing trees and riding our bikes and making plans for our secret clubs.”
I smile because I can’t not when I think about all those memories. I had a great childhood all because of my family, and because of Brock. We used to have so much fun together, then middle school happened.
He only teased me to get me to talk to him? Does he expect me to believe that?
A few minutes later, we get to the hospital and he leads me in. We ask a couple of questions at the front desk and are sent upstairs to cardiac-unit waiting room. While we’re in the elevator, Brock reaches over and grabs my hand, threading our fingers together. I watch the whole thing and can’t take my eyes off our joined hands. What is happening?
Then I think back to all the times he’d held my hand when we were kids. When we’d sit on the sand, after digging for crabs, and we’d just watch the waves roll in and out, he’d hold my hand. When we’d swing on the playground, he’d always hold my hand because if we got out of sync with our swinging it made things more wobbly and fun. His family was very affectionate. Huggers, cheek kissers, you know the types.
He’s just being supportive and friendly. That’s all this is. And the fact that my body is reacting is just confusion because of the emotional roller coaster with worrying about my dad. Also because I haven’t been with anyone since jackass Jeff.
We round the corner and find Brock’s parents sitting in the waiting room.
I drop his hand when I see his mother eyeing us suspiciously.
“Have you heard anything yet?” I ask.
She pulls me into her arms and tears prick at my eyes. See? Hugger. Also, damn moms and their magic tear-inducing hugs.
“He’s okay, sweetie. Causing all kinds of problems back there.” She smiles and there is no worry in her face at all. “They’re running some tests, but they’ve ruled out a heart attack, so that’s good.”
The relief washing through my body is almost too much, and I nearly fall into a seat behind me. I take a sip of the coffee again and relish the surge of sugar and caffeine as it hits my blood stream. I glance over at Brock who has sat beside me. “Thank you for this.” I hold up the travel mug.
He nods.
His dad stands, stretching, and I realize that he looks very much like an older version of Brock. More gray in his hair, a little padding around his middle, but tall and strong with those big man hands.
What in the actual hell is wrong with me that I’m checking out Mr. Daniels’s hands?
“If y’all are going to be here for a while, I think Judy and I will head down to the cafeteria and find some coffee of our own.” He holds his hand out to his wife.
“Yeah, go ahead. Thanks for coming with my mom.”
She squeezes my shoulder as they walk away.
“No heart attack is good,” Brock says in a low voice when we’re alone again.
“Yes, it is.” I’ve got my legs folded up underneath me, and I’m gripping the travel mug with both hands.
“So what happened with us? Why did you suddenly stop being my friend?” he asks.
I turn my head and stare at him, looking for a smile that lets me know he’s kidding. But he’s not smiling. His face is full of sincerity. Damn, he’s pretty. Stupid brown hair that looks soft. Stupid green eyes that remind me of my favorite color. Stupid mouth that isn’t smiling highlighting how perfectly shaped his lips are.
“You really don’t know?”
He shakes his head. “No clue. I know that one day we were friends and the next you ignored me. Or glared at me.”
I blow out a breath. I wasn’t prepared to talk about this today. “Do you remember our first school dance?”
“Eighth grade, right?”
I nod. “We went together. Decided we would just go and laugh at the way people danced. Half an hour into the night, you disappeared to go to the bathroom. The rest of the evening you spent with your face attached to Chelsea’s.” I shrug. “I wasn’t jealous or anything. You just made your choice. The popular crowd picked you and I was the geeky girl with her nose in a book. I didn’t fit into your world anymore.”
His eyes close and he rubs a hand down his face. “I didn’t pick her over you. I still wanted to hang out with you. I wanted your friendship.”
“You didn’t have time for me. Especially once high school started. You had football and your cheerleader princess girlfriend and your ‘bros.’” I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. All water under the proverbial bridge.”
He glances over at me, all sincerity in his features. “I’m sorry, Ginger. If I could do things over again, I would have made different choices” He reaches over and fingers one of the russet-colored ringlets resting on my shoulder. “Think we can start over and be friends again?”
His question makes my heart tighten and I don’t understand what that’s all about. “I’ll consider it,” I tell him.
We sit in silence for a few moments, the buzz of the waiting room television in the background. I can’t see it from this angle, but I can tell that it’s on some twenty-four hour news station.
“You and Chelsea keep in touch while you were in Europe?” It’s been on my mind and I’ve tried not to ask, but we’ve already talked about her now. The seal has been broken, and damn if I don’t want to know if he’s planning to reunite with his high school girlfriend.
He chuckles low. “No. We didn’t exactly leave things on the best of terms.”
“How so?”
“She wanted to go with me. Her parents offered to pay for everything, get us a flat to share and the whole nine yards, but I didn’t want her there. I wanted to go on my own.”
“See the world outside of our small ocean-side town?”
“Exactly. Plus my grandfather had left me money for school. Enough for me to go wherever I wanted. I wanted to follow in his footsteps, study history. Though instead of the American History he loved, I wanted to focus on art history. I knew Chelsea would never understand that. She’d get bored that I wasn’t devoting all my time to her.”
His words warmed me. I’d loved his grandfather and all his cool retelling of the American Revolution and the Civil War. If you can talk about that stuff and catch the interest of a child… yeah he was amazing.
