Too Many Rules

by G. L. Snodgrass

  She swung and hit my shoulder but smiled at my absurdity then frowned. “Kevin’s never asked me out.” She looked so sad it broke my heart. I knew there was a little manipulation going on. She’s my sister, what can I say. The idea of her going out with boys was terrifying. The idea of her sitting home alone sad and miserable was worse.

  “Do you want me to talk to him?” I asked.

  She squealed and hit me twice. “Don’t you dare, I’d dig a hole and crawl into it if you broach the subject with him. Do you understand?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said rubbing my shoulders. I never should have taught her how to throw a punch. “Maybe if….”

  “NO!”

  “Alright, okay, I get it. No big brother involvement.”

  She smiled and hugged me goodbye.

  As I started to climb into the truck I turned back. “Hey Mattie, how about I take you down to get your learner’s permit after school on Monday, you’re fifteen and a half right?” She squealed and ran to give me a hug before she walked back to the house mumbling something about a test.

  Like I said, life was good.

  .o0o.

  The date with Katie went its normal outstanding self. She wore a pleated red skirt and a tight black sweater that made her look sexier than a New York model sitting on a cool car. Her glasses reflected back my huge smile, she really didn’t like contacts. That was fine by me; the whole sexy librarian look was a real turn on.

  While we were in line for the movies several guys I didn’t know shot her looks of approval. Running their eyes over her body when they thought I wasn’t looking. Katie caught it and shivered. I leaned down and whispered, “I want extra points for not pounding their heads into the concrete. Unless you want me to that is?”

  She laughed and shook her head. I made it a point of stepping between her and them and giving them a look that let them know how unhappy I was. They got the message and turned to flirt with some other girls in front of them.

  After the movie, I drove us to the bluff and turned off the engine. We sat there for a moment staring into the night. I counted twelve yellow porch lights twinkling like static fireflies. This place would always be special. Fleeting memories of what we called, “Her Story,” popped in and out of my mind. Would they always be haunting us I wondered?

  Being a red blood young man, of course, I had thoughts about the two of us taking it up a couple of levels. Like all the way up. Okay, it was all I thought about.

  Every waking moment and most of my dreams seemed to be filled with thoughts about the two of us making love. Here I was sitting next to the prettiest, sexiest girl in the entire country and I couldn’t do anything about it. The wrong word, the wrong move and I’d scare her away, maybe forever.

  Heaven knows she had more than enough justification to avoid anything that could make her remember the hell she went through. Maybe counseling could help. Maybe I could find somebody who could tell me how to be next to this wonderful, sexy person and not want her so much.

  “Take it slow” I kept telling myself. “Don’t screw it up.”

  .o0o.

  Katie

  Scott’s left arm was wrapped around my shoulders cradling me on his lap. His right hand was on my hip, rubbing small circles that seemed to penetrate to my very core and set it on fire.

  I became lost in the touch and feel of his lips on mine. My world narrowed to just his lips. A warm tender feeling suffused through my whole body. His hand drifted to my tummy and rested half way between my chest and belt. My insides tensed up waiting for his hand to move.

  His hand slipped inside my shirt and burned my skin where ever it touched. The heat worked its way into my body and brought it alive. I couldn’t stay still and shifted on his lap to get a better position.

  Scott gasped and broke our kiss with a reluctant sigh.

  “Maybe we should take a break for a minute.” His voice sounded like a cement mixer full of gravel as he rested his forehead against mine.

  “Okay,” I answered my lips pursing in a pout. It hurt to think he didn’t want to kiss me. That wasn’t really the issue but it still hurt. Scooting around on his lap to get more comfortable I stared out of the steamed up windows.

  A moan from deep inside his chest bubbled out and his face scrunched up in pain. I started to jump off him. He clamped his strong arms around me and said, “Don’t move. Please for the love of God, don’t move.”

  I can occasionally be dumber than a rock. It took me a moment to realize what was going on. A secret thrill washed through me as I thought about the impact I was having on him. It might have made me a bit of a tease but it was such a sweet empowering feminine feeling. It made me giggle and wiggle a bit more than I should have.

  He groaned again and gently pushed me off his lap. “You have a mean streak Katie Rivers.”

  The giggles wouldn’t stop as I looked at his face. “No I don’t, not really. You caught me by surprise. I can’t believe that the great Scott James is embarrassed by little ol’ me.”

  “I’m not embarrassed, I’m frustrated.”

  A serious pall settled over us. His eyes got big and his pupils dilated. Quickly, I held his arm to let him know it was all right, he hadn’t upset me. “I know you’re frustrated, I am too.” The silence dragged on for a moment more.

  “I’m scared about taking things further. This has been the most wonderful two months of my life and I don’t want to do anything to ruin it. I want it to go on forever. I want it to get better every day.”

  “I’m not pressuring you, Katie. I don’t want to be that guy. I love you and I’ll wait until hell freezes over if I have to. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to obsess about it in my brain. I’m a human male. It’s been proven that we think about little else.”

  I laughed and sent a silent prayer of thanks that some higher power had seen fit to bring this man into my life.

  It was unbelievable that we were sitting here calmly talking about sex.

