“Oh good,” Nova exclaims and turns to grab a big cardboard tray with about twelve lobster rolls lined up on it. “This saves me a trip. Bring this to your team will ya?”
Logan nods. “They’ll be forever grateful.”
“Thanks, Nova,” I say.
Her grin broadens. “Those aren’t for you. Those are just the standard rolls - toasted bun, mayo, lobster meat. Lucy made two Jake specials for you. And she pre-paid a chocolate peanut butter shake at Patti’s just for you. All you have to do is pop over there.”
“She did not have to do that!” I argue but I reach across the counter for the bag with my name on it.
Logan knocks my shoulder with his. “Gonna have to learn to live with it, Maverick.”
And then out of nowhere, a row of clam shell lights that I hadn’t noticed were hanging under the counter pop on and Terra pops up. She must have been under the counter plugging them in. She looks amazing and adorable. Her hair is in two braids and the long sleeved Hawkins Lobster Shack shirt she’s wearing is red, which accentuates her perfect, pale skin and the freckles that dot along the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. She’s in overalls on top of it, but I can still tell the shirt is clingy, so her svelte figure isn’t as hidden as it usually is. “Hey boys, make sure no one burns anything down or drops dead tonight.”
She doesn’t make eye contact. I swear she hasn’t looked me in the eye since that night in the pouring rain. Of course I’ve only seen her twice since then, once at the restaurant and once at the doctor’s office when we met for our first consultation together for the transplant after the social worker gave the go-ahead. At the restaurant she hovered in the background while her family showered me with thanks and then disappeared into the back claiming she had invoices to pay. I had to go into work, so I didn’t get to hang around or sneak into the back and confront her. At the doctor’s office, Lucy was with her and I wasn’t about to bring up anything in front of Mom. Because what I want to talk about with her is that kiss.
“Hey Terra, I got some time before it gets busy, wanna go walk the streets and check out some of the lights?” I ask hoping I sound casual and laid back.
“Sorry, I still have stuff to organize here,” she replies as she turns toward the grill at the back of the booth.
“I can handle the rest of the prep,” Nova interjects.
“Yeah, and I can help her. I know how much you love the lights,” Declan replies.
“You used to make me pay you my allowance money to take me to see them when Mom said I was too young to wander around alone,” Terra says giving Declan dagger eyes from over her shoulder.
“You don’t let anything go,” Declan rolls his eyes. “Well now I’m going to do manual labor so you can go check them out. Consider it an apology.”
“Go with Jake, Terra,” Nova adds, grinning. “The man is giving you a kidney. The least you can do is give him a walk.”
Finally, Terra looks over at me. Her expression is guarded, but why? It’s not like I’m the one that kissed her. She kissed me. Does she regret it? Is she embarrassed? Is she worried I think it means nothing or that it means something? So many questions. But I can’t ask them if she stays here. Luckily, after a fairly heavy sigh that feels like an insult, she opens the door on the side of the booth and exits. I hand the bag of lobster rolls back to Nova. “Hold onto these for me until I get back, please? If I leave them on the firetruck they’ll get eaten for sure.”
Nova takes the bag back with a smile. Terra, on the other hand looks like she’s going to the gallows. Great. I turn to Logan before I leave. “Tell Cap I got my radio if he needs me.” I pat the radio on the hip of my work pants.
Terra and I walk in silence back down the pier until we get to Dune street. It runs along the beach and has the biggest houses in town. “You wanna check out this street first?”
She shakes her head and points straight ahead to Colby street, which runs away from the beach. “Let’s go back to the other side of town, those guys don’t get as many people looking at their displays, and they deserve the love.”
Another thing that I like about Terra, she is always so sensitive to things like that. We continue down the road, crowds wandering past us in the other direction, keen to be by the pier and the bigger, fancier displays. I know where she’s going to turn before she even does it because for more than a couple of years growing up, I tagged along when her brothers chaperoned her at these events. She loves the houses on Free Street. It’s a short street with only ten homes and the start of Gold Park, a nature reserve which is thick with pine trees. All the homes are one or two story stone cottages with sunrooms on the side. Every single sunroom is decorated with different kinds of lights. One has pineapple and palm tree shaped lights, one has red, white and blue stars and fairy lights, one has old fashioned lanterns. You can visibly see Terra relax as she takes them all in.
