Breaking Rules

by Tracie Puckett

  Fourteen

  Thursday evening rolled around, and it was finally time to head to the church for a few hours of volunteering at our soup kitchen. I managed to get through most of the day without thinking of California, my burgeoning hatred for my father, or the constant flutter in my heart sparked by the sheer thought of Gabriel Raddick.

  “What are you doing all dressed up?” I asked, eyeing my sister as I walked through the kitchen on my way to the front door.

  Bailey was up on the counter, gnawing on the top of a granola bar. Out of her school clothes and dressed in a pink flowered sundress and heels, she looked as though she was ready for an evening on the town. Her hair was styled into a smooth ponytail and bouncing off the top of her head, and her make-up was seriously overdone.

  “You know I’m taking the car tonight, right?” I asked, trying to fathom where in the world my sister planned to go looking like that. “Do you need me to drop you off somewhere?”

  She shook her head, swallowed the bite of granola, and then hopped down from her spot.

  “Nope, I was just waiting on you.”

  “Waiting on me for…?”

  “A ride.”

  “To?

  “The soup kitchen,” she said, clapping her hands once to knock the crumbs off her fingers.

  “What’s at the soup kitchen?”

  “The Raddick Initiative,” she said, holding a finger up before I could interrupt her. “And don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’m only going with you because Jones had to bail to cover your shift, and none of the girls were free at the last minute.”

  “Okay?”

  “So I’m going to spend the evening helping,” she said, shrugging. She studied my suspicious stare.

  What was she up to?

  “I’m not up to anything,” she said as if she’d read my mind. “I mean, come on, Mandy. Weren’t you the one who gave me that whole load of crap about doing something positive and making an impact for the greater good?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?” she asked. “Don’t stand there staring at me like I’m naked. It’s not a miracle that I’ve changed my mind.”

  “It kinda is.”

  “Do you want me to go or not?” she asked. “Because I can turn around right now and find something to do on my own. It won’t faze me for a second.”

  True, she could, but I had trouble believing that she would. I loved my sister, but unlike me, she didn’t know how to be alone. If Jones, Dad, and all of her friends were going to be busy, Bailey would rather spend a few hours volunteering than spend a few hours alone with her own thoughts. And that was saying something, considering that only one week earlier Bailey would’ve rather gouged out her eyes than to help anyone in need.

  Though I was still uncertain of her motives and her decision to leave the house with me, I snatched my keys and purse from the coat rack near the door and left with my sister in tow.

  I pulled the car into a corner spot just outside the church a few minutes before five, and neither Bailey nor I had time to make it through the back door before Lashell waddled out with her hands held high in the air.

  “Nope, turn around, back in the car,” she said, waving at us.

  We exchanged looks with one another, and then we turned back to the graying woman. Neither of us knew what to say, but we stood plastered in our spots, silenced nonetheless.

  “What do you mean back in the car?” I asked, finally finding my voice. “We agreed on Thursday evening. The kitchen opens tonight. Carla’s put up hundreds of fliers.”

  “Change of plans. You’re not working here today,” she said, coming down the few steps. “Carla’s got her whole family to pitch in here, and Fletcher just showed up with half the drama club. We’re packed behind the line.” She extended her arm and passed me a piece of paper with a small, hand-drawn map and barely legible scribbles scrawled across the bottom. “You’re on the street team today.”

  “The street team?” Bailey asked.

  “It’s the roadside clean-up,” I said under my breath. “It’s not even part of the school program. It’s one of the permanent RI groups. They collect the litter—”

  “Like trash pick-up?” she asked, widening her stare. She looked down at her dress and heels. “No way, José! I did not sign up for that.”

  “You didn’t sign up for anything if my memory serves me well,” Lashell chimed in. “Bailey, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said, standing tall. “Bailey Parker.”

  “Well, Miss Bailey Parker,” Lashell said, nodding up at the building. “We can try to squeeze you in somewhere inside if you’re too dainty to get your hands dirty, but I won’t make any promises.”

