Crash

by Nicole Williams

  When it was announced we’d be simplifying—AKA downsizing because we were running out of money—our lives, I had one request.

  Actually, it was more like a demand.

  My dance lessons at Madame Fontaine’s Dance Academy go on uninterrupted. Or cancelled due to insufficient funds.

  I didn’t care if I no longer got to wear the name brand clothes and had to shop at half price day at the local thrift store, or if my car was replaced for public transportation, or even if we had a roof over our heads. I had to keep dancing.

  It was the only thing that kept my head above water when I felt I was drowning. The only thing that got me through the dark days. The only thing that seemed to still welcome me with warm arms and a mutual love. The only thing that hadn’t changed in my life.

  Throwing my pointe shoes over one shoulder and my purse over the other, I opened my bedroom door a crack. The cabin was a rickety old place, with lots of character as my parents put it when they bought the place a decade ago, which had just been a nice way of saying it was a hunk of junk that was lucky to still be standing, but I’d learned two summers ago how to oil the hinges and apply just the right amount of upward pressure on the door handle to get the half century old door to open noiselessly.

  I waited, listening for the sounds and noises apart from the “Come Together” chorus. Only when a solid minute had gone by without a click-clack of heels or a trio of sighs being emitted did I give myself the green light.

  Mom was either on her way or already at work, so the coast was clear. After last night’s dinner, actually, after the last five years of dinners, avoiding my mom was a top priority, right below dancing.

  Leaping down the stairs, an image surged to mind. An image I’d tried to erase from it. An image my best intentions had been useless against.

  Jude Ryder, crouching in the sand a breath away from me, grinning at me like he knew every last dark secret of mine and it didn’t phase him one bit. Jude Ryder, golden from a summer in the sand, liquid silver eyes, stacked muscles pulling through his shirt . . .

  My toe caught on the second to last step and, had I not been bequeathed with a fair amount of grace from years of dancing, I’m certain I would have face planted into the ancient, lord knows what’s hiding in between the cracks, plank floor.

  Righting myself, ensuring shoes, purse, and pride were still intact, I forced myself to make a sacred vow that I would never allow myself to daydream, think of, ponder, wonder, or lust after Jude Ryder again.

  I didn’t need a signed petition from the countless girls he’d seduced and left high and dry to know he was a one way ticket to an unwanted pregnancy at worst or a broken heart at best.

  “See ya, Dad,” I called out, snatching an apple from the fruit bowl. “I’m off to dance practice and I’ll be home sometime before dinner.” Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I was out the door two heartbeats later.

  It didn’t matter how long I hung around, there would be no response from my dad. Not even a nod of acknowledgement. He could have been a mannequin in his chair, staring absently out the window at nothing.

  I could have been screwing half the world’s population on the kitchen counter and he wouldn’t have cared. Or even noticed.

  Reminding myself that dwelling on the screwedupedness that was my family wouldn’t fix a thing, I turned my thoughts to something else, anything else, that wasn’t family related.

  And where did my mind lead my thoughts to?

  Jude Ryder.

  I was on some sort of sick, self-destruction thought stream.

  Heading towards the Mazda, something caught my eye. Something that stood out because of the way it caught the early morning sun. Something that had not been there yesterday.

  Turning towards the beach, I saw what was responsible for stopping me in my tracks at seven oh two in the morning.

  It was cyclone fencing, a rectangle of it, containing a miniature house, two plastic bowls, and a knotted rope inside of it. A dog kennel.

  A solution to one of the endless problems that riddled my life.

  An answer to a silent prayer.

  Striding down the beach, biting my lip to keep the phantom tears from even thinking about forming, I noticed there was a red bow tied across the padlock door, a folded note hanging beneath it.

  I suppose to ninety-nine point nine percent of teenage girls, a dog kennel as a present ranked just above a bad hair day on prom night, but to me—a girl who couldn’t have fit the mold of normal if she tried every day of forever—it was like finding the latest Hollywood heartthrob wrapped beneath the Christmas Tree with a tag that read, Enjoy.

