The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

by Shirley Jump

  Trust me. Such a loaded statement. For a second, he wanted to tell her not to trust him, that he wasn’t a man anyone should rely on. But then he reminded himself it was just fishing. A couple hours puttering around the lake in a boat. Nothing more.

  She placed a tentative foot on the bottom of the skiff, lifted her other foot, then let out a little squeal when the boat rocked. He reached his free hand up to catch hers. She gripped him tight, then regained her balance and lowered her body to the bench seat. “That’s harder than it looks.”

  “Harder than pirouetting around a stage in five-inch heels?”

  “You liked those heels quite a lot, if I remember right.”

  Holy hell, yes, he’d liked those heels she wore when they’d been teenagers. Meri had been the only girl he knew in Stone Gap who wore sky-high heels that made her long legs look five miles longer and accented every inch of her curves. Too bad heels weren’t appropriate footwear for fishing.

  He pushed off from the dock, then pulled the cord on the outboard motor and slowly guided the skiff from the shore to the center of the lake. “I liked those heels only because they made you as tall as me.”

  Liar.

  “And here I thought it was because you liked how they made my legs look in a bathing suit.”

  He grinned. “That was just a bonus.”

  She splashed water at him. He tried to dodge the spray, and ended up rocking the boat dangerously close to tipping into the lake, which had her squealing again and splashing him a second time. Jack laughed.

  The laugh felt good. Really good. Maybe going on this fishing trip wasn’t such a bad idea, after all.

  Wispy clouds muted the sun’s rays and drifted lazy trails across the sky. The water glistened, darkening as the boat motored toward the murky, deep center of Stone Gap Lake. It being a weekday, the lake was relatively quiet, with only a few other boats dotting the vast blue surface. A heron flew overhead, its long gangly body settling into gracefulness when it landed on the far bank.

  “It’s beautiful out here.” Meri leaned back on the bench and turned her face to greet the sun. “So peaceful.”

  Peace. It wasn’t something Jack knew or, hell, remembered. But out here with Meri, in the quiet murky blue of the lake, he began to wonder if perhaps he could find peace again. It seemed to linger at the fringes of his mind, just out of grasp. Maybe if he tried harder, reached farther, he’d snatch a few minutes of it here, with her.

  Jack turned off the motor and grabbed one of the rods. “So are we gonna fish?”

  “Do we have to?” She grinned at him. “I could just work on my tan.”

  “Go right ahead. It’ll look great on your naked butt when you dive overboard into the lake.” Jack picked a worm out of the bait container, slid it on the hook, then dropped the line over the side of the boat.

  “Wait. I have to do that with the worm?”

  He nodded. “It’s not hard, just a little gross. It’s best to thread it through the hook a couple times. You can’t just hang it over the hook and hope for the best.”

  “Thread it through?” She blanched, then seemed to find some well of resolve inside herself. “Right. Okay. Give me a rod and the bait.”

  Jack did as she asked, then sat back to watch her. He thought for sure that Meri would girl out and hand him the worm and hook, but instead she surprised him, by baiting her own hook just as he had, then dropping the line on the other side of the boat from his. “I am impressed.”

  “It wasn’t exactly hard to do. Just gross, like you said. Honestly, I didn’t think I could do it.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I asked you to come along partly to bait the hook if I wimped out.”

  Jack chuckled. “I haven’t met too many women who bait their own hook. Scratch that. The women I know who do bait their own hooks and take their own fish off the line also chew tobacco and drink moonshine.”

  She laughed. “You do not seriously know any women who are like that, do you?”

  “Hey, this is Stone Gap. Pickin’s are slim.”

  That made her laugh even more, and that, Jack decided, was a good thing. For the first time in a long damned time, being around the sound of laughter didn’t give him that anxious feeling, as though he was in a crowd he didn’t belong to.

  “So, what possessed you to buy a can of worms and go fishing today?”

