Sweet

by Tammara Webber

  “Both.” I paused and she waited for me to gather my thoughts. “What if all humanity is like a mechanical creature—made up of millions of parts, all working together, but sometimes not? Parts break or wear out or malfunction and have to be replaced by other, newer parts. And that keeps the whole thing going indefinitely, as long as new parts exist to replace the old ones.”

  She flopped onto her back and sighed. “But we’re still just interchangeable parts then. We’ll eventually wear out and get replaced and not matter.”

  I grinned and shook my head. “You’re making a sorry case for pointless with that pity party. None of us live forever—we all learn that early on. But maybe you’re one of the important parts. Maybe my dad served his purpose when he fathered me, and I served my purpose when I pulled you out of that ocean you keep wanting to dive back into.”

  She was quiet for a heartbeat before turning her head to look at me. “That’s not true, Boyce.”

  When she didn’t say anything more, I lit a cigarette and dug my toes into the sand at the edge of the blanket. The breeze pulled the smoke out over the water where it dissipated into the darkness.

  “You’re trying to figure out where you fit,” I said. “That’s one of the cool things about you. The fact that you care about things like what kind of difference you can make and how to make it. That’s why I can’t believe people like you, people like Brent, would be born into the world for no reason.”

  “I didn’t—I didn’t mean he—”

  “I know you didn’t. Maybe I can’t be impartial where you and Brent are concerned. I’ve always been a self-centered son of a bitch, y’know. Everything eventually comes back to how it affects me.” I took a drag and smiled down at her. “Looks like that includes your existence, sweetheart.”

  Pearl

  When Thomas brought that enormous lightning whelk shell in with the morning paper, I knew Boyce had left it for me. I hadn’t seen him or heard him leave it, and I wasn’t psychic. I just recognized his shirt—a green baseball tee with dark green three-quarter sleeves. He’d filled it out better than any boy on the actual baseball team would have, and the green in his eyes, usually indistinct from across the lab table, glowed when he wore it.

  I had no idea what it meant that he left that shell on my front porch. At fourteen, the motives of sixteen-year-old boys baffled me in general, but Boyce—kissing me cross-eyed one night and acting like it hadn’t happened a few days later—left me bewildered.

  Crusted with barnacles and marsh weeds, packed full of sand, the shell would have been an odd gift for anyone but me. I loved it, apart from Boyce and his intentions. But I loved it all the more because he gave it to me. I spent the day digging the sand out of the deep aperture and scrubbing the outer whorls and crevices with an old toothbrush. Once it was clean, I polished it with mineral oil and set it on my desk.

  “I wonder who put that shell on our front porch and why?” Mama asked at dinner.

  I shrugged and stared at my plate.

  I didn’t find out why he left that shell at my doorstep until over two years later—the first and only time Boyce was ever in my bedroom, the day after we graduated.

  The fact that I was lying on top of my comforter buck naked—next to an equally naked Boyce Wynn—seeped into my consciousness slowly. Though I’d thought long and hard about who (Boyce) and how (protected) I’d lose my virginity, I couldn’t say I’d seriously contemplated the where or when. In my fantasies, the setting was always somewhat ambiguous but always dark. Because of course it would happen somewhere private, romantic, and dark. Not at ten a.m. on my own bed with at least a dozen people in the house.

  After discarding the condom, he collapsed next to me. I stared at the embossed patterns on my ceiling as the sounds of our breathing slowed simultaneously and our shared muteness became a whole different sort of loud. My bikini and sundress were on the floor, on the opposite side of the bed. On the opposite side of the boy lying next to me. The bedding was in disarray beneath us, but not enough to dive underneath without making an awkward spectacle of myself.

  I suppressed a panicked giggle. I was lying on my bed with a boy in the bright light of day, naked as a jaybird. I’d rocketed past both awkward and spectacle a ways back.

  That was when he rose up on one elbow and pointed at my desk. “Still got that whelk, huh?”

  Pretty much the last subject I expected to discuss at this juncture was the shell that had been sitting on my desk for two years.

