The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

by Shirley Jump

  Jack hadn’t. He hadn’t, in fact, decided what to do after last night. It had been a wonderful, amazing, incredible night, and in the warm and cozy glow after sex, he’d made plans for a future with Meri.

  Then he’d gone to bed and realized what he had done. He couldn’t plan a future with Meri. Couldn’t date her. He was the last man in Stone Gap, hell, on planet Earth, who should be falling in love with Eli Delacorte’s cousin.

  Damn it. He’d screwed up again. Why couldn’t he just leave Meri alone?

  Jack headed away from Ray’s, and turned down the wooded path that led back to his cottage. He ducked under a low branch, telling himself it would be good to sit on the porch, have a beer, maybe two, and just wait for this day to end and another to start. Maybe then he could find something to fill the hours of tomorrow and the day after that. The days that he knew would never be filled the way these last two weeks had been. Because Meri was going to leave—and he needed to reconcile himself to that.

  He passed a wide oak tree and his steps stuttered. Every time he took this path, he turned right at the fork instead of left, going toward his cottage instead of toward this place. Every time, except this time. Coincidence? Or some buried masochistic need to keep revisiting the past?

  Jack put a hand on the tree, its base as wide as the trunk of a car, and the memories slammed into him, hard and fast. He was ten years old again, Eli only nine, and they were on an adventure, a quest they’d called it, to build a fort.

  Come on, Jack, hurry up! We gotta get this finished before the storm hits.

  Jack, running after Eli, his father’s too-big tool belt banging hard against his hip and the planks of wood under his arm making his steps lurch to the right. The boys had dropped their wood into a pile, then shimmied up the tree—like two monkeys in the wild, Ray always called them. For an hour, Eli and Jack had hammered and sawed, fashioning a platform in the graceful arch between two large branches. They’d nailed the few remaining stubs of wood into the bark of the oak tree and added a thick knotted rope for a handhold to help them climb up to their new supersecret hideaway.

  When they were done, they’d stayed up in the tree while the rain pattered the platform below them and the leaves above caught the worst of the storm. Every day that summer, he and Eli had come to the tree and climbed up to their fort, adding a tarp the following week, a battered pair of lawn chairs the week after that and a box filled with cans of soda and Twinkies.

  Jack spread his palm across the rough bark of the oak tree, fingers reaching for the first wooden slat, worn down now from years of storms and squirrels. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree.

  This is the best fort ever, Eli had said. I hope it never falls down.

  Eli had gotten his wish, Jack thought. His throat caught, his heart ached, and his fingers gripped the slat, gripped it hard, then, before he could stop himself, he was tearing at it, tugging the wood until the nails gave way and the piece yielded with a protesting creak. Jack flung it at the ground, but seeing the broken piece on the bed of pine needles at his feet only made his heart break.

  “Jack?”

  Meri’s voice, coming at him both like a balm and a flaming arrow. God, why couldn’t she just walk away? Just forget about him once and for all?

  “Leave me alone, Meri. Just leave me alone.” He waited, his head against the tree, for the crunch of leaves beneath her feet.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Jack. I left the party and came here. To see you.”

  He closed his eyes and fought the ache in his gut. How he wanted to have her in his arms, to have her in his life. But then he rounded back to square one again, the place where he was the one who let her cousin die, and he couldn’t find a way to fashion some fairy-tale ending. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Meri. I think we should just...end it here.”

  Silence. Long, cold silence. “End it here?”

  “You’re going back to New York, and dating or anything like that would just be impossible. I’m not a commitment kind of guy, and I’d hate to lead you on and make you think this meant something.” The words ripped at his throat, but far better for her to think he was an ass than to know the truth. “I’m sorry.”

  Jack told himself it was best this way, like ripping off a Band-Aid. Yeah, if that was so, then why did it feel more like he had severed a limb?

  There was no crunch of leaves. No receding footsteps. He spun around to see her still there.

  “I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Why? Why are you still here? Why are you even still in Stone Gap? Your grandfather is doing better, you’re back to taking pictures, why haven’t you gone back to New York?”

  “Because I haven’t finished healing yet,” she said softly. She came up beside him, and put a hand on his shoulder. “And neither have you.”

  He shrugged off her touch. “I’m fine.”

  “You are far from fine. I hear it in your voice when you lash out at me. I see it in the way you try not to connect with anyone. Your family, my grandfather, me. Yet at the same time, I see this longing in your face, for the people you love. You are building walls as fast as you can, while a part of you is still trying to tear them down. Like last night, those walls came down, but now they’re back with a vengeance.”

  Damned if she didn’t analyze him with the precision of a sniper. “Why are you here?”

  “Honestly? Because I haven’t given up hope on you yet.” She reached out, as if she was going to touch him, then lowered her hand at the last second. “We both have scars, Jack. The only difference is, people can see mine. Yours are deep inside and if you don’t tend to them, they will harden and spread until you can’t find the man you used to be anymore.”

  “He’s been gone for a long time, Meri.”