  “I’m on a mission to do all the things I missed out on when I was doing pageants. I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since I left Stone Gap. Now I want to go fishing, camping—”

  “Skinny-dipping?”

  She laughed. “Sorry, Jack, that didn’t make the list.”

  “Then you better catch more fish than I do. Don’t forget our bet.”

  She pshawed. “Easy peasy.” She shifted the rod in her hands. “Okay, so now what do I do?”

  “You wait.”

  “How long?”

  He chuckled. “You really have never fished before?”

  “Do you know what kind of coronary my mother would have had if I came home smelling of bait or with a cut on my hand from some wayward hook? No, never fishing. The closest I ever got was swimming in the lake whenever I could sneak off to Grandpa Ray’s.”

  “And whenever you tagged along with us and caught crawdads in the creek.” He’d been twelve, Meri had been nine, almost ten. She’d sneaked out of the house, still wearing her pink-and-white church dress and little white shoes so shiny they reflected the sun like spotlights. Meri had clambered down the root-riddled path with Eli and Jack, her hair tangling with leaves and errant branches. She’d shied away from actually getting in the water, letting the boys do all the crawdad catching. Jack had dropped one into her palm, expecting her to scream and run away, but instead she’d beamed up at him as if he’d given her a pot of gold.

  “That was a great day,” Meri said. “Even if I got grounded for a month.”

  “A month?”

  She shrugged, as if it was no big deal, but to Jack, it seemed a pretty severe punishment for ruining a Sunday dress. “You didn’t notice I was gone that long?”

  “I was twelve. I didn’t notice girls at all back then. It wasn’t until I was older that I noticed when you were gone.”

  “You did?”

  A simple two-word question. He could be flip and toss back some kind of sarcastic retort, then get back to the fishing. But something about the day and the sunshine and the peace of it had wedged an opening in the shell Jack had kept around himself for the past year. “Yeah, I did. A lot.”

  She jiggled the line and kept her gaze on the water. “You never wrote after you went off to the military.”

  “I thought it was better that way.” Especially after his first tour. He’d been sending letters home before that, looking forward to the letters back, but after a while he ran out of things to say. Ways to pretend that Afghanistan wasn’t a hellhole and a half.

  “I thought you forgot all about me.” She said me with a lilt of a tease at the end, but the sentence held an edge of truth and hurt.

  He couldn’t blame her. Their breakup had been swift and unexpected. He could still see Meri standing there in his father’s garage, staring at him, shocked, hurt, not understanding why he had ended their relationship the day before he shipped out. At the time, he didn’t have the words to make her understand.

  “I didn’t forget about you, Meri,” Jack said.

  Their gazes met and a heartbeat passed between them, then another. “I didn’t forget about you either, Jack. I wondered about you a thousand times. How you were doing, if you were back home. Eli said he was with you for a while—”

  “You talked to Eli?”

  “I wrote to him while he was overseas. You know Eli, though. He was never very good at keeping in touch. He’d send me an email once in a while, a letter
one time, and that was about it. I wrote to him all the time, though.”

  “I know.”

  As soon as Jack said the words, he wished he had kept his mouth shut. But in his mind, he had seen the pale blue stationery in Eli’s hands, and felt that odd curdle of envy all over again. Every time he’d seen Eli with one of Meri’s letters, it made him think of North Carolina’s glorious skies, the way the blue seemed to stretch forever. He thought of the summer he’d dated Meri, before he’d shipped off to boot camp, and the time they had lain on the float in the lake and watched delicate clouds take a languid march across the sun. In his mind, those were the years when everything was perfect and simple, and when he saw Meri’s letters to Eli, he’d had a bone-deep ache for that simplicity.

  “I’m glad Eli was with you,” Meri said. “He told me once how scared he was and that when he got transferred to your unit, he was glad to have someone he knew and trusted there. Made him feel safer. Thank you for that, Jack. I know it made it easier on him.”

