by Anthology
One time, during their junior year, Nick had been hanging out while she was doing laundry. He spied the shirt while she was folding her clothes and wrinkled his forehead in puzzlement. He asked why she had a guy’s Def Leppard shirt, and she lied and said that it was an old shirt of her dad’s that she kept because she didn’t have that many memories of him.
He looked at her strangely, but didn't pursue it. She didn't care, though, because she knew for a fact that Nick would have never seen Jason in the shirt. Nick had moved to Harper's Crossing just before their seventh grade year began, and the shirt had been in her possession since the middle of sixth grade.
Now, sitting in Jason’s truck parked outside of CVS, Katie realized that she had never thanked Jason for his jungle-tacular heroics that day.
She turned to him and slowly pulled her hands down from where they were providing protective cover for her red face. She said, “Oh my gosh, Jas…I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there and noticed my situation. Actually, now that I think of it, how did you see the problem? I was already sitting down when you came over to the table.”
“I noticed when you put one leg over the bench to sit down. I could tell by the way you were talking and laughing that you had no idea, so I stayed at my table until I came up with a plan,” Jason said in a matter-of-fact tone and then shrugged modestly, adding, “and then I went over to help.”
“You already knew what you were going to do before came over to my table? Your Tarzan plan was premeditated?” Katie asked in disbelief, her jaw dropping slightly.
“Premeditated.” he chuckled. “Whoa. Now, listen, counselor. I knew that you would be too busy freaking out to figure out what to do about the ‘situation’ once it was brought to your attention, so I figured I had to be the one to think rationally and devise a plan.
“I would think that instead of picking apart my M.O. you would have been kissing my feet for saving you an entire childhood of humiliation. You know, come to think of it, I never even got a thank you for being your knight in shining armor.”
Jason said this in a lightly teasing tone, but when Katie looked at him, she definitely saw a challenge in his eyes.
Katie narrowed her eyes, she’d always hated it when he gave her that look. It was a look that said, “Checkmate. Your move.” It was like he already knew he had won.
Well, not this time buddy.
She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and began her rebuttal.
“I wasn’t saying that ‘premeditated’ was a bad thing. In fact, I am even more impressed that, one, you weren’t too embarrassed to do anything, and two, you even noticed in the first place.
“Three, you did not decide to use the information to humiliate me, as you easily could have done. And, honestly, I really do want you to know how incredibly grateful for that I am,” Katie finished sincerely.
Then she continued on with her speech, moving into the part where she was going to play a little hardball.
“Which is why I went to your house after school to tell you all of that on the day it happened. Seth said that you had gotten detention and that your dad was not too happy about it. Feeling bad about my role in your detention, I went down to the school to try to get you an early parole hearing by explaining how you had been my ‘knight in shining armor’ so to speak.” A small smile tugged at her lips. “My Tarzan in shining armor, if you will.
“By the time I got there, your dad was already in the office with Principal Jenson and they were laughing so hard that Principal Jenson could barely finish telling your dad the story. Then I heard Principal Jenson say that he would send for you to come up to the office, so I figured I would meet you in the hall.”
She stopped and stared at him expectantly. He looked puzzled.
“What?” he asked, “Is that your whole story?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Well? What do you think I saw when I turned down the hall towards the science lab?”
Jason looked honestly perplexed. He shrugged and shook his head. “No idea,” he said.
Katie gave him a punch on the side of the arm. “I saw you playing tonsil hockey with Callie Martin, you traitor. You didn’t really look like you would want to be interrupted so I turned around went home. And as far as never thanking you, I was eleven, and starting a conversation with someone by saying, ‘Thanks for saving me from complete humiliation and social suicide the first time I started my period’ isn’t really the easiest thing to do.
“But you’re absolutely right. You do deserve a proper thanks. So thank you, Jas, for saving me from years of humiliation. Happy? Or did you want me to kiss your feet?”
Jason still had that look in his eye, the one that made her insane. The one that meant he thought (knew) he was winning this round.
“Wow,” he said in a lightly amused tone. “You said all of that in one breath. Now I'm the one who's impressed. Now, let me explain a few facts of my own to you.”
Jason leaned in so close that he was barely an inch away from Katie’s face. Her heart began beating double-time in her chest.
“One, of course I noticed. I notice everything about you. Two, I appreciate the fact that you came to rescue me from detention. That’s sweet. Three, I would never do anything to humiliate you, Kit Kat. I wish you knew that about me.
“And as far as Callie Martin, well, she came on to me. I was just an innocent bystander in her plan to dominate the entire male population of Harper's Crossing. That's all that was.”
Jason leaned back a little. The challenge was still in his eyes, but now a smile was deliberately spreading across his face, covering it as slowly, but surely, as melted butter coats a pan.
Finally, he said, “I have to admit, though. I’m pretty happy she did, all things considered. I like seeing the jealous side of you.”
Katie's jaw dropped, and not just a little this time.
“I am not jealous!” she protested hotly. “I only even mentioned it because it was a pertinent part of my explanation. You know, as to why I didn’t thank you.”
