The Heart Will Lead You Home

by Kristin Leedy

  Lizzie swung into the passenger seat of Grace’s car and rolled down the window. Summer had hit, and it was blazing hot there in the South. Already the thermometer read eighty-nine degrees, but it felt hotter than that sit sitting on the warm leather of Grace’s car seat.

  “Come on, poky, hurry up!” Grace, Lizzie and Summer called out to Jade who waved goodbye to her boyfriend and hurried to join them in the car.

  “Okay, Okay, I’m here. We can go. Do you all have your swimsuits?” All the girls nodded. “Great, let’s see ‘em.”

  They made friendly ribbing cat calls as each girl held up her suit and showed the others. Lizzie held up her tiny two piece flame red suit with white strips and the other girls whistled. “Better hope Payton doesn’t see you in that. He’ll blow a gasket for sure.”

  “Shut up!” Lizzie turned red and hid her head behind her t-shirt. “Besides, he doesn’t even like me. He totally wants some other chick that lives over in Clarkston.”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever,” Jade joked. “That’s not what I see when I catch him staring at you when you walk down the hall.”

  “That’s it, you’re walking. Grace, pull over and dump her on her ear.” The girls all laughed and continued on down the road, their windows down, the radio blaring some country tune as they headed to the outskirts of town to Sellars’s house.

  Sellars’s family, the Johnstone’s, had been crawling in money for centuries. But for some reason they enjoyed living in this little town instead of with the other big money in Clarkston. Their house was on the edge of town, and was massive by Edenville standards. The girls pulled through the brick and iron entry gates and down the paved drive to the back of the two story sprawling stone and stucco house. The house must have sat on at least sixty acres by Lizzie’s guesstimate, probably more if she thought about all the woods behind the house.

  At the rear of the house was another iron gate that led into a courtyard. That led back to the tennis courts and swimming pool. To say the least, it was the nicest home Lizzie had ever been invited to.

  Mrs. Johnstone made the girls virgin daiquiris while they changed into their swimsuits, and Lizzie felt a little nervous when it was finally time to shed her cover-up to enter the pool. She felt awkward because all the other girls had long ago developed into their adult body, and here she sat just beginning her stage of it. Grace had found this suit for her while they were shopping one day and bought it for her as a gift. Lizzie wanted to refuse, but Grace insisted, and now she was stuck wearing it today so Grace wouldn’t be offended.

  Fortunately, Sellars had assured her no boys would be coming to the pool party. And fortunately, none of the girls made a peep, so Lizzie chalked it up to Grace warning them within an inch of their lives if they said anything about her suit. She finally settled into the shallow end of the pool with the other girls, a daiquiri in hand, while they giggled about life and the latest gossip they had heard at school.

  “What are y’all cooking up over there?” All the girls turned to find Lou Ann standing at the edge of the pool.

  “What is she doing here?” Jade asked with a hiss. The others looked at Sellars, wondering the same.

  “I sort of asked her.”

  “You did what!” Grace looked shocked.

  “Well, I mean, she’s been part of the group forever. I just thought…”

  “Well, you thought wrong,” said Summer, and everyone else agreed.

  “It’s okay,” Lou Ann said. “I understand. I was an ass and I deserve it.” Somehow Lizzie got the feeling that she was merely playing up a pity card but she felt almost sorry for her.

  “Wait,” Lizzie called as Lou Ann turned to leave. “It’s okay with me if you stay.”

  The other girls looked at her like she’d sprouted horns. “Are you sure?” Lou Ann asked with a smile. Lizzie nodded.

  There was a tense silence for a minute, but eventually the others asked her to stay and after a while they were back to their gossip.

  “All right,” Jade said as she turned the music louder on the radio. “Let’s decide here and now the hottest boy in school.” She turned back to face them, and smiled around the straw where she sipped her daiquiri.

  “I know what Grace is going to answer,” Summer commented.

  “Who?”

  “Colin.”

