When Summer Comes

by Brenda Novak

  “How about you put a smile on my face right now?”

  Obviously, he wasn’t picking up on everything she was saying. He could only concentrate on meeting the demands of his body, which made her doubly conscious of how she was misleading him. But maybe she was overthinking it. After all, he couldn’t be taking this too seriously. He hadn’t even told her his real name.

  “What do I call you?” she asked.

  He reached her and held her against the wall, hands at her waist, eyes on mouth. “What are you saying now?”

  “Levi feels silly since I know it’s not your name.”

  “It is my name.”

  The feral gleam in his eyes gave her goose bumps. “Levi what?”

  “Who cares?”

  See? She had nothing to worry about. He wasn’t even willing to tell her his last name. He’d be gone by morning. “I guess no one,” she admitted.

  “Are we done with the nervous jitters?”

  “I think so.”

  “Great. Let’s get rid of this,” he said, and tugged off her robe.

  * * *

  Callie’s mouth was hot and wet and parted just when Levi wanted it to. Behrukh hadn’t been able to kiss him with such abandon for months. She’d never kissed anyone else, and she was so frightened of what she was feeling, and of getting caught with him, that she’d resisted learning. He’d never forget how stilted and wooden she’d been when he first touched his lips to hers, how many times he’d had to kiss her before she grew warm and pliable and responsive. But he’d understood. She’d been told Americans were infidels, that he’d drag her down to hell if she even spoke to him. It was remarkable that they’d been able to overcome all that. It’d taken him months of stopping in at the store where she worked, of smiling at her until she’d at least meet his eyes, of flirting with her when her father was gone. And then it took several more months before he could convince her to meet him somewhere else so they could talk, touch. Kiss.

  Ironically, now that she was gone, he missed all those early experiences as much as everything else about her.

  The fact that Callie was nothing like Behrukh wasn’t as easy to overlook as he’d first thought. She was beautiful and sensuous and as pliable as Behrukh had been stiff and unyielding. But she smelled all wrong and moved all wrong. He didn’t want a substitute—he wanted to make love with the woman who owned his heart, with Behrukh. When he closed his eyes he could almost feel the swell of her belly beneath his hand, feel the excitement of knowing his baby grew in her womb.

  But Behrukh was gone. So was their child. And he couldn’t seem to overcome the loss.

  Unable to continue, he pulled back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I...can’t. I just...can’t.”

  Callie was panting slightly as she looked up at him. “Did I do something that triggered a...a bad memory or—”

  “It’s not you.” He closed his eyes as he stepped away from her and pressed his fingers to his forehead. “It’s me. I shouldn’t have started this.”

  “Because...”

  He met her gaze. “I’m in love with someone else, Callie.”

  She flinched as if he’d slapped her, and he cursed his own stupidity. He should’ve told her before, but there’d seemed so little point in talking about a woman who no longer existed. He’d thought he could finally get beyond the past.

  Just seconds ago, he’d been determined to do so.

  But he couldn’t persuade his heart to betray Behrukh, not even her memory.

  “I see.” Callie smiled, but he could tell by the emptiness in her eyes that her pleasant expression was a front. “I understand. To be faithful to someone...that’s an admirable thing.”

  She scrambled to reclaim her robe as though she was suddenly embarrassed to let him see her without it, and he regretted that he couldn’t make her feel as attractive as she was.

  “I support you one hundred percent,” she added, filling the silence as she jammed her arms through the sleeves and averted her gaze. He was still naked, but he didn’t care about that. He wanted to be naked. He wanted to make love. He wanted to find himself again. But it was impossible. He couldn’t overcome the resistance in his heart and his head.

  “I didn’t know or...I wouldn’t have...bought this,” she was saying. “I feel silly, of course.”

  He couldn’t move. Even now he was torn between touching her and just getting the hell out, before he made matters worse. “Don’t feel silly. It’s me, like I said. And it’s not that I’m cheating. The situation isn’t what you think.”

  She chuckled without mirth. “I don’t even know what I think! I mean, you’re not gay—”

  “No!” He shook his head. “This isn’t history repeating itself. What your intuition’s been telling you—that I’m attracted to you, that I want you—it’s true. If only I’d met you before.”

  “You’re really in love.”

  “Yes.”

  “So...why aren’t you with her? Is she married or—”

  He cursed as the memories began to pile up. “She’s dead, Callie.”

  It felt as if someone had knocked the wind out of him, but Levi cared enough about this new person in his life to want to offer some explanation.

  Her jaw dropped. “How?”

  “I met her in Afghanistan.”

  “She was in the army?”

  “No. She was a civilian. Her father pretended to be friendly to Americans because he wanted our business. He owned a little grocery store. I actually thought he liked me.” He grimaced as the bitterness threatened to overwhelm him. “But he was secretly aligned with the insurgents. Someone in her extended family—her brothers wouldn’t tell me who for fear of reprisal—shot her in the head when she admitted that she was carrying my child. They said she’d defiled herself by lying with a filthy American. I wanted to bring her home with me, wanted to marry her, but...her father didn’t care.”