  “I think he’s still there.” She ran a hand through her hair, resettling the blond waves along her shoulders. “I’ve seen him dozens of times over the last couple of weeks. In the way you take care of my grandpa, the way you watch out for your father, and...in the way you look at me.”

  He tore his gaze away. “You’re wrong.”

  “I think you’re scared, Jack. Terrified of letting people know you aren’t perfect. That you screw up and you fail, just like the rest of us.” She took a step closer and slid her hand into his. “Failure is liberating, Jack. Admitting you aren’t perfect sets you free.”

  He scoffed. “It’s not as easy as that.”

  “It is.” Her green eyes met his, true and earnest, and full of a belief he didn’t feel. “You just have to let go and trust that the people who love you will catch you when you fall.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  People who loved him? People like...Meri?

  Jack did not dare to ask, because if she said yes, then he would have to do something about that information. Something like admit how he felt about her. Something like build a relationship with her.

  A relationship that would be built on lies and secrets.

  Meri stepped over to the tree, looked up at the wooden boards nestled between the branches, then back at Jack. “This is the fort you built with Eli.”

  Jack nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.

  “I remember when you guys built that. And you wouldn’t let me up there because I was a girl. So I ran ahead of you and Eli and climbed up the rope—” she gave the knotted line a little swat and it swung back and forth “—then pulled it up with me so you two couldn’t follow.”

  “And you ate every last one of our Twinkies.”

  She grinned. “That’s what you got for telling me I couldn’t go up there.” Then she sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “I miss Eli so much. Every time I turn around, I expect him to come walking into Grandpa Ray’s, raiding the refrigerator and messing up my hair.”

  It was Jack’s
fault that Eli wasn’t ever going to walk into Ray’s kitchen again. It was Jack’s fault that Eli would never climb this tree or sit in that fort again. It was Jack’s fault that Meri was missing him, and always would.

  Jack tore away from the tree, stumbling over the slat of wood on the ground. “I have to go.”

  “Wait. Don’t go yet. I need your help.”

  The last word paused his step. “Help? I can’t help you, Meri.” I can barely help myself.

  “You just have to stand there. That’s all I need.”

  He pivoted back to her. “Stand here?”

  “And let me take your picture.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because...” She fiddled with the camera around her neck. “I don’t have any pictures of you. Not a single one. And no matter what happens, I want to remember you, just like this, in these woods where we all grew up.”

  He never should have gotten close to Meri again. Never should have slept with her. Even when he tried to drive her away, she stayed in his life, the only thing sweet and good—and the one thing he didn’t deserve.

  “I’m not really...”

  “Just stay right there.” She put up a palm. “Give me a second. Please, Jack?”

  He shifted his weight. He should leave, go home. But his feet refused to move. “Okay.”

  She squinted through the eyepiece, adjusted the lens, then snapped a photo. Another. Turned the camera ninety degrees, took another. Stepped back, refocused, then took a fourth, a fifth. “Great shot,” she said. “Lean against the tree, would you?”

  He did as she asked, because he couldn’t seem to find the strength to walk away, to end it once and for all. He watched her work, her face a mask of concentration, her pale pink dress puddling on the ground when she crouched. She asked him to bend down, rest one elbow on his knee, and prop his chin on his hand. Although he felt like someone pretending to be modeling for a JCPenney catalog, he did as she asked.

  Meri’s smile bloomed wider and wider on her face with each image. She was enjoying this, finding her rhythm. And he was enjoying watching her, as much as he knew he should let her go.

  After a while, Meri lowered the camera. “Okay, I’m done torturing you.”

  He got to his feet and brushed the leaves off his shorts and legs. “It wasn’t torture.”

  “I’ve been on the other side of that lens. I know how torturous it can be.” She cocked her head and studied him. “You know, you should try it.”

  “Try what?” Try leaving, that’s what he should do, but once again, his feet refused to bow to common sense.

  “Seeing how the world looks through a lens. It changes things somehow.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing’s going to change my view.”

  She lifted the camera off her neck and held it out to him. “You won’t know unless you try.”

  He backed up, warding her off. “Meri—”

  “You said all you see when you look out there is death and danger and hell.” She lifted the Nikon in his direction. The glassy lens caught the sun and winked at him. “Maybe if you change the way you’re looking at the world, Jack, the images you see will change, too.”

  The oak tree’s shade spread over them in a wide, dark circle. A breeze fluttered through the woods and caught on the edge of the tattered tarp, flapping it in the wind. Was that a message from Eli? If so, Jack couldn’t read it.

  “I should leave,” Jack said. Maybe if he said it enough times his feet would finally obey his brain.

  “Just try, Jack.” She moved the Nikon closer. “Once. That’s all I ask.”

  He hesitated, then realized she wasn’t going to give up, so he took the camera from her and peeked through the viewfinder. “All I see is a lot of green.”

  “You need to focus.” She slid into place behind his right shoulder, reaching past him to guide the zoom back, widening the image before him. That cherry-almond perfume wafted up to tease him, lure him closer. “There. Try again.”