  If somebody had told me that I’d be sitting in a truck with Scott James talking about making love with each other. I would have thought they were three cards shy of a full deck. The fact that we had already shared our deepest darkest pains made all other subjects easier to breach.

  The radio started a new song, it was “AT LAST by Eta James, the first song we slow danced too. It was quickly becoming our song. We looked at each other and broke into huge smiles. The tension was gone and we were okay again. I snuggled into the crook of his shoulder and said, “I Love You.” He draped an arm around my shoulder and said, “I love you more,” as he kissed the top of my head.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Scott

  Walking next to Katie always made me feel bigger, stronger, and more powerful. It was a feeling a guy could get used to, almost addicting.

  Holding the door open for her, she entered her library ahead of me and deposited her backpack behind the counter. I tossed mine up on my regular table. Mrs. Johnson waved hello then ignored us. She had long ago given up any hope of getting work out of Katie when I was around. I think she was happy for us.

  We sat and I pulled out a Trigonometry worksheet I needed to finish. Katie watched me for a minute and unconsciously pulled my dad’s lucky penny out and started to rub it. She did that whenever she had a quiet moment to herself.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked. It was always impossible for me to read her deepest thoughts.

  She startled for a moment then smiled. “I was wondering about my father. I wish I knew him so I could introduce you. Is that weird or what?

  “No, it’s not weird. I wish my mom was still here. She’d have loved you to pieces. My dad would have been jealous.”

  She smiled and a tear gathered at the corner of her eye. “That is the sweetest thing you’ve ever said.” She buried her head in my shoulder and sobbed. It made me feel weak and useless and I wished she’d stop.

  Obviously, she had a problem and I needed to fix it, now.

  “You know,
maybe we could figure out who your dad is. Your mom had to have gotten pregnant when she lived here. You told me you were born six months after she left.”

  Katie pulled back from my shoulders her eyes sparkling with unshed tears and a brief flash of hope.

  “How?” she asked, her voice catching with a weak hitch.

  “I don’t know but there’s got to be away. I’ve already asked Grandfather, but he doesn’t have any idea.”

  Katie blanched. “Oh my God, Oh my God,” she said, her hand going to her mouth in shock. “Your dad dated my Aunt Jenny, you told me what your grandfather said. That means he knew my mother also. What if….Oh my God!”

  “What if what?” I asked, confused and getting a little scared. Something had really upset her.

  “What if your father got my mother pregnant? That’d mean….”

  I busted out laughing. It was one of those deep down belly laughs.

  “Why are you laughing? This is serious! What if we are brother and sister?” The look of fear and terror on her face was priceless.

  I laughed again. “There is no way you are my sister. Believe me, I’d know. I have a sister. I wouldn’t feel like this if you were my sister.”

  “You don’t know. Those are social morals established by early religions. You don’t know how you would feel about someone you didn’t already know you were related to,” she said, her face had gone stark white. All of the color had drained away and I worried about her fainting.

  “Katie, I’m positive. You are not my sister. My dad would have been about four years older than your mom. He’d have already graduated before she started her freshman year. There is no way he did that, especially not with your Aunt Jenny’s kid sister. You didn’t know him. He wouldn’t have dishonored our family like that. And if he had, he sure as hell would have married your mom. There is no way.”

  She looked off into the distance and I knew her mind was running a thousand miles a minute thinking of all the possibilities of how things could go wrong. Shaking my head I stood up and walked towards the bookshelf in the back.

  “Here, let me prove it to you.”

  “How are you going to prove it? We may never know. Oh my God, what if we have this hanging over our heads for the rest of our lives.”

  Then another thought exploded in that brain of hers. “Thank God we didn’t do too much,” she said and her stark white face started to grow pink then red as she thought about how close we had come a few times.

  “Katie, settle down, here look at these.” I returned from the stacks with four different yearbooks. All of them were different versions of the same thing. Red and white covers with some kind of tiger on the front.

  I found the right year and flipped through the pages until I found what I wanted. Setting it down, I pointed out the picture and slid it to her.

  She looked at me with terror-filled eyes then slammed both hands down on the book, covering the picture of my dad.

  “No, let’s not look. Let’s pretend we didn’t think about this.”

  “Katie, come on, listen to me, you can trust me. Look at the picture. My dad doesn’t look anything like you. Different hair, eyes, everything.”

  Slowly her hands slid away from the book as she looked at the picture. She studied it for several seconds then let out a huge sigh as her shoulders slumped in relief. “That’s not my father,” she said with a shaky voice.

  I studied her as she ran a finger over the picture of my dad. “He looks like you,” she said. “He has your eyes. I wished I could have known him.”

  My heart lurched at the pain in her voice. I’d do anything to make her happy. She looked up with glistening eyes and a weak smile.

  “Come on,” I said. “Maybe we can find your father in here.”

  We started going through the yearbooks. She squealed when she found her Aunt Jenny with long brown hair and a shy smile. When she found her mother’s sophomore picture she froze and stared at it for several minutes.

  “She looks so young, innocent, with no idea of what life has in store for her.”