  “Um. Yeah.” I wondered if I could grab the edge of the comforter and roll myself into it without looking like a lunatic. Or a burrito.

  “I knew it was meant to be yours the minute I found it. So whatever happened to my T-shirt?”

  I blinked as his eyes flicked to mine, and then, as if he’d just remembered the fact that I was completely naked, his gaze moseyed—a Boyce Wynn pastime if ever there was one—over every exposed peak and valley to my toes and back.

  “Do you want it back?”

  “What?” His eyes returned to mine finally, but his stare was incisive, his pupils dilated, dark.

  “Your T-shirt?”

  He grinned, his warm palm splaying across my stomach. “Screw the T-shirt. All I want right now is round two—if you’re game.”

  Desire surged over me in a landslide as his hand slid higher, thumb stroking the underside of one breast. From the feel of things against my hip, he was definitely game.

  He was kissing me before I finished nodding yes.

  • • • • • • • • • •

  Sleep was impossible in that bed, four years older but not much wiser when it came to Boyce. It was midnight before I got home from our trip to the sandbar. I’d watched him dig that hole and stare into it for several minutes before emptying the contents of the bag and refilling the remaining cavity with soil and sand. Not a word was spoken. Even so, Bud Wynn had been laid to rest in a manner he didn’t deserve—with more respect than he’d ever shown his youngest son.

  Melody had texted me earlier, letting me know she’d arrived safely in Dallas and asking what I was doing without her. Not much, I’d responded, revealing nothing about what I was doing or with whom. Boyce and I had never made our relationship—whatever it was—public. We’d both taken pains to do the opposite in fact. I’d persuaded myself for years that it wouldn’t be understood by anyone who knew us, but now I questioned why I cared if anyone understood. The secrecy wasn’t all me, though. Boyce hadn’t ever broadcast it either, or even told his best friend. Lucas had given us puzzled looks the few times we ran into each other that summer between high school and college. He wouldn’t have watched the two of us like we were an unsolvable equation if he’d known.

  Melody: I still can’t believe you want to stay there, GF. That place is VOID of anything or anyone worth doing! Dallas is sooooo much better. Promise you’ll come visit!!

  Boyce had returned from parking the car then, dropping his dad-in-a-box into the bow hatch and steering the boat down the canal, toward the bay.

  Me: Sure. Maybe this fall. ☺

  Slipping my phone into my pocket, I’d glanced up and forgot what I’d been about to say. The sun had begun its descent on the horizon, and at that exact moment it framed Boyce just as as it had that day on the beach when I’d woken up from drowning to his face hovering above me and his hand grasping mine. Art History, freshman year, I’d memorized various terms for the light surrounding him that day—halo, nimbus, glory—used to depict saints and angels.

  Boyce had laughed and urged me to tell him which of those he was, as if daring me to liken him to either. He’d stared at my lips, and they’d prickled as I recalled, like a film on fast-forward, every blessed moment of their possession by his mouth.

  Saint, he most definitely was not.

  chapter

  Twelve

  Boyce

  Ruben Silva was the only teacher I respected in high school—as much for his awe-inspiring size as his mechanical know-how. I’d gi
ven him some hell, but he’d known the best way to deal with me was to threaten to kick me out of his shop or call my dad. I’m sure he never thought I’d end up running my father’s garage alone, but neither had I. If not for how much I craved the purr and smell of a revving motor and the feel of grease on my hands, my old man would have lost me to dealing weed to tourists long ago. I’d come close enough as it was.

  I figured Silva might know a kid who’d jump at the chance to be paid to change oil and spark plugs, plus get an occasional hand in a more complex engine repair. It was worth shutting down a little early to go chat with him after he finished his first week of teaching driver’s ed. We met in his shop where two kids leaned under a hood while he directed whatever they were working on.

  “Summer class, Mr. S?” I asked, crossing the concrete floor, offering my hand.

