by Ruthie Knox
“No.” Matt swept his finger over the screen of her phone. “No atmosphere.”
He said it without judgment, but privately Allie added the Duh she deserved.
“You still don’t have any bars.” He tossed her cell back on the wagon’s green vinyl upholstery. They jounced through a pothole, sending the phone skittering to the floor as Matt reached for the oh-shit bar. Their sheepdog, Roscoe, whined in the backseat.
“You wanted to come with us,” she muttered irritably. But a glance in the rearview mirror told her that poor Roscoe had curled up in a ball of misery. She eased her foot off the accelerator. Matt’s knuckles were white, and she was being ridiculous, even by her own standards.
There was no reason to expect May to be at the store, or even to hope she’d left another message. She’d said she was on her way. She would get here when she got here.
Allie managed the rest of the drive over the rutted gravel road at a more reasonable speed, and soon enough the store and gas station came into view. As she pulled into a parking spot, Matt put his hand on her knee. She cut the engine.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
She unbuckled her seat belt and covered his hand with her own. “Yeah, thanks. I’m just kind of … discombobulated by this whole thing with May.”
“You seem distracted.”
Allie managed a little laugh. “I’m always distracted.”
He smiled.
She remembered thinking, when they first became friends, that Matt had the best smile of anybody, ever. Totally open, it was a pure reflection of his unblemished awesomeness. His eyes, too—but these days, she had trouble meeting his eyes.
“More than usual,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
“With the wedding coming …” He trailed off. Not a question, but an open invitation to tell him what was going through her brain. A promise that he’d understand, whatever it was.
And he would. Whatever she said, whatever she did, he’d be understanding and lovely—and God, how could she tell him how much she hated that sometimes? How impossible it was to imagine spending her life feeling like the bad one? The petty one, the craven one, the moody one—name a fault, and she had it. Not Matt, though. He was a better person than her by every possible metric, and damn him, he was even better-looking than she was.
His only fault was loving her.
“You’d tell me, right?” he asked. “If there was something really wrong.”
“Of course,” she lied. “Always.”
He leaned in to kiss her, and she kept her neck loose. She kept her mouth soft and welcoming. She muffled the part of her that had always whispered doubts about Matt and had resorted lately to dialing up the volume to a full-on klaxon ah-oooooo-gah noise every time he kissed her and she had to force herself to let him do it.
She had to work so hard to want him, and that was her fault. One more fault that Allie possessed and Matt didn’t.
When he said mmm and scootched closer, she closed her eyes and hated herself.
When his hand smoothed up her arm and cupped her shoulder, his thumb rubbing back and forth over her collarbone through her T-shirt, she hated herself even more.
She hated herself all the time, lately.
Something wet poked behind her ear, warm and insistent.
Matt placed his palm against Roscoe’s neck and pushed him into the backseat. “Damn dog,” he muttered. But he was smiling.
Always smiling.
Allie looked away, out the windshield, and caught a glimpse through the storefront window of someone tall, with pale hair. She flung herself from the car so fast, she startled Roscoe, whose claws scrabbled over the seat in his excited confusion.
“Where’s the fire?” Matt asked.
“May’s in there!”
Allie skipped over a small patch of lawn and burst into the store, ready to fling her arms around her sister and crazy-hug her. Or possibly shake her. She wasn’t even sure which, she just needed to touch her.
Born eighteen months apart, they’d spent their whole lives together, and it was bad enough that May had moved to New Jersey. Now she was involved in some kind of scandal, and Allie couldn’t stand being left outside of it. She needed May to tell her what was going on. She needed May to be here.
It was damned uncomfortable, being crippled by doubt a week before your wedding when you didn’t have your sister-confessor around to spill your guts to.
But when she scanned the entryway of the store, she didn’t find her sister. Just a long-haired man with a camera slung around his neck, chatting with the suspicious store owner.
Telephoto lens. Journalist? Photographer?
He couldn’t be here because of May. That would be too bizarre.
But then, so was the idea of May attacking Dan with a utensil, and Allie had seen that video footage with her own eyes.
She checked the bulletin board near the door. No new messages.
None yesterday, either. No calls. One piddly email that said nothing Allie could sink her teeth into.
The fist of anticipation in her stomach tightened, and she released a long exhale and headed toward the coffee. Coffee was the ostensible reason for this errand: Matt only drank decaf, and they’d run out. But honestly, Matt drank maybe three cups of coffee a week. Mom had sent them out because she was just as anxious for news as Allie was.
Allie had watched the YouTube video fifteen times at least, always wincing at the part where Dan—with his typical Labrador earnestness—basically called May ordinary and boring, when anybody with eyes in their head could see that she was made of awesome.
Or maybe they couldn’t see it. Allie had been forced to impose a news blackout Thursday in the aftermath of the luncheon when some dickweed sportscaster called May “plain” and Matt read a sports blog that called her a “Packers groupie” whom Dan had elevated to the good life. Allie had lobbed a slipper toward the computer—not hard enough to actually hit it—and took Roscoe and Keller for a long walk.
Then she’d come home and watched the video some more.
