Clean Break

by Erin McLellan

  “But you like him.”

  Of course I liked Connor. I liked how strong he was and how his face glowed when he was spanking me. I liked that he was caring, and serious, and a little strange. He was different from any guy I’d ever been with, and everything about him made me want him more. Made me want to dig into him, analyze and diagram him like a sentence, pull his beauty and heart to the surface until it shined. Until he was mine.

  Impossible.

  Joel and Paulie wanted to go home. Well, I had no idea where home would be for me. For the summer, it’d be St. Louis. For the next three years, it’d be Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It would never be Elkville.

  Elkville would never fill my heart, even if there was a boy there who could.

  It might hurt when we ended.

  And we would end. Soon. We had to.

  Chapter Thirteen

  CONNOR

  The week before spring break passed in a blur of all-nighters.

  My parents didn’t seem to understand the pressure of midterm exams, and both kept pestering me about inviting friends to their annual cookout and brush burning over spring break. My dad had even called to tell me to invite Travis, because Lena was a traitor and had ratted out my crush.

  The midterm exam in Entomology 101 was scheduled for Friday, and it was the easiest of my tests that week. I put off studying for it until my Thursday shift at the Feed Store where I could review my notecards while manning the register.

  The Feed Store was a staple in Elkville. Not much had changed in it since the eighties. There was a card table by the front door where the old-timers sat around reading the paper, griping about millennials, and drinking sludge coffee. In the morning, when I opened the store, the old men were always waiting in their farm trucks for me to let them in. None of them ever bought much from the store, but normally, one of them did bring donuts to share, so I didn’t mind.

  This morning they were up in arms about a question that was going to be on the ballot in the next state election. It affected small farms, in particular, and primarily benefited big business.

  “Hey, you. Cliff’s son,” one of the old men called to me at the register. His name was Milton Weisman, and he knew my name. He’d known me my whole life.

  He’d also called me Cliff’s son, which wasn’t technically wrong, but Red had raised me. Red was the man I called Dad. Comments that diminished Red in any way got my back up a bit.

  “Yes, Mr. Weisman?”

  “What do you think? You’re getting that fancy degree.”

  “What do I think about the state question?” I asked, wanting to verify.

  I personally thought it was a ploy by a bunch of politicians to suck up to the corporations and lobbies that filled their coffers. I tried to keep my nose out of the men’s discussions, but today I was tempted to engage since so many of them seemed determined to vote against their own best interests.

  Before I could respond, the retired veterinarian, Dr. Mudd, waved his hand. “Oh, don’t ask the kid. His head is full of nothing but textbooks, safe spaces, and men.”

  I tensed. Should I be offended by that? My shaking hands said yes.

  Mr. Weisman rolled up his newspaper and slapped it on the card table. “You leave the kid alone. He’s good stock.”

  The old men were off and running with a new topic before I’d blinked, and I relaxed as soon as the spotlight was no longer on me.

  Mom showed up at noon to cover for me during my lunch break. Sometimes I ate my lunch at that card table, but the men were still gabbing away, so I took my sandwich to my truck. I texted Travis.

  Are you ready for the midterm tomorrow? I asked.

  As ready as I’ll be. I have a paper due too so been focusing on that.

  We could study together tonight. I have notecards.

  Travis didn’t respond for about fifteen minutes, and I found myself checking my phone over and over again, like I was lovesick.

  Because I was.

  It was depressing.

  Are they color-coded? he finally replied.

  Of course they were color-coded. I had studying down to a science.

  Yes.

  His response was several laughing emojis, which made me scowl at my phone. He hadn’t answered my question.

  So studying? I asked again.

  Not this time.

  My stomach hit the floorboard when I received Travis’s text.

  As I went back to the register, I couldn’t help but wonder if Travis would have seen me tonight if I’d asked him for sex.

  Maybe that was all I was to him, after all. We never hung out unless sex or storage-closet kissing was involved.

  Maybe I needed to change that.

  Travis finished our entomology midterm fifteen minutes before me. He squeezed my shoulder as he walked by to turn his test in to Dr. Greer. I watched as they chatted quietly at the front of the class, completely forgetting about the exam in front of me. Eventually, they wrapped up their conversation, and Travis left the classroom.

  I’d been banking on talking to Travis after class, but it hadn’t occurred to me that we would finish at different times. I was distracted through the rest of the exam, which sucked. I’d studied hard for this test, and it was stupid to let Travis Bradford derail me.

  When I turned in my exam to Dr. Greer, he asked me how my cockroach was doing.

  “He’s well. I think,” I said, very seriously.

  Cressida had started hissing this week, which I could have done without, but all in all, he seemed to be enjoying his cockroach life.

  “Have you named him? I love hearing the names students come up with.”

  “Cressida.”

  Dr. Greer chuckled. “You and Travis are clever. That’s pretty funny.”

  I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. How did he know Travis had named my cockroach?

  “What’s funny?”

  “Travis’s is named Troilus. Troilus and Cressida.” At my blank look, he said, “Like the Trojan War. There’s a Shakespeare play called Troilus and Cressida.”

