by Hazel Parker
Such as right now, for example.
“The hell old are y’all? Sixteen?”
“What? We can’t have a good time?” I said with a smirk.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“You want to arrest us? Public intoxication? Noise violation? Disturbing the peace?”
“There ain’t no peace to disturb,” Sheriff Wiggins cracked. “Not with the Mercs a town over and tryin’ to raise hell down here.”
I snorted.
“What can I do for you, officer?”
“What the hell did y’all do last night?”
I looked at him, confused, and shrugged.
“Drank too much whiskey and tequila. The hangovers are—”
“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout that. I’m talkin’ ‘bout whatever the hell y’all did in Los Angeles.”
I looked at him askance when, tired of my apparent playing dumb—I really didn’t know what he meant, I was too hungover—he pulled out his phone and showed me the front page of the L.A. Times. “Explosion rocks North Hollywood warehouse.”
“Not familiar with it,” I said, even as panic settled into my stomach.
“Christ, do ya really gotta think I’m so dense?” Sheriff Wiggins said. “Look.”
He made it a point to pull me away from his squad car, away from anyone who might be trying to eavesdrop through the radio or some other unknown means.
“I know ya gotta handle y’alls business, and I do what I can to stay away whenever I have to. Ya know the rules. No innocents, and no shows for innocents. Well, unfortunately, that second rule got violated last night.”
I bit my lip, pretending to play coy, but only because we both knew on an unspoken level I could never admit to anything, even a friend on the force.
“Explosions draw eyes, Trace,” he said, lowering his voice. “The last thing Green Hills needs is eyes on it. Ya catch my drift?”
“I do,” I said simply, leaving it at that.
“I’mma do what I can to keep the higher-ups off us. Say the DMs got into some internal warfare or somethin.’ But at some point, Trace, I got my limits. I’m a sheriff, not the president of America.”
“I understand, sir,” I said, fighting to keep my smirk on with the hangover and the stress ravaging my body.
“Consider it a neighborly courtesy,” he said. “Ya may wanna make sure the place is cleaned up a bit. Ya know. Look presentable if the feds show up.”
I bit my lip.
“If?”
“I really don’t know,” he said. I believed him. “But it’s possible. And I ain’t gonna be able to do nothin’ if they come. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Get some rest and get hydrated,” he said. “And Christ… where can I get some girls like the ones you have?”
I smirked.
“Keep this town under your jurisdiction,” I said with a wink. “And I’ll see what I can do.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, but he did so with a laugh as he got into his cruiser.
He took off a few moments later, and once he disappeared from view, I kicked a nearby bucket as hard as I could.
“Fucking hell,” I growled. “Last thing we need.”
This morning was a mindfuck.
Needing something good to happen, I pulled out my phone, texted Jane, and told her I had a great time.
Her response, two emojis—one with a smile, one with a kiss—were all I needed to feel better.
But then the thought that I was dragging her back into tragic heartbreak came roaring back all the same.
Chapter 12: Jane
Three Days Later
The saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” was becoming more and more true, even though it was only three days without seeing Tracy.
I knew all of the psychology behind distance and unavailability. I knew that people craved that which they could not have, and my little maneuver not to let him sleep with me had made him text me much more than before. But by the same token, his decision to ask me to wait a couple of days before a date—“just to make sure everything works out” as he put it—had me going a bit crazy too.
Part of it was that whenever I saw Dr. Burns, my mind raced back to our conversation about if I should pursue love or a career in medicine, or how to balance the two. I’m pretty sure that what I thought was the message she was trying to send, that if I passed up a chance for love, I would have to rely on extraordinary circumstances to get what I wanted. I definitely didn’t feel like being a surrogate emotional mother, and I definitely didn’t want to go through life wondering if I should have gotten hitched.
Already thinking in terms like that…
My, how things move quickly with Tracy, huh? He really is a different type of man.
Just… one date at a time.
Still, there was a definite awareness that for as much as I pushed Tracy to take it slow and not rush me, I was reaching my breaking point at which time I would just want to fuck him. It had been over a year for me personally, and while I could always use my hand or my toys, it just wasn’t the same.
And it wasn’t the same as what I imagined Tracy would be like.
Just better hope you don’t find an excuse to push him away this time.
You’re not going to decide to marry him tonight. You don’t have to let your commitment issues get in the way.
Like what?
That you think he’ll die in the field and—
“Can’t wait for tonight,” I said to myself, doing my best to speak over my thoughts.
It worked temporarily. It worked whenever I had surgery or some other treatment to take care of. It worked when I woke up in the morning, too tired and too slow to be thinking anything other than getting a cup of coffee.
But it didn’t always work.
Nevertheless, on the third day, I felt more excitement than anxiety. Tracy had told me that he’d pick me up at the end of the shift from the hospital and show me around. I warned that my shift didn’t end until eight, meaning I didn’t have time for a long night, but Tracy just shrugged it off, saying he wouldn’t think of eight as late until he was a grandfather. I hated that my first thought was “would they be our grandkids?”