Every time, she felt a sympathetic, curling disappointment deep in her stomach. When Dan sank to his knee, May’s back was turned to the camera, so Allie couldn’t see her sister’s reaction as Dan said that the most important thing in his life was football. She couldn’t see what May had felt when she heard him say that she kept him grounded, helped him focus, made him a better player.
She could imagine it, though. May’s hurt. Her disappointment. Maybe even a fleeting anger, though anger and May weren’t well acquainted.
She just couldn’t imagine any expression on May’s face that would lead to her attacking Dan with a fork. It wasn’t May.
Dan’s proposal had sucked, but Dan was Dan. This was a guy who’d put green beans in his nose at the dinner table. True, Allie had egged him on, but even so. Green beans. In his nose. What had May expected, violins and roses?
Whatever she’d expected, she hadn’t gotten it, and Allie hated that. She hated that May almost never got what she hoped for, and she loved May for never letting it get her down. It was the most glorious thing about her sister—the way she always found some new source of hope.
Roscoe barked outside, a brief moment of disobedience as Matt left him at the curb, having clipped his leash to a signpost. Possibly-a-Reporter Guy sauntered into the coffee aisle and looked her over, then turned his attention to the herbal teas.
Allie scanned the coffee until she found the kind Matt liked. She heard him greet someone warmly near the front of the store.
Typical. They were hundreds of miles from home, but somehow Matt had found a friend.
She wandered back toward the meat counter to pick up cold cuts and cheese. Reporter Guy trailed behind her, feigning interest in the Entenmann’s coffee cakes.
Shit.
Allie kept her face turned away and tugged her hat down over her forehead. If he recognized her, would he follow her and
Matt back to the cabin? Did he know May was supposed to be here soon?
She ordered pimiento loaf, salami, and Muenster cheese. Snatches of Matt’s conversation floated to her, interspersed with the grating sounds of the slicer.
“—surprised me, dude, that’s all—”
“—not sure. Sometime today, but—”
“—disappeared on me, and I kind of lost it, to tell you the truth. I hopped in a cab—”
“—have practice? There’s a game in a few days, right?”
“—Thursday. But I’m not supposed to be here. I think Coach is going to cut off my nuts. I just got her note, and I went straight to the airport. I actually made it up here last night, but then I didn’t know where to go.”
That was when she figured out who Matt was talking to. And started saying all the really bad swear words in her head.
“—find it?”
“They all look the same in the dark, dude, and May’s not answering her phone. I’m glad to see you, because—”
“Will there be anything else?”
Allie blinked. The man behind the counter was slapping a sticker on her plastic bag of salami, and Dan was here.
Dan was at the front of the store, talking to Matt.
She snuck a glance at the reporter. He was staring fixedly at her.
This was nuts. It was Labor Day weekend. On Labor Day weekend, the Fredericks family played cards, drank beer, and ate too much junk food at the lake, and Allie filled the annual drama quotient quite capably by herself.
When she was eight years old, she’d knocked out both her front teeth in a bizarre, impossible-to-replicate waterskiing mishap.
At eleven, she fell asleep with gum in her mouth and woke up with it stuck to her thighs and tangled in her hair.
At seventeen, she’d laid out in the sun all day covered in baby oil and somehow, despite distinctly overcast weather, managed to contract sun poisoning, after which she’d spent most of the weekend huddled in a dim room, shivering.
And now she was twenty-four, about to get married, and scared to death she was making a mistake. She’d spent three weeks telling herself to calm down, because she would have a chance to talk to May at the cabin. Every time she imagined how that might go down, she’d had to admit that it seemed likely she’d crown a lifetime’s Labor Day stupidities by jilting the one man in the world who loved her more than oxygen.
Instead, May had gone AWOL, and her NFL quarterback boyfriend had hauled ass to the North Woods to throw himself at her feet. And at least one reporter was here chasing the story.
Weird didn’t begin to describe it.
“Ma’am?”
“Sorry. What?”
“Anything else?” The butcher extended the assorted bags of sandwich stuff, and she rose to her tiptoes to take them.
“No, thanks. That should do it.”
“All right. You have a good day now.”
But it hardly seemed possible. Dan was here, and May was not.
Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.
“Matt?” she called loudly. “Hon?”
“Yeah?” he called back.
“You and, uh … Dave should take the rental and head on back. I’ll be done in a sec, and I can follow you guys in our car.” She crossed her fingers. Catch on, Matty. Catch on.
“Who’s Dave?” he called back.
Allie barely resisted smacking her palm to her forehead. The guy with the camera started walking in Matt and Dan’s direction.
This is the problem with men who think the world is full of people as nice as he is, Allie thought as she sprinted down a parallel aisle. They never understand codes.
They also had trouble with dry humor, and they were too nice to even consider anal.
She cleared the end of the aisle. There they were: her fiancé and May’s erstwhile boyfriend standing together, wearing matching Why-has-Allie-gone-crazy expressions.
Executing a sharp ninety-degree turn, she flung her arms out and blocked the reporter from exiting his own aisle. “Matt, take Dan’s rental and leave,” she demanded. Reporter Guy pushed against her arm barrier, then thought better of it and jogged toward the back of the store.