  He was still the biggest man in town and had been since he was seventeen—the high school’s only wrestler to ever win state. Rumor had it he’d turned down an offer to go pro to care for his terminally ill mother and stayed after she passed to finish raising his little sister, who went on to college and then law school.

  “Well I’ll be—if it ain’t Boyce Wynn.” We shook, his mitt still engulfing mine, though not as noticeably as it had when I was his student. “Making me proud, son.”

  I swallowed and nodded, grateful when he turned toward the students.

  “No formal class. Just a few students who were more automotively curious than the rest. We meet in the afternoons, work on their cars or donated vehicles—repair work, restorations. Gives ’em something to do besides bein’ thugs all summer.” The would-be thugs eyed us over their shoulders. One wore safety goggles. The other was holding a wrench. “Adams,” Silva barked. “Goggles. Goddammit, these kids. One of ’em’ll put an eye out and who’ll get blamed? Me.”

  I chuckled, having heard this exact same tirade a hundred times years ago, directed at me more often than not.

  He waved a hand at the Adams kid. “Come meet Mr. Wynn.” It threw me for a loop, hearing Mr. Wynn from Silva—about me. To me, he said, “This is the one we talked about. Ignores orders half the time but a natural under the hood—like you. Has some potential beneath that know-it-all façade.”

  “Ain’t no façade, Mr. Silva.” The kid smirked, chin lifted. “I know a lot.” This was Silva’s recommendation for my first employee? A smartass who sounded about twelve and looked like a scrawny twig in those coveralls?

  And then the kid sat down in the wheelchair I hadn’t noticed and wheeled quickly around a stack of tires and a toolbox¸ heading our way. My misgiving morphed into disbelief.

  “Boyce, this little twerp is Samantha Adams. Samantha, Mr. Wynn.”

  A girl. In a wheelchair.

  Her brass-blond hair was chopped short and stuck out in every direction, and her eyes were gray as an angry fog rolling into the gulf. “It’s Sam. Jesus, Mr. Silva.” She scowled at her teacher and shook my hand like she meant to crush my fingers.

  She yelped when I squeezed back.

  “Sam.”

  Withdrawing her hand and flexing her fingers, she sized me up. “So how much is the pay and what hours do you expect me to work?”

  Goddamn. Who the hell was interviewing who?

  “Minimum wage, and we can talk hours if I decide to hire you.”

  “If? So what do you have a problem with—my chair or my gender or my sexual orientation?”

  Jesus Christ, I was ready to throat-punch Silva. I had a sneaking suspicion he was about to pay me back and then some for every smartass retort I ever made or rule I ever disregarded in his class. “Better flick those chips off your shoulder,” I said. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the first two, and I don’t want to know details of the third.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Meaning you have a problem with it?”

  “Meaning the only sex life I have any interest in is my own, which—let’s just throw this out there right now so we’re clear—is none of your damned business. I may be swamped and need help, but not at the expense of pissing off my customers. If you want the job, convince me you won’t be a bitch or a whiny brat and tell me what you can do for me. I run a garage, not a nursery.”

  She blinked, silent, which I assumed wasn’t usual for her, and my phone buzzed.

  Pearl: Hey. I know you’re probably busy tonight but I have a problem and I don’t know who else to talk to.

  Me: Never too busy for you. Just tell me where.

  Pearl: Your place? When can I come?

  Me: You tell me, I’ll be there.

  Pearl: Now?

  Me: Come on then, girl. See you in a few.

  I glanced down at Sam, who was chewing her lip. “I have to get,” I told her. “Think about the job and come by Monday if you want it. We’ll do a one-week trial.”

  She frowned up at me. “One week? Isn’t trial employment usually like a month or ninety days?”

  “It’s however long I say it is. Take it or leave it.” I turned to Silva and stretched my hand out over Samantha Adams’s head. “Thanks. I think.”

  The bastard had the nerve to laugh.