  “Oh. Right. Yes.”

  Travis had never told me his cockroach’s name, and I hadn’t thought to ask. Not that it would have made much difference. I wasn’t exactly a Trojan War scholar and my Shakespeare was worse.

  I said goodbye to Dr. Greer rather than ask him if the play was a love story. Knowing Travis’s sense of humor, I assumed not.

  I left the classroom and immediately pulled out my phone to do some Shakespeare Googling.

  “How’d you do?”

  I stumbled at Travis’s voice, and he grabbed my elbow to steady me. I hadn’t even seen him in the hallway.

  “You waited.”

  His smile froze, like he’d been caught out, and he released my arm. “Yeah.”

  “I want to go to lunch. Or brunch, I guess, since it’s fairly early.” It’d taken us each less than forty-five minutes to finish the exam, so we’d gotten out of class earlier than normal.

  “Oh, I was thinking, you know. Some mood lighting, a shelf of paper towels, a storage closet, and me and you.”

  “I want lunch. With you,” I said again. I wanted to hang out with him.

  He sighed, all drama, all the time, and I had to bite back a smile.

  “Do I get to choose the location?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I said the word so thoughtlessly that it surprised me. I couldn’t believe I’d handed over the reins to him without agonizing over it.

  He peered at me and bit his lip. “Nothing too adventurous. How about Little Dipper Diner?”

  Little Dipper Diner was a local favorite. It was across town and cash only. I was surprised Travis had heard of it, but I’d been eating there for as long as I could remember. It was a safe restaurant for me. It rarely upped my anxiety or tripped those wires in my brain that made eating out difficult.

  “We’ll have to drive there. What about your class this afternoon?”

  “All I have to do is drop my midterm pape
r in my professor’s box, and I’m free for the day. Benefit of being an English major. We rarely have tests. Essays are king.”

  Twenty minutes later, we found ourselves in a booth with vinyl seats. It was raining, and the droplets pounded the huge window beside us.

  Our waitress was the mother of a guy I’d graduated with. She eyed us suspiciously. “You know we only take cash, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “How you been, Connor?”

  “Good, Mrs. Evanson. How are you?”

  The harsh lines around her mouth softened. “Getting by. Gerrick’s in prison.”

  “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what cooking and selling meth gets you.” She shrugged, her chin hitching high in defiance. “So what do you want to drink, boys?”

  Travis had watched this whole exchange with wide eyes, but he smiled when she turned her gaze to him. “I’d like a coffee, please.”

  “Orange juice for me,” I said.

  She wrote it down on her pad of paper, then left.

  “How do you know her?” Travis asked.

  “I graduated with her son. Gerrick.”

  “She brought up her son so you wouldn’t do it first.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It follows you, doesn’t it? There’s no anonymity here. Everyone knows your business.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Sometimes. Of course it does.” I wanted to tell him about the men at the Feed Store, but embarrassment stopped me. Instead, I said, “I worry about what I’ll miss by staying here my whole life.”

  It was the first time I’d admitted that, to anyone. My heart stampeded from my chest to my throat, and I had to swallow the sudden urge to speak all my fears to this beautiful man. This man who I was falling head over heels for.

  “What do you think you’ll miss?”

  The word that popped into my head was “love,” but that was only sentimental bullshit and my own unsteady feelings for Travis coming through.

  I thought of my bucket list, which was shorter now that I’d marked losing my virginity and paddling someone off the list.

  “Adventure.”

  That wasn’t quite right either, but I liked the way Travis’s eyes sparked at the word. I simply wanted the ability to create a life from scratch, to discover myself without my family’s history and expectations weighing me down.

  “Elkville isn’t going to hold you back from being adventurous.”

  He didn’t understand. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I needed to reevaluate all the fears I had around being stuck here. It wasn’t a jail sentence.

  I nodded, and a small smile flashed across his face. He reached across the table and grabbed my hand, giving it a quick squeeze. I held on when he tried to pull back, rubbing my thumb along the knobby bone of his wrist, over his thundering pulse.

  What was it that Travis had said after we’d had sex? That he thought it was important to have a gut check to make sure we were on the same page.

  We weren’t on the same page at all.

  I wanted him. I was falling for him. But my pre-planned future made a relationship with him impossible.

  Travis drew in a shaky breath. “Connor.”

  He shook his head a little, and a small piece of my heart broke off at his rejection. I let go of his hand.

  TRAVIS

  Maybe I needed to come to terms with the fact that I was incapable of putting distance between Connor and myself. He wiggled into my heart with every stingy smile, every word reluctantly pulled from his beautiful mouth, every touch, whether it was sweet, like hand holding, or naughty, like a paddle to my skin. Hearing him talk about his future with such obvious longing—it killed me. I wanted to soothe him. I wanted to hug him and fuck him and take him out of this small-ass town forever.

  He pulled his hand out of mine, and a bit of my heart went with it.

  Then he nodded, like he was trying to shake off our conversation and shore himself up at the same time. Our waitress returned with a deep frown and our drinks. Who knew if she was normally this sour, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because we’d been touching only moments before. Maybe it was because I was Black.