Near the end of my shift, right around two minutes to eight, as if telling me that it was time, I heard the revving of a motorcycle as it approached the hospital. I saw more than a few doctors and nurses giving me looks, which I mostly just ignored, the better to keep my focus on the task at hand… which, apparently with two minutes left, was just to file some paperwork.
As soon as the clock struck eight, I was bounding out of the office like a kid who had just finished her last day of school. I made a quick detour to the break room so I could change into clothes slightly less professional and more date-appropriate. The sound of the motorcycle engine got louder and louder as I came closer and closer to the exit, and my heart beat faster and faster.
Then I saw him through the sliding doors—the muscular arms holding onto the bike, the colors, worn with pride, and the motorcycle waiting to grab me.
“Hey you,” he said.
“I haven’t ridden in ten years,” I said, a mixture of delight and nervousness setting in.
“You got nothing to worry about,” he said as he pulled me in close for a hug—though thankfully, not a kiss. As much as I had feared getting kissed at his shop, I think it would have mortified me even more to have gotten kissed in front of my coworkers. “I have a time and place for doing tricks on the bike. But this isn’t one of them.”
“Oh, good, so just speeding and a few wheelies?”
“You get the idea.”
I laughed, deflecting the nerves I had about actually going through with this. Nevertheless, I lifted my leg over Tracy’s bike, positioned myself, and wrapped my arms around him.
I had never realized how taut his stomach was until I had positioned myself like this. Those abs better have great control over this bike.
“Where are you taking me?” I s
aid.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” he said. “You’ll recognize the place.”
“Is that so? So it’s within Green Hills?”
He just shrugged, put his helmet on, and had me do the same.
“How far away is this place?”
“Are you asking because you want to know, or because you’re trying to delay me taking off?”
I was caught.
“Just hold on tight and close your eyes if you get scared,” Tracy said. “I promise I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
You fucking better not!
I did indeed close my eyes as I felt the engine roar to life and tremble beneath my legs. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve said Tracy offered to give me a ride because he knew what the vibrations underneath me would to do my arousal level.
Actually, I did know better, and it was fair to say that he had done this just for that reason.
Still, the VROOM-VROOM-VROOOOOOOOM that came as he led me out of the parking lot forced me to close my eyes and press my head close into his. This felt more than a little silly, most of all because my Pops had taken me on rides well before I could even fit my arms around him, and I’d never felt safer, but… ten years! Ten years was a damn long time to not do something so dangerous!
Is it dangerous with these guys, though? Especially your father and especially Tracy?
Still, even just twenty miles per hour felt like a mad dash, and Tracy just laughed when I asked him to slow down.
“You think this is bad?” he shouted over the bike. “You’re gonna hate going on the highway!”
“Are you serious?”
“You can always walk if you want,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll want to make that choice, though.”
Goddamnit, Tracy.
Luckily, what I had hoped would come true did. The first couple of minutes scared the shit out of me as I envisioned his bike flipping over, him having to skid out, or some other nasty combination that resulted in me having to get operated on by nurses and doctors from my own hospital.
But gradually—and by gradually, I mean within about five minutes—I remembered what it was like to ride with my dad. I recalled the liberating sensation of allowing myself to surrender to the man in front of me, the man who protected me more than anyone else ever had. The man who brought me into this world and sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything to take me out of it.
And now, all these years later, riding with a handsome man I had a massive crush on, the one who wanted to keep me in this world as much as my Pops did, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
I slowly opened my eyes, letting myself take in everything that we sped by and passed by. The wind whipped around Tracy’s back, hitting my arms but not my face, which was well protected by my helmet and by Tracy’s broad back. When he moved to the highway and changed lanes, I briefly felt some nerves, as it felt like the bike was going to tip over, but then he brought it up with such ease that after the first two turns, I didn’t feel anything other than like a kid on a swing—a bit of a rush at the prospect of going up in the sky, but the comfort and knowledge that nothing bad was actually going to happen.
Still, I did have to wonder just, exactly, where we were going.
It only took two exits, though, to make me realize what Tracy had chosen on this evening. “Green Hills Lookout,” a hike of about half a mile to a spot where not only would our cozy, small town be visible, so would almost all of Los Angeles. Admittedly, I wondered if this was his way of getting us some privacy since he probably knew full well that no one was coming to interrupt us. Hell, we probably wouldn’t even bump into any other hikers along the way.
“A hike, huh?” I said once he had killed the bike.
My god, I can still feel the bike’s vibrations through me.
And damn, does it feel really fucking good.
“You wanted me to prove that I was serious about you,” he said as he took his helmet off with a smile. “I thought, what better way to show it than by taking you to the opposite of a bar? Instead of trying to get you drunk off of alcohol—”
“You’ll get me drunk off of altitude sickness?”
