Overprotected

by Lulu Pratt

  There is going to have to be something done between us before dinner tonight, or sitting down with her parents and mine is going to go absolutely pear-shaped. FUBAR, as my commanding officer likes to say. But it can’t come from me.

  Harper made it clear at the lake that she doesn’t even want to talk to me, that she didn’t even want to be in the same room or the same place as me. I’m pretty sure she’s probably cooled down by now or she wouldn’t be in her parents’ house, but I don’t know.

  You could text her and see if she’s at least interested in talking, or if she’s still pissed at you.

  But then almost right away I push that idea out of my head. If I text her and she’s still pissed, that’s going to make dinner that much more awkward. I have to hope that Harper is going to decide to do the right thing and somehow get in touch with me.

  Just when I’m on the point of deciding to leave the house out of sheer boredom, my phone buzzes. At first I think it’s one of the guys from the base, wanting to confirm when I’ll be back, but instead I see, as soon as I check the screen, that it’s Harper.

  We need to talk, don’t we?

  I grin to myself. I’m relieved that at least Harper’s willing to reach out.

  We do. What do you think we should do?

  Obviously, in the middle of the day and considering the situation, we can’t meet in our usual spot. I don’t even think that the lake is necessarily a great idea.

  We need to hash everything out. We need to do it before dinner.

  I almost roll my eyes. It was obvious enough that I didn’t even think it needed to be said, and yet Harper had said it.

  Right.

  We can’t meet at the usual spot, so we need to figure out somewhere we can both go. I think to myself that at least Harper isn’t still so pissed at me that she can’t stand to even talk to me. That is a good thing, even if the rest of the situation is pretty shitty.

  Do you know if your parents know about the other night?

  I think about that question for a moment. From the conversation I had with Dad, I almost figured that he knew that I was talking about Harper, but neither of us had mentioned her name. I have to assume that if he did know about her, that he would have said so directly.

  I don’t think your mom said anything to them, at least not yet.

  We need to find a place where we can meet privately.

  I know she doesn’t mean it that way, but I can’t help but think of what I want to do with, and to, Harper as soon as I get her alone. I can’t, I know that, but I want to all the same. She was so good that in the back of my mind, ever since the night we had sex, a fantasy of having her again has been playing steadily, right along with everything else going on in my head these past few days.

  Let me think of something. If you figure something out, text me.

  I sigh and put my phone aside, trying to think of somewhere we could go. It’s not easy. Our parents will probably be watching us like hawks, even if it’s for different reasons. We need a getaway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HARPER POLSEN

  Maybe fifteen minutes after Zane tells me to let him think of somewhere for us to meet, it occurs to me — the perfect place for us to go to, and where they’re even less likely to end up accidentally finding us. I just don’t know if the place in question is still standing.

  I debate whether it would be worth it to go there myself and scout it out before I suggest it to Zane, but finally decide that even if the landmark I have in mind isn’t still standing, we can make use of the place where it should be. After all, we’re only going to go there to talk, aren’t we?

  Do you remember the treehouse?

  I haven’t thought of the treehouse in years, and it’s been even longer since the last time I actually set eyes on it. For all I know, it fell while I was in college, and the pieces of it rusted and rotted into the ground, or got carried off by mendicants. But even if the old playhouse in the trees isn’t there anymore, it shouldn’t be too hard for both Zane and me to find the spot where it used to be, should it?

  Oh man, the treehouse! Duh!

  I grin to myself in spite of how agitated I feel.

  Our parents, or, more accurately, our fathers, built it for us when we were five or six in a little stand of woods that separates our neighborhood from another neighborhood. Just old enough for both our mothers to decide that we would probably not die from being up in a tree.

  Even though we stopped being friends sometime around middle school, when Zane suddenly became the funny, popular, jock-without-a-sport that he was, we essentially decided without debate or discussion that the treehouse was there for both of us. Neither of us had a better claim than the other, and we’d stay out of each other’s way.

  I kind of hoped it was still there. I was sure that even if it was, it would look absolutely nothing like my memories of it. It would probably not be even a little bit safe to climb into, but it might be nice to see it all the same. It would give us both a place we knew the way to, but that our parents weren’t likely to consider.

  I take a deep breath and try to figure out when, how, we’re going to meet there to figure out this huge mess we found ourselves in. Why am I so nervous? I shake my head. Of course I’m nervous, I’m about to meet with Zane to talk about the incredibly awkward topic of us having sex and how we’re going to get through a big dinner with both sets of parents, with hopefully only one of the four of them already in the know.

  When do you want to meet up?

  I bite my bottom lip as I read the text from Zane. That’s the question, isn’t it? The dinner is hours away, but I don’t think there will be a better time before it.

  Why not now?

  I hope I can breeze through the house and get out to where our treehouse may or may not still be standing.

