All I could do was smile softly and nod. As maid of honor, It was my job to make sure her day was special. And It would be. Casey and Austin deserved it more than anyone I knew.
The next two weeks were a blur. Grandfather arriving, staying at Scott’s. The graduation. The bachelorette party, the wedding. Shipping off my stuff. Everything hectic and hurried. But behind it all. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about Kevin.
Where was he? What was he doing? Would I ever see him again.
I had been so lucky to see him again, so lucky to finally put the beginning of closure on the us we used to be. But it had opened up a hole inside of me. A hole that I was worried would never be filled again.
As the plane descended into Omaha, I looked down on the flat green fields of endless corn, broken by the occasional farm house. Home, I thought. Were I belonged.
Grandfather met me in the terminal and my heart melted. Still the same man. A little stooped, gnarled hands. But still the man who had raised me.
It had only been a couple of weeks. But this was different. This was home.
Sinking into his embrace, I held on for an extra second, soaking it up.
“Come on,” he said as he led me towards the baggage claim. “I still can’t believe you came back to this place. I though once you got out you’d never look back.”
I hugged him, “You can take the girl off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl.”
“I don’t know that you’ll be doing much farming. You’ll get an accounting job in Brady, no problem.”
I hoped he was right. I’d already received some interest in my resume. It seemed young people with accounting degrees were few and far between around here. Most of them left and never came back.
As he lifted my suitcase into the back of his truck, he paused for a moment and looked at me. A sad smile crossed his face as he said, “Your grandmother would be so proud of you. Your Mom and Dad too.”
I stopped as a warm feeling washed through me. He’s right, I thought. They would be. Shooting him a quick smile, I jumped into the truck, ready to start my new life.
The trip home was like a trip back through my memory banks. The endless fields. The dry wind with a taste of dust to it. The Carrs’ John Deere dealership on the corner. Joe’s Pizza Parlor. The high school. Nothing had changed. Nothing but me. I wasn’t the same girl, I realized.
Everything was the same, as if I’d left it the day before. Yet, something was missing. Some part that kept everything from working the way it was supposed to.
No Kevin, I realized. That was what was missing. Home didn’t seem right without Kevin there.
Sighing to myself I pushed the thought away. At some point I was going to have to move on or I’d end up a crazy cat woman living all alone on the Nebraska prairie. But not yet, I thought. I’d move on in the future. But not yet, the pain was still too close, too tender.
As we turned onto our farm road, We began to pass between the tall green corn stalks. Grandfather would be harvesting in a couple of months. I smiled to myself, looking forward to helping him. He’d tried to hide it, but I’d noticed that his arthritis was getting worse.
Grandfather glanced at me and smiled. Not a large smile. Grandfather was too reserved to break out a big smile. But I could tell he was pleased that I was there.
As he parked the truck just outside the house, Shep, our border collie barked happily and raced from the barn, sliding to a halt in front of me, his tail spinning a mile a minute.
Reaching down I pulled him into a hug, burying my face in his fur. Home, I was home, The house, the barns, Shep. I was back. Yet I couldn’t put aside the feeling of loss inside of me. Home, but without the right person to share it with.
Sighing, I looked up and my heart slammed to a stop. A tall man was stepping out of the farm. A tall man leaning on a cane. A man I had thought I would never see again.
Kevin!
He slowly walked towards me.
“What?” I whispered as I turned to Grandfather. He just raised an eyebrow and grabbed my suitcase.
“I’ll put this in your room,” he said as he shot me a quick grin.
“What?” I repeated, unable to understand what was happening.
Kevin continued towards me, his eyes never leaving mine. As if searching for information, needing desperately to discover some hidden truth.
“What are you doing here?” I final forced myself to ask as my heart raced and my hands began to shake.
Kevin smiled slightly and tilted his head. “I work here. If that’s okay? I mean, I don’t want you thinking I’m stalking you or anything.”
The hesitation in his voice pulled at me, he’s nervous I realized.
“ But why? I thought you needed to be alone, figure things out.”
He shrugged those wide shoulders of his and looked deep into my eyes. “It didn’t take long for me to realize what I needed to do.”
“What was that?” I said softly, as my heart stopped beating, desperately waiting for an answer.
He continued to study me for what seemed like forever then said, “To try and make you fall in love with me again. For a chance to fix things. To be more than friends. To build something important.”
My heart melted, as I stepped towards him, “Oh, Kevin,” I said. “I never stopped loving you. That was never our problem.”
He smiled as his shoulders slumped with relief. Shaking his head as if unable to believe what he had just heard, he dropped his cane and reached for me, pulling me into the tightest, safest, bestest hug of all times. The kind of hug that could cement our two souls together. The kind of hug that leads to soft tender kisses and so much more.
“I will always love you Mattie,” he said, sending a warm feeling through me. “I finally figured out that it isn’t what you see in the world or where you go. It’s what you build and who you build it with, that is important.
Leaning back, I stared up into his eyes and smiled. “It took you long enough.”