“You still love this street?” I say.
“Always,” Terra sighs. She has been obsessed with it since she was little. I remember her telling her mom she wanted to buy one of these stone houses one day. I wonder if that’s still a dream of hers.
“I’m hoping to buy in the next year,” I say quietly as we wander towards Gold Park. “Been saving up.”
The fact that I will likely be passed over for the captain’s position may limit my budget and I might end up buying a condo instead of a house, but I still want to own. I’d be the first in my family to do it. My mom has always bounced from rental to rental and my grandparents, who died before I was born, raised my mother in a motorhome.
“Here? You want to buy here? On this street?” she looks positively excited about the possibility.
“If something comes up and I can afford it, of course,” I reply with a smile. “Want to rent a room from me? I’ll need a roommate. I was going to ask Logan but you’re a much better option.”
She laughs tilting her head back, the moonlight glinting off her freckles. “How on earth am I a better option than one of your best friends?”
“Because my best friends don’t make-out with me when I do nice things for them,” I shoot back and she stops laughing so suddenly it’s jarring. Like somebody turned off the laugh track on a sitcom.
Her head dips down so now she’s looking at the pavement as we walk. “I’m sorry about that. I … it was a mistake. I was just so … overwhelmed. I mean, I lost it. But I swear I won’t, like, attack you again.”
“So you didn’t mean to do it?”
“No. I didn’t. It just … happened.” She nods her head, eyes still glued to the cracked pavement.
“You regret it?”
“Yes.” She says with such conviction that I can’t help but feel offended.
I stop walking. We’re at the end of the street now anyway. Our only option is to either continue into Gold Park or turn back around and take one of the streets that intersects with Free street and goes back down to the waterfront.
“You used to want to kiss me remember?” I say quietly.
She stops walking too, but a couple feet in front of me. Finally, she lifts her head. Our eyes meet for the briefest second and then she looks away. “No. I wanted you to kiss me. There’s a difference.”
“Oh?” I consider that. I guess there is, but to me a kiss is a kiss. She clearly isn’t a fan of my blasé response because when she looks up at me again her expression is a mix of fire and ice.
“Yeah Jake, believe it or not I didn’t want to force myself on you. Not at fourteen and not now.” The wind picks up and blows a strand from her braids, and she reaches up and tucks it behind her ear roughly. “You made it clear back then that I wasn’t your type, and it hurt. It was awkward and embarrassing but we got through it. I didn’t mean to make all those gross feelings come back. So can we just forget what happened?”
She turns and starts to walk way too fast toward another street but I hook her by the elbow and turn her back to face me. “I don’t want to forget it happened. In fact, it’s all I thi
nk about.”
She blinks. Repeatedly. And then pulls her arm from my grip. “Jake, don’t placate me.”
“Why the hell do you think I’m placating you?” I demand and now I’m getting pissed. “Do you think so little of yourself that you honestly don’t think I could enjoy a kiss from you?”
“You don’t want a kiss from me. You told me. To my face,” she replies, hands moving to her tiny hips. “I’ll never touch you.”
“Are you seriously holding on to a stupid childhood game?” I ask and take a step toward her. “I was a dumb, terrified kid. If I kissed you in that closet, your brothers would have beat the shit out of me and never talked to me again.”
“Okay, let me give you the benefit of the doubt on that one,” she snaps. “Fine. You were young and scared of my brothers. Needed their friendship. But then you dated my best friend.”
“Because you hated me.”
“What?”
“After that closet debacle you were a total nightmare to me. For years,” I remind her.
“So you date my best friend?”
“You cared?”
“Oh my God, Jake yes! I was…” she stops. “Why the hell do you think Aspen ended up wearing spaghetti?” She turns and bolts. She doesn’t head for the street this time, she heads for the park.
