by C. K. Brooke
The new glasses give him a slightly geekier yet more mature appearance. As I observe him, my mind drifts to another scenario. If he were my doctor and walked into the examining room while I was getting a checkup, I would definitely be intrigued.
Maybe more than intrigued…
Goddess, help me. I’m not actually becoming attracted to my stepbrother, am I?
The closer we get to Elms Creek, the less I want to admit the answer.
12
As we venture southwest of home, the landscape doesn’t differ much from Ohio; just a whole lot of flat land, open fields, and dilapidated barns, with the occasional working-class neighborhood or mobile home community. By the time we cross the border from southern Indiana into southern Illinois, hunger is our unanimous interest.
Going by the road signs promising gas stations and fast food, Henry takes an exit, carrying us into another small Midwestern town. There’s barely anything here but a Home Depot, two gas stations across the street from each other, a McDonald’s, and a bunch of gnarly, naked trees leaning precariously over miles of telephone wire.
“I guess no choice but Mickey D’s?” I say.
“What’s that place?” Mason points.
Henry slows the car. There’s no one else on the road but an eighteen-wheeler pulling out of the gas station in the opposite direction. He squints behind his glasses. “Mae’s Diner,” he reads the faded lettering over the cheap-looking vinyl building. “Is it even open?”
“Looks like it,” Mason says. “There’re some pickups parked on the side. That must be the entrance.”
“Homemade lemon meringue pie,” I read from the sign in the window as we roll closer. “I’m sold. McDonald’s doesn’t have lemon meringue pie.”
“Mae’s it is, then.” Henry pulls into the unpaved parking lot and parks the sedan adjacent to the line of rusty pickups.
My knees feel creaky as I stretch them for the first time in hours and exit the car. I bend down to massage them, then hitch my handbag over my shoulder. Henry holds the door open for me, and the guys follow me in.
A freestanding ‘Please Be Seated’ sign greets us over super old-fashioned black-and-white tiles. I glance from wall to wall. The place is decorated like any other diner, with Americana across the twentieth century. A mishmash of dusty black frames covers the walls, showcasing pictures both in color and black-and-white of classic cars, American musicians, and magazine ads from the 1940s through sixties. A giant buck head stares out over the bar area, antlers sprawled in a mighty breadth, meeting two doorframes—supposedly leading to the kitchen—on either side. I recoil, sure that it’s real. In most parts of the States, it’s still cool to kill animals for sport. My Wiccan mom would lose her mind if she saw it.
“Where do you want to sit?” Mason asks.
I select a booth by the window, where we can keep an eye on his car. “How about here?”
The guys unzip their coats as I slide into the booth. Mason sits next to me. My stepbrother lowers himself across from us, carefully removing his glasses.
As we’re settling in, a middle-aged waitress who still styles her hair and makeup like it’s 1975 hands us each a sticky, one-page menu. I order a glass of ice water with lemon, then turn to stare out the window. My stomach feels weird.
The waitress walks away. Save for us and a man eating alone at a table toward the back, the diner is empty. Faint country western music warbles from a speaker above our heads, and I catch the unappetizing smell of bleach.
“Hmm.” Henry peruses the menu which, I now notice, consists solely of red meat, burgers, and fried chicken strips. “How do I want to clog my arteries today?”
Mason smirks. “Not much of a meat eater?”
Henry glances up. “What makes you say that?”
Without thinking, I swat my menu playfully at my stepbrother’s knuckles. “Henry eats everything under the sun. He’s just trying to sound sophisticated.”
Henry grins at me. I grin back, and my heart does a strange little flip-flop.
Wait.
I feel my face warm up. That wasn’t supposed to happen. No, my heartbeat does that weird jerky stuff for Mason—Mason, not Henry.
To make matters worse, Mason has definitely noticed the exchange. His eyes slide back to his menu, his expression unreadable.
I almost want to apologize, but I don’t know what for. Mason isn’t my boyfriend. Plus, it’s not like…whatever just happened between Henry and me…meant anything. Right?