He laughed. “Yeah, well you’re going to have a lifetime of reminding me that you’re the smart one in the family.”
I closed my eyes and sank into him. A lifetime. Such a wonderful, beautiful word. Family, an even better word.
“Are you sure,” I asked as I held my breath.
He smiled, “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. All I know is that you give my life meaning. You make it worth living. And if you’ll let me. I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy.”
Yes! The words I had always wanted to hear. I knew there would be hard times, for us. But I also knew they would never outweigh the good times. This was Kevin. My Kevin. The man I would always love. The man I would build a life with.
The End
Author’s Note
Thank you for reading ‘New Rules'. I would love to know what you think of it. My readers make it possible for me to do what I love. I am always grateful and excited to hear from you. Please stop by my website GLSnodgrass.com or send me an Email at [email protected]. Feel free to sign up for my newsletter. I use my newsletter to announce new releases and give away free books.
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As always, I would like to thank my friends and family for their help. I also owe a great debt to Anya Monroe, Eryn Scott, Kim Loraine, and Alexis Adair for their kind assistance. And of course, my great friend, Ms. Sheryl Turner.
As a little extra, I’ve included the first chapter of my book My Brother's Bodyguard (Hometown Heroes 1). Enjoy.
My Brother’s Bodyguard
Chapter One
Elle
I am of the firm belief that life is a series of events designed to make you hope for death.
How else to explain my situation there on that hell know
n as a school bus. A bus on its way to the first day of Junior year.
For most people my age, Junior year is one of those rare moments of hope and happiness. Not yet the pressures of preparing to leave home. No cliff fast approaching. Yet, no longer a despised member of society. Neither sophomore nor dreaded freshman. No, Junior year was to be that perfect time.
But of course, as I said earlier, life is not like that. At least not mine.
You see, I was cursed. Cursed by a burden known as Jimmy, my little brother.
Yes, I know, normally, a brother is not a curse, even a little brother. But then you don’t know Jimmy, nor my situation.
Jimmy was only thirteen years old. Not a major issue in and of itself. But Jimmy was also going to be a Senior in my school. Yes, that is right, a year ahead of me.
Do the math. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
I bet you came up with the same answer as me. My much younger brother would be ahead of me in school. It didn’t make sense, the universe is not designed to work that way. But then, Jimmy wasn’t a part of our universe. The normal verse, I call it. No Jimmy was unique, Jimmy was special. And he had absolutely no idea what he was in for.
But then, when it came to reality, Jimmy could be blind or just willfully ignorant, I could never decide.
The thing that made it even worse was that it wasn’t his idea. If he’d have had his way, He’d already be up at Stanford, He’d had a standing invitation for the last two years. Yes, he was that smart. One of those freaks of nature the universe blessed.
Of course, his blessing ended up being my curse.
No, it wasn’t Jimmy’s fault. That could be laid at my mother’s feet. She who must be obeyed at all times. The all knowing, all powerful woman who ran our lives.
A boy who had never been to school. - Not unless you count that one time he visited MIT - A boy home-schooled by my mother and my Nana. The local schools had taken one look at his test scores and ran for the hills. He’d terrified them. They didn’t know how to even approach a problem like Jimmy.
A walking geek about two feet short of our current seniors and as big around as a corn stalk during a drought.
And she was throwing him into the high school deep end. Not even as a freshman, where he might have been able to hide and avoid what was coming his way. Nope, she was throwing him into the senior class.
I knew these kids. They’d spent twelve years honing their talent of ruining any and all that were different. It was their mission in life. They had reached the top of the pecking order. Their goal was to impart pain and shame on any that were not like them. Wasn’t that the whole point of being a senior?
And Jimmy was as different as they came.
In fact, he suffered from all three diseases. He was short. A geek with a ninth degree black belt in computers. And a young man with the social understanding of a footstool.
But had she listened to me? My mother. Um, no. Of course not. She had simply said that the school would make sure everything went just fine.
I tried not to laugh in her face, I really tried, but I failed miserably and barked out a laugh so loud it made Rufus, our Siamese cat jump in his sleep.
“Mom,” I tried again, “Please, you don’t understand. They are going to eat him alive. He doesn’t have a clue.”
“Well, he needs to learn,” she said, “And it is better here at a high school than off at university.”
“Mom, if you think high school is better than college you are sorely mistaken. There, at least they are pretending to be adults. Here, they aren’t even trying. It is the jungle, eat or be eaten.”
“Oh, Elle, don’t be so dramatic.”
“Mother, listen to me. Am I normally overly dramatic? You have no idea.”
“Oh, I remember what high school was like. It wasn’t that long ago, we even had books instead of clay tablets.”
“Mom, you were both the class Valedictorian and the Prom Queen. Of course, high school was easy and fun. You’d had twelve years to intimidate every student you ever met. No one would think of bringing any rain to your world. It won’t be like that for Jimmy.”
She just gave me that mom smile of hers. The one that drove me up the wall. The one that said I was being a silly little girl and I should leave these things to the grown-ups.