Luckily, two of her strides is one of mine—advantage of having a foot of height on her—so I reach her before she can disappear down into the dark woods. “Is this finally the truth?”.”
She glares up at me. “I still had a crush on you and she asked you to prom and I wanted to kill her. I knew you’d end up dating, which you did.”
“I would never have said yes if I knew that,” I confess. If I ever believed Terra still had an inkling of interest in me, I wouldn’t have dated Aspen.
“Really?” She whispers in disbelief.
“You seemed to hate me so much, I figured I lost my one and only chance and that you wouldn’t care if I dated Aspen or anyone for that matter,” I tell her and I can’t believe I’m admitting any of this.
“I have a chronic illness. I’m really good at pretending,” she replies and the wind rustles the trees around us. A family of four wanders by, too busy looking at the all lit up homes to pay attention to us.
“Aspen and I have been broken up for years,” I reply. “And you never—”
“Set myself up to be rejected again?” she interjects, her brown eyes hard. “I know you think it’s no big deal, that stupid game from Abbott’s sixteenth birthday party, but it was everything to me at the time. I had just found out I had lupus. I felt like damaged goods on top of the regular awkward teenage girl insecurities, and it took every ounce of courage I had to say your name that night. I wanted that perfect, normal kid moment with the hottest guy in school.”
She suddenly looks so… young. Almost exactly like I remember her back then. Vulnerable and delicate, inside and out and for the millionth time in my life I wish I could go back and do that whole moment over. I reach out and take her left hand in mine and without even realizing why, I start to pull her down the trail into the wooded park. I only take her a few feet, until the hundred foot pines towering over head make it dark enough that prying eyes from passersby on the street won’t be able to see us clearly.
Then I dip my head. My nose bumps her cheek. I can feel a strand of her hair graze my cheek bone. I inhale, long and slow. She smells like lilacs and ocean breezes. My dick stirs but I ignore it. I slowly turn my head toward her mouth and run my tongue slowly along my lips in anticipation.
“What are you doing?” she whispers.
“Unless you tell me to stop I am going for a do-over,” I whisper roughly. “In three… two… one.”
I find her lips through the darkness and press mine against them. Her whole body tenses and her hand falls flat against my chest, just next to my left shoulder, but she doesn’t push me away. So I press harder, moving my lips, opening them a little. And she fists my work shirt, just above the Ocean Pines Fire Department logo and pulls me closer. My hand on her arm drops and circles her waist, my palm spreads over the small of her back, fingers pressing into the top of her ass. I open my mouth further and she either gasps or sighs, I can’t tell, and I slip my tongue into her mouth and I swear to God , this is better than anything that might have happened ten years ago.
An owl hoots loudly in the branches above us and we break apart, both breathing hard and then my radio crackles. “Maverick! You need to get back here ASAP.”
“Is that Logan?” Terra says, her voice unsteady.
“Yeah. Shit,” I grab her hand and lead her back to the road.
I hit the radio. “On my way. Be there in five.”
“Go! Run!” Terra encourages me waving her hands.
I impulsively kiss her again, quick and hard on the lips and then turn and start running. I’m out of breath, but it’s not from the exertion. It’s from Terra. I don’t know what the hell we’re doing, but I know it’s been a long time coming.
11
Jake
Turns out it’s the most chaotic, crazy night we’ve had in a while. On the way to our third consecutive call, Murphy points out something we hadn’t noticed before—it’s a full moon. Now it makes sense. We seriously get way more calls on full moons. It’s illogical but true. By midnight I’m exhausted and starving because I never got to consume my milkshakes and lobster rolls, and on my way to a fourth freaking call. This time it’s a backyard fire that is licking its way up a couple of trees. The address is on Free street, where Terra and I were earlier tonight. The last house on the street, the one directly next to Gold Park where Terra and I kissed.