  Relief swept across Bailey’s soft face. She looked to me as if to ask if it was okay for her to stay, and I simply shrugged. What else could I do? If I said I wanted her to come with me, she’d no doubt follow me straight to the street clean-up, but she wouldn’t let a second go by that she wouldn’t remind me how much she hated me for making her pick up trash along the highway.

  Letting her stay at the soup kitchen was about the only way to ensure that she wouldn’t be ready to murder me by the end of the day.

  We said our goodbyes, and Lashell added a few, simple instructions before I turned to leave: follow the map if I couldn’t read the directions at the bottom, meet the RI street team at the white van, and log my hours this evening on the highway. I didn’t have a moment to ask her why I’d been the one transferred before she turned away, and she and Bailey both disappeared through the back door of the church.

  I let my gaze fall on the scribbled words at the bottom of the page. I got back into my car and followed each turn just as it’d been given on the paper. Within fifteen minutes, I was halfway to Desden on Highway 6.

  There was an empty parking lot off the side of the road, so I pulled in and parked the car. The lot was empty with the exception of the street team van, but the team didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. I got out of the car and stood just a foot or so away from my open door. I turned in a full circle, looking for any sign of the other volunteers, but there didn’t seem to be another sign of life anywhere.

  “Good, you made it.”

  Gabe rounded the back corner of the van, dressed in his dirty and dingy work clothes, and then he looked down at my freshly laundered, RI shirt.

  “Oh, boy. That’s never going to stay clean out here,” he said, opening the back door of the van. He reached inside, dug around for a second, and then he extended his arm to hand me a folded trash bag and a long, litter stick. “The rest of the team is going north today. We’re going down the south stretch. I went ahead and sent them out while I hung back and waited for you.”

  I looked down the road, back to him, and then I pulled my head upward and watched him from the corner of my eye. Even in those first, few moments, I already sensed that there was something strangely different about him.

  “What exactly am I doing here?”

  “The Raddick Initiative sponsors a four-mile stretch of clean-up between Sugar Creek and Desden,” he said, and his words were very formal, almost as if he’d rehearsed them.

  “That’s great,” I said, clearing my throat. “But I meant why am I here? Lashell stopped me on my way in and told me to follow the map.”

  “Right,” he said, closing the van doors.

  Clutching a litter stick and trash bag of his own, he started toward the highway, so I followed. With a few brisk steps, I caught up to his pace and threw him a questionable glance.

  “Gabe?”

  “You’re here because I asked Lashell to send you.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the competition,” I said, just in case he’d forgotten. “I want to win, Gabe. I need to win, you know that. Besides, I’ve made a commitment to my group, and we all knew what we were responsible for. We had a plan, and my absence kind of messes with the
whole dynamic of our team.”

  “Don’t worry about the team,” he said, ignoring my mention of the competition altogether. His tone remained very formal, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had suddenly sparked this all-business side of him. “Lashell will find someone to step in if she needs the extra help.”

  “She already did,” I said. “Bailey’s taking my spot.”

  “Bailey?” he asked, stopping in his tracks. He turned to me, and his expression finally changed to something softer. “Your sister? She’s volunteering today?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She said she wanted to tag along and work with me, but then Lashell split us up. I thought that maybe I’d done something wrong.”

  “Oh, Mandy,” he said, closing his eyes as he forced a breath through his lips. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, shrugging.

  Sure, it had been the one chance, and probably the only foreseeable opportunity that I’d get to spend time with her, and it hadn’t panned out the way I hoped. By now I could only imagine that she’d dread the whole evening, making it the worst possible experience of her life, and then she’d somehow find a reason to blame me for abandoning her (although it was her idea to stay, and leaving wasn’t necessarily within my control).

  “You can go back to the church if you want to, Mandy,” Gabe said, reading into my expression. He started walking again, so I kept up with his pace. “You don’t have to stay here. I can handle this stretch.”

