Here With Me: A Best Friend's Brother stand-alone romance.

by Tia Louise

  Noel looks back at me, and I wave, turning to the refrigerator. “Yeah, there’s time.”

  “I just need to make some sketches. I’d like to go down to Hayes pond if that’s okay?”

  “Take the three-wheeler.” Noel’s voice carries out the screen door, which closes with a bang.

  I turn, leaning my back against the appliance and crossing my arms over my chest as I watch them in the yard. I’ve got so much work. I’ll lose these feelings like I always do, in straining muscles, blazing heat, and stinging sweat.

  If manual labor doesn’t kill it, you’re not doing it right.

  “Ugh, I hate harvest.” Noel bangs through the door again, dropping into the chair and scooping up the glue gun and another gold-striped straw. “It’s already hot as Africa out there.”

  “What do you know about Africa?” I take a long drink of lemonade.

  “I know it has deserts, and it’s so hot people have to ride camels because horses would drop dead. And that’s just the north part.”

  “It’ll be over soon. Time flies during harvest.” I see Taron pulling the truck into the lot behind the shed, and I start for the door.

  “Because we barely have time to think.”

  Pushing out the screen door, I shake my head. Noel always exaggerates, but in this case, she’s not far wrong. My mind drifts to Mindy in the rows sketching, and I wish I could go to her. My chest aches for her more with each passing week. It was so hard last night to keep from doing more…

  But she doesn’t belong here. She’s fucking talented and smart. Hell, some of the paintings she’s shown me—figures and portraits—are really unique, emotional and edgy. They’re totally different from the Peach Festival posters, which are just mass produced and watered down for public consumption. I want to see her follow her dreams. I don’t want to see her give them up for this grueling existence.

  “Hey!” Taron shouts to me from inside the shed. “Was that Mindy on the three-wheeler?”

  I grab the last of the crates from the bed of the truck and toss them on the loading dock. “Yeah, why?”

  He grunts as he pushes up onto the concrete slab. “Looks like she had an accident. I’ll finish here if you want to go check on her.”

  “What the fuck?” Fear seizes my chest, and I’m in the cab of the Chevy before he even finishes speaking.

  He shouts something behind me as I blast out of the dirt lot, but I’m not listening. I’m fighting visions of Mindy lying injured in the field or worse…

  Which is completely illogical. Taron would’ve stopped if she were hurt.

  I work to calm my thoughts, but it’s not easy—a reality I’m not prepared to examine too closely right now.

  It takes less than two minutes for me to cross from our place into the Hayes’s old orchard, which is now full of dead trees, cow weed, and black-eyed Susans.

  Dutch Hayes owned the orchard adjacent to ours for years until they over-harvested their trees. Now he and his son Digger grow cotton all the way from here to Delta. It’s a lot of cotton, but it takes a lot to make anything off that crop.

  I’m over the last small hill leading to the Hayes pond when I see her and exhale heavily. Shit. She’s on her knees beside the small vehicle with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. One of the back tires is completely flat.

  Dropping my speed, I park the truck close by and climb out, slamming the door. “Are you okay?”

  She rises, pushing a strand of hair off her forehead. Her hands are shaking, and I cup them in mine before catching her chin, lifting her eyes as I search for signs of dilation.

  “Just shook up a little.” She blinks away from my gaze. “Damn thing exploded so loud I nearly had a heart attack.”

  Relief mixes with the adrenaline in my veins, and I want to pull her against my chest and hold her. I want to slide my hand down the back of her head and feel her safe in my arms. I want to kiss her gently.

  I guess I’m overreacting.

  “You sure you’re not hurt?”

  “I’m fine.” She nods. “But this is stuck.”

  We walk around to look. The rim is in a muddy rut, and I trace her route a few paces until I find looks like a broken keg tap hidden in a clump of grass. Snatching it up, I carry it back and toss it in the bed of my truck.

  “Found the culprit at least. Probably some kids threw it out.”

