This Time Around

by Denise Hunter

  For Luke to have called them by the name they’d been tagged with two decades before was the perfect finale to the perfect conversation.

  “I don’t . . . how does he—know you?” Skye said, shuffling her words as poorly as her feet.

  Theo shrugged. “It’s Luke. It’s also the only gas station in town. I’m up here a lot.”

  “And . . . you just became friends.”

  “Well, he hasn’t invited me over to grill out in his backyard . . .”

  Skye nodded as though this was obvious.

  “Since last year,” Theo continued, “but sure, I’d say we’re friends.” He tipped his head thoughtfully. “He is, after all, one of the only people to appreciate my lasagna.”

  “You make him lasagna,” Skye mumbled, more to herself it seemed than to him. She stepped up to the tractor. “Sure you do. Sure you do.”

  Theo tried to slip his hands into his pockets, but the insides of both felt like the outside—sandpaper. “So.” He looked up to the tractor behind her. “What’s next?”

  Skye popped open the glass door and took a step up. “You take the Prius. I take the tractor.”

  As she settled inside, she tossed a set of keys at him.

  Theo caught them. Looked at them. “Ah. See, I believe I forgot to mention I’ve never driven a stick shift before—”

  “You’ll be fine.” Skye put the key in the ignition. “Just be sure to press the clutch all the way to the floorboard with the gear shift in neutral first.”

  “The clutch,” Theo said uncertainly. “Right. And that is the . . .”

  Skye’s brow creased as though she both could, and couldn’t, believe the man before her. “Left. The little pedal on the left.”

  “Right.” Theo nodded.

  Skye pointed up the road. “We only have to take it those five or six miles, but the road will be steep, so you’re going to have to keep it firm in second and be careful not to let it stall out.”

  He nodded again. Stalling out. On a mountain with woods on one side and a cliff-like drop-off to rocky crags on the other. “You know, I am actually very good at jogging—”

  At last, Skye cracked. “Oh my gosh, Theo. You are not going to jog next to the tractor for six miles in your . . . your”—she frowned as she glanced down at his feet—“absolutely hideous cowboy boots that look three sizes too small.”

  Theo looked down at the overly ornate, gold-threaded black boots. “Two. But it was all they had.”

  “Come here.”

  He raised a brow and took a step forward.

  “You’ll ride with me.” She stepped down from the tractor and waved impatiently for him to get in.

  Theo hesitated, then glanced up the road.

  “Get in.”

  He felt momentarily helpless, unable to drive not only the tractor—which, given his occupation and lifestyle, was at least understandable—but a standard-transmission vehicle as well. Had he known, however, that she had expected him to drive her car, he could’ve driven his own, dropped her off at the gas station instead—

  “You first.”

  Theo’s thoughts dissolved as he peered inside. “Can this handle both of us?”

  Skye gave him a look as if to say, Did your eyeballs just see Luke? What are you trying to imply about my weight?

  “But of course we’ll fit,” Theo said. “With you being so petite, the tractor will need me simply to keep us grounded.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Theo, just get in.” Theo felt her two hands press against his shoulders and push him forward. He scrambled up the steps and, careful to avoid touching any gadgets, sat on the cracked seat. The weathered steering wheel was large and tilted toward the sky. Numerous dials and switches were arranged beside the armrest to his right. Glass surrounded him.

  Skye dropped all of her weight on his knee. He nearly grunted but managed to hold it in. “Ah. So that’s how we’ll fit. That makes perfect sense.”

  She frowned at him and turned the key. The engine rumbled.

  Skye flicked the switch and turned the vast wheel, and the massive tires of the tractor began to move. Theo’s world slowed as the wisps of her hair tickled his cheeks. While trees flickered by in his periphery, his breath caught on the scent he had almost forgotten. After all these years, her hair still smelled of strawberries and cream.

  He lifted his voice to match the grumbling noise of the tractor. “You use the same shampoo.”