  Zane texts back a thumbs up, and I find myself quickly checking my make-up, changing out of my pajama pants and into a skirt.

  “God, what am I doing?” I shake my head at myself and hurry out of my bedroom before I can give into the impulse to do even more to prepare. We’re going to be talking, it isn’t like I need to look particularly good, is it?

  “Harper! I was just going to come and get you,” Mom says as I’m about to walk past the kitchen. Shit.

  “I’m actually just on my way out,” I tell her, hoping she won’t ask too many questions.

  “Where are you going?” Mom stops in the middle of what she’s doing and looks at me. “What’s happening, Harper?”

  “Nothing important,” I say. “Just wanted to take care of some errands.”

  “You don’t have your purse,” she says.

  “Well I do have a life of my own, Mom,” I point out, smiling. “I have lots of things that I do that you don’t know about.”

  “And one thing that you’ve recently done that I found out about,” Mom says, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I try to keep my face neutral, but I can feel the blush beginning to rise into my cheeks.

  “Are you going to meet with him?” She doesn’t say who, but we both know Mom means Zane.

  “Why would you ask?” I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s not even really your business, is it?”

  “Harper Polsen, I want you to think about what you’re doing. This boy is someone you grew up with, and his parents are very close friends. If you and he keep messing around together and it ends poorly, you could wreck a friendship of almost thirty years.” She stares me down and I feel even more irritable than when we’d argued about it before.

  “First, I’m an adult, Mom. I can do what I want. And yes, I am meeting with Zane. And in fact I’m trying to do what I can to make sure that things don’t go all awkward and weird between everyone, okay?” I return her stare for a few moments.

  “Just think about what you’re doing, okay?” Mom sighs.

  “Mom, of all the people in the world who you know, who do you think is the most like
ly to overthink what she’s doing?” I smile at her.

  “Just promise me you’re going to think about it carefully, and not rush into it just because Zane is… hot and familiar.”

  I have to laugh at that advice. “Mom, I’m not rushing into anything. I’m trying to figure out the situation as best as I can, so we can all have a nice dinner tonight. Okay?”

  Before she can answer I’m already turning away. I don’t want this to become a fight again. I don’t know how much time I have left until Zane leaves his house, and if he does that while I’m still in view, it won’t just be my mom who knows about what happened between us.

  I almost run across the yard, to the woods that border the property line. For a second, as soon as I’m in the cooler air and dimmer light of the woods, I feel like I might actually get lost.

  And then I find the trail that my dad and Zane’s dad cut out and tamped down, and it’s like I’m fourteen again, the age I was when I still went to visit the treehouse regularly. Before I got too wrapped up in studying and being a straight-A student to spend as much time outside climbing trees. My heart’s beating faster because I don’t know what Zane and I are actually going to talk about. But I know we’re going to talk.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ZANE LEWIS

  I check myself in the mirror. Between our fight the day before, the sex we had before that and the dinner to come, I have no real clue what Harper and I are going to talk about. There’s too much ground to cover.

  But I know we have to do something. Her mom knows about us fooling around in the yard, but she doesn’t know about the sex, and she definitely doesn’t know about the fight. If things get too tense at the dinner party later, a lot of stuff could come out that would screw everything up, and I feel like I kind of owe it to my parents not to be the cause of that.

  I head downstairs. Dad is sitting in the living room, watching something about how aliens were responsible for all the things the ancient civilizations did.

  “Hey, where you headed, Zane?”

  I stop short and shrug off the question. “Just going for a walk in the woods,” I say.

  “Have you given any thought to what we talked about yesterday?” Dad looks at me intently and I shrug again, feeling nervous.

  “I’ve been letting it soak in,” I say.

  “I wanted to talk to you. Before you head out,” Dad says.

  I raise an eyebrow. “It was good advice. I don’t see why you need to add to it now,” I tell him.

  “I had a chat with Nadine this morning.”

  Months of grueling basic training is the only reason I can keep my face from showing how much I’m dreading what else Dad might say next.

  “Don’t you have a chat with Nadine most mornings?”

  “Zane, sit down.”

  I want to say that I don’t have time, but I know if I don’t Dad is going to come up with some reason to detain me, or he’ll get Mom in the room, or something like that.

  “I need to head out, actually,” I begin to say.

  “You’re going to meet up with Harper, aren’t you?” Dad keeps his eyes on my face and after a moment, I nod.

  “Yes,” I admit.

  “When we had our talk yesterday, I had to wonder who it was you were talking about, someone you’d known for a while, who you didn’t think about ‘that way’ and all that,” Dad says.

  “I never said who it was,” I point out.

  “There aren’t that many single girls from your high school still in town, or in town right now,” Dad tells me.

  I cringe. I probably should have thought of that, but I’d been too occupied with making sure he wouldn’t immediately guess it was Harper.