  He sighed and looked through the viewfinder a second time. The oak tree’s bark filled the screen and Jack’s vision blurred.

  “Tell me, what do you see?”

  “A tree,” he barked. Why was he doing this? It was pointless. Wasn’t going to change a damned thing. Yet even as he resisted, a part of him—the part that was still searching for peace and still believed in the impossible—held on, wanting Meri to be right.

  A gentle hand on his arm, her voice soft against his ear. “Look some more.”

  He let out a breath and did what Meri asked. He shifted to the right, then concentrated on what he saw through the glass of the lens.

  A spindly sapling, struggling for light and real estate among the thicker, ancient oaks that dominated this stretch of woods. A few ferns, content to live in the shadows at the base of the trees, spreading their leafy dark green fronds like aunts offering hugs. A squirrel darting among the ferns in a flash of brown fur and a flick of a bushy tail.

  “What do you see?” Meri asked softly.

  A white butterfly fluttered in the undergrowth, then flitted out of his line of sight. A shadowy pile of leaves against a fallen log covered a shadowed entrance for a rabbit or a squirrel. Dark green leaves hugged the head of a flower, about to bud any day, its lilac petals straining against the protective confines.

  “Beauty,” he whispered. “I see...beauty.”

  “That’s what I see, too, Jack. True beauty, not the manufactured kind.” She was crouched beside him, her presence a calming blanket. “Take a picture.”

  “How do I...”

  She put a finger on top of the camera. “Press that button.”

  “But if it comes out all blurry or something, won’t that mess you up?”

  She laughed. “Photography is an art, and art is messy. It doesn’t matter if it’s blurry or if you take five hundred pictures of the same leaf. The important thing is that you have fun with it.”

  It took him several shots—okay, maybe two dozen—before the organized, regimented side of Jack let go and he began to snap a picture of whatever took his fancy. He turned the camera this way and that, zoomed in and out, aimed high, aimed low. When he tired of the landscape, he turned toward Meri and took a picture of her.

  She giggled. “What are you doing?”

  “Photographing a beautiful woman.” He gestured toward her. “Stay there. The light is perfect. It makes your whole face glow.”

  She swung her hair over her cheek, covering the scar. “Okay.”

  He stepped forward and brushed the hair back behind her ear, just as he had that day in the grocery store. “You are beautiful the way you are, Meri.”

  “This isn’t beautiful, Jack. It’s a scar.”

  “Don’t you understand, Meri? Scars show you have survived a battle.” He trailed his finger along the mark that had changed Meri, made her better, stronger. “In the military, they’re like a badge of honor because scars say you weren’t afraid to dive into the fray and stand up for those you cared about, and for what was right.”

  “I didn’t dive into a fray or fight a battle. I was attacked. Simply for being on the wrong street at the wrong time.”

  “You fought back, though, didn’t you? And you survived. And you drove into this town among these people who thought you were nothing more than a grown-up Barbie doll, and you didn’t cover up or look away or hide. You were proud and strong and pretty damned amazing.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t been strong. I have been kind of hiding here at Grandpa’s. Trying to get my crap together so that I can go back to the life I had. Or find the next life I want.”

  “And what is in that life you want?”

  A soft smile stole over her face, the kind that said she had dreams, hopes, wishes—all the things that Jack had left behind
on that battlefield. In that moment, he was jealous as hell of Meri.

  “I want to live in a place where I am surrounded by beauty so exquisite that all I want to do is take pictures all day. A place where there are people who love each other, and people I love. A place where...I fit in.”

  “Sounds a lot like Stone Gap to me.”

  She let out a chuff. “I’ve never fit in here. I never became what my mother expected, what this town expected...”

  “You’re even better than I expected.”

  She grinned. “You’re just buttering me up. Probably for another dare.”

  “Not at all.” He paused for a second, then put up a finger. “But I do reserve the right to use that toward another naked dare in the very near future.”

  God, he couldn’t stop himself. Thirty minutes ago he’d been breaking up with her, ending their relationship forever. And now he was thinking about taking her skinny-dipping again, talking about a future. A future he had no right to offer but that didn’t stop him from craving it, needing it. Needing her.

  “Okay, that’s it.” She giggled again. “The picture taking has warped your brain. Give it back to the professional.”

  He laid the camera in her outstretched palm, but didn’t let go right away. “My brain might be warped, but I know you. You have changed, for the better, and this town would be lucky to have you living here, putting up pictures that remind people to see the world can be a beautiful place.”

  It could also be an ugly place, a horrible, terrible ugly place, but he refused to let that little dose of reality tarnish this moment in the woods with the sun kissing Meri’s features.

  “Why, Jack Barlow. You sound almost romantic.”

  “You must have me confused with my charmer brother, Luke.”

  “I’ve never confused you with your brothers. Or any other man.” Her eyes met his for one long, hot second, then she looked away. “Let me just grab a couple more shots, then I’ll let you go wherever you were going.”