  Normally, an ambiguous frown wouldn’t have bothered me, but I was suddenly worried about Connor. He had to live here. These were his people, the ones he’d spend the rest of his life living alongside. No freaking wonder it felt stifling, always questioning what they thought of you, feeling their judgment because you were different.

  The waitress took our orders—sourdough pancakes for me, and a ham and cheese omelet for Connor—and when she was gone, Connor stared at me thoughtfully.

  “You named our cockroaches Troilus and Cressida. Why?”

  I choked on a scalding sip of coffee.

  “How did you find out about Troilus?” I asked, once my coughing fit subsided. I’d never told him my cockroach’s name was Troilus. The night I’d named Cressida had been a blur of hormones and stupid, soft feelings. I was being sentimental and weird.

  “Dr. Greer told me. He thought it was funny. I don’t know anything about their story though, only that it’s a Shakespeare play.”

  I’d taken a class last semester on Shakespeare’s problem plays and Troilus and Cressida had been the most difficult for me to wrap my head around. It was so unusual tonally, but I liked the way it handled disillusionment and questioned the value in love, honor, and war. The night I’d named Connor’s cockroach, I’d done so out of some desire to put a name to our longing. Cressida and Troilus pine for each other, but they don’t work.

  Instead of explaining all that weirdness to Connor, I said, “Yeah, it’s a tragedy.”

  “I figured,” Connor said, his voice bone dry.

  That made me grin, made me wish I could reach across and grab his hand again, but our waitress returned with our food. We ate in silence. Every once in a while, I’d catch him watching me, an almost-smile on his face, and the fondness in his expression overwhelmed me. I kept trying to link our feelings for each other to the sex we were having, but it was getting harder and harder to deny that they stretched beyond that.

  Was that why he’d insisted on brunch rather than the storage closet? Was he trying to prove a point?

  Was it working? Because I wanted to get close to him in a way that had nothing to do with orgasms, and that was horrible.

  Once he was done with his omelet, he cocked his head and said, “What are you doing for spring break?”

  I cleared my throat and doused the rest of my pancakes in blueberry syrup. “I’m driving down to Houston suburba-hell to visit the family for the week. I’m leaving in the morning. Why?”

  “I was going to invite you to my family’s annual brush burning and cookout.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Meeting the parents jumped, skipped, and hopped over our no-strings boundaries.

  He ran his finger over a crack in the table. “It’s fine. It’ll be boring anyway. I’d also . . . never mind.” He shook his head.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking of the other things we could do over break.”

  “Like what?” I teased, hoping to convince him to talk dirty in his hometown diner. I wanted to put us back on that plane—the plane of sexual compatibility and mild kink.

  “Well, there’s the drive-in theater, which opens for the season tomorrow. I also looked up the events at the library, since you enjoy going to them, and they’re having a ghost-hunters program in the middle of the week. And Desi invited me to that paint-and-wine thing at the Spectrum Center. I thought you might enjoy that too.”

  Ah shit. Those were date ideas.

  “There’s Glitter Night at the Yard,” I added, to see his reaction. He didn’t disappoint.

  His nose scrunched up and his sexy lips tipped down into a frown. “If you wanted.”

  I laughed. Glitter Night happened every spring bre
ak, and it involved glitter body paint and an amateur dance competition for charity. It was wild, and it didn’t surprise me that Connor was uninterested. He hated the normal weekend crowd, and Glitter Night was wilder.

  “Too bad I’ll be gone.”

  “Yes.” He reached across the table and traced around my fingers like he was making a turkey craft for Thanksgiving. It sent tingles to my toes.

  The waitress appeared again with our check, and before I could see my share, Connor slipped her a small stack of bills and told her to keep the change.

  I stared at him in surprise. He smiled, which was devastating. It didn’t flash on and off his face like usual, either. He kept smiling.

  “This isn’t a date,” I said grumpily, making him grin wider.

  “Understood.”

  “Seriously, Connor.”

  His fingertips tripped up the back of my hand and over my knuckles. “Sure. Okay.”

  Okay. I hated that stupid word. I snatched my hand back, and he sighed.

  “I used to be a long-distance runner. A good one,” I said.

  He froze at the subject change, and my pulse jumped. I wasn’t sure how to explain this. He’d asked me once about my invisible backpack. I was pretty lucky. Mine felt light most days. But if there was one thing that had left me heartbroken, that had left me heavy, it was this. It was the loss of my identity as a runner.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “I loved it, but I screwed up.”

  “What happened?”

  “My senior year of high school, I shattered my ankle doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. A compound break. It was—” I had to swallow the bile in my mouth at the memory. “It was gruesome. I’d verbally committed to LSU, but when it was clear I wouldn’t be able to completely recover, I decided to come here. If it’d been a clean break, I might have been able to heal and be as good as new, but it wasn’t clean.”

  “You’ve never mentioned running before. Do you still do it?”

  “I stick to the bike if I can. I try not to put a lot of impact stress on it.” I missed how running used to clear my head, how it’d made me feel fast and free and unencumbered.