  Grinning like the schoolgirls I rolled my eyes at, I ripped the note from the bow, not even caring who had built the kennel. This meant mini Cujo could stay with me until I’d rehabbed him so he could be adopted into another family.

  My smile that felt like it wouldn’t end did just that rather abruptly as soon as I read the words.

  So. How about that date?

  It was signed with nothing other than a J, but I didn’t need the perfect punctuation or the following three letters to know who’d left it. Just the man I needed to, yet couldn’t, stop thinking about.

  Just the man I never needed to see again. Just the man I wanted to see right now.

  If my history of failed relationships didn’t already prove it, this did. I was going to end up an old, malevolent shrew.

  Taking a quick scan of the area, there was no sign of a man whose face, body, and smirk shunned the gods. I was irritated at myself for being disappointed.

  Certain a guy like Jude knew exactly what he was doing and what his next play was going to be, I shot one more smile at the kennel before jogging to the Mazda. The mirror walls and wood floors were beckoning to me and, as I’d already admitted, dance came before boys.

  With perhaps the exception of one.

  Shaking my head and putting a heavy lid on my irresponsible, internal evil twin, I turned the key over in the ignition and blasted music until the speakers sounded like they were about to blow out.

  I still couldn’t erase Jude Ryder from my mind.

  I wiped out. Fell so hard on my ass it knocked the wind right out of me. The last time I’d taken a fall of any kind was when I was ten and on the second day on my pointes. I was mad the fall had cut my practice short. I was madder Becky Sanderson, who’d been bragging she was a shoo-in for Julliard since we were in grade school, had had a front row seat to it. I was maddest I’d have a bruise the size of Cape Cod on my derriere until winter break because I’d been thinking of a certain someone I most certainly shouldn’t have been.

  Whatever and why ever it was, Jude had set off a grenade in my life that was decimating even the most sacred pieces in less than a twenty-four hour period.

  I wanted to curse the maker for not completing the female cast with a delete slash purge button when it came to men, but I was too superstitious. I was convinced swearing at the divine was followed by a one way ticket to hell. And not the otherworld, Satan and demon dwelling hell. Hell on earth.

  Let’s face it, I was already so close I needed to be on my best behavior every second of the day.

  Pulling into the driveway, I slammed my head down on the steering wheel, trying to conceive of a viable equation for time travel so I could fast forward my life one year.

  Because dogs were the most sensitive creatures on this earth, a hot, wet tongue slid up my cheek.

  “Why can’t you be a teenage boy, Rambo?” I asked, scratching him behind his ears.

  A yap and a doggy smile was his answer. My newest pet project, pun intended, earned himself a name last night at the Darcys’. Apparently a Rambo marathon played all night long and whenever Mr. Darcy had attempted to turn off the TV, the pup had gone all nutso on him, so he left it on and, by dawn, neutered male, mixed breed, scheduled for euthanization the same day I adopted him, had a new name.

  “All right, boy,” I said, frowning at the beach house. “Let’
s get this over with.” Scooping up all of Rambo’s twenty pounds, I beelined for the kennel like it was safe territory. Like if I proved I could contain him, I could keep him.

  “Here’s your new house, Rambo,” I whispered as I shooed him inside. “Be a good boy and don’t dig, bark, or tear your doggy house to shreds, okay?”

  He began inspecting the kennel right away, growling in the corners where I guessed a certain set of hands had spent a lot of time fastening nuts and bolts together.

  “You’re not a big fan of Jude’s, are you?” I said, kneeling outside the kennel door. “Why is that?”

  “Probably because dogs have great intuition.”

  I was so startled by the voice behind me and its proximity to my neck that I stumbled back, falling on my butt. For a grand total of two times that day. At this rate, I was going to become the first prima klutz ever.