  “Idiots.” Mindy grumbles, glancing at the jagged piece of metal.

  “I don’t know if I can lift this thing.” I squat beside it thinking. I don’t have a spare tire, and I’m not sure Taron can help me. “Where were you headed? I can give you a ride.”

  She sighs and pulls her bag over her shoulder. “Here.” She waves a hand toward the pond. “I was going to sit on the pier and do some sketching. I probably could’ve walked.”

  We leave the vehicles in the field and walk slowly toward the old fishing pond. A pipe rises in the middle, aerating the water by spraying it in an arc over the surface.

  “You’re going to sketch the fountain?”

  “I had this image in my head of a boy with a fishing pole sitting on the bank…” Her voice drifts as she studies the scene. “He could be framed by peach tree branches and blossoms, like it’s his world…”

  “That so?”

  Clearing her throat, she shakes it away. “Or I don’t know. It’s probably a dumb idea.”

  “I like it.” I think about fishing out here with my dad all the time as kid, and I think about the day I found her crying and alone, the day my life changed forever.

  The day she put her hand in mine.

  She pulls out the sketch pad and starts flipping pages. I catch glimpses of pencil drawings, but a few of the pages have color on them.

  “Can I see that?” I reach forward to stop one of them before she flips it away fast.

  “What?” Her brow furrows, and she turns back. “Oh…”

  Her shoulders rise, and she tries to cover it again. I stop her. “Hang on, what is it?”

  “Sawyer…” Her tone is pleading.

  It’s a watercolor of a couple in a bed. They’re both dark-haired. The woman’s is long and flowing in waves around her shoulders. She’s lying on her back with the man above her, and her fingers are threaded in the side of his hair.

  It’s so familiar, so much emotion is in their faces, their lips almost touching. It looks like us. I want to ask… but I see pink in her cheeks and change my mind.

  “It’s really good.”

  “Thank you.” She takes the sketchbook out of my hands and quickly closes the cover.

  I want to hold her that way. I want her fingers in my hair, pulling me closer to her like she did in bed last night.

  “You doing okay today? Sorry I had to take off this morning. You know. Harvest.”

  “I know.”

  She does know. She’s grown up in this world. A long time ago, I told her she could tell me anything… I think about telling her everything. I’m not sure how she’d take it, but I can guess she’d want to help. I’ve seen her at the nursing home with the old ladies.

  Then she’d be trapped here, the same way I’m trapped.

  Obligation.

  Fuck that.

  Last Christmas Mindy wanted to leave. She wanted to move to Dallas and pursue her art career. She didn’t go for some reason she never shared… Probably her Ma, but I know she has dreams and ambitions that are bigger than this small town.

  I step back as she squints up at me. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to make you tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking I’d better get moving if I’m going to fix that flat.”

  “I’ll be here if you need any help.” She turns, continuing to the pond, and I hesitate a moment, watching the sway of her cute little ass in that short dress.

  Yeah, I’d better get back to work.

  5

  Mindy

  I close my eyes and remember Sawyer in high school, his hair
dark and shaggy around his head, his body tall and lanky. He didn’t get muscular until after that horrible winter.

  Everybody in town helped them. Ma was best friends with Penny LaGrange, their mother, so she took their care personally. We were over at their house every day making sure everyone ate, clothes were clean, homework was done… hugs and comfort was administered.

  The best thing about my ma is she has plenty of affection for an army of kids. None of us felt left out of the love—if anything, we got too much.

  I was eleven. It’s an age where you’re still too young to be taken seriously, but you see and feel things deeply. I understood the seriousness of what was happening to them. I knew what a big responsibility had fallen on Sawyer’s shoulders, and I think I fell in love with him then, before I knew what love really meant.

  He was only sixteen, but he seemed so strong and solid. He got up early and went to the meetings with the grown men, talked to them like he was one of them. He wasn’t like any boy I ever knew before or since…

  Sitting on the pier now, I think of him at twenty-one… He was a man with lines of muscle tracing across his chest, down his arms, that V dropping into his jeans. It felt so cruel we couldn’t be together until I was eighteen, and I did everything I could to wear him down.