  “And leave you all alone?” I asked, shaking my head. “No way. Not with the way you’ve been dragging that leg lately. It’s not that big of a deal, anyway. If Bailey gets mad, she’ll get over it.”

  “But the whole reason you decided to do the program was so that you could spend time with your sister,” he said. “And now that she’s on board, I don’t want to be the reason you’re not doing that.”

  “And you won’t be,” I said. “I’ll tell her I was with you. Believe me, she’ll understand. I mean, it’s you.”

  Gabe stopped walking again, and he arched his back, almost as if my words had surged through him, and not in a good way. He turned back and looked down, narrowing his gaze and studying my blank expression. He finally nodded a few times, and then he turned and started walking again.

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked after five minutes into trash pick-up. When he didn’t said anything for a while, I began to worry that maybe I’d said something wrong. He’d been acting strange ever since I’d pulled up, and I couldn’t figure out what in the world had happened. “Gabe?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why am I here today?”

  “I thought we covered that already.”

  “But we really didn’t,” I said. “You were vague. You were avoiding the question. You asked Lashell to send me here, but why?”

  He paused, and his breath became shallower by the second. He poked a piece of Styrofoam along the roadside and dropped it into the large trash bag clutched in his hand.

  “I asked Lashell to send you here this evening because I wanted to spend some time alone with you,” he admitted, dropping his head a bit further. Still, he didn’t look at me, but focused his attention on the trash alongside the road. “I knew that I wouldn’t get the chance to do that again anytime soon. I just… I wanted to see you while I could.”

  Before I had the time to respond or even register what he meant by that, the wind picked up, and a chilly autumn breeze swept between us. I shivered and lifted my shoulders, but the cool air didn’t seemed to bother him. Gabe closed his eyes for a minute and let the wind sweep around us, and when he opened his eyes again, his gaze fell back to me.

  “I probably should’ve warned you that you’d be out here all evening,” he said, looking down at my short-sleeved, RI shirt. “Here, take my jacket.”

  Propping his litter stick against his leg and letting the bag fall to the ground, he unzipped his jacket, removed it from his body, and draped it across my shoulders. I wanted to hate how clichéd the whole thing was, but even I couldn’t ignore the magnitude of the moment.

  For a moment his hands gripped my upper-arms, holding me as if to somehow help me stay warm. It was the first time since I’d pulled up that evening that I felt like Gabe wasn’t distracted by something. But as quickly as he’d changed, his expression turned sad again. Something buried in the lines of his face looked pained and hurt.

  I took a step forward, and his hands fell away. “Gabe, are you okay?”

  He was acting so strangely.

  His eyes shifted around, focusing anywhere but on me, and there was a hazy uncertainty laden in his stare.

  I didn’t like it. Something was wrong.

  “Maybe we should just go back to the van,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. “It’s too cold for you to be out here in this wind, and the next few hours will be torture if you try to tough it out.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, slipping my arms into the sleeves of the jacket. “It’s just a little breeze. I’ll survive.”

  Hoping I hadn’t done something to upset him, I simply stepped forward and let my hand fall on his arm. He turned back to me, and for a moment I swore there was a single tear welling in his eye.

  What happened?

  “Gabe, what’s going on?” I asked. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, reclaiming his stick to stab another piece of trash. “It’s nothing. I just got something in my eye.”

  “Right,” I said, still not moving my hand. When his stare trailed down and watched my fingers grip his arm, I remembered the way Bailey held me like that just the night before. I remembered the warm sensation of comfort I felt from her touch, from the simple knowledge of knowing that she was there, holding on to me, no matter what happened.

  The memory of Bailey’s grasp sparked thoughts of Gabe’s protective hold on Monday night—the way he’d taken my purse, set it aside, and just wrapped his arms around me until we literally couldn’t hold on to one another anymore. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t wonder how long that embrace would’ve lasted had Dad not come back in and all but forced him out the door. And then there was the way he’d kissed my fingers… and every moment we’d shared the day before.

  I knew there was only one thing I could do.

