Fall in Love

by Anthology

  That was progress at least.

  Katie had then spent the first four days of her vacation in her apartment, so it was really more of a ‘staycation’—but still. She cleaned, cooked, slept, and had a Julia Roberts movie marathon.

  At the end of the four days, the morning she was scheduled to fly back to Illinois, she had been called into work because a fellow associate had come down with the flu. And well, if she was being honest, she had been more than happy to go back to work on Wednesday instead of being on a direct flight from SFO to O’Hare.

  Bottom line, she hadn’t made it back home since she’d left after ‘the incident.’

  Until today.

  She was here. In Illinois. Headed back to Harper’s Crossing. She had done it. Because this weekend wasn’t about her—it was about Miss Sophie Hunter, who was getting married to Bobby Sloan, Jr., the youngest of the five Sloan boys. Sophie had called her, ecstatic, three months earlier to announce her engagement to Bobby and to ask Katie to be her maid of honor. Bobby was Jason Sloan’s youngest brother and Jason was the best man in the wedding.

  Nerves, unlike any she’d ever felt before, bubbled up inside of Katie. Looking down at the green LED lights on her dashboard she saw that it was 8:30 a.m. Today was Thursday and her return flight to California was not until 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. All she needed to do was get through the next four days—preferably without having a nervous breakdown—and then she could wing her way back to her lovely, safe, predictable life in San Francisco.

  Let the countdown begin.

  ---~---

  Jason leaned his hands on the cool tile of the shower wall as steam rose up around him. He inhaled deeply through his nose as he let the pounding heat of the water hit his tense shoulders and back. Adrenaline raced through his veins like the white waters of raging rapids, nerves whirled through him like the Tasmanian Devil on speed. Rolling his neck from side to side he tried his best to just relax.

  Never before in his life had he felt this amped up and anxious. Jason was an easy going, laid back guy. Always had been. Until today.

  This was it. The day that Jason had been waiting for, for over a decade, was finally here.

  Katie Lawson was coming home.

  Dipping his head once more under the heated shower stream, Jason reached down and turned the silver knob to the left, shutting off the water. He shook the excess water in his hair out as he pushed open the glass door and grabbed the towel he’d hung on the wall. As he quickly dried off, he heard his phone buzz for probably the tenth time in the last five minutes.

  Grabbing his jeans, he pulled them on and swiped the screen on his iPhone. He had twelve missed calls. Three voicemail messages and two texts. Pressing his thumb on the icon to pull up the first text he saw it was from his oldest brother Seth. It read:

  Is the kid really going to go through with this?

  Jason sighed. None of his other brothers, or his dad, or any of the crew at work believed that Bobby was doing the right thing. Jason did. He saw the look in Bobby’s eyes when he talked about, looked at, or was even thinking about Sophie Hunter. Jason recognized that look. He knew it well, from personal experience. It was the look of a guy that was in love with his soul mate.

  Jason’s thumbs flew across the screen as he typed back:

  Yes. He is.

  Bobby was twenty-four years old, a grown man. Yes, he may be the youngest of the Sloan boys, but he was still a man. Jason was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, his baby brother knew what he was doing.

  A loud buzz once again sounded as Jason’s phone vibrated in his hand. He looked down to see that it was another text from Seth.

  You can’t talk him out of it?

  Jason inhaled slowly through his nose as he typed back:

  No. And I wouldn’t even if I could.

  A part of Jason knew that Seth, and his other brothers Riley and Alex thought they had Bobby’s best interest at heart. But, his two older brothers, Seth and Riley, had left for the Marines just days after their high school graduation and had been gone since Bobby was still in elementary school. Alex, who was born two years after Jason and two years before Bobby, had just returned home a few months ago after being in the Navy for the past six years. His brothers had been absent for years and didn’t know Bobby, not the man he was today.