  Skye jerked the wheel and looked over her shoulder. “Try not to sound like a creeper while I’m stuck in here with you. And . . . I can’t believe you remember that.”

  He didn’t reply, but instead looked out the window. Only then did he realize just how quickly the trees whipped by. “How fast does this tractor go?”

  “Twenty-five.” She looked back, noticed the car crawling behind them, and pulled closer to the creek-side edge. She pushed the window open and waved them on. Theo watched the tire creep over the white line and inhaled sharply before looking the opposite direction.

  But as he watched her intent posture, her alert gaze, the confidence with which she handled the wheel, he remembered another thing he hadn’t called to mind for years: the way he used to trust her. Blindly trust her, really. Always eager for the next adventure.

  “Do you remember the time I let you drive me around in that four-wheeler?” Theo said, his voice barely audible above the rumble.

  There was a pause. Then a laugh. “The ATV? I was grounded for three weeks. How could I forget?”

  Theo smiled to himself. “It was so cold that night. Do you remember how cold it was?”

  Though her face was half obscured by her loose curls, he saw her wistful smile. “My fingers nearly froze clicking that flashlight so many dang times. I thought you’d never see it.”

  He chuckled. “Oh. I always saw it.”

  She didn’t respond, no doubt because she didn’t need to. They both knew he did. By the time they were teens, every weekend, every summer break, every chance he could convince his family to pack up and drive to Evergreen for a reprieve, he always went to bed keeping one eye on his window, just in case he’d see that blinking flashlight. Their code.

  “It just took a while to see it coming from the barn,” he continued.

  The tractor rolled past Skye’s cottage, the roof dappled with sunlight that spilled through the leaves of the great maple.

  The sign for Evergreen Farm came into view, and Skye turned onto the gravel. “The snow was coming down too thick for you to see from my bedroom, and besides, I had to rig up the four-wheeler. I was coming for you whether you were sleeping or not.”

  He grinned as they progressed along the bumpy gravel driveway between the trees. He recalled the energy, the adrenaline high, of spotting her blinking flashlight through the heavy snowfall. How he’d bounded out of his bed. How quickly he’d slipped into his warmest boots and bibs, barely snatching up his toboggan before cracking open the heavy front door and sneaking outside. He never had any idea what Skye planned; he was only certain there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

  That evening, Skye screamed and laughed as she whipped the four-wheeler in figure eights beneath the midnight storm on the snow-covered field. Theo gripped the sled for dear life and laughed along with her. Screamed and laughed. Screamed and laughed. Until they saw her father in the distance, stalking out of the woods.

  Theo blinked toward that empty field, now filled with rows of adolescent trees. “That was by far the most fun evening of my life.”

  Her eyes flickered almost imperceptibly to the thirty-foot Fraser fir standing in the center of the field. The one in all this time he’d never cut down. “The most?”

  He pressed his lips together. He could never forget the night before he’d left for UVA.

  “The most fun. Another evening has its own category for simply being the most.”

  She let go of the wheel with one hand to pull her hair behind one ear. Her large brown eyes gazed back at him. The corner of her m
outh turned upward. “The most. You have a category where one evening wins for being the most. If that isn’t the most grammatically incorrect thing I’ve ever heard from you—”

  Her hair slipped from her ear and covered one eye. Without thinking, he returned it to its place.

  Suddenly they both stopped. Words stopped. Theo felt the tractor slow to a stop. And what was in her wide brown eyes welled, brimming with emotions, questions, memories.

  His breath caught in his lungs, a heady strawberries-and-cream scent encapsulated by four walls of glass.

  But then one word came to mind. Ashleigh.

  “You know, I forgot I needed to make a few calls before we got started,” Theo said. He nodded to the cabin not so far in the distance. “I’ll just hop out here and meet you at the tractor.”

  “Good plan,” she said, only too eager to push the door open and move down the steps before her sentence was finished. “It’ll take me a while to get the rachet straps on anyway.”