Allie pivoted to make a shooing motion with her hands. “Go,” she hissed. “I’ll keep him here. When you get to the cabin, hide the rental where he won’t be able to see it. Maybe we can prevent him from finding us and ruining the whole trip, okay?”
Understanding dawned on Matt’s face. He grabbed Dan’s arm and started hauling him toward the door. “Who’s taking Roscoe?”
A brilliant plan occurred to Allie. So brilliant, she broke into a manic grin. “I am.”
She followed Matt and Dan through the doorway and unclipped her dog from the post, inviting him to follow her into the store with a soft tug and a cluck. The rental car unlocked behind her with a clunky mechanical noise.
“Good luck,” Matt called.
She barely waved her hand at him. All her attention was focused on the dog, who followed her eagerly into the store. “Do this for me, Roscoe, and I will give you all the salami,” she promised.
Having sprinted down the next aisle over, the reporter had just reached the register. Allie headed directly for him. Roscoe positively wiggled with excitement.
Allie felt like wiggling, too. She had a talent for getting in the way, but Roscoe took the ability to a whole new level.
When they got close, the reporter dodged left. Allie dropped the leash and made a whirling motion with her hand. “Round him up.”
She snapped her fingers and Roscoe took off like a shot, barking and running circles around the reporter. It only took a few seconds for the guy to fall down, ankles hopelessly ensnared.
“Oh, you poor man,” Allie said. “I’m so sorry.” She watched him surreptitiously beneath her aura of ditziness to ensure that he didn’t seem too frightened of Roscoe. Reporter or not, if he had a dog phobia, she’d never forgive herself for aggravating it.
He only looked mad, though, not scared. “Get this fucking dog off me,” he demanded, and she plastered a worried frown on her face as she walked in counterclockwise circles, waving her bags of cold cuts back and forth within range of Roscoe’s nose. The dog barked with excitement and nosed Reporter Guy in the thigh.
Inside, Allie was whirling in circles, her imaginary paws lifting off the floor with every excited bark.
Dan and Matt would have to be gone by now. She had saved the day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You want another shower to warm up?” Ben tossed his keys on the kitchen counter. “Or I could make you some more coffee.”
“Both would be great.”
May was perfectly warm, but she felt gross—drying on the outside but damp under her arms, along the insides of her thighs, and around her ankles. Her feet were swollen and sore from walking so much in her soaked shoes.
A shower and a hot coffee would go a long way toward improving her condition. Though the prospect did raise an uncomfortable question.
Ben answered it before she even had to ask. “You’re going to need something dry to wear. Let me see what I’ve got.”
May took a seat at the counter, awash in something like déjà vu spiked with Mexican jumping beans.
She’d never expected to come back here, but when the opportunity had arisen, she’d decided to say yes even before he finished asking.
Yes to whatever he offered. Yes to Ben.
She wasn’t sure when she’d made up her mind. Before she took the cab to the farmer’s market at Union Square, though. Waiting in line at the airport, she’d been thinking about the way he’d looked while whipping cream for her. The flex of corded muscle in his working forearm and the way the other arm cradled the bowl against his stomach. The hollow of his throat above the neckline of his gray T-shirt.
His three-day stubble had grown into a four-day beard now. When he’d leaned in to kiss her cheek earlier, his face had felt scratchy and warm against hers. Interesting.
She’d
never kissed a bearded man before.
After a minute, he appeared in the doorway to his bedroom and smiled in a way that made her heart race.
Deep breaths, May-o. It’s always scary when you’re about to jump into the deep end.
Or so Allie told her. Allie was usually the one who did the diving.
“I’m sure my shirts will fit,” he said. “Not so sure about the jeans. We’re not far off on height, but …”
Aaaand there was the water, the smack of impact as harsh as she’d feared.
We’re not far off on height, because you’re a giantess, but your hips are broad as a barn, and there’s no hope on earth of your squeezing into these jeans.
She wasn’t cut out for the deep end.
“What about sweats?” she asked. “Or track pants, something like that?”
“Sure. Just a sec.”
He left her with his clothes, and she lifted his jeans to check: 32W, 34L. Straight up and down. Cuffed, they might have fit her in sixth grade, before she hit her second growth spurt. The one that had left stretch marks.
She folded them again as he came down the hall with a pair of dark green track pants. The stripes up the side were gold. Packers pants.
“They match your jersey,” he said.
She imagined herself walking around with him in Packers pants, a green jersey, and green slippers with bows. “I need to buy some clothes.”
“I know,” he said. “I figured shopping is probably first on the agenda.”
“You shop?”
“I wait nearby with a cup of coffee and my book.”
That made her smile, a little bit. “You can find out if they ever manage to bury the dead lady while I locate pants that fit.”
Ben smiled back, that elusive grin that made him look younger, a little silly, and far too appealing. “It’s a deal. But first, get warm, and I’ll feed you.”
“You already fed me soup.”
“I have to make the coffee, drink the coffee, and change my clothes. Plus, you’re a chick, so you’ll take forever. I bet it’ll be ninety minutes before we hit the pavement. By then, I’ll be ready to eat again.”