1983: Cruel Summer (Love in the 80s #4)

by Amber Lynn Natusch

I took a deep breath and made my way over to him, careful not to trip on the blanket covering the truck bed. Crouching down in front of him, I scooted back against him, resting against his chest. His strong arms wrapped around me, holding me close.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered in my ear as the movie started.

  “Me too.”

  An hour and a half later, I couldn’t have told you a thing about the movie I’d just seen. I’d watched it. I’d heard it. But nothing seemed to register in my mind. I was too aware of all things Braxton at the time to care. How amazing he smelled. The rise and fall of his chest as it pressed against my back. The feel of his head resting against mine. The sound of my name on his lips.

  Everything between us truly had changed overnight.

  And it was for the better.

  “So where to now?” he asked as I stood up to stretch.

  “Sadly, home. I promised my parents I wouldn’t be out late tonight.”

  “Tightening the leash, are they?”

  “Something like that. They think I’m acting strangely. Mom overheard part of my conversation with Shawn—”

  “The break-up call?”

  “Yep. That one. They think it’s weird that I’m so okay about it. Dad grilled me for about an hour after I’d hung up with Shawn. And he made a funny face when I said I was going out with you. I tried to save face and say it was so that you could cheer me up, but…”

  “He saw right through that lie?”

  “I guess so. At the very least, he doubted it.”

  “Would going out with me really be the worst thing ever? After all this time of being friends?”

  “You know how he is, Brax. It took him a long time to allow Shawn to go out with me. I wouldn’t expect special treatment if I were you.”

  “Well, if you need to go home, then I’ll take you home. No biggie. I can play your father’s games if need be.”

  He stood up and jumped out of the truck bed, then helped me down. I walked around to the passenger side and climbed in while he shut the tailgate. Once he joined me inside the cab, he looked over at me and just stared for a moment. Then I felt his hand touch mine, holding it in a way he never had before.

  “You know you mean everything to me, right?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I nodded in response. He held onto me for a second or two longer, then let go and fired up the old diesel.

  It only took ten minutes to drive back to my parents’ home. The lights were mostly off, except for their bedroom upstairs. When we pulled into the driveway, they turned them off. They’d been waiting up for me as they always did. They were slightly paranoid that way.

  Braxton cut the engine once he parked, not wanting the noise to disturb them. I sat there, trying to think of something to say to him before I left that could accurately reflect just how amazing it’d been going out with him. I fidgeted with the edge of my shirt until I had it—the perfect thing to tell him. But when I looked up, he leaned in toward me and buried his hand in my hair. His lips were on mine, kissing me slowly, but not gently. The pressure of them made my whole body tingle in a way it never had before. I didn’t want him to stop.

  He slid across the bench seat and caught my face with his other hand, pulling me toward him. The pace of our kiss had quickened, and with every second, we seemed more and more consumed by it. We were breathing hard, scrambling to get a better grasp on one another. I was sure we’d have looked like two fumbling novices to an observer, but to me, in that moment, it was brutally hot. I wanted his hands and his mouth all over me. I wanted to lie down right there and let him have the one thing I’d joked about not giving him only hours earlier. Braxton made it hard to think clearly.

  I loved that about him.

  “Izzy…no,” Braxton said, pulling me from my momentary bliss. It was then that I realized I hadn’t only been thinking about lying down in his truck, but actually doing it, pulling him down on top of me. “Not here. Not like this. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like your thinking, but—”

  “You’re right,” I said, exhaling hard. “I just…I got carried away.”

  He smiled wide.

  “I have that effect on the ladies.”

  I groaned. His smile grew further.

  “Apparently I have that effect on them too.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Brax. You really are.”

  “You’ll learn more about that soon,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose. “It might be the only thing you don’t already know.”

  “Then I look forward to it.”

  “See you tomorrow? Maybe we can just hang out? Do some homework?”

  “Sounds great. Give me a call when you want to come over.”

  “I will,” he said, leaning away from me. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I hesitated for a minute, not really wanting to get out of his truck even though I knew I had to.

  “Goodnight,” I said, leaning in to kiss him. “I know mine was.”

  “Goodnight, Izzy.”

  I hopped out of his truck and closed the door, then made my way up the driveway to the house. Like a gentleman, he waited to make sure I got in okay before driving away. I watched him disappear down the road and sighed to myself. I knew I wouldn’t sleep easily that night. The memory of his lips on mine would see to that.

  The next morning I rolled out of bed feeling like I’d been run over by a Mack truck. I sat up, waiting to see if the world would spin or not, and was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t. Puking had been the best possible outcome the previous night. It made me feel far less sick, even though I was still hungover.

  Knowing I needed food, I schlepped my way downstairs to the kitchen to see what I could find. I was pretty sure there was still some cereal in the pantry. It sounded horrible, but I needed something in my churning stomach.

  When I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I looked into the living room and found an unexpected sight. Braxton was curled up on the couch, a blanket too short for his long frame awkwardly wrapped around him. Sleeping peacefully, he reminded me of the boy I used to love. The one I cared for more than any other.