The waitress returns and sets our drinks in front of us. We all order the same thing—BLT with a side of slaw.
“Don’t judge me,” Mason nudges me as she retreats again, “but I actually like this song.”
I pause to listen. “Return to Sender” by Elvis has just begun. I take a sip of water. “It’s probably one of the only Elvis songs I like, too.”
“How about you?” Mason nods at Henry. “What kind of music you listen to?”
My stepbrother rubs his chin wanly. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t have time to listen to music these days.”
“You have time to watch X-Men movies with me,” I point out.
Henry smirks behind the heel of his hand. “I make time for that, Willow.”
Okay…STOP smiling, Willow Raven Solomon. I tuck a wave of hair behind my shoulder. As I turn to stare out the window again, the fluids in my empty stomach rise up in a wave.
What the hell?
My gaze slips back to my stepbrother. In a sort of daze, I study him. God, there’s something so familiar about him. More familiar than just the past year, living under the same roof together. It’s a deeper knowing.
Like a rope stretching too far, something inside me suddenly snaps.
“Whoa.” Mason rescues my water glass as I involuntarily jerk my arm back. He holds the glass aloft, water sloshing precariously up the rim. “Willow?”
My head hurts. So badly. I grip my forehead in both hands, my shoulders hunched. I can’t take this, whatever it is, coming upon me all at once…
I feel Mason’s hand on my back. “Deep breaths,” he murmurs. “That’s it.”
“What’s wrong?” Henry demands. “What happened?”
The sound of his voice sends torrents of fury and grief through my nervous system. As if sensing my visceral need to get up and get the hell out of there, Mason slides off of the seat, allowing me out of the booth.
Henry immediately gets to his feet.
“Don’t.” I hold out a hand to stop him from coming any closer. “Just don’t.”
Henry looks lost. “I don’t understand…”
I can hardly see. Wincing, I clench my throbbing temples harder and shut my eyes. My nightmare plays out in disjointed vignettes. The driver…the car…the bridge…
It’s as if I no longer have control of my own body. I keel over, squeezing my head between my elbows, internally begging for the pain and the racing images to stop. Nausea overcomes me, the scent of bleach in here too strong in my nostrils. I’m afraid I’m going to puke all over the black-and-white tiles.
“Breathe, Willow,” Mason’s steady voice reminds me.
“Dude, she needs air—now,” snaps Henry.
An arm wraps around my shoulders and steers me out the door. I don’t know whose it is. And I don’t care if I’m making a scene in the Podunk diner. I can hardly breathe for the shooting in my skull.
It’s freezing outside. The cold is somewhat of a relief. It passes through my lungs, numbing a portion of the pain. I open my eyes into slits to see who it is that’s bracing me against the side of the building.
Henry’s eyes narrow with concern as he presses the back of his hand against my cheek. “You’re white as a sheet,” he murmurs. “Willow,” he says, very seriously, “you’re having a panic attack. Okay? That’s all this is. You’re going to be all right.”
Knowing what it is doesn’t make it any more tolerable, and it definitely doesn’t convince me that everything’s all right. I want to tell h
im that but I can’t speak.
“There’s no danger. I promise.” His takes my hand and squeezes it. “Your heart is fine. Your head is fine,” he adds quietly. “It’s just your panic making it race. You need to relax.”
I exhale too heavily, feeling like I’m choking—drowning. “It’s not working!” I cough.
“Shh,” he whispers. “You don’t have to talk.”
I try to focus on his umber eyes, but something inside me is flipping out, threatening to tearing me apart. Henry holds my hand, breathing with me. I vaguely register the fact he’s coatless, yet he doesn’t seem to notice the cold.
How can I begin to explain that, somehow, a distant but powerful part of me believes that he’s the one responsible for this?
The panic gradually subsides, giving way to something less tangible. It’s as though I’m floating, hovering slightly above our bodies. And I’m suddenly sure, without a doubt, that before he was Henry, he was Ray.