  Eli hadn’t been safe at all, Jack wanted to scream. Not safe for a second. Eli, that trusting, happy-go-lucky fool who had made everyone in the truck laugh five seconds before the light exploded in front of them. The light first, then the boom, then...

  Jack was stuck in the middle of the damned lake. No easy escape. No back door. No way to avoid the memories, the pain, those questions in Meri’s eyes. Damn it. He should have known, should have seen the situation before he’d climbed into this stupid boat.

  “Were you and Eli still together when he—” her eyes filled and Jack wanted to stab himself in the heart “—when he died?”

  Goddamn. Why did Meri have to be the one to ask that question? If there was anyone in the world who’d loved Eli as much as Jack, it was Meri. Eli had been Jack’s best friend, but to Meri, her cousin had been the closest thing to a brother.

  “I...” The truth shredded his heart and chest, took away his breath. He worked his mouth, but no more sounds came out.

  I killed him, Meri.

  She sat across from him, with that trusting, inquisitive look in her eyes. The same look that had been in Eli’s eyes the day he walked into Jack’s camp and realized Jack would be his commanding officer.

  I killed him, Meri.

  Jack tried again but the words lodged hard in his gut, a lead weight that Jack was sure was heavy enough to bring him and the boat and Meri to the bottom of Stone Gap Lake. How could he tell her? How could he possibly speak those words?

  “Meri, I—”

  “Oh! I got a bite!” She turned to the rod and started reeling in the line. “I got one!”

  Jack shifted gears, grateful as hell for the fish that had chosen that moment to take the bait. He forced the memories to the back of his mind and focused on the fishing line, on the reel, on the excitement in Meri’s face. “Slow and easy,” he told her. “Don’t rush it. You don’t want to pull the hook out of his mouth.” She flicked a questioning glance at him. “Yup, that’s it. You got it, Meri.”

  The reel clicked as the line rolled back onto the brass barrel. Tension tightened the line, bowed the rod, heightened the air. But then a second later, the bend in the rod gave way and it sprang up again. “Damn,” Meri said. “I think I lost him.”

  “That’s okay. It happens. Where there’s one there’s always another.”

  “Plenty of fish in the sea, huh?”

  He pulled her line into the boat and slid another worm onto the hook. Focusing on the fishing brought him back to the edge of peace again.

  Once Meri’s line was set, he checked his own. His worm was looking a little worse for wear, but was still tethered to the hook, so he dropped it back into the water. “Speaking of fish in the sea, how come you never got married?”

  She swung her rod over to the other side of the boat and released the gossamer line, watching the silver hook disappear into the dark depths of the lake. “I could say because I haven’t met Mr. Right, but that’s not really it. I guess it’s because I spent enough years of my life fulfilling someone else’s expectations. I didn’t need a ring on my finger to sentence me to more of that.”

  “Not all marriages are like that.”

  She arched a brow. “I don’t see a ring on your finger, Mr. Expert.”

  He jiggled his rod, avoiding her gaze. “I just haven’t met the right woman.”

  “You mean one who will put up with your faults.”

  “I don’t have any faults.” He grinned. “Just ask my mother. She thinks I’m perfect.”

  “She is hopelessly biased. You, my friend, have a very long list of faults.” She rested her pole against the side of her leg and began ticking them off on her fingers. “You have terrible taste in music—”

  “Lots of people happen to think AC/DC is a great band.”

  “You have matching issues.”

  “Matching issues?”

  “Sweetheart, I hate to tell you, but camo doesn’t go with red.”

  The sweetheart made his pulse skip. The boat seemed small, tight, intimate. He leaned toward her, making the boat rock a bit and their bodies wave toward each other for a second. “Honey, I hate to tell you, but everything goes with camo. That’s why it’s short for camouflage.”

  “So now you’re a fashion expert?”

  He laughed. “That is entirely your department. I’m just an expert in good ol’ Southern boy apparel.”

  “Well, you do have that Southern boy thing down pat.” She gave him a coy, flirty look.