  Jason was tired of having this conversation with people. Just this morning, a few guys on the construction crew had called to run the idea of kidnapping Bobby at his bachelor party tonight to “Stop him from making the biggest mistake of his life.” Jason had quickly squashed those genius’s abduction plan.

  Scrolling through his missed calls he saw that a majority were from Laura, a girl that he’d been seeing, off and on, for the last year—until three months ago when Sophie and Bobby announced their engagement. Since then, Jason’s social life had come to a screeching halt. No way was he going to return her call. He wasn’t trying to be a dick, but she’d been calling a lot the past couple of weeks hinting (not so subtly) that she wanted to be his date for Bobby’s wedding.

  Yeah, that was not going to happen.

  She hadn’t been the only one who’d called, though. One voicemail was from his foreman on the Slater St. site and the other was from Sophie.

  Lifting the phone to his ear Jason pressed play on the message from his soon to be sister-in-law while he reminded himself that as much of a milestone, a game changer, an event Katie Lawson’s return was in his world, this weekend was not about him. It was about Bobby and Sophie. Bobby had chosen him to be his best man and Jason didn’t take that responsibility and honor lightly.

  Sophie’s bubbly voice sounded through the speaker, “Hey Jas, just wanted to see if you can get to mom and dad’s a little early. Bobby and I are still out running errands and Aunt Wendy is dealing with last minute wedding details. I just talked to Katie and she’ll probably get there in about half an hour, before I can make it back. I wanted someone to be there when she gets home. You know like a welcome party, even if it’s just a party of one. Can you believe it? Katie’s actually coming home!” He barely registered Sophie’s high pitch squeal of excitement followed by her quick, “Thanks, Jas. You’re the bestest!”

  Jason’s mind replayed Sophie’s words, “Katie’s actually coming home!”

  Yes, he was his brother’s best man and he planned on being the best damn best man there ever was. But that didn’t change the fact that Jason was finally going to get the opportunity to see Katie again. Apologize for that night. To tell her all the things he never had. To set the record straight. He wouldn’t be on best man duty every minute of every hour over the next three days.

  Jason looked at the time that Sophie had left the message. Thirty minutes ago. It must have been when he was out for his morning run.

  He finished getting dressed, grabbed his keys, and was out the door in record time.

  He had no idea what was going to happen when he and Katie saw each other again. What it would be like. What they would say to each other. But, there was one thing he knew for sure, he’d waited a decade to find out, and now, finally, the wait was over.

  Chapter Two

  As Katie drove past the sign marking Harper’s Crossing city limits, her heart was racing as she tried her best not to think about the best man and instead focus on the reason she was here. Sophie’s wedding.

  Sophie (or 'Sophiebell,' which had been her nickname since Sophie was six and had decided that she was Tinker Bell) was the closest thing Katie had to a sister. And there was nothing Katie wouldn’t do for her. And panic attack aside, she was really excited to see her. Other than a brief trip out to California after Sophie had graduated high school four years ago, Katie hadn’t seen her since she left home. But they’d kept in touch, talking or e-mailing several times a week.

  Katie was an only child. She and her mom, Pam, had gone to live with her Aunt Wendy in Harper’s Crossing when Katie was four, immediately after her parents’ divorce.

  Craig, Katie’s dad, had come to
visit his daughter exactly one time since she’d moved to Harper’s Crossing. It was one month after she and her mom had arrived that Craig had taken Katie to Tasty Treats for a double scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

  He had talked about how much he loved her and assured her that the divorce and the move had nothing to do with her. He had also promised to see her once a month. Suffice it to say, he didn’t keep that promise.

  Katie had not seen her father since that cold October Saturday, twenty-four years ago.

  Growing up, she’d always assumed that he had stayed away because he and Aunt Wendy “did not see eye to eye,” as Katie’s mom always said (although, now, as an adult, she was leaning towards the theory that it was because he was a shitheel).

