by Lauren Layne
“Your sacrifice is noted,” I say, pinching his cheek as we head up the bumpy walkway toward the familiar blue front door, the squeaky wheel on my suitcase protesting mightily.
“And in my own defense,” I say, “it’s not like I planned yesterday to be the day my car finally gave up the ghost.”
“Really? Because the way I see it, when you buy a car on Craigslist that has a hundred and twenty thousand miles on it and is single-handedly responsible for destroying the ozone layer, you sort of choose every day for it to break down.”
“Let’s not speak ill of the dearly departed.”
He’s pretty much right, though. I thought I could get through graduate school car-less, the way I did when I was an undergrad.
Yeah, no. A couple weeks into my two-year program, I realized that getting one’s MSBA in Hospitality and Tourism Management meant actual hands-on experience.
As in, internships, plural. And Virginia Tech, while pretty fabulous, isn’t exactly NYU when it comes to public transportation. My tuition was courtesy of a butt load of student loans, but books and food and the roof over my head were all on me. There hadn’t been much left over for a car, so, well…I’d made do.
The poor little Subaru did better than Craig’s giving it credit for. But yeah, yesterday it decided that it couldn’t make the two-hour trip back to my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, after all. And the mechanic I’d paid an extra fifty bucks to come and take a look at the car confirmed it wouldn’t be making any more journeys. Ever.
Normally that wouldn’t be the end of the world. It was the car’s time, and I have a big brother who’s been oh so gracious about coming to pick me up and bring me home.
But…
That sad little Subaru wasn’t just supposed to get me to my parents’ house. It was also supposed to get me from Virginia to California the day after tomorrow to start my new job.
Now I’ll have to round up the money for a plane ticket, plus the cost of shipping all my stuff, not to mention buying a car when I get to San Francisco. Plus, I’d spent one rather glorious cabernet-fueled Friday night carefully planning a two-week road trip to see the middle of the country that I’d likely never visit otherwise.
Not to mention the detour down to Miami to see Ruben…
I blow out a breath. Tomorrow. I’ll deal with all of that tomorrow.
I smile as the CONGRATULATIONS SPOCK! sign flutters in the warm June breeze.
Suddenly I can’t wait to see what sort of gloriously fattening welcome-home meal my mom has prepared, have a beer with my dad and brother, and enjoy two nights with my family before I start my dream job as hospitality manager at Château St. Magrit, one of the biggest wineries in Napa Valley.
“Spock.”
Craig says my name as I reach for the handle of the front door.
I glance back, and he gives me a slightly sheepish grin. “For what it’s worth, it wasn’t my idea.”
“What wasn’t?” I say.
Then it hits me.
The sign in the front yard. The cars lining the cul-de-sac.
The fact that my parents haven’t come out to greet me, even though I’d have bet serious money that my mom would be impatiently waiting by the living room window, my father making up excuses for why he needed to be out in the front yard when I drove up.
I groan. “They didn’t.”
Craig grins wider. “Not every day their baby girl comes home with a fancy degree in tow.”
“I’m not even the baby,” I mutter. That dubious honor belongs to Brandi, my little sister by four years.
Then I take a deep breath and push open the door.
I’m prepared for it, but the “Surprise!” still makes me jump a little. And then, even though it wasn’t quite the small, intimate homecoming I’d been dreaming about for weeks, my eyes water all the same, because everyone is here.
My parents, beaming at me; Brandi, looking seriously grown-up, even since I saw her at Easter; aunts; uncles; cousins. Neighbors who’ve known me my whole life, grade school friends, high school friends, former co-workers from Luna Winery, the local Virginia Vineyard where I discovered my love of the wine business…
I drop my bag, ignoring the fact that my Revlon mascara and off-brand tampons are probably scattered all over the area rug, and run at my parents with a happy squeal that’s a good deal less dignified than my status as a twenty-four-year-old probably requires.
I don’t care.
The second my mom’s arms go around me and I feel dad’s hand mess up my hair, I don’t care about anything except that for forty-eight glorious hours I’ll be home.
My dream job in Napa is pretty freaking fantastic—it’s everything I’ve been working for since I settled on a major my sophomore year of college. But right now, this is where I want to be more than anything.
I mean, not everyone from my childhood is here—there’s one rather crucial omission—but mostly it’s the kind of coming home you see in Hallmark movies, complete with a big bouquet of CONGRATULATIONS! helium balloons tied to the back of one of our dining room chairs.
“Lucy Darlene Hawkins, you’re too skinny!” my mom says, pushing me back.
I grin, because I know that’s my mom’s form of expressing love. Or rather, the quest to fatten up her children is her form of expressing love. Unfortunately for her, all three of us take after my dad’s side of the family, which means we’re lean.
Although my leggy sister also got my dad’s height, whereas I got the shortness genes, edging in at just under five-two—something my five-nine “little” sister reminds me of now by resting her forearm on my shoulder. “Hey, Spock. You like your sign? Craig and I worked hard on that.”
“Love it. Although maybe you could tell Mom exactly how you knew to make the L look so perfectly like a penis?”
My mom says “Girls!” in exasperation, and Brandi gives our mother a cheeky smile. “I’m not even sure where the penis is mom. What’s a penis? A type of cocktail? It’s Lucy here whose mind went phallic.”