  “How’s that?”

  “You have that drawl when you say honey.” She shivered and Jack wondered if his words had made her do that. “Not to mention, you have that way of looking at a woman that...”

  “That what?” he asked. “Honey?”

  Her chest rose and fell. Her green eyes darkened. “That way of looking at a woman that...makes her feel like she’s the only woman in the world.”

  “And do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Feel like the only woman in the world?”

  He wanted to know—no, needed to know. Did she want him as much as he wanted her? Did that kiss they’d shared—so hot, so short—haunt her dreams, leave her tossing and turning at night?

  Jack’s pole, forgotten on the bottom of the boat, gave a jerk. Meri waved toward it. “You’ve, uh, got one on your line, Jack.”

  For a second, he thought she meant he’d hooked her, but then the reel skittered across the metal bottom of the boat and the intelligence light went on in his brain. Oh, duh. A fish. The whole reason they were here today.

  He gave a quick jerk, setting the hook in the fish’s mouth, then reeled it in, slow and steady. A minute later, a nice five-pound bass flopped around on the floor. “That’s one for me. And, uh...absolutely zero for you.” He grinned. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  From far off, the rumble of thunder announced an incoming summer storm. The clouds began to darken and crowd the sky, blotting out the sun. The wind shifted from a soft breeze to a strong, angry gust. “I remember our bet, Jack,” Meri said. “But there’s a storm coming in. We should get back.”

  “You’re not chickening out, are you?”

  “Of course not.” She raised her chin a notch. “You think I’m afraid to let you see me naked?”

  “I sure hope not.” In those short shorts and that damnable vest, she looked silly and sexy all at the same time. He imagined her shedding the fishing vest, shimmying out of the shorts, then standing to tug the tank top over her head. “Are you afraid to get naked with...uh, in front of me?”

  “Certainly not. I’m just worried about poor Bert here.”

  “Bert?”

  “The fish.”

  It took him a second to remember the bass on the floor of the boat. “You named the fish? First r
ule of fishing, Meri—don’t name dinner.” He propped the pole against the side of his seat and reached for the hook.

  “Oh, don’t cook him, Jack. Let him go back to his family. They’re probably worried about him.”

  Jack didn’t bother to explain that fish had about as many brain cells as worms, and he doubted any of the fish in Stone Gap Lake were worried about the fate of this one small bass. At his feet, the fish was beginning to panic, flopping faster now, its gills working furiously to find water and oxygen. The bass’s eyes were wide and glassy, watching him. But instead of the fish, Jack saw Eli’s eyes, filling with panic and the certain knowledge that death’s long dark arm was reaching for him.

  Jack sat on the hard metal bench in the skiff, immobile. His mind was back in the dusty landscape of Afghanistan, surrounded by thick smoke and twisted metal and panicked screams. Eli, I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.

  “He’s scared, Jack.” Meri’s voice, seeming to come from a thousand miles away. “Let him go. Quick, before he dies.”

  Get it together, soldier. Do something, damn it.

  “Jack? Did you hear me? Seriously, I feel bad now. I know it’s just a fish, but can we please not cook him?”

  Just a fish. One of thousands in this lake, one of dozens he had caught over the years. It wasn’t Eli. Was. Not. Eli.

  Jack closed his eyes. Opened them again. The bass’s tail flopped again, then slowed, as if the fish was giving up, giving in to the oxygen-deprived end.

  “Come on, buddy,” Jack said, working the hook out of the bass’s mouth before reaching under the fish to scoop him up. Jack tipped his palms toward the lake and the bass slid down and into the water.

  The fish lay still for a moment, and Jack’s heart clutched. Too late, he’d been too late.

  Then there was a flicker, a hard right with the tail and the fish was gone in a glimmer of blue-green that shimmered for a moment on the surface, then darted deep into the dark water below.

  Meri reached for Jack’s hand. “You’re a fish hero, Jack Barlow.”