  I should’ve known anyone who could take on what he did was strong enough to hold me at arm’s length, at least a few years.

  My hand moves over the sketchpad, and I trace out a line for the bank. Below it I’ll fill in the lake with sparkles of light tipping the surface. Above it, I’ll add the heavy brush where he would sit and fish, watching the water so quietly.

  He’s always been that way, quiet, patient, waiting. It made his groans in my ear when I’d straddle him and kiss him, even more thrilling. It was like I’d made it to a place nobody was allowed.

  Dropping my hand lower on the page, I draw a curved line for his broad shoulder, following it to his muscular biceps. His arm is bent, and his hands clutch my shoulders. I quickly sketch them, narrow and raised. My chin is raised, and his head is lowered. Our lips are almost touching, a breath apart… Closing my eyes, my body heats as I feel it.

  “Sawyer said you got stuck?” Leon’s loud voice makes me scream and toss my sketch pad.

  “Leon, what the hell!”

  “Holy shit…” His voice breaks off with snorts of laughter.

  Just like his brother, Leon is long and lean with dark shaggy hair, but he’s always been full of mischief.

  “Sawyer said you’re working on the Peach Festival poster?”

  Reaching down, I scoop my pad off the pier thankful it didn’t land in the water. “I was trying to. Until somebody broke my concentration.”

  “Is that why you jumped a mile in the air? All those peach trees?” His dark eyes twinkle.

  “Do you need something from me?”

  “Not really. Sawyer went to town to get a new tire. I figured I’d come check out the damage. Saw you sitting up here gazing at the lake like Aquaman’s about to show up or something.”

  “I was not. I was thinking about my sketch.”

  “Is it going to be X-rated this year?”

  Opening my bag, I stuff my sketchpad inside. “I’m heading back to the house. It’s too distracting out here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he laughs. “Did I interrupt your artistic flow?”

  “No more than you ever do.”

  I’m walking quickly in the direction of the house, Leon keeping pace, not letting up for a minute on the teasing.

  “You know your face gets all pink when you’re drawing dirty pictures. You chew your lip, and—”

  Stopping short, I cut him with a glare. “I was not drawing dirty pictures.”

  “Bullshit.” He crosses his arm, grinning down at me. “Open that sketch book and prove me wrong.”

  I hesitate. I don’t remember how far I’d gotten in my illustrated memory of Sawyer and me together, and the last thing I need is Leon knowing our secret.

  Although, to be honest, I don’t know why it’s still be a secret. We’re both old enough to be together now, and my mom would be thrilled—mostly because I’d be staying in Harristown.

  I say all this as if I have any reason to think Sawyer and I would be together. We never defined the relationship before he left, and since he returned from the Marines, I’m back at arm’s length. I’m not really sure why, and it’s getting old.

  “That’s what I thought.” Leon laughs, turning on his bootheel and heading toward the wrecked ATV. “Now let’s see what you’ve done to this.”

  “It wasn’t me. Some idiot threw a broken tap in the pasture.”

  “It’s stuck pretty good.” He tries to push it, but it won’t budge. “I’ll have to come back with Sawyer.”

  Now I feel like shit. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing my big brother can’t fix.” He throws an arm around my shoulders. “I think he likes fixing all our crap.”

  I’m not sure that’s true… In fact, I know it’s not, which makes me feel even worse, but I don’t want to seem too familiar with the inner workings of his brother’s mind.

  He drops his arm off my shoulder and adjusts the cap on his head. “Deacon’s at the house.”

  “Is he back from Dallas?” I remember my mom’s invitation.

  “Hell, I don’t know. Nobody tells me anything.”

  “Is that so?” That makes me laugh. “Have you told anybody what you’re going to do with that degree yet?”