Jason ignored Katie’s outburst and brushed the side of her face with his fingertips.
“And four,” he continued as if she hadn't even spoken, “I’d much rather you kiss my lips than my feet.”
With that, he closed the gap between them and pressed his lips to hers firmly enough to show her that he meant business, but gently enough to make Katie want more...and more...and more.
Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was behind his neck and she was pulling him closer to her, deepening their kiss. She heard a low moan coming from deep within Jason's chest.
The sound made her bold, and she parted her lips and traced her tongue along his bottom lip. Her entire body was consumed with delicious tingles, her heart was racing, and her skin felt like it was burning up. She was engulfed in overwhelming sensations, and she never wanted to climb out of it. If this was drowning, she didn't want to be rescued.
Just as Jason's lips parted and their tongues made their first electrified contact, Jason’s cell phone rang. The sound shattered the bubble that had formed inside the cab of the truck and brought Katie back to her senses.
She quickly pulled away, turning in her seat to face forward. Jason just stared at her, his breathing labored, until Katie blurted out, “You'd better check that.”
Shaking his head, he begrudgingly looked down at his phone.
“It’s Bobby,” he grumbled as he put his phone to his ear. “What? This better be good,” he barked.
Chapter Eight
Katie sat there for a minute catching her breath, listening as the boys went back and forth with their usual brotherly bickering. Well, Jason's bickering might have been a little surlier than normal, but that was to be expected under the circumstances. When she felt like she had gotten herself under control, she slipped out of the truck and quickly walked into CVS.
Not only did she desperately need a break from Jason, but she also had to get what Sophie needed and get
going so she wouldn’t be late for the luncheon. She looked at her watch. Damn. It was 12:30. She couldn’t remember if the luncheon was at 1:00 or 1:30. She prayed it was 1:30. Where the hell was her itinerary packet? She’d looked at in the car.
How could she not remember? Her colleagues had nicknamed her Polaroid, because they said she had a photographic memory. Which was an exaggeration, but she normally remembered and stored information better than most. It seemed her return to Harper’s Crossing was apparently the kryptonite to not only her sanity, but her memory as well.
Whew. She felt like this day was spinning out of control. She couldn’t remember basic details or find a program she had been given mere hours ago. She needed to get a grip. She was the M.O.H. She needed to be bright, cheery and on time. Disorganized, late and horny were not on the list of “Top Ten Most Desirable Qualities in an M.O.H.” that she was sure Aunt Wendy had included somewhere in her packet.
Katie shook her head, hoping to clear it. What she could really use was a shower, both to cool down and to get her head on straight. She always sang in the shower, too. No matter what was going on in her life, a good shower concert was all she needed to get recharged.
She reached into her purse and dug around.
Bingo!
She pulled out the wedding festivities packet and took a quick look. Hmmmm. No schedule was in the packet. She had taken it out to study it in the car. Had she tucked it safely back inside when she was finished? She couldn't remember.
Either way, chances were that no shower concert was going to be on the agenda at any point during the day.
Hurrying to the appropriate aisle, Katie made her selection, got to the checkout stand, and paid for her purchase. She rushed back to the front of the store, scurrying quickly so as to get back on the tight timetable.
She was just about to step through the pneumatic double glass doors that fronted the store when she stopped in her tracks. She caught sight of Jason leaning against his truck and talking on the phone, and it took her aback. He was laughing, completely unaware that he was being observed, without a hint of artifice.
Dimples. How in the world had she forgotten he had such deep dimples?
She had also forgotten the way that, when he was just being his relaxed and funny self, he radiated joy more purely than any person she had ever met. It was infectious. Just being around Jason when he was in that mood put a smile on your face—a real one. The kind that went all the way to your toes.
Man, she thought wistfully, when was the last time I smiled like that? An all-the-way-to-my-toes smile?
Probably not since the last time Jason made me smile like that.
In high school, she was always studying, always pushing, always trying to get the best GPA she could so she could get into a good school.
And then in college, although that should have been her time to cut loose and be carefree, she had continued to bury herself in academics. Now, looking back, she realized that it was a way to escape facing what had happened with Nick and the overwhelming guilt of feeling like she had betrayed him with Jason.
Lord Almighty. To this day, she still had a hard time believing what she and Jason had done. Jason and Nick had been best friends—inseparable—but Jason obviously did not have the same issues that were haunting Katie. He seemed genuinely happy and content with his life.
Granted she had only been back in Harper's Crossing for a few hours, but even with all of the wedding hustle and bustle, Jason seemed content. Not stressed at all. But that was Jason’s way.
Seriously, Jason, she thought. How on earth do you manage to do that?
Katie had never understood how, no matter what was going on, Jason always stayed cool, calm and collected. Katie was usually uptight and worried about things like rules and schedules. That had always been their dynamic, even before Nick’s accident.
After the accident, while Nick was lying in the hospital, in a coma, Jason tried to reach out and be there for Katie. But, for her own reasons, she couldn’t let him in. She kept him at arm's length, pushing him further and further away.