A man I’d fallen for. A man I’d given everything to.
A man I never should have trusted.
I recall my mom’s words that evening, after my impromptu regression with Mason at our house. You said something about…your man.
In my mind’s eye, my stepbrother’s face begins to morph. He’s no longer the blond, twentysomething student I’ve been living with, but a fairly suave and slightly older man with brooding eyes and dark hair, his masculinity and hint of southern charm irresistible to my once-vulnerable young heart…
“You took advantage of me,” I whisper, well recognizing the image of Raymond Sanderson.
My hand remains in his. Henry shakes his head, still not understanding. Yet, how can he not? He caused this—he’s the reason for everything.
I try to speak through scattered breaths. “I believed you.”
His forehead creases.
“I hoped, with everything I had, that you felt how you said you did—how I did. But you didn’t. You lied. And when I needed you most, you chose her.”
I pull back, feeling my chin tighten. Henry’s hand falls away.
The cold bites at my burning eyes as I turn. I blink out a tear, studying the crackled pavement in the almost-empty parking lot. I recall the girl from my dream, primping in her bedroom mirror. She was so pretty, so confident. The kind of girl who was head cheerleader and junior prom queen.
“You can say you don’t remember it, don’t believe it.” I speak with my back to him. “But I know you never actually cared about me. And you never will.”
More visions overwhelm me. I see flashbacks—Susan, rolling on lipstick as she watches herself in the mirror… Laughing, climbing into a convertible car with a hoard of friends wearing what look like vintage varsity jackets. It’s striking just how popular and outgoing she—I—was. She was everything I’ve been so ineffably afraid to be…everything I’ve tried so hard not to be this time around. Because I’d learned the hardest way imaginable that it was dangerous to be well-known, well-liked…to give into the men who pursued me…
These wounds had never healed.
Would they ever?
Henry’s voice issues haltingly behind me. “Look. I’m not going to pretend to know what this is about. But it feels like you’re trying to accuse me of murder or something.”
I shut my eyes briefly. Am I?
“And anyway, you know I don’t share your superstitions or beliefs. I only came along so that you wouldn’t be alone with him.” I don’t have to look at Henry to know he’s cocking his head toward the diner, where Mason’s undoubtedly still waiting for us. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe he’s the one brainwashing you against me with all these ‘past-life’ stories? And he knows just how to spin it in a way you can neither prove nor debunk?”
I don’t agree—not for a second. Mason didn’t invent this; no one did. It’s real. I feel it…I always have.
Leaving Henry in the parking lot, I go back inside. The warmth and bleachy odor of the diner in contrast to the frigid air outside is stifling. I resume my seat in the booth next to Mason. In silence, we wait for our food.
Eventually, Henry rejoins us. Mason glances between him and me, but doesn’t ask.
Good. Because I wouldn’t know where to begin.
13
My eyes flicker open. It’s dark in the car, as if the hour is late. Disoriented, I sit up in the back seat. The highway passes steadily out the windows beneath an ominously gray sky. I slip my seatbelt back on.
At the click of the buckle, Mason eyes me in his rearview mirror. He’s driving. “You sleep it off?”
“Sleep what off?” My voice sounds dry and groggy. I reach for my water bottle in the cupholder and twist off the lid.
Mason’s eyes find mine again in the rearview, and my sleepy memory returns. He’s referring to the panic attack—which we both know wasn’t any ordinary attack—that overtook me earlier at the diner.
I take a swig of water. “I guess. Why’s it so dark out?” I glance at the clock on the dash. “It’s only two-thirty in the afternoon.”
“Storm’s coming,” mutters Henry. I peek over at the passenger’s side, hardly surprised to see not one, but two textbooks open in his lap, with his tablet lying on top of them. He swipes the screen, then cross-checks something in his books.
“Thirty minutes to Elms Creek,” Mason reports, the GPS flashing from its mount in front of him. “We ought to check in somewhere, freshen up, eat. Then we should probably lay low until the weather passes. I doubt there’ll be much to see in the rain anyway.”