  While the tractor continued puttering in the opposite direction toward the ridge, Theo took his first clear breath. Put his hands on his hips as he strode up the gravel driveway and then made his way to the cabin’s wide porch steps.

  He couldn’t pretend anymore.

  It was time.

  * * *

  Theo slid the landline phone off the counter. Picked it up and began tapping.

  Before eight thirty yesterday evening, he had been happy. He was in a relationship with someone who was as eager to be with him as he was her. If their relationship were a flower, it’d be a sunflower growing six inches a day. They were thriving.

  But then the woman he once loved more fiercely than his own life had returned, as if from the dead. And maybe she didn’t care a whit about him. Maybe he didn’t have a chance, but he couldn’t go for it this time without giving his all.

  And he wouldn’t—ever—try to build the foundation of his relationship with Skye on a lie.

  He had fallen before for a girl at UVA, a friend who’d somehow, without clear definition, turned into something more over the course of months.

  He wasn’t even sure how it had happened all those years ago. He started dating Skye mere hours before he left for UVA, and then, through five more long semesters, he lived apart from her. Day in. Day out. Making friends. Memories. Growing a whole life apart from her. Trying his best to make a life out of calling every night, visiting on the infrequent weekend. But with every passing semester the workload grew, the hours hunched over those books lengthened, and the calls shortened. It got harder to deny the bond growing with Chloe as they pored over books and met with friends. Just before winter break of junior year, they’d taken one step too far. Then Chloe, with mutual friends in tow, had hopped in a car during winter break to surprise him at Evergreen.

  And it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

  He’d realized the lines had blurred then and, without redrawing them sharply, he just let them bleed.

  He would not do that again.

  “Hello?”

  Ashleigh’s voice came on the line and he took a breath, lifting his gaze to the row of oil paintings lining the living room wall. His eyes traced the small cursive script in the corner of each one: S Fuller.

  “Ashleigh . . . there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Chapter 10

  Skye

  She had to pull herself together.

  Skye gave the toe strap one final yank at the anchor point of the overturned tractor and hopped off the tire. Already she could see Theo walking toward her in the distance, although to be fair, people in a plane seven miles up could see his blazing orange flannel.

  They hadn’t been reunited even twenty-four hours and already her emotions were getting in the way. She had to remember the issues at hand and not even think about making out like teenagers in Daddy’s tractor. The fact of her father’s abysmal pay remained. And while Theo was and always had been a master wielder of words, his actions were indisputable: he was a man driving around in a hundred-thousand-dollar Tesla while paying her father, who had been the farm’s faithful employee more than thirty-five years, a quarter of that. A quarter. That was a fact. Along with the fact that while Evergreen Farm’s eight-seater hot tub and Peloton bike waited shiny and ready for the occasional Watkins weekend visitor, her parents were living with the same furniture in the double-wide of her youth. These were facts.

  She needed to focus on getting that figured out instead of doing something she regretted.

  She wiped her dirty hands against her pants, then shaded her eyes and watched Theo move into the forest. Her lips turned up in a smile.

  “Theo, what are you doing? You look like a chicken.”

  Theo’s casual gait had turned into something else. He was lifting his knees unusually high and slow as he stepped over broken tree limbs and moved cautiously around thickets. A long, slender branch stood before him and he carefully pinched it between his fingers and pushed it aside to pass.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I look like a sensible man who is aware that three to 384 spiders—two of whom live in our area and are fatal—exist within one square meter of you at any given time. You, on the other hand, look like a Neanderthal.”

  “Well, this Neanderthal would outlive you by a hundred years if we got stuck out here, so how about you give walking like a human a try?”

  As he stepped over a thick log, she turned back to Luke’s tractor.

  “C’mon, you can help me run this strap to the hitch.” As she stepped over snapped limbs, she worked to undo an unruly knot in the toe strap. “Once we get the tractor upright, we’ll need to keep the tension on it so I can get it over that mound without flipping it again. I’ll need you to move the—”

  “Skye!”