  “You can’t be serious. I’m way over him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Been there, seen all of that. I’m on to new stomping grounds now.”

  “Wait,” Jade gasped. “Does that mean you’ve…” Grace gave a confirming nod.

  “No!” All the girls said in unison. Lizzie was shocked.

  “But, when did this happen?” Lizzie asked, innocence filling her eyes. The others weren’t nearly as naïve and they giggled at her purity.

  “Lizzie, honestly. A week after the barn party, and then again maybe a few weeks ago. But down worry, I washed him off with a good romp with Clint- you know, Clint Hawkins in twelfth grade? Yeah him.” All the girls, minus Lizzie who was still shocked and confused, gave approving nods.

  “Seriously, Lizzie. You don’t have to look like Armageddon just arrived.” Grace studied her friend, and realized that as well as she knew her, she had overseen this one aspect of her life. “Wait, you don’t mean to tell me that…”

  “What? Tell you what?” Summer quizzed.

  “Lizzie, tell me you’ve at least kissed a guy before?” Lizzie opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come. All the girls giggled, and gave her a group hug.

  “Oh, it’s all right, honey. But, why not, if you don’t mind me asking?” Jade asked with a sympathetic giggle in her voice.

  “Why not what?” All the girls turned to find Payton, followed by a group of guys, as they all sauntered onto the pool deck. Lizzie thought she was just going to die. She noticed that Payton didn’t look her direction and she prayed with every ounce of her being that he hadn’t heard the conversation the girls were having. It was one thing for the girls to know she’d never kissed anyone, but entirely another story for a guy to know. Especially a guy named Payton.

  Lizzie shrugged her shoulders to herself, since all the attention had instantly been riveted to where the guys stood stripping of t-shirts on the opposite side of the pool, and tried to hide her flaming face behind her daiquiri. Why did it matter if she’d never kissed a guy before when her best friend had already been romping, as she apparently liked to call it, with multiple guys? Was that bad? She didn’t think so.

  So what if she thought of herself as awkward and not impressive to guys. She didn’t see many guys knocking down her door to get a shot at her. And besides, she wasn’t interested in anyone enough to want to figure out why anyone would even bother with something like romping, or anything more than kissing. Well, minus that one stupid crush on Payton that had hung around for far too long.

  She watched as Colin and Bud leapt off the diving board, one right after the other, and both did double flips into the pool. All the other girls laughed like hyenas and applauded until she thought she would gag simply from their overbearing flirtatiousness. She had to admit, with a roll of her eye, that even though she had expressly been promised no guys would show, she was happy to have their company around. This way she didn’t have to give away any more horrifying secrets that had already slipped through the cracks that day. And besides, even though she didn’t want any of those guys, it was still nice to see their strong bodies all slick with pool water and tanned from the sun.

  Lizzie perched her empty daiquiri glass on the edge of the pool and leaned back against the smooth stone edging the water when she felt a sharp tug on her ankles and she immediately sank underneath the water. She was stunned for a minute until she felt a strong body pull her close, then release her before she had time to think.

  She came up gasping for breath, her eyes wide with stunned shock, her hair, thankfully, had been swept back as she surfaced so she could see who her attacker had been. She opened her eyes and felt th
at all too familiar jerk she felt every time she found herself staring into that pair of eyes every bit as green and translucent as her own.

  Payton’s face was arrow straight for a moment, but he gave himself away with the gradually increasing twitch at the edge of his lips, and then the round of laughter he could no longer contain. She glared at him but tried to make light of the fact that her skin was still tingling from where their bodies had recently touched.

  “Ha, ha, Payton. Very funny. Do you always get your kicks picking on smaller people?” He smiled, that little dimple popping out, before he sank beneath the surface of the water and quietly swam away. She wondered what she had said after he swam away that had made him leave her alone. Whatever it was- surprisingly, she realized- it hadn’t been her intention.

  “Hey, wanna play a game of pool volleyball?” Bud asked it just before he leapt from the board again.