  I glanced over her shoulder at the picture. I saw a bit of a wild girl with wavy blond hair and too much make-up for a girl her age. She looked into the camera with a challenge and glint in her eye. This was a girl with dangerous written all over her.

  She looked so different than Katie. Her jaw and forehead were the same. But the blue eyes had a hard knowing look that Katie lacked.

  .o0o.

  Katie

  My stomach was settling down after the scare of thinking Scott might be my brother. The idea had stopped my heart and terrified me so much I thought I was going to be sick right there in my library.

  Blessed relief had flowed through me when I saw Scott’s dad. I knew immediately he wasn’t my father. A little pang of regret had flittered across my thoughts. I was ecstatic but also wanted to know who my dad was.

  An envious feeling of jealousy towards Scott bubbled up. He may have lost his father, but at least he knew who he was. Knew his history. Grew up knowing where he came from.

  I started going through the yearbooks. Why didn’t we think of this earlier? The fashions had changed over the years. Their hair used to be bigger and they wore a lot more pastels. Quite a few of the boys had perms. I laughed, the guys today wouldn’t be caught dead with a perm. I looked at Scott and shook my head, I couldn’t imagine him in a perm.

  Continuing to go through the pictures I looked for my eyes looking back at me.

  Would I know it if I saw it? I wondered. Each picture was different yet the same. High school kids trying to look cool. Full of potential and excitement about the future.

  What were their teenage years like? Was it the best time of their life? Had they peaked in high school and everything afterward been a letdown? Had they hated high school, fighting to make it through years of embarrassment and not belonging? How many of them had felt bullied? How many of them were the bullies?

  I continued to flip pages, my fingers running down the pictures. My stomach kept turning over in worry. What would I do if I found it? What if I didn’t?

  Scott stood behind me looking at the pictures, his calming presence giving me the strength to keep going.

  A face jumped out at me. A boy in his senior year. It wasn’t any one thing but a combination that froze me in place. The boy wore glasses that looked a little too big for his face. He had brown auburn hair with a reddish tint. Green eyes looked back at the camera with a cocky attitude. It was the facial bone structure, the chin and cheekbones. It was a masculine version of my face to the tee. It felt like I had seen that face before. I looked to the side of the page to put a name to the picture.

  Steven Carrs. Danny’s dad. My insides hardened into stone as I gasped. No! Scott’s enemy. I looked again, cataloging each feature. Studying the picture trying to find some way to deny the evidence in front of me.

  Scott saw what I was looking at and started to rub my back. I looked at him with raised eyebrows. Did he see it? He nodded and gave me a weak smile.

  I looked back at the picture. Torn between fearing he was my father and hoping like hell that I had finally found him. It was hard to breathe, Scott’s soothing caress kept me grounded.

  “Do you think…?” I asked him.

  “It makes sense of something Danny said to me a couple of months ago.”

  “What? You didn’t tell me you talked to Danny.”

  “I didn’t think it was that important. He confronted me in the parking lot. It sounded like he was trying to warn me away from you…”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I think he knows you’re his sister. Maybe he was afraid I’d see it and tell everyone.”

  “Is being my brother such a bad thing,” I asked as I looked back at the picture. A brother, the thought had never really occurred to me.

  “For Danny, it would be,” Scott said. “His family is one of those that believes appearances are important. His dad owns the John Deere dealership and is a
town councilman. He’s always cared what people thought about him and his family.”

  The picture was mesmerizing. Steve Carrs was wearing a beige suit and skinny black tie, it reminded me of a nineties movie about high school kids. “That isn’t proof, this picture isn’t proof,” I said.

  Scott was quiet for a moment letting me think, “You know it’s him. Look at it. What are you going to do?”

  It was unbelievable, this might be my dad. “I want to meet him, I have to know.”

  Scott nodded his head and put his jacket on. “Okay, no time like the present.”

  “What? Now?” My heart stopped and my palms began to sweat. This was going way too fast. No way was I ready for any of this, I hadn’t prepared myself. What if it turned out to be wrong? What if he didn’t want me coming back into his life? A thousand things could go wrong. Why did we ever go down this path? Life had been great, I had Scott. I didn’t need anything more.

  Putting the genie back in the bottle was impossible. I knew who my father was, I had to deal with it.

  Scott got my jacket and helped me slip it on. He squeezed my shoulders and kissed my neck. “It’s going to be alright Katie, I promise.”

  He meant it I’m sure, but I also knew that even Scott can’t control everything. A daze descended as I let him lead me to his truck. We were going to meet my father. Maybe?

  .o0o.

  The John Deere dealership was located on prime real estate at the intersection of Main Street and First Avenue. The large parking lot was covered in green and yellow tractors and giant combines. These machines were what made this community work. Without them, we would be a dry prairie supporting a bunch of buffalo and Native Americans. With them, these people grew enough food to feed half the world.

  Scott parked on the street and held the glass door open for me to go in first. The showroom had smaller tractors and riding lawn mowers with pictures of waving fields of grain on the walls.

  A salesman jumped up then seemed to deflate when he saw a couple of high school kids coming into his place of business.

  “How can I help you?” he asked.