“How did you guess? Your genius is beyond me, Jane.”
“Shut up,” I said with a laugh.
He took my hand in his as he led me to the dimly lit trail. There was some lighting, which meant we weren’t stepping blindly through ankle-twisting and foot-damaging potholes, but the nighttime ensured that most would-be hikers were likely waiting for the morning sun to come for them to get their move on. That was perfectly fine with me—it allowed me to squeeze his hand, challenge him to races up the hills, and talk without shame about out-drinking him at the next club party.
The banter was light, playful, and fun. It was exactly the kind of thing that I had hoped he would make happen when I suggested this date—not innuendo-heavy, not sexually charged, not erotic. Just… just like we were friends.
Which, contrary to our first date’s guidelines, we were not just.
But it was nice to know that this wasn’t just about sex.
When we reached the top, I gasped. To the north, directly ahead, was the small town of Green Hills. Behind us, with a simple 180-degree turn, I could see all of the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles.
“Quite the contrast, isn’t it?” Tracy said as he put his arm around me. “Green Hills has a way of looking mighty small when you see the city behind us.”
“Pretty much everything looks small in comparison,” I retorted. “But yeah. I get it. Green Hills…”
“It’s home.”
“It is, but it’s just…”
I couldn’t find the words to express what I wanted to say—something about how such a small city had such major going ons, had such incredibly interesting people, had played such a big role in Tracy and my upbringing. This small town, which was smaller than some places in the Dakotas and Montana, could both be the small, everyone-knows-everyone place that we had grown up in, but it could also act as a feeder into the greater Los Angeles area… or the greater happenings of life.
Maybe I was just being a little bit too philosophical with this, but for what Tracy had managed to make me feel by bringing me here, how could I help but feel anything but that way?
“Perfect?” he said, interrupting my thoughts.
I couldn’t find any other adjective. Perfect wasn’t right, but neither was anything else. For all the complexity this town was to me, there probably wasn’t an adjective that could sum it up. It would take many words, many sentences, many books to describe what Green Hills meant to me properly.
“Good enough,” I said, and it was true.
And then my thoughts went somewhere that I had not expected this evening to go.
Sentimental.
“You know, my Pops used to take me here all the time,” I said. “Probably came here once a month at least. Did you know that?’
“Can’t say I did, in all honesty,” Tracy said. “I knew he liked to get away from Green Hills from time to time, get the chance to decompress and think. Didn’t know he came here and took you.”
“Yeah,” I said, realizing that my voice was wavering a bit, becoming slightly emotional. “He would take me here about once a month. Now that I think about it, it was usually the last Sunday of the month. We’d come here and hike, even when I was just barely learning to walk. It became a huge deal to me when I realized that I could make it all the way up without taking my dad’s hand.”
I laughed at that, trying to deflect the more powerful emotions creeping in at the moment.
“When I got to the top… and it was always a clear blue day, perfectly clear… he would…”
My eyes began to water.
“He’d point up and he’d say, ‘I bet Mom is watching you right now. I bet she’s proud of you.’”
I felt Tracy’s arm go around me. I sniffled, and the first tears started to fall.
“I never knew my mom, but whenev
er I came on these hikes, it just felt like she was with us, you know? And now that I’m back here with you… it’s, it’s like they’re both here with us.”
Tracy pulled me close, and I let some tears fall onto his shoulder. If I had known that I would cry like this, I probably would not have let Tracy pick this place.
But if there was anyone I was comfortable revealing this to, it was Tracy. Tracy knew everything that I had gone through on a much more intimate, personal level than anyone else had. Tracy loved my father and probably had some memories of my mom, albeit likely very fuzzy ones.
And frankly, there was no one who made me feel more loved and appreciated than Tracy. It was more of a protective, watchful eye relationship in my youth, but college and med school had never brought anyone who made me feel the same way as Tracy, if I was being fully honest with myself. No one had ever had the history with me, no one ever knew me better, no one could appreciate what I had gone through more than Tracy.
Maybe that was why most of my previous relationships had never lasted that long. Of course, there was a whole host of reasons that I had suspected, many of which now flooded my mind since I didn’t have to protect myself against crying.
The death of my father had affected me terribly in this regard. I didn’t have anyone to look up to as a man anymore, didn’t have anyone to warn me about boys, didn’t have anyone to threaten to kick a boy’s ass if he mistreated me.
The death of my mother had likely played a role too. Right from the earliest days of my consciousness, I had learned that loved ones died, and a certain nihilism had probably settled in to some degree. My father’s death had only perpetuated and entrenched that mindset even more.
And, of course, once things became patterns, they were much harder to break. What had started as keeping flings short to avoid getting hurt had simply become the way of thinking—of course, most relationships only lasted a few months. Of course, love between anyone other than a parent and a child was fleeting.
I would always look for things to prove myself right. The divorce rate. The fact that my peers also weren’t getting married. The deaths and grieving that widows had to go through.