Because it’s Ocean Pines, I know who owns it, so I have a strong suspicion who caused the fire. And my suspicion is proven right when we get there. Mr. and Mrs. Ellis are standing in front of their little stone cottage in their bathrobes. Mr. Ellis looks furious. Mrs. Ellis looks stricken. She runs towards us as we jump off the truck. “Robbie is hurt! My son burned himself. Can you help?”
Mason and Logan jump out of their ambulance and run over to her. “Take us to him,” Logan says calmly.
Forty minutes later, the fire is completely out and we managed to contain it to only two trees and half their lawn. Robbie Ellis isn’t so lucky. He’s got first degree burns on his right forearm, and on his forehead and is missing one eyebrow. He’s sitting on a gurney behind the ambulance, getting treated by Logan and Mason as we pack up the hose.
“Robbie, what have we told you about using your deep fryer drunk?” Logan says in a voice that sounds so much like his dad I can’t help but smile despite the seriousness of the situation.
“I wasn’t drunk. I was tipsy,” Robbie Ellis argues. He went to school with us. Was captain of the varsity soccer team and homecoming king two years in a row. Now he lives in a converted garage on his parents’ property after two failed marriages and works as a part-time caddie at the golf course in Old Orchard. I grew up listening to Springsteen because Mr. Hawkins played his stuff all the time at the Shack, and Robbie Ellis is exactly the type of working class, small town dude who won’t grow up that Bruce Springsteen sings about in “Glory Days.”
Logan hits him with a scowl as he coats Robbie’s forehead in burn gel. “We have to run you to the hospital Robbie. This is pretty serious.”
“The torched trees are gonna have to come down too, Robbie,” I explain “They’re dead as a doorknob and if you leave ‘em up, the first good winter storm will knock them onto the house.”
“Great! Fabulous. Rob you’re gonna cut those bastards yourself. I ain’t gonna be killed by a tree in my sleep because of you, and I sure as hell ain’t paying for someone to clean up your mess,” Mr. Ellis barks from a few feet away, angrily tightening the belt on his faded purple bathrobe. Next to him, Mrs. Ellis, her hair in curlers, puts a palm over her heart.
“Maurice, it was an accident,” she insists. Ah, the enabler. I’ve seen this before in a lot of relationships when I res
pond to emergencies. “I’ll get it removed, Robbie honey. You just heal up and promise Mommy you won’t do it again.”
Logan’s jaw visibly clenches. I turn to face the parents with a sympathetic smile and walk over to them. “Ya’ll can go to bed now. I promise it’s all fine for tonight.”
“Thank you so much,” Mr. Ellis says to me and shakes my hand. “Jake Grady, right? You went to school with Robbie. You played soccer too.”
I nod. “Yes sir. But it’s Maverick now. I changed my last name at eighteen.”
I hate what comes next.
Mrs. Ellis pats my hand. “Fresh start. I understand why you’d want that.”
“Actually it was my middle name,” I shrug. “My mom picked it from a character in her favorite movie growing up, Top Gun. She was sixteen when she had me, and I guess it seemed like a good idea to name your kid after a Tom Cruise movie. Anyway, I always thought it sounded cooler than Grady so I changed it.”
She looks confused. Mr. Ellis looks like a lightbulb has gone off in his head. “Oh right. Your mom was … well, look at you now though. You’re a responsible young man with a respectable job. I bet you know how to use a deep fryer and don’t just drop in an entire frozen turkey all at once.”
I don’t answer that. Instead, I hand them one of the pamphlets I keep in the truck. Mr. Ellis looks at it. “This is a very good program for adults who might need a little help with their drinking or other substances. It’s day patient, and you don’t need insurance. It’s free, covered by public donations and therapists who donate their time.”
Mrs. Ellis lets out a huff and shakes her head. “Whatever would we need that for?”
Mr. Ellis shakes my hand again. “Myrtle, this is exactly what the damn kid needs and you know it. Thanks, Jake.”
I nod and leave them on the porch to fight, which is exactly what they do. Logan is still treating Robbie, who is suddenly concerned. “Will my eyebrow grow back?”
The Fall We Fell: A Small Town Friends-to-Lovers Romance (Ocean Pines Series Book 1) Page 12