  Honestly, if Katie’s memory served, she hadn’t really seen a lot of her dad even when he and her mom were still together. It seemed to Katie that ‘pre-divorce,’ it was just Katie and her mom and then ‘post-divorce,’ it was Katie, her mom, and Aunt Wendy.

  She never really missed her dad. Sometimes she would miss her idea of what having a dad in her life would be like. But never the man who had fathered her. She really never knew that man, and what she had known had been unpredictable. Promising to visit her once a month and then her never seeing hide nor hair of him again really just seemed par for the course where he was concerned. It was simply the last in a long line of broken promises that had characterized their father-daughter relationship, and—even at four years old—Katie didn't remember being terribly surprised when the months rolled around and he didn't.

  She had always credited the fact that she didn't miss him terribly to how full her life had been, how utterly surrounded she was by people who loved her. Although, she would sometimes get lonely in Aunt Wendy’s house. Aunt Wendy had a full-time job and Katie's mom usually held down two jobs just to make ends meet, so there was a lot of time that Katie had been alone with just her imagination and books to keep her occupied.

  As she made her way down the highway, a smile crept across her face because, oh boy, how that changed the summer before Katie's seventh grade year.

  That was the summer that Sophie Hunter (aka Sophiebell) had moved into the house next door to Aunt Wendy. And right away—literally, starting immediately on moving day—Sophie had become Katie's shadow. Not that she’d minded. Katie had loved finally having someone, anyone other than a doll, to dress up and play tea party with.

  Sophie’s dad, Mike, was a fireman and her mom, Grace, was a nurse. Katie had babysat Sophie when Mike and Grace's shifts overlapped. Katie’s house felt a lot less lonely with a bouncing, laughing, full-of-life four-year-old in it. But Sophiebell wasn’t the only distraction the Hunters had brought with them when they moved to Harper's Crossing. They also brought Nick, Sophie’s older brother and Katie’s first love.

  Nicholas Hunter was three months older than Katie and he had never let her forget it. He had sandy blond hair and the most beautiful green eyes Katie had ever seen.

  The day before school started in seventh grade, two weeks after the Hunters had moved in, Nick came to Katie’s door to get Sophie for dinner. She'd never forget that day. Before he left the porch, he looked over his shoulder, his green eyes sparkling in the sun. They were even extra green due to the fact that he was wearing his favorite Fighting Irish t-shirt. Swoon.

  He asked, “Hey, do you think you would want to be my girlfriend? It’s a lot easier to start a new school when you already have a girlfriend.”

  He then proceeded to shoot her a smile that—she would later come to know— had gotten him anything he’d wanted since he was an infant. And with good reason—it was one helluva doozy of a smile.

  As much as Katie had wanted to act as if the smile didn’t affect her, she knew the heat she felt in her cheeks meant they were bright red. No way could she hide the evidence.

  Still, that didn't mean she had to acknowledge it. So, she’d done what any super-cool eleven-year-old girl would have done when faced with Nick Hunter’s dreamy proposal.

  She’d shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Sweet,” he smiled.” I'll be here at 7:45 so we can walk to school together tomorrow.”

  He then jumped off her porch before she could say another word. She slowly closed her front door and, once it shut, started to scream and run around in circles until she fell on her couch in utter exhaustion. Katie always did lean towards the dramatic.

  Katie had no way of knowing, then, that the relationship she had just entered would last for the next six years of her life and end in tragedy.

  Katie’s chest constricted tightly and tears stung her eyes at the thought of the senseless tragedy. The summer after Nick and Katie's senior year of high school, Nick had been out late one night joyriding and had tragically driven his truck off Spencer Point.

  Hours later, when the police pulled the truck out of the steep embankment, they found a nearly lifeless body inside. Nick lay in a hospital bed in a deep coma for three weeks following the accident. Katie and his family were by his side every moment the hospital staff would allow them to be.

  Finally, his parents, Mike and Grace, made the most horrific decision any parent could ever have to make. They took Nick off life support.