  The one who broke my heart.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, calming the emotions rising within me. We were past that now, I told myself. And I almost believed it. Almost.

  When I opened them, I found him staring back at me, a world of unspoken words burning in his eyes.

  “I was going to get some food. Do you want some?”

  He sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands, leaning his elbows down on his knees.

  “I’d rather talk about last night if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Breakfast it is!”

  I walked past the living room to the connecting kitchen and started rifling through the pantry to find something edible. I could hear Braxton’s footsteps against the marble floor, but I tried to ignore what I knew was coming. Damn, that boy could be pigheaded sometimes.

  He stopped my hand as I reached for a box of granola on the top shelf, and pulled me around to face him.

  “I never meant to hurt you, Izzy. I know you don’t believe that, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And I don’t care if you want to spend the rest of your life punishing me for what I did, but I need you to stop punishing yourself over it.” His bright green eyes bore holes right into me as he stared down at me. The intensity of his stare was too much to take, and I tried to walk away from him. This time, he had no intentions of letting me. “I know Jason hurt you too, but you can’t act out and expect to make things better. You’re only going to make things worse that way.”

  “Jason is a cheating asshole, Braxton. One that I’m not certain really ever loved me. I think he saw an opportunity our senior year and he took it. And I let him. I used him as much as he used me. He didn’t hurt me. He opened my eyes.”

  “Open, my ass,” he shot back at me.

  “What exactly are you upset about, Braxton? You don�
��t have anything to worry about. I thought I told you we were good?”

  “You did. And then you pulled that stunt last night, Iz. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re hurt. You should be. What Jason did to you was horrible. You should want to lash out at him, but last night…that was too much. That wasn’t just about Jason.”

  “That was years of me hating this town, Braxton. Not you. Not everything is about you, you know that?”

  “That’s true, Iz, but I think this is, which is why you’re going to stand here and let me explain, whether you like it or not. What you do after that is entirely up to you.”

  “The hell I am.” I tried to wrench my arm from his hand but his grip only tightened, just enough to keep me from running away.

  “I meant everything I told you at the quarry that day after Homecoming, Izzy. Everything. And the night we had together is still one of the best of my life.” He refused to break eye contact with me, which only made me squirm more. I wanted to escape what was about to happen there in my parents’ kitchen more than anything. As long as I’d always wanted to know what happened, the thought of hearing something I didn’t like made me never want to know. Seeing my obvious fear, he tried a different tactic. “What do you think happened, Iz? Why do you think things went down the way they did?”

  “I heard rumors…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you knocked Tara up before Homecoming.”

  “That’s what she told me, yes.”

  “Was it true?”

  “No. she lied. I’d broken up with her after the dance. I knew I couldn’t be with her anymore—that I had to try to be with you because you were all I really wanted. Her telling me she was knocked up was her attempt to keep me.”

  “She had to know that you’d find out,” I pointed out, anger in my voice.

  “She told me weeks later that she’d miscarried, but I’d figured out she was lying long before that.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “How, Izzy? How do I tell you that I love you one second and then tell you that I might have to marry some girl that I don’t love because I did something stupid?”

  “That’s weak, Braxton, and you know it. You could have come to me the second you knew she was lying. You could have told me everything.”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I came to your house three days after I found out. I wanted to tell you then. I tried to sneak into your room like I used to, but when I looked in your window, I saw you sobbing on the floor next to ripped up pictures of you and me and I knew… I knew it was too late. That you’d never forgive me.”

  “Then tell me something. What did you do for those three days before you came? Hmmm? Did you enjoy just leaving me to wonder what I’d done wrong? Why you wouldn’t return my calls? Why you’d just left me hanging?”

  He swallowed hard, his jaw clenched tightly. There was an edge to him that I couldn’t quite place. A reluctance to answer that I didn’t understand.

  “I freaked out, Izzy.”

  “That’s your excuse? You freaked out? Really? After three years, that’s what I get?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped you in the face.”

  “I freaked out, Iz. I don’t know what else I can tell you. I left your driveway that night on cloud nine, then I came home to Tara’s angry father standing in my living room with my parents, Tara crying on the couch, and I felt like someone yanked the world out from under my feet. I went from the highest high to the lowest low. I couldn’t even begin to process it all. And even in the face of possibly being a daddy in a few months, all I could think about was how you were going to feel when you found out. I know how this town is. The second she started to show, everyone would be talking about it.”

  “So your solution was to not tell me? To let me find out with everyone else?”

  “What could I say, Izzy?” he shouted, pulling away from me to stalk across the kitchen. “That I fucked up royally? That I’m the useless shit my dad knew I’d be? As useless as he was? I could barely face myself, let alone you. Maybe if things between us hadn’t changed I could have come to you, but after Homecoming? No way. I couldn’t stand to have seen the disappointment in your eyes.”

  “So ignoring me entirely was your solution?”

  “No.” He stopped on the far side of the room, his back facing me, his head hung low. “Tara told me that if I didn’t stay away from you that she’d never let me see the baby.”