  “Right,” I say.

  “So when Nadine told me that she caught the two of you, I put two and two together,” Dad says.

  “So does that change what you told me yesterday?” I just want to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible.

  Harper is definitely at the treehouse by now, wondering when I’ll show up.

  “I want to clarify one thing for you,” Dad tells me.

  “Go ahead,” I say with a nod I’m pretty sure I won’t like it, but I owe it to my dad to hear him out, and I don’t have to follow his advice.

  “You’ve got this going on, whatever it is, and I’m not going to speculate until you’re ready to tell me, and you’ve got the thing with the army going on,” Dad says.

  “Right,” I say, and I nod, gesturing for him to continue.

  “My advice to you for what it’s worth, on both of those issues, is this. If you’re actually in love with Harper, then you should see where it goes, and maybe consider re-joining the civilian world if it looks serious. But if it’s not going to go anywhere, and you already know that, then you need to make a clean break and you need to re-enlist so you’re not going to end up running into her again.”

  I look at Dad for a while after his little speech, and I have to admit, the advice makes a lot of sense. There’s just one problem with it.

  “I don’t really know what the situation is,” I admit.

  “You’d better find out tout de suite,” Dad says with a smile.

  I shake my head at that, but he’s right.

  “I’m going to go talk to her and see if we can figure it out,” I tell him.

  “Just make sure you don’t screw up dinner tonight. Your mom is really looking forward to it, since it’s the capper to our anniversary week, and she wants it to be perfect right before you leave us again.”

  I cringe at that, and stand. I need to hurry if I’m going to get into the woods before Harper gives up on the meeting.

  “I’ll do my best,” I say.

  “I know I don’t have to tell you to keep your head on straight,” Dad says, giving me another one of those looks.

  I decide to leave before he thinks of more advice for me. I’ve already got enough going on in my head.

  At least Dad has a better opinion of the situation than Nadine does, according to what little I was able to get out of Harper the day before. But as I finally get out of the house and start towards the woods, I don’t know whether that isn’t because he’s pretty sure I’m going to decide to reenlist.

  I shake my head, finding the trail that leads to the treehouse, and thinking about what an incredible mess everything has suddenly become. Harper might still be pissed at me, and I’m not sure if I can blame her for that. Nadine is definitely pissed at me. I don’t know if she’s told my mom about it, but I’m pretty sure Mom will be at least a little upset about it.

  We’re going to settle this and figure out what the hell we’re doing. Part of me wants to keep it casual with Harper, say that we did what we did, and it’s done and we should make a clean break of it. She’s in the city, I’m still in the army for at least the next couple of months. Besides, is a woman really a good reason to get out of the army if it’s doing right by me?

  Wait until you talk to her and see what she has to say about this, and then figure it out.

  I can see the tree house up ahead, and for a second I don’t see Harper. I expect to see her standing under it, waiting, but she’s nowhere to be seen. The old tree house actually still looks like it’s in good shape, the wood is weathered-looking, but the basic structure is metal and plastic, so it hasn’t fallen down.

  “Zane?”

  I look around at the sound of Harper’s voice.

  “Up here!”

  I look up, and there she is, standing in the tree house, peeking through the branches out of one of the windows.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  HARPER POLSEN

  “Good God, Harper, is it even safe for you to be up there?”

  I grin and shrug. “It’s held my weight so far,” I point out. I’d been waiting for him under the tree for just long enough to get curious about the tree house itself, and to think that maybe, just maybe, it might be fun to climb, for old time’s sake.

  “How did you even get up?
” Zane looks for the rope ladder we used to have, but it rotted out a long time ago.

  “I climbed,” I say simply. I feel my heart pounding in my chest, and I don’t know what I want to do. I have to admit that I have a tingle running all through my spine at the sight of Zane. He’s so gorgeous, and my body remembers how he felt inside me so easily that I can’t think of anything else for a few dozen heartbeats.

  “Maybe you should come down,” Zane says.

  “Maybe you should come up,” I counter.

  He looks up at me for a long moment.

  “Is the big bad army man afraid?”

  “Oh you bet your sweet ass I’m coming up,” Zane says, and that breaks at least some of the tension between us, but it reminds me in some other way of all the rest of it.

  What are we even doing?

  My heart pounds while I watch him climb, and I wonder if it’s a huge mistake to do this. Maybe I should leave well enough alone. Zane and I can pretend like nothing happened when dinner comes. But at the same time, I know I can’t.

  Finally, Zane is standing only a few feet away from me. All I can think about is being in his parents’ bathroom, feeling him inside me, feeling his hands all over my body. Is that really what I want? Asking the question brings up the fight we had the day before.

  “I shouldn’t have gone off on you like I did yesterday,” I say quickly.

  “I can kind of get why you did,” Zane tells me. “I mean, obviously, you were upset.”