  “Yeah.” All the guys jumped out of the pool to go fetch the net while the girls found a ball and divided up the teams. Lizzie ended up being on the opposite team from Grace and Payton, and had a sneaking feeling before the match ever started she was going to regret having those two on the same team.

  “All right, huddle up team.” Payton, who had instantly been deemed team captain, yelled out to his team. They huddled, and Lizzie knew her team was in for disaster.

  Somehow she had been elected captain for her team, though she tried to pass it off to one of the guys. Regardless, she knew after the huddle when Grace winked at her and Payton had a grin so wide you could see his teeth sparkling all the way to Texas that she was in for a battle.

  Payton looked up from the huddle and tried not to focus in on that incredibly small and revealing two piece Lizzie had strapped to her body. He didn’t know where she had found it, but he certainly did know that much more of that and whatever it was that happened to him whenever she was in his vicinity lately would send him over the edge for sure.

  He focused in on the plan and sent the team to their places to begin the slaughter match. Payton pushed his way up to the front of the line and just his luck, found himself face to face with the owner of the red and white striped two piece with the maddeningly green eyes.

  Lizzie smiled shyly at Payton, her stomach all twisted with nerves and emotions too crazy to name, and she prayed that her team wouldn’t be slaughtered too badly.

  Payton watched Lizzie smile at him, and he saw the way she cut her eyes down and away. He just knew she was playing with him, trying to flirt in her own way, and it sent his body into overdrive.

  The first serve was thrown into the air and everyone watched as the ball bounced back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly, Payton was up in the air slamming the ball to the water below. His team, one point. Her team, zero.

  That was fine by her. She wasn’t going to give up yet. Her team served and lobbed it over the net. Colin served it back and the ball was going back and forth again. It was Lizzie’s shot at the ball and she saw her opening. Up in the air she went, bikini long forgotten as she let her inner instinct drive and she slammed the ball to the water below. His team, one point. Her team, tied.

  They went on neck and neck for a while, his team would score, then hers. But in the end, Payton got tired of playing and he and Colin decided they’d had enough fun for the day. They quickly put Lizzie’s team out of its misery and happily did their victory dance like a bunch of crazed fools off the diving board.

  It was getting later, and the girls needed to get on the road if they still planned to shop before the movie. They had all changed and were climbing in Grace’s car when the guys climbed into Payton’s truck to head out for a night of their own.

  He stopped his truck just beside her window and smiled at the girls, his baseball cap shadowing that beautiful green Lizzie had learned to want so much. Absently she licked her lips, and Payton made sure he looked well away while she did. He was having enough trouble not thinking of her in that red bikini as it was. He turned his attention back to the girls, his smile firmly in place, his strong arm draped over the black metallic paint of his truck.

  “Thanks for the fun, girls.” All the girls giggled.

  “Hey Lizzie?” He said her name slow and easy, like a cool summer spring, and it made her skin tingle just hearing the way he said it. She looked at him more closely and found him studying her intently. “Am I going to see you at the pond again this summer?”

  She smiled at him, remembering all the fun times they had had the last summer. “Maybe. If you’re lucky.” And with that Grace pulled away and left the guys spitting in her dust.

  Payton stared after her while all the other guys laughed and gave high fives in the back.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It had been almost three months since school let out, and nearly that long since she had seen Payton. He had to go away for the summer, he had explained to her the one day she saw him at the pond. His grandparents that lived in Texas were getting older, and he needed to spend the summer on their ranch getting things back into shape before the fall harvest hit.

  She knew he had been back for a few weeks now, but it was time for football training for the Varsity team to start, and she knew he was busy with that. Still, it bothered her that not seeing him for this long had upset her. She had no ties to him, but still somehow she felt some odd sort of connection between them.