  Skye barely had time to turn her neck his way when she felt Theo’s chest crash into her body and then, a moment later, was swept off her feet. Literally swept. Followed shortly by a branch slapping her across the face as he began barreling through the woods.

  For a moment, all she could do was hang on to his neck for dear life. And notice, despite herself, how firm his chest was. Good grief, it’s just like a marble chessboard. Like the hardest pillow you’ve ever slept on in your life. Like asphalt. If I just press my cheek against it . . .

  She jolted at the thought and pulled her neck as far away from him as she could, which, given the circumstances, wasn’t very far.

  “Theo! What are you doing?”

  Skye yelped as Theo high-kneed into her back as he ran.

  “Stop, you crazy man! Stop!” She felt like she was trying to command a runaway horse to yield. “Theo!”

  It was time for another tactic. Her cheek scraped against his orange flannel as she put both arms around his neck and began pulling herself up. Good grief. How is the man not getting hives from this material?

  She yanked her legs out of his arms like the pair of them were in a swing-dancing act and swung back until her boots hit ground.

  They dragged against twigs and dirt for a moment, her arms still locked around his neck, his arms wrapped tightly around her rib cage.

  To his credit he didn’t tumble; instead, Theo slowed to a stop. He looked down at her feet as though to ensure she was securely grounded, his clean-shaven chin brushing her forehead. A tingle crept up her spine as he let go.

  For a couple moments they just stood there, inches apart, the wind dancing on newly sprouted leaves as it passed through the trees.

  And then, most awkwardly, she realized she hadn’t let go.

  “Your shirt is horrible,” Skye said, letting go of his tree-trunk neck and half expecting her cheek to have been rubbed raw. She touched it and looked up at him, partly wanting to laugh, partly wanting to ask if he’d just gone clinically insane.

  “There was a snake,” he said through breaths. He pointed behind her. “There was a snake.”

  Skye blinked and took in the man, like a poor alien in this place called Earth. �
��So you hoisted me up and knee-highed me out of there.”

  She smiled, her tone lighthearted, but the world in her periphery was shifting subtly. The blanket of trees and their leaves gained a more vibrant green hue. The sunlight peeking through the dimpled leaves shone a more golden yellow.

  The man deathly afraid of snakes had stepped into striking distance to save her. Was willing to put himself in front of his greatest fear in order to help her escape. It was touching. Absolutely crazy and ridiculous and paranoid, but also . . . touching.

  “A rattlesnake can strike up to half its length in distance,” he continued. “And given the rattlesnake typically can get as large as six feet—”

  “There’s no way you just saved me from a rattlesnake, or any lethal snake for that matter,” Skye said, putting a consoling hand on his shoulder. The stiff, itchy fabric bit her hand and she immediately retracted it. “I’m sorry, Theo, I really do hate to break it to you after the heroics and all, but black snakes are a dime a dozen out here.”

  “It wasn’t black.”

  “I’m sure it was—”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “I’ll bet you anything that’s what it was.”

  “You’d bet dinner?”

  The words came out of Theo’s mouth so quickly he looked almost as startled as she was that he said it. Skye looked at him for several seconds, watching for clues in his expression. For regret in his words.

  But his onyx eyes only grew steadier as they gazed at her.

  Finally, she nodded. “Dinner. Fine. If you win, you buy me dinner. But if I win”—Skye raised a brow—“I get to hand you the snake.”

  Theo looked as though he had just choked on his own breath. “No. Something else.”

  Skye shrugged. “What’s the problem? You’re the one so sure of this bet.” She grinned, seeing the red splotches forming on his neck. “Good grief, Theo. Either you’re getting hives from the idea or you seriously need to take off that flannel.”

  “Fine. Deal.” Theo put out his hand.

  Skye shook it, a smile starting to form. “This is going to be so good.”