  “Dammit, Jude,” I said as Rambo broke into a tirade. “There were these great one syllable words referred to as greetings that were invented so one person”—I motioned at him—“could alert another person before they—”

  “Fell smack on their ass?” he finished, offering me that same grin that had been my undoing yesterday and, as my twisting gut was proving, today as well.

  “Startled them,” I finished, about to push myself off the ground when he reached for my hands and pulled me up. I told myself the warmth, the heat, that trickled into my veins at his touch had everything to do with the hot as Hades summer day.

  Even in my most authoritative voice, I wasn’t very convincing.

  His smile ticked higher. His eyes flickered. He knew exactly what his touch was doing to me. And I hated that he knew.

  “Sorry I startled you,” he said, letting go of my hands.

  “Sorry you knocked me on my ass, you mean?” I smirked at him, wishing he wouldn’t look at me like he could see and hear everything taking place below my skin.

  His eyes rolled to the sky. “I’m sorry for all prior, current, and future offenses I make in your presence.”

  From behind, I heard Rambo start lapping up some water from his bowl. “All jokes and banter aside,” I said, “thank you. This is quite possibly the nicest thing anyone’s done for me.”

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he stared at me. “It was no big deal.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said, not about to let him wave this off as no big thing. “Although I’m curious as to how you got this thing built without anyone hearing or noticing.”

  “It helps that I’m a fence making ninja,” he said, giving me a twisted smile, “and it also helps that I live next door.” Pointing his chin at the next cabin over, he arched a brow at me and waited.

  “It was your family that bought the place from the Chadwicks last fall?” I asked, gazing at the A-frame cabin next door. I’d been under the impression it was still vacant.

  “Yes, indeedy.”

  “You’re my neighbor?” It was every teenage girl’s American dream to have a neighbor like Jude, so why did my stomach feel like I’d just swallowed a brick?

  “No,” he said, rubbing his hand over his mouth, trying to mask his smile. “You’re my neighbor.”

  “Well,” I sighed. “There goes the neighborhood.”

  He nodded once, those gray eyes of his so light today they were the color of nickels. “There it goes.”

  Three words. Three words accompanied by that look, performed by those eyes, emitted from that man.

  I was lucky my knees weren’t buckling beneath the weight of that swoon.

  “So,” Jude scanned me, “neighbor, how does Friday night sound?”

  “It sounds like Friday night,” I smarted back, thankful the strong, very unswoony pieces of me were coming back together. No man, a level short of divinity or not, would render me into a sighing, batting eyelashes, love sick maniac.

  “Weak, Luce,” he said, clucking his tongue. “We’re going to have to work on the speed and sharpness of your comebacks if you’re going to spend much time with me. I’m hard to keep up with.”

  “Easy solution to that then,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning back into the kennel. “I won’t spend much time around you.”

  “So you’ve decided to wise up and keep your distance?” he said, his voice quieter.

  “Lucy wise up?” A voice that could line that much ice around words in this kind of heat took a particular level of skill and discipline. “That’s as likely as me getting to take a three day vacation any time in the next decade.”

  I swear if I was a dog, my hackles would have been on end or my tail would have been between my legs. With my mom, I didn’t know whether to fight back or cower and expose my jugular.

  “I don’t know about that, ma’am,” Jude said, stepping around me to where I assumed my mom lingered over me. “Luce seems like one of the smart ones. One of the ones who has her head on straight.”

  Mom clucked her tongue three times. “Flattery is not considered a virtue, young man. Especially when, at this stage of life’s game, it is utilized by young men hoping to work their way into a young woman’s pants.”

  “Mom,” I hissed, spinning around.

  “Who’s your new friend, Lucy?” she asked, looking him head to toe like he was as every day and far less useful than polyester.

  “Jude.” When she was acting like this, I kept my answers to one word.

  “And I’d assume Jude,” she said, just like she was sinking her teeth into a lemon wedge, “has a last name.”