  He hadn’t told anyone about Behrukh. He shouldn’t have told Callie, either, because now he couldn’t look her in the eye. It had been a mistake to touch Behrukh. And it had been a mistake to touch Callie. But she was the best thing to happen to him since Afghanistan. For the first time in months, he’d felt human—instead of like some kind of robot, just going through the motions of living.

  It was time to get out of her life before he hurt her, too. But he couldn’t leave her vulnerable to Denny. First, he had to know she’d be safe.

  “I’ll start cleaning up the mess in the barn.”

  He was exhausted after being up all night, but he wanted to get away from her, needed the escape.

  Turning he put on his clothes and, without another word, left the house.

  16

  “Callie? Callie, are you okay?”

  Rolling onto her back, she forced her heavy eyelids to open. Kyle and Baxter were leaning over her, their faces pinched with worry. Earlier, after Levi had hammered some boards over the broken window, she’d put on an old flannel nightgown, crawled into bed, and that was the last thing she remembered. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but it felt like a lot. It was getting dark outside.

  “What...what are you doing here?” As if to underscore how long she’d been sleeping, her voice sounded gravelly from disuse.

  “We came as soon as we learned about the fire,” Kyle said.

  The fire was just this morning but it seemed like ages ago. “Who told you?”

  “Some of the volunteers who helped fight it were talking at Just Like Mom’s.”

  Because it’d happened out of town in the middle of the night, she hadn’t expected a burning barn to generate much interest. No one had been hurt, and the fire hadn’t spread. But there was some question as to the cause and that, naturally, invited conjecture. Or maybe the firefighters knew. Maybe that was what they’d been discussing.

  “Was it arson?” she asked.

  “One guy said it had to be,” Baxter answered. Kyle was too busy scowling.

  Dragging a hand up to push the hair out
of her face, she finally awoke enough to see that the bustier she’d bought for Levi’s benefit was lying in the middle of the floor, along with her silky robe. Kyle and Baxter had to step over them to get to her.

  Shit...

  “Levi didn’t have anything to do with what happened, did he?” Kyle’s voice and manner were just shy of accusatory.

  “Of course not!” she replied. “He tried to put it out. Without him it would’ve done more damage.”

  “Then where is he?”

  This question gave her a start, a moment of panic when she realized that, if he’d left, she might never see him again. She knew she shouldn’t be surprised—or sad. This had been coming all along. But she felt so unprepared. “He’s not here?” she managed to say.

  “When you didn’t answer the door, we walked around back. Rifle’s in the yard, but Levi’s motorcycle is gone.”

  Suddenly desperate to fade back into sleep, to avoid this reality, even though she should’ve expected it, she drew a steadying breath. “I guess he decided to move on.”

  “You didn’t know?” Baxter asked.

  She scrambled for an answer that would cover at least some of her embarrassment, given what they’d seen on the floor. “Things have been chaotic because of the fire.”

  “So that’s it?” Kyle said. “He’s out of your life for good?”

  The relief in those words bothered Callie. Whether Levi stayed or went shouldn’t make any difference to Kyle. They were finished sleeping together. They’d spent months trying to feel just a fraction of the excitement and attraction she’d experienced so naturally with Levi, but trying to turn friendship into love hadn’t worked. As a matter of fact, it was such a poor substitute she knew she could never settle for something so diluted again, even if she had another fifty years to live. Which she didn’t.

  “I told you he wouldn’t hang around forever. With the...with the barn burned, there’s no way he can paint it.” But he could’ve said goodbye....

  Kyle encouraged her to scoot over so he could sit beside her on the bed. “What exactly happened last night?”

  “I wish I knew.” She propped the pillows behind her back as she explained the sequence of events to him and to Baxter, who was standing to one side.

  “Is there any chance Levi was smoking when the fire broke out?”

  Baxter asked this. Callie shifted her gaze to him. “Levi doesn’t smoke. As you probably heard, the cause wasn’t obvious. Chief Stacy said he’d get an arson investigator out here.”

  Kyle and Baxter exchanged a glance. “Why would anyone want to set fire to your barn?”

  “I’m hoping no one did. That there’s another explanation. But...there is one person who has a grudge against me.”

  Baxter barked a laugh. “No, there isn’t! Everyone in this town loves you.”

  “Not Denny Seamans and Powell Barney,” she said.

  “Who are—” Baxter started, but Kyle interrupted.

  “The two guys who own the pit bulls that attacked Levi.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Kyle stood. “Damn it, Callie. This is what I was hoping to avoid! If you’d only stayed out of it—”

  “I wasn’t trying to get involved!” she broke in. “What else could I have done? Turned Levi away when he was bleeding all over my doorstep? Told him he had to leave when his bike wasn’t working?”

  “He’s a big boy,” Kyle grumbled. “He can take care of himself.”

  Baxter nudged Kyle. “Come on, that was her choice.”

  “Exactly!” she agreed.

  “But look what’s happening because of it!” Kyle said.

  Callie straightened the bedding. “Denny’s upset and he’s blaming me. That doesn’t make it my fault.”

  Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets. “Maybe Baxter, Noah, Ted and I should go over and have a talk with Denny.”

  “Don’t! I’d rather not have all my friends become their enemies, too,” she said, but Kyle wasn’t willing to back off quite that easily.

  “They’d better not be responsible.”

  She held up a hand in the classic stop position. “Let’s wait and see what caused the fire before we go off accusing people.”

  “When’s the arson investigator coming?” Baxter asked. “Or has he already been here?”

  “He hasn’t shown up to my knowledge. Stacy didn’t mention a time.”

  Baxter took Kyle’s seat on the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  There was an earnest quality to his voice that indicated he wasn’t only concerned about how she’d been affected by the fire. As the one person who knew about her liver disease, he was asking after her health. “I’m fine. Just...tired. I was up all night.”

  Kyle stooped to recover the bustier and threw it in her closet, out of sight. “Have you eaten?”

  She twisted around to see the clock. It was nearly eight. She’d slept all day. “Not yet.”

  “You should have some dinner. I’ll go make something.” With that, he went to the kitchen, but Baxter stayed behind.

  “What happened?” he asked, his voice low.

  “I told you,” she said.

  “I’m not talking about the fire.”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about anything else. “What, then?”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Are you going to pretend you didn’t have sex with your guest?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Come on.” A skeptical grin tugged at his lips. “A girl doesn’t break out a bustier unless she’s got plans.”

  She smiled that he could name that particular type of lingerie when Levi couldn’t seem to remember it no matter how many times she told him. “I had plans. It was Levi who called it quits.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true.” And now he was gone....

  Baxter made a sympathetic sound. “You have the worst luck when it comes to men, don’t you?”

  She couldn’t help chuckling. “That’s no joke,” she said, then sobered. “But I haven’t lost anything, right, Bax? I knew he was going to move on. And now he has. So...”

  “So?” he prompted.

  “Why am I sad?”

  He shrugged. “There’s just something about this guy.”

  That was true. She’d felt it almost from the start. “I wish we could choose who we want to love.”

  “So do I!”

  His expression suggested this was the understatement of the year and she knew that for him it was. She reached out to squeeze his arm, and he responded by lying down with her. “We’re pathetic, the two of us,” he said as they settled close.

  “How long have you been in love with Noah?” she whispered. They could hear Kyle banging around in the kitchen as he cooked. It wasn’t as though he was listening in, but the seriousness of the subject seemed to warrant extra care.

  Baxter hesitated so long she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But then he took a deep breath and murmured, “Since forever.”

  “What do you think he’d do if you told him?”

  “I don’t want to find out.”

  “He can’t get too mad. It’s a compliment.”

  “You’re kidding, right? He’d probably start throwing punches.”

  She rose up on her elbows. “Really?”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I know he cares about you.”

  This didn’t seem to please him. “Caring sounds so weak compared to my side of things.” He ran a hand over his face. “He’d feel betrayed,” he mused. “As if I was only pretending to be his friend all these years. As if I’ve been living a lie. And I have been. I make it worse every time he talks to me about a woman and I pretend to understand and agree and support him.”

  What other options did he have? “I can see why you’re tempted to move away. Why not live in S.F. and find someone else, someone who can fulfill you?”

  “Because I’d have to leave you and the rest of our friends. I could never replace what we have.”

/>   She snuggled closer. “I feel the same.”

  “And I’m afraid of what’ll happen to me there, how I’ll change.”

  “You’d come out of the closet, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t be able to stay in it, not in an environment where it feels safe to be who and what I really am. Maybe I could pull off a double life for a while, but...” His words faded before he regrouped and finished. “Noah would find out eventually. So would my parents.”

  “Would that be so bad?” she asked. “Surely, they’d have to accept it.”

  “Would they?” he challenged.

  She couldn’t say for sure. She hated to encourage him to do something that wouldn’t turn out well, and yet she understood how difficult it must be to pretend.

  “Noah would hate me,” he said. “So would my dad.”

  She wished it didn’t have to be that way. “I’m sorry.”

  He kissed her temple. “I know.”

  * * *

  As soon as Callie heard the sound of a motorcycle, she dropped her fork. The clang of it hitting her plate made Kyle and Baxter pause in the middle of their dinners.

  “What is it?” Kyle asked.

  She picked up her fork. “Nothing,” she said, but she felt giddy with relief. Levi wasn’t gone. She had no idea where he’d been all day, but he was back, and that made her far happier than it should have.

  The motor she heard outside died. Then there was a quick knock and Levi poked his head into the living room. “Callie?”

  “In here!” Instinctively, she shoved her chair back. She wanted to go to him, but he was already on his way, and she preferred not to reveal her own eagerness.

  He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen. The fact that he was covered in grease and wearing a blue Whiskey Creek Gas-N-Go shirt surprised her.

  “You’ve been...at the gas station?” she asked.

  He eyed Baxter. He had to have seen Kyle’s truck, but he would’ve had no reason to expect a third person. “All day. I was going to start cleaning up the mess left by the fire but figured that might not be wise—to touch anything before the arson investigator arrives.”