  Leon graduated from the small college in town last month with a general studies degree, and so far, he still hasn’t announced any plans for the future.

  Not that I’m one to throw stones. Hell, I’m still sitting on my art degree, waiting…

  “I want to be more involved in the orchard.” His expression turns serious. “Deacon says there’s tax advantages to having me on as an employee. But I don’t want to be just an employee.”

  We’ve been walking as we talked, and we’re in eye-shot of the house when I stop. “Have you talked to Sawyer about this?”

  He stops with me, dropping his chin and rubbing the back of his neck. “Sawyer’s ten years older than me.”

  “So?”

  “So he still looks at me like a kid. Even though I’m five years older than he was when he took over.”

  My brow furrows, and I think about the few times Sawyer’s talked to me about his feelings—always when he’s had a little too much whiskey. He has dreams just like all of us. He wanted to travel, go to the south Pacific, explore Asia…

  “You should talk to Sawyer about this.”

  Leon chuffs a laugh and turns away toward the shed. “Yeah, maybe one day. When he takes me seriously.”

  My lips tighten, and I watch him jog away toward the shed. I’ve been waiting for Sawyer to come to me, you know, the whole, when you love something set it free? Maybe it’s time to stop waiting for my bird to fly home and go get it.

  Deacon is at the table with Noel when I push through the door. He lifts his chin and gives me a little nod. I hop over and give him a shoulder-hug.

  “How was Dallas? Aunt Winnie still busting your balls?”

  “Pretty much.” He presses his full lips together and passes Noel what looks like a profit and loss spreadsheet. “See what you think.”

  My friend takes it and turns it over in her hands. “This is it? My five-year plan?”

  “It’s what you told me. You don’t have to follow it unless it’s really what you want to do.”

  Deacon’s wearing Armani, but his collar is unbuttoned and his jacket is open. He’s the most casual rich boy I’ve ever known in my life—so accustomed to the finer things, he doesn’t even consider being careful with his expensive suit.

  I remember freshman year when he walked into our accounting class. Thick, dark hair and piercing blue eyes… all the female students sat up straighter in their chairs. Then he walked over and sat right by me. I didn’t know whether to be smug or fee
l sad. Sawyer had claimed my heart so completely, I had no interest in this sexy Dallas boy at my side.

  “What are you doing for dinner tomorrow night?” I punch his shoulder, and his brow furrows.

  “You asking me out again?” He’s teasing, but Noel’s eyes are on us. She’s been determined we’re hooking up since college.

  “Ma wants you to come over for dinner. She thinks she can feed you and get free financial advice for her bee business.”

  “Your mom can bribe me with food any day of the week.” He winks, but I just shake my head.

  “I’ll tell her you said yes. I’m sorry I bothered y’all.” I kiss Noel’s head, and she slants her eyes at me.

  “You’re not bothering us. I’ll give you a call later.”

  I want to help with the mess I’ve created for Sawyer. Leon’s right. He looks at us as things he needs to take care of, responsibilities… burdens.

  His truck pulls up behind the shed, and I head for the door. It’s time to show him I can take care of myself.

  6

  Sawyer

  “Now I feel like shit. I didn’t know you’d have to fix it by yourself.” Mindy stands beside me watching.

  I’m on my knees in the muck doing my best not to knock the three-wheeler off its unstable jack.

  “Who’d you think was going to help me?” The words come out on a grunt as I push against the socket wrench. “The tire fairy?”

  She leans forward at my shoulder, and the scent of lilac drifts to me. It’s a nice contrast to the mud.

  “I thought Leon would help you.”

  “I sent him with Taron to get more palettes.” The wheel’s off, and I stand.

  She steps back, facing me, still in that thin sundress, her dark hair falling in slick waves over her shoulders. By contrast, I’ve got sweat running down the sides of my neck, and I’m covered in mud from the knees down. Nice.

  “I got this.” I carry the flat over to where the replacement waits. “Can’t have Taron throwing his back out this close to harvest.”