“What if it doesn’t let up until nighttime?” I frown. This time of year, night falls before six P.M. “We won’t be able to see the town in the dark.”
“Might have to wait till morning, then,” says Henry distractedly.
The answer irritates me. We didn’t come all this way to sit in a hotel room for the whole afternoon just because it’s raining out. Yet that’s probably what Henry has in mind, seeing as he’s brought a mountain of homework to climb.
“You don’t have to spend every millisecond studying, you know,” I snap.
He shrugs a shoulder. “I do, if I want to get out of crappy little towns like Middling and Elms Creek someday.”
“You haven’t even seen Elms Creek,” I argue. “Mason just said we’re still thirty minutes away.”
“Yeah, and I doubt it’s any different than the rest of these small Midwestern hick-towns we’ve driven by so far.”
“Oh, I forgot; you’re so elite, Dr. Hayes,” I snark. “Sorry we white-trash peasants aren’t elevated to your first-rate standards.”
“That’s right, Willow.” Henry turns in his seat to regard me. “Keep chopping away at that chip on your shoulder. Pretty soon it’ll turn into a nice, big dent.”
“Screw you,” I reply.
“You two literally argue like siblings,” Mason remarks, adjusting his mirror. “At least when you’re not flirting.”
I drop my bottle, spilling water all over my jeans.
Great. Now it looks like I peed myself.
Henry resumes his books, as if nothing entirely mortifying—not to mention, totally inaccurate—has just been said. I’m left blotting my pants with the sleeve of my coat.
“It’ll dry on its own.” Mason winks at me in his mirror.
I glare at the back of his seat, my face hot. Highly uncomfortable in my now-damp jeans, I look down at my fingernails. Each has been bitten to the quick.
Mason thinks I flirt with Henry.
I did flirt with Henry. Back at the diner, just a little. Right before the memories attacked me. Before my head felt like it was going to explode from the weight of our shared past.
I did think Henry looked hot in his driving glasses.
And then, I do, for a split-second, imagine what it would be like if, during one of our superhero movie marathons in the den, I scooted a little closer to my stepbrother on the downstairs sofa…let him rest an arm around my shoulders…raised my chin just so, reaching for
his lips…pulled him down on top of me…
Damn it!
I clench my jaw. Something about this trip is already messing with my head, bigtime. These urges don’t make any sense—can’t be coming from me. Mason, my crush, suddenly feels more like the chaperone here as I’m sitting in the back seat of his car, fantasizing about making out with my own stepbrother.
I’ve entered a parallel universe.
I try to convince myself that feeling this way about Henry is indulgent and wrong. Not just because our parents got married a year ago, but because I know better than to repeat history.
Ray left me broken the last time. There’d be nothing to stop him from doing it again.
#
I can’t see much of the landscape in the darkness of the stormy afternoon, apart from the fact that Missouri is another flat, heartland state. Some of the bare fields we pass look eerily familiar. Then I blink and the familiarity fades.
There’s only one chain hotel and a motel in Elms Creek. We drive by the dinky motel first, but it looks super old and sketchy.
“I don’t trust that the sheets will be clean,” I say, squinting at the crooked shutters as Mason slows past it.
“I don’t trust the mattresses won’t have bedbugs,” adds Henry.
Mason smirks. “I don’t trust Javier Bardem won’t break into our room with a bazooka.”
I laugh. A Coen Brothers reference. I like it.
Even though it’s twice as expensive, we go with the hotel. I double-check my pitiful bank account balance through the app on my phone and sigh. “We’ll share a room, if that’s okay.”
Mason lets Henry and me out of the car. We grab our bags from the trunk, then go inside to check in while he finds parking.
“We have a room available with two queen beds,” the concierge informs me at the front desk.
“Can we have a cot brought in too?” I ask.
“That’ll be an extra forty dollars.” He looks up from his computer screen. “Is that all right?”