  I inhaled sharply. All Braxton had ever wanted was to be a better father to his children than his had been to him. Losing custody of a child would have been about the worst thing that could have ever happened to him. Suddenly, his reasons started to make sense.

  “Braxton, that—”

  “I came that night to tell you, so I could avoid what happened, but the damage was already done. I figured I should just leave well enough alone. Everything I touched seemed to go to shit. I didn’t want to somehow make it all worse.”

  “But she lied,” I said softly. He turned to face me, the sadness in his eyes almost painful to see.

  “And by then, it had been three months, Iz. Jason had already started talking to you. When you were with him, you looked happy. It was the only time you did. I didn’t want to ruin that.” He looked away from me. “You deserved that happiness.”

  “Leaving me alone is one thing, Braxton, but you used to walk past me in the halls like I didn’t exist. Like I never had.”

  He pressed his eyes closed and inhaled deeply.

  “It was the only way I could handle seeing you. I know that’s shitty. I know you’re going to think it’s weak and cowardly and all of that, but it’s how I could manage so I did it, and I’m sorry for that, Izzy. I’m more sorry than you could ever imagine. If I could take it all back, I’d do things so differently, but I can’t. All I can do is tell you what happened and hope that one day you can really forgive me for it.”

  I stood there silent, staring at him from across the room. It was so much easier to hate him before I knew the truth. Now, having heard his side, I wasn’t sure I still could.

  “Last night, watching you walk off with that creep… I knew your mind wasn’t right. That you were acting out. I know it wasn’t my place to stop you, but I had to. I stayed here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He took a few steps toward me, but stopped himself before he got too close. “I’ve said what I wanted to say, Iz. If you still hate me for what I did, I understand. But know that I did love you. The second you set foot on that school bus in grade school, I knew it was all over for me. It just took me too long to realize that you might have felt the same way. That’s my fault, not yours. But I need you to know that I’ve always loved you, Isadora Lancaster. Even when you hated me.”

  I couldn’t speak. I wanted to, but no words would leave my mouth. Taking my silence to mean something else, Braxton nodded to himself, his acknowledgment that what he’d hoped would happen when he told me the truth hadn’t, then walked out of the kitchen. I could hear the front door open and my mind began to race. I wondered if I let him leave if that would really be the end between us. If it was the final nail in the coffin of a relationship that maybe wasn’t dead yet—not if I stopped him. Before I knew what I was doing, I was already in the foyer, calling his name.

  “Braxton! Wait!” He was halfway down my driveway when I burst outside. Standing there, looking hopeful, he waited for me to say something. I struggled to find the words I wanted to say. “Where are you going to go? You don’t have your truck…”

  Although that definitely was not what I’d wanted to say in that poignant moment, it certainly did break the tension that had built between us. Braxton, who had the best laugh I’d ever heard, let it erupt from him until he turned red in the face. When he finally got a hold of himself, he strode toward me, smiling ear to ear.

  “You’re not going to make me do the walk of
shame? How considerate of you.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m feeling charitable at the moment.”

  He stopped in front of the bottom step and looked up at me.

  “Does this mean I’m forgiven?” All humor had left his tone when he asked me that pivotal question.

  “I think I’d make you walk home if you weren’t.” A smile tugged at my mouth until I stopped fighting it. Braxton looked like he was about to burst out of his skin at the sight. He took the first step toward me, and I thrust out my hand to halt his approach. “To be clear, yes, I forgive you, Braxton Bryant, but I can’t so easily forget. I don’t really know where that leaves us, but…but I’m willing to try this crazy friend thing that we used to be so good at. That is, if you are, I mean.”

  His smile widened, as if that were even possible.

  “Permission to approach, ma’am?” I nodded. He walked up until he stood on the landing in front of me, his tall, broad frame blocking out the rising sun behind him. “I’ll take you any way that you’ll have me, Izzy. If it’s friends for us, then so be it. I couldn’t be happier.”

  He reached out and pulled me into a hug, crushing me against him. I’d have been lying if I said the feel of him wrapped around me wasn’t amazing. His hugs had always been the best. I guess some things never change.

  “So what now?” I asked, my voice muffled by his chest. He pulled away just enough to look down at me.

  “Maybe you could give me a ride to the farm to get my truck? That’d be a great place to start, I think. Unless you want me to walk there as penance…”

  “I’ll get my keys,” I replied with a roll of my eyes.

  After I dropped him off at the Billings’ farm, I went home to get a bit more sleep. I had to work that afternoon until the pool closed. Then I promised Braxton that he could take me to the movies with the boys. I was hesitant at first to agree to it, especially given the things I’d said that night at the party. Tad and Scooter didn’t deserve what I’d said about them. Hell, even Simmons had proven to be far more tolerable than I’d remembered him being. I owed them all a massive apology, and it was going to be no small feat getting it out without somehow digging the hole I was in a little deeper. Braxton assured me they weren’t upset about it—that they understood why I’d said what I said—but I was far less convinced.