  I dropped my litter stick and my bag on the ground right where I stood. I reached forward, took Gabe’s from him, and tossed them to the side along with mine.

  I slid in next to his body, wrapping my tiny arms around his thick mid-section. Gabe’s arms hung limp at his sides, and then I felt them gently wrap around me, returning the hug I’d initiated. Just like the last time we’d held each other, Gabe held tight, and I prayed that he would never let me go.

  Unlike that first time we’d embraced, neither of his hands found the backside of my head, caressed my hair, nor moved from around my shoulders. He held onto me as if letting go was never an option. He never relinquished an ounce of his strength or let me slip away for even a moment.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” I said into his shoulder, and in spite of how muffled my words were, I knew that he heard and understood every one. “But I hope that you know you can talk to me, Gabe. You’ve done nothing but listen to me from the moment we met. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t return the favor?”

  Gabe half-laughed, and then his hand finally found my head.

  “Let’s not pretend we’re friends,” he said, repeating only what I’d said to him once before, and then he finally pulled just far enough away to look down and meet my stare.

  He was hiding something, masking something behind that joke—just like he’d accused me of doing. I wanted to know what was wrong. I had to know why he was hurting, but Gabe wasn’t letting me in. If anything, I felt that he was shutting me out.

  “You know, you’re right,” I said, taking a chance. “I like to think we’re not friends at all. There’s something here, isn’t there?”


  He didn’t say a word. Our gazes met, and I felt something shift. I knew Gabe was about to say or do something that would change the dynamic of our ‘friendship’ forever.

  He moved his hands across my back, holding me closer as I sank into his warm chest. His strong hands moved all the way up my spine and into the back of my hair, and his fingers buried deep in my soft curls. His forehead landed gently against mine, and our noses brushed for just a moment. As his mouth inched closer to mine, I could taste the warmth of his breath tickling my lips. I found myself falling closer to him, pulling my body against his, praying that he would just kiss me already.

  But after a few, long seconds of standing there, holding and touching, so close to finally tasting his lips, Gabe closed his eyes and simply backed away.

  “Mandy, you’ve got to go,” he said, his gaze no longer sweeping over me, but now fixed on our feet. When I searched his expression for something, hoping for some kind of explanation as to why he’d pulled away, he shrugged and finally looked at me. “You need to be with your sister. Go back to the kitchen and spend the evening with her. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  I blinked a few heavy times, watching his pale eyes as they locked on mine, seemingly never blinking, nor needing to.

  “You said you wanted to spend time alone with me,” I said, hearing an unexpected catch in my voice. “You said that.”

  “Right.”

  “But why?” I hoped that if I could just get him to tell me the truth, then maybe I could understand what was going on with him. “Why would you want to spend time with me, Gabe?”

  Of course, at that point, I knew as well as he did. But I wanted to hear it, no matter how much I knew it would hurt in the long run. I wanted the truth from him, probably as much as he wanted it from me.

  He swallowed hard and shook his head.

  “Let’s get you back to the kitchen before your sister throws in the towel,” he said, still avoiding my questions. “I don’t want to be the one responsible for causing an even bigger rift between the two of you.”

  At that moment, I’d never felt so disconnected from a person. Not even two minutes earlier I’d been wrapped inside his arms, holding on to him as if I’d never felt anything as comforting as human contact. He’d held me just as closely. I’d been certain he was going to kiss me. I knew he was. So what happened? Why the sudden change in demeanor? Was it something I’d done? Something I’d said?

  What was going on with him?

  “We don’t have to go back,” I said, but he took a step away, finally separating our grip altogether.

  “We should, though,” he said. “I don’t want you to miss out on that quality time with Bailey.”

  “But what about quality time with you?” I perked up. I knew it was a risk, but it was one I had to take. He was the one who’d told me to keep fighting. “You asked Lashell to send me here because you wanted us to have that time together, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you want me to miss out on that?”

  For a moment, his expression shut down.

  “No. I wouldn’t want that at all. But now’s not the time for either of us, Mandy. You need to go. Please.”