  She had met some guy while she and the girls were in Clarkston one night at the bowling alley, and that at least had kept her mind off of him a little. She kind of thought he was cute- nothing in comparison to Payton, but then again, in her mind, not many guys could ever stand a chance next to him. Still, this guy had his good qualities, and he acted like a gentleman. So, Lizzie had given him her phone number and he had called a few times over the past few weeks.

  Lizzie lay on her porch swing, Skipper underneath snoring to his hearts content, while she read a chapter from the latest romance novel she had chosen to read. She had long since finished her summer reading, and had written the reports as well. Now it was time for her to read whatever it was she wanted, and this was what she chose.

  The book was set in the 1700’s and the heroine was swimming, supposedly unaware that anyone watched, while the hero secretly snuck to where he knew she was and watched her as she swam. He ended up sneaking into the water with her, and they had made love there in the shallow water close to the bank.

  Lizzie sighed and put the book aside. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a love like that, she thought? Her mind involuntarily moved back to the last day she had seen Payton, and she drifted off to sleep dreaming about that afternoon.

  He’d looked gorgeous, she remembered that. His trunks this summer were navy blue and they accented the tan he’d already acquired in the short time he’d been out for summer. His muscles had filled out on his body, that she remembered all too well from the day she had been with him at Sellars’ pool.

  But that afternoon he’d snuck up behind her where she lay reading by the edge of the pond, and he’d taken her book from her and held it high over his head.

  “Give that back, Payton Cartwright. Right now!” He laughed and danced out of her way.

  “Or what? You don’t look like you could hurt a fly, Liz, but I know better than that from watching you punch Lou Ann.”

  “That’s right, I can punch. Do you want to find out how hard?”

  “Is that a threat?” His smile had been wicked and taunting, and she couldn’t help but laugh at his obvious tease.

  “Come on, you’ve rescued me too many times for me to hurt you now. Just give the book back and we’ll call it even.” He’d thought about it for moment, and then smiled again.

  “Tell you what. You spend two hours with me at the pond this afternoon doing whatever I ask, and then we’ll call it even.” She thought about that for a moment herself, then smiled her own impish smile.

  “Deal. Now give me back my book.” She could tell by the wicked light in his eye he had something up his sleeve, but she wasn’t quit
e sure what.

  “Umm… Nope sorry.” He made a dash and hid her book back in a thicket of briars where she couldn’t reach it. “In two hours you’ll have your book back, but not a minute sooner.”

  It hadn’t mattered. Not really. Not even a bagful of snakes would have driven her from that afternoon at the pond, but she pretended to pout anyway just to throw him off. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on pretending that she didn’t have feelings for him when inside she was dying to know what it felt like just to be in his arms.

  She had expected him to immediately tell her what to do, but instead he sat down on her towel and patted the other edge for her to sit next to him. Tentatively, she sat next to him, their legs brushing barely against each other. He smiled at her, his green eyes crinkling behind dark lashes, his white teeth sparkling out from deeply tanned skin.

  Every time he smiled at her like that she felt like the whole world had just been handed to her on a silver platter. She would give every piece of fashionable clothing she had to Goodwill if only he would smile at her, and only her, like that for the rest of her life.

  He was the first boy she had ever liked, and she couldn’t imagine ever finding someone that would, or could, take the place of this crush. She smiled back at him, a little shyly, then turned to study a turtle as it bobbed along the surface of the pond.

  They talked for a while about simple things before they circled back to summer vacation.

  “What are you doing this summer?” He asked her as they watched a bird dive bomb the water and try to pluck a fish from the pond.

  “I’m going to be here, reading, like usual. What about you?”

  “What, no big plans with all your new girlfriends?” Lizzie smiled. They both knew it was because of him that she had these new friends.

  “Well, I’m sure we’ll think of something to do. Maybe a little time at the pool or going to the movies.”

  “Shoot,” he smiled at her and winked once before he looked back at the pond. “I’ll bet before I get back to Edenville at the end of the summer you and all your girlfriends will have picked up a throng of admirers over in Clarkston.”