And hadn't that proven to be the right thing to do, considering how things turned out? The night that she did give in to the sweet temptation of letting herself ‘lean on him,’ things ended up going way too far.
She had only herself to blame. That was why she had to keep her guard up. Jason had some kind of voodoo spell hold over her or something. She wasn't quite sure what. It was like he was a magnet and she was made entirely of metal, like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. The big difference there, of course, was that the Tin Man had wanted to be granted a heart he didn't have. Katie had a heart, all right. It was her inability to control it that was the problem.
How could she have let him kiss her? Seriously, what if someone had seen? To this town, she would always be Nick’s girlfriend. She didn’t want anyone to view her act of kissing Jason, even after all these years, to be “cheating” on Nick, even if only in spirit.
It seemed, from what she had gleaned from conversations with her mom and Aunt Wendy, that Nick had basically been sainted in this town. It was a small town, and people loved to gossip. She wasn't going to let that happen. This weekend was supposed to be about Sophie and Bobby—not a Katie/Jason/Nick love triangle.
--- ~ ---
Jason hung up the phone and slowly took a deep, steadying breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. Damn. That kiss had shaken him up. He wished that he could control himself when he was around Katie, and he had promised himself that he could and that he would—but recent evidence proved quite the contrary. In fact, it showed that, not only could he not be trusted around her long-term, he could not even be trusted with her on a short car ride.
In his defense, of course, he had been pretty much head over heels in love with the girl since they were five.
They just needed to get some things sorted out before he let anything else happen between them physically.
He needed to set her straight on exactly how he felt about her—past, present, and future. She wasn’t going to like it, but she was going to hear it. Not only that, he was going to make sure she listened with her heart, not just her ears. If that kiss was any indication of her feelings for him, she couldn’t keep denying what they had between them. It was too raw. Too powerful. Too real.
Having a talk with her, where he laid his true feelings bare, was years overdue. It's not as if he hadn't always known the feelings were there. Growing up, Jason had always known he felt something special for Katie.
In elementary school, he had shown it the way most little boys did—by picking on her. They had been friends, but their friendship had mostly been based on him teasing her, followed by her snappy comebacks.
Then it had changed. Deepened. When Jason’s mom passed away, the summer before middle school, it had sent him reeling. His behavior and his life spiraled into a tailspin. His mom hadn’t even been in his life for years before she passed, but her death had still had a profound effect on him.
The year after her passing went by in a blur. He’d felt as though he were on the verge of drowning every single minute, and each day was just a long series of bumbling efforts, big and small, to keep his head above water.
The only time he felt okay, like he was hanging onto a lifeline, was when he was around Katie. But being eleven years old, and a boy to boot, he was unable to process those strong emotions and his reaction actually came out as anger and frustration at Katie rather than gratitude for her stabilizing presence.
Over the summer between sixth and seventh, Jason and Katie had seen a lot of each other. Down at the Riverwalk, at the Boys & Girls Club, and at friends' birthday parties.
They had even played Seven Minutes in Heaven at Rachelle Thomas’s twelfth birthday party. They spent the first five of their allotted seven minutes just talking. Then, because Jason was always so ‘smooth’ when it came to Katie, he announced that he was bored so they might as well kiss.
She just stared at
him in shock. Interpreting her silence as agreement to his plan, he went in for the kill without encouraging further discussion. Jason had kissed plenty of girls by the time he was with Katie in the closet. His first ‘real’ kiss was in fourth grade. But he had never felt the true power of a kiss until his lips met Katie’s in that dusty closet when they were almost twelve years old.
During the last few weeks of summer vacation after the kiss, he couldn’t get the kiss out of his mind. Jason had even gone as far as purposely avoiding Katie in hopes that he could erase the event. It hadn’t worked.
All day, every day. Every hour. Every minute. Jason did nothing during all that time but remember kissing Katie, dreaming about kissing Katie, and planning ways to create an opportunity to kiss Katie again.
Ultimately, he had made up his mind that the very next time he saw her, on the first day of school, he was going to 'ask her out.' Which, in middle school, basically just meant that she would be his girlfriend. They wouldn’t actually ‘go’ anywhere, per se.
Even now Jason could remember walking up to Great Oaks Middle School that brisk September morning and seeing something that hit him like a punch to the gut. Katie Lawson was holding hands with some blond-haired kid and giggling whenever he said anything.
Jason quickly learned that Nick was the ‘new kid in school.’ At first, he befriended Nick because he wanted to know exactly who this guy was that had swept in and stole 'his girl.' It was a 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' sort of a thing. But the thing was, Nick actually turned out to be a great guy. He and Jason quickly became best friends.
Jason had, honestly, never expected Nick and Katie’s relationship to last as long as it had. Seriously, what kids that get together in middle school manage to last all the way through senior year of high school? Jason had initially thought that he was just biding his time for the few weeks or months it would take for the novelty of the ‘New Kid’ to wear off for Katie. Or maybe for Nick to meet some girl he hadn't come across yet when he had asked Katie to be his girlfriend before even setting foot in the school.