I roll my eyes and hug my sister, then my dad (who thankfully missed the penis reference), all while answering questions from relatives and neighbors, everyone talking over one another, wanting to know how my graduation ceremony was, and if I’m really going to be a West Coast girl, and does my new boyfriend know my nickname is Spock…
My smile freezes a little at the mention of Oscar. My parents already don’t like my boyfriend of ten months. Not that they’ve met him, but then, that’s sort of the problem. My family came out for my graduation ceremony, two weeks earlier (I stuck around campus awhile longer to finish up my internship), and it had not gone over well that Oscar hadn’t made the trek up from Miami.
I’d tried to explain that having his own restaurant in Miami Beach was a big deal. He couldn’t just up and leave on a weekend two months after opening. He’d sent me a big-ass bouquet of pink roses.
Which wasn’t quite the same as having him there at a milestone moment, especially now that I’m not going to be able to take the road trip down to see him.
Everyone’s in the kitchen now, people happily heaping up pasta and potato salad onto plates while the enormous platter of what looks to be the local Gabby’s Fried Chicken is rapidly being depleted.
I’m about to sink my teeth into a drumstick when my mom pulls it away from my face and tosses it onto a plate.
“What the heck?” I say. “I thought you said I was too skinny.”
“You have your whole life to eat,” my mom says, clapping her hands excitedly, a strand of dark hair falling down by the side of her round face. “We have something for you.”
I glance around, realizing that “we” means my immediate family, although my sister and brother look decidedly skeptical about the surprise compared to my giddy parents.
I let my mom lead me to the garage, following after my dad as the sibs drag along behind.
I admit, I’m expecting the ta-da moment to be a little more, well, anything.
My parents are still beaming expectantly, awaiting my response.
I give Craig and Brandi a Help! look but they’re too busy cracking up.
It’s my dad who caves, clearing his throat and gesturing with his hand toward the car.
I scan the station wagon, affectionately dubbed Horny by my brother his freshmen year of high school, and then I see it.
The bow.
Not a big bow, but a tattered, dirty-looking red bow that I vaguely remember being a Christmas tree topper in a former life.
“Umm—”
“Spock, we’re giving you Horny!” my mom blurts out, apparently fed up with my denseness.
Her utterance is too much for my siblings to handle and they both burst out laughing, retreating into the kitchen to rejoin the party, where there’s wine.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give for wine right now.
“I, um…you’re giving me the car?” I ask.
“Because yours broke down,” my dad explains, walking forward to thump Horny’s dented hood.
“And this one’s…not broken down?” I ask skeptically.
Look, it’s not that I’m not grateful. My parents are trying to give me a car—I get that—it’s just…
Here’s the thing about Horny: He barely got us three kids through high school. I mean, Horny is the car that sputtered and shook making it the 3.2 miles to Jefferson High, no matter who it was behind the wheel, and at some point, it was all three of us kids.
I’m even going to come all the way clean here and say that early on in my freshmen year I was embarrassed showing up in Horny. Then I realized I was lucky to have a car at all and, well…I dunno, I guess Horny became a part of us Hawkins kids’ charm, because the station wagon became practically an institution, from Craig’s high school reign all the way through Brandi’s.
But he quit working years ago. Much to Brandi’s chagrin, he gave up the ghost a mere two months before her high school graduation, and she spent the last bit of her senior year being picked up by my parents.
“He’s going to take you to California,” Dad says, giving the car another thump.
“Really?” I step forward and run a tentative finger along the familiar side panel. He’s had a bath, so that’s something. “Because last I knew, he wouldn’t even make it out of the garage.”
“Yeah, well, we neglected him for a while, but he’s right as rain now,” Dad says, puffing out his chest as though Horny’s a fourth child.
“Like, as in he actually starts?”
“Purrs like a kitten,” my mom says with an emphatic nod. “We didn’t believe it, but we took him to church on Sunday and there were no issues.”
I literally bite my tongue to keep from pointing out that Sacred Presbyterian is .8 miles away from the house.
“You took it into a shop?” I ask, starting to warm to the idea of having a car again. I’m a little touched, actually. Money is tight for my parents. Dad’s a PE teacher and Mom gives a mean winery tour, but the gig’s never paid much.
“Not exactly—it was more of a bartering situation,” Mom says.
“Yeah?” I say, going around to the driver’s seat, already giddy with the prospect of telling Oscar I’ll be able to come see him after all.
“Reece agreed to fix him up.”
I’m lowering myself into the car as my dad says this, and I reverse direction so quickly I hit my head—which doesn’t even register the pain, because I’m too busy registering the hurt in my heart at the mention of that familiar name. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Reece,” my mom says, giving me a bemused look. “He’s always been handy with cars.”
“He fixed up the car in exchange for what?”
And then I feel—I actually feel—the air change around me as the side door to the garage opens and a new presence sucks all the air out of the space.
I don’t turn around. I don’t move. But I feel his eyes on me. Over me.
“Reece is headed out to California too,” my oblivious mother chatters. “It worked out perfectly, actually—now you two can ride together and your dad and I don’t have to worry about you being alone in the middle of nowhere with a twenty-something-year-old car.
The car? They think the car is going to be the problem here? It’s not the car that’s dangerous to me. It’s him.
Reece Sullivan. My brother’s best friend. My parents’ “other son.”
Slowly I force myself to turn, and even though I’m prepped, the force of that ice-blue gaze still does something dangerous to me.
He winks, quick and cocky, and I suck in a breath, and I have to wonder…
I wonder if my parents would feel differently about their little plan if they knew that their makeshift mechanic is the same guy who popped my cherry six years earlier under their very own roof.
And then promptly turned around and broke my heart.
Love stories you’ll never forget
By authors you’ll always remember
eOriginal Romance from Random House
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