“She came once. To Paris. She thought if I saw her, I’d want her to stay. But I left here for a reason and she was a big part of that. I wanted to be done with high school and the popularity game. People like Chelsea peak in high school. Though she’ll always be financially solvent because of her family, she’ll never truly accomplish anything because she’s still stuck on being the Homecoming Queen.”
I am, admittedly, fascinated by his story. It’s probably not nice of me, but I never did like Chelsea and there’s a twisted part of me that would have enjoyed watching him reject her. “What did you do when she got there?”
“I told her to leave. That I meant it when I ended things with her. She was beyond pissed. We haven’t talked much since. Exchanged a couple of emails, but that’s it. I don’t even know if she knows I’m back in town.”
The thought of that does funny things to my stomach, but I shove it away.
“What about you? What did you do after graduation?”
“Went to college, got my teaching degree, and came back here to teach. That’s basically it.”
“Did you leave a trail of broken hearts in your wake?”
I snort. SNORT! I am hopelessly goofy. “Hardly. I had one boyfriend. His name was Jeff and we were together for three years. But we broke up.”
“Mutual?” he asks.
“Uh, I guess. He thought he should get to continue sleeping with someone else and I disagreed.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. I was naive. Stupid.” I shrug against his shoulder.
He lifts my head briefly to snake his arm around me, and then pulls me back to him. “It’s not naive to assume your partner is being faithful. I’m assuming y’all were sleeping together?”
I sigh. “He was my first.” And only, but I leave that part out.
“You haven’t dated anyone since?”
“I’ve had a handful of first dates, but that’s it. I never seem to click with anyone. I tend to attract older men who have a gross young girl fetish—I guess because I’m short they can pretend I’m younger than I am. Only went out with one to figure that out.” A shudder creeps through me.
The double doors leading back to the examination rooms open and my mom comes out. I jump to my feet and run to her, and she squeezes me tight. She looks over my head and smiles at Brock.
“Thanks for bringing her.”
“Of course. My parents went to get coffee, do you need anything?”
“No, I’m good. Thanks, Brock.”
“So what is going on with Dad, is he okay?”
My mother’s che2eks tint pink and she looks down at the floor. “Evidently he has a minor heart issue that has been undiagnosed thus far, and it interacted poorly with his ED medicine.”
“Fuck,” Brock whispers from behind me.
“ED?”
“Erectile dysfunction,” my mother says looking me straight in the eyes.
I want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. OH. MY. GOD. I’m pretty sure I look like that shocked-face emoji right now. Or maybe the blushing one.
“Now then,” my mom continues as if she did not just talk about my father’s malfunctioning penis and their sex life all in one breath. “Today is the second day of the fundraiser and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to leave here. You know how hospitals are. I need you to handle things for me at the beach.”
My brain isn’t quite working yet because I’m still stuck on the fact that my mother said erectile in front of me and Brock. But I can be mature about this and I pretend the last three minutes didn’t happen. “What’s on the agenda today?”
“It’s the build-a-sandman competition, down on Windsor beach. I’ve already set up everything. Judy can’t help today because she’s got to get all the baking done for the gingerbread competition in two days.”
“Are you sure I can just leave you here? You don’t need me to stay?”
My mom smiles. “No, baby, I’m fine. Promise. And your dad is fine. Though I might kill him if he keeps causing trouble. He’s trying to get the orderlies to coordinate a wheelchair race with the patients.”
Brock barks out a laugh. “That sounds like your dad.”
I ask her about my siblings and she assures me everyone ha
s been notified. Then Brock’s parents return and our moms immediately start in on the plans for the remaining days of the fundraiser.
“We’ve got it under control,” Brock says. Then he’s grabbing my arm and tugging on me.
I let him pull me away and it’s not until we’re in the elevator that everything hits at once. I double over in a fit of the giggles.
“Oh my God, I did not ever need to know that,” I say in between my laughs. I swipe at the tears streaming down my face.
“Me neither,” he agrees. “About your parents. Or anyone’s parents, for that matter.” Then he shrugs. “Though I guess it’s good to know we can have sex well into marriage.”
We.
WE?
We can have sex.
My mind is playing the words on repeat like it’s an old record player stuck on a scratch.
I follow him to his truck, and then suddenly he’s standing really close to me. His six-foot frame towers over me, as I look up into his face. That infernal grin of his. I really wanted to dislike him, but I just can’t. He’s been so great today. Sweet and supportive. He even apologized for some of his high school antics. We both did, I guess. I can’t say that I didn’t play some part in our rift.
“You owe me a kiss,” he said. His eyes dropped to my mouth.
“How do you figure?”
“Twice now you’ve gotten out of it. Last night under the mistletoe.” He ticked off one finger. “Then our sophomore year, you snuck off before our seven minutes in heaven.” He ticked off a second finger.
“First of all, you did kiss me last night. Just not on my lips. As for that stupid kissing game, I didn’t even want to play. And you had a girlfriend.”
“We weren’t together for more than half of that year,” he reminds me. “So you can’t use her as an excuse.”
I just look at him until he raises his brows making it clear he’s still waiting on my answer. “I ran off because I didn’t want my first kiss to be part of some dare.”
He tips my chin up with a nudge of a finger. “That means...”