  “Ryder,” he offered, extending his hand, which she glared at like it was a misplaced load bearing beam on one of her projects.

  “Ryder,” she repeated, although she annunciated it so it sounded more like ride her. “Of course it is.”

  Unbelievable. My mom had to be the first woman who had looked into Jude’s face and not felt something thump-thump somewhere inside. Even a guy, a straight guy, would have been more impressed by Jude than mom was.

  “Another dog,” mom sighed, turning and appraising the kennel and everything in and around it as if it should be shipped away on the next train out of town. “So much for wising up. When are you going to learn that you can’t save the world one lost soul at a time?” she said, the hardness draining from her voice, leaving behind nothing but the sadness that really was my mom.

  She didn’t expect a response to that question but, although she was halfway to the cabin door and out of hearing range, I still offered one. “Until there are no more lost souls left to save.”

  “Seems like a great lady,” Jude said from behind. I could feel the smile on his face it was that strong.

  “You have no idea.” I turned towards him, wishing every time I looked at him it didn’t feel like I was falling down an abyss. “So you think I’m smart, huh?”

  “Only because you decided to keep your distance from me.”

  Glancing at the kennel, imagining the time, money, and stealthy planning it must have taken to build it without being noticed, I didn’t need to know the finer details that made up Jude Ryder. “Who says I decided to keep my distance?”

  “You did,” he said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his worn pewter jeans.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. “And if I did, I reserve the right to change my mind at any given time.”

  “If that’s the case, then I reserve the right to retract my previous comment.”

  “You make so many of them, exactly which comment are you talking about?” I asked.

  Reaching out, he ran his fingers down the laces of my pointe shoes strung over my shoulder, like he was capable of breaking them if he wasn’t careful. “The one about you being smart.”

  He could have been about to say something else, he could have been about to do something else, but it would have to remain a mystery because at that moment, the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week” blared through the windows. Dinner was in thirty.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Stroking the pink ribbons one last time, more careful
ly than hands like his seemed capable of, he glanced back at the cabin. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” I repeated, shooting him a look. “You’re a teenage boy, a super human sized one at that. You should always be hungry.”

  He paused, the inner conflict so strong it was lining his face.

  “Come on,” I insisted, grabbing his hand and giving it a tug. “My dad’s the best cook ever and you just met my mom. Don’t make me go in there alone.”

  Exhaling, his eyes shifted to mine. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely, positively, impossibly, certainly,”—I peaked a brow at him— “Dare me to continue?”

  “Make it stop,” he said, clamping his hands over his ears.

  “Come on, Drama-saurus Rex,” I said, waving goodbye to Rambo, who was happy as a clam gnawing his bone, and lead Jude up the stone walkway.

  “Another weak weak attempt at humor, Luce,” he said, winding his fingers through mine. “So weak.”

  “Forgive me, oh hallowed god of comedy.”

  Nudging me as we walked up the steps, he grinned that impish grin that made me feel my heartbeat in my mouth. “Good to see you’re ready to admit I am a god.”

  “Oh, god,” I sighed, shaking my head.

  “Exactly,” he said, all matter-of-fact. “Just the way you should refer to me.”

  Shooting him the most unamused look I could manage, I shoved the screen open. The inevitable would only wait so long.

  Sitting down to a family dinner was low on my list of priorities, especially considering dinners as of late had been punctuated by silence and even more silence. Unless you count the looks mom fired like a ping-pong ball between dad and me. But sitting down to a family dinner with Jude, a guy I knew very little about other than I was dangerously captivated by him and that, at least on the surface, he was a guy no right-minded parent would want their teenage daughter spending their time with, this dinner, I was quite certain, had the potential to be epic.

  An epic disaster.

  “Something smells damn good,” Jude said to me, sniffing the air that was thick with the scents of lemon and butter.

  His words weren’t only heard by me, as attested by both my parents’ heads snapping back to stare at him.