  Pearl

  The “highway”—two lanes, one in either direction, with stoplights—was clogged with summer vacationers. Even so, it only took ten minutes to get to Boyce’s place. He was sitting on the top step of his trailer, smoking, one booted foot resting a couple of steps down on the cracked concrete and the other crossed beneath it. The dark plaid shirt—sleeves rolled up, unsnapped with a navy tee underneath—looked good on him. I tried to remember the last time he hadn’t looked good to me and couldn’t.

  The doors to the garage’s two bays were both shut, though it wasn’t yet six. I parked in the driveway and got out.

  “Close early today?” I walked the worn dirt path from the garage drive to the trailer’s front door. I couldn’t see his eyes; his sunglasses were too dark.

  “Yep. Had an errand to run up at the high school.” His forearm flexed under the light brush of copper hair as he turned to stub out the cigarette in a makeshift ashtray—a ceramic pot three-quarters full of sand.

  “Really? Doing what?” I ripped my gaze from his arm when he turned back.

  “Hiring one of Silva’s students to help me out in the garage, hopefully.” Grimacing, he reached to scratch the back of his neck. “I don’t know though. Might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  As I reached him, he shrugged and stood. “We’ll see, I guess. You said you had a problem? Come on in and let’s solve it.”

  If only it were that simple. I’d never thought of myself as helpless, but Boyce was running a business and his life, and I had no job, no money of my own.

  I followed him into the trailer, which seemed darker in broad daylight than it had when I’d come over the other night. We both removed our sunglasses.

  As if reading my mind, he said, “Sorry it’s so dark in here—trailers aren’t exactly famous for great lighting design. Your eyes will adjust in a minute, but I can switch on the lamps if you want. I could walk around in here blindfolded, so I don’t really think about it.”

  “It’s fine. I didn’t prepare a graphic presentation or anything. I just need to talk this out. You sure you don’t mind?”

  “’Course not. You can always come to me—you know that.” He sat on one end of the sofa and I took the other. “So what’s up?”

  We leaned into our respective corners, facing each other.

  “I just finished my first week of class. It’s an adjustment from work I did for my BS, and even more so from what I ever imagined doing as a postgrad, but I love it. My two classes are small—just a handful of people. I already know everyone. We took a boat out and gathered samples to help one of the professors run lab tests, and it was nothing like being an undergrad at a huge school where you have little to no autonomy. He was like, ‘Go do this,’ with almost no direction, which was like being a peer instead of, you kno
w, a minion. A low-ranking peer, but a peer.”

  He smiled. “Sounds great. And I’m not hearing the problem.”

  Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath. “The problem is I got accepted to Michigan. Med school.”

  “I don’t understand. Thought you said you weren’t going.”

  “I applied to several schools, and I was actually accepted to the majority of them. When Mitchell and I chose Vanderbilt, I turned the other acceptances down. But I was waitlisted at two—Harvard and Michigan.”

  “At the risk of showing my hick side, what does that mean, exactly—being waitlisted?”

  “It means you met the qualifications, but other candidates met them better, so they got the offers to attend. Waitlisted applicants are put in a queue. You only get an actual acceptance if enough of the candidates ahead of you decide to go elsewhere and you’re high enough on the list. I got an acceptance letter today—which Mama opened before I got home.”

  “Ah. So she’s all fired up about you changing your mind.”

  I chuckled joylessly. “Fired up is a good way to term it. I want to do exactly what I’m doing, but she’s made it really clear that she and Thomas don’t support that decision, which could mean I’m on my own financially. I know this will sound incredibly naïve and immature to you—but I’ve never had to take care of myself in that way. I grew up understanding that there were things I couldn’t have because Mama couldn’t afford them. I never asked for anything I perceived as unreasonable, but I was still a kid. I wasn’t always sure. After they got married, money was no longer an impediment. What I got or didn’t get was based on factors like safety or whether it would distract me from my studies. Things that had little or nothing to do with the expense. As a result, I’m… I’m spoiled.”

  Sitting forward, he leaned his forearms on his thighs and his eyes promised the frankness I both wanted and dreaded. Boyce never lied to me. That was why I often sought him out when others might have made more sense on the surface—because he told me, bluntly, the truth as he saw it.