  His funeral was held three days later, and Katie left that very same night to go stay with her grandmother in Chicago. She’d needed to escape. That was the last time she had set foot in Harper's Crossing.

  Katie breathed out a long sigh as she turned onto Main Street. She needed to get her head on straight and pull it together. Facts—that was what she needed to focus on. Facts had always comforted Katie.

  Fact: she wasn’t a teenager anymore. Fact: she was an adult. Fact: she could handle this.

  After Sophie called, Katie had decided to go and see another therapist to determine if she could pick up any tips for the panic attacks associated with returning to Harper’s Crossing. She’d gone a grand total of eight times. Most of the things she’d told Katie had been fairly generic, but there were a few things that had stuck out. The therapist had explained that Katie had two very strong sides to her personality. One side was very fact, truth, rules oriented. It gave her security when making decisions and also made her a very good lawyer. The other side was a carefree, fun, sensitive side. Which made her care about and connect deeply with people and gave her a great capacity for giving and receiving love.

  Those two sides of her had collided when Katie had left Harper’s Crossing and she had never dealt with that inner conflict. The danger in returning to Harper’s Crossing, for her, would be that all the memories and everything she had been hiding from and pushing down would now be flooding back because she would be in familiar surroundings with people that really knew her.

  So, Katie’s lawyer side, “the fixer,” would say, ok, we’re finally going to face this, great! Time to face it = time to fix it—good let’s get it done. But she had to realize her emotional side would not be able to handle that. She needed to be careful and take it slow, or she could be completely overwhelmed and just shut down, or possibly, even have a small breakdown.

  A maid of honor having a mental breakdown was not the YouTube video moment that Katie wanted to occur this weekend.

  Driving through the town as she took in her surroundings, Katie barely recognized it. The last time she had been in Harper's Crossing, it contained two traffic lights and one four-way stop. Today there seemed to be a traffic light or four-way stop at every intersection.

  Katie’s eyes scanned the area where Picklers' field had been. She was shocked to see that the field she had learned to ride her bike in when she was five, played tag in when she was seven, attempted and failed to smoke a cigarette in when she was thirteen, and spent almost every Friday and Saturday night parking in with Nick after he turned sixteen and got his black Chevy truck, was now a strip mall.

  Coming up to yet another stoplight, Katie did a double take. The quaint, one-story hospital she had been admitted to when she had suffered
from chicken pox and had a temperature of 104 at age six, had her tonsils removed when she was eight, and spent three weeks practically living in when she was eighteen, keeping her vigil beside Nick’s motionless body as he lay in a coma, was now a four-story hospital that looked to be straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest. And if the exterior was any indication, it was now state-of-the-art.

  As she continued on, she mentally counted four McDonalds, three Burger Kings, and two Taco Bells since she had entered the city limits. This was quite a contrast to her days in Harper’s Crossing, when there had only been one fast food restaurant in town—a Dairy Queen. It had been the local hang out for all the pre-teens and teens. Katie noted sadly that the Dairy Queen, which was another place that held so many of her teenage memories, had also been obliterated at some point in the past decade. It was replaced by an Office Depot.

  But, as different as everything looked, it also looked the same. Harper’s Crossing was still surrounded by lush rolling green hills on one side, quaint downtown buildings still gave it its character and a large river running through the center of town still gave the town a picturesque postcard feel.

  As Katie made the left turn onto her childhood street, she audibly exhaled in relief.

  From what she could see, nothing had changed on Harper Lane. Certainly not the houses, which were still all painted in one of three color combinations – blue and yellow, green and white, or blue and white.

  And judging by the few neighbors she saw out on their lawns, the people hadn’t changed either. Mrs. Belmont stood watering her yard in that same pink and green moo moo she had worn since Katie could remember. Mr. Peters still mowed his lawn in white shorts that were two sizes too small and black socks that he pulled all the way up to his knees, a cigarette precariously dangling out of his mouth.