Of course, I’d never told her about the whole sixth-grade disaster, or about Justine Beckham and her gaggle of followers and the girl's bathroom. Nope, some secrets I would keep to my grave. All I know for sure is that my mother had never been bullied. She was just too clueless.
All I could do was shake my head and walk away, leaving her to her work. As a major lawyer for one of California’s leading environmental non-profit groups, she was always bringing work home. She’d spend half the night going over things while her son was busy scouring the net for some kind of intellectual challenge and her daughter was twiddling her thumbs alone in her room, desperately trying to figure out how to navigate through this screwed up world.
Making it even worse, I couldn’t exactly complain. After all, she was doing the good work saving the planet. Although, there are times I wish the damn desert salamanders would just disappear off the face of the earth.
I know, that makes me a terrible person, but I made sure to keep such thoughts to myself, I’m not an idiot. Not in Jimmy’s league, but not an idiot.
Glancing over at him, I had to shake my head. The boy was clueless. He didn’t even know enough not to sit next to me on the bus. It made him look weak and me uncool.
He had his head buried in a textbook. I don’t know why he bothered, he’d had them all memorized half-way through the summer. In addition to being a curse, he was a constant reminder of how unfair life was. I had to work my butt off just to keep my grades up enough to hope to get into a mediocre college. Jimmy remembered everything. What is more, he could see the relationship between everything all in that weird brain of his.
It’s like a web,” he told me once. “I just have to find the right string and pull to find the answer.”
Yeah, a web. Me? it was like a congealed mass of goo. I couldn’t find the answer to most questions without digging through a pile of junk.
Suddenly, a thought popped into my head that made me want to kick myself for not thinking about it earlier. This whole school bus fiasco could be avoided if I had a car and drove us to school each day. Why hadn’t I been working on Mom all summer? Sometimes, I really could be a dolt. If I’d played my cards right with my mom, I might have been able to finagle a sweet ride out of the deal. Instead, I’d spent the summer worrying and fretting, instead of using it to my advantage.
When the big yellow monster stopped in front of the school, I reached out and held Jimmy back for a second.
“Let them go first. There’s no rush,” I said
Jimmy looked back up at me with an excited look that let me know he was actually looking forward to school. Like I said, the boy had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Finally, we exited the bus and made our way inside.
Ah, the sweet smell of floor wax, fresh paint, and a thousand teenagers. A unique blend of hope and angst that is high school.
We wove our way through the throng of new students. Everyone smiling and yelling at long lost friends. People talking about the summer, the hopes and dreams for the future year. In other words, teenage people being teenage people.
It seemed no one knew where they were going, and yet, the crowd moved along at a pace just slow enough to make sure we weren’t going to get there in time.
“Come on,” I said as I pulled at Jimmy’s shoulder. The boy was a minnow in a school of tuna. The size difference alone was remarkable, but the blank, unknowing stare on his face sealed the deal.
Making sure I had a good grip, I snaked our way through the crowd until I got him to his first class, English Lit. I know, a totally useless class for him, but Mom had insisted. After all. He wasn’t there to learn, he was there to grow.
I pulled us to a sto
p and turned to face him.
“Are you ready for this?”
He laughed, “Elle, don’t worry, I’ve already read all the books. What’s the big deal?”
I shook my head, he thought I was talking about the classwork. Oh, how stupid could you be?
“I’ll meet you here after class and walk you to your next one.”
He frowned for a moment. “You don’t have to do that. I know where it is, just around the corner and two doors down.”
“It doesn’t matter, humor me, okay?”
He laughed and nodded, “Okay, Elle, if it makes you feel better.”
My heart ached as I watched him step into his classroom. At that moment, I hated my mom for making him go through this. I hated her even more for making me go through it.
Grinding my teeth, I turned to hurry to my class when I ran smack dab into a solid mountain of hard chest.
My nose, followed by my entire face, smashed into some guy. Some very large, male type guy.
Bouncing back, I looked up, and up, into a pair of silvery blue eyes that sort of stopped my world for just a moment. The eyes belonged to a very tall young man with massive shoulders, black hair that kissed his ears and a small scar on his chin. He was dressed in jeans and a green army jacket that looked so wrong for a Bay Area high school.
“Um, I’m sorry …” I mumbled as I fought to get my reality back on track.
He looked down at me for a very long second, then his lips twitched in a smirk that made me angry. I don’t know why, it just pissed me off. Maybe because the smirk made him look enticing, almost desirable. So me, being the cool, calm person I am, I overreacted.
“You’re in my way,” I said as if that was all that ever needed to be said.
The smirk grew just a little, “Go around,”
My anger jumped up about fifty degrees. I seriously thought of bumping into him as I passed but realized immediately that I’d only hurt myself. It would be like running into a brick wall out of spite, not smart, and the wall never got hurt.
Instead, I tried to play it cool. I did the whole hair flip over the shoulder thing. Shot him the evil stare my mom had passed down to me, and then walked around him.
New Rules Page 5
