Come Home to Me

by Liz Talley

  “Good. Just a few minutes more, Rhett.” Apology shaded her voice.

  Seconds later, a police car arrived, pounding feet, baying sirens, wails of grief. The dispatcher hung up. He stared at his phone, refusing to look at his car. At the broken headlight. Bent fender. Life bleeding onto the asphalt.

  Someone pulled at his arm. “Sir?”

  “I can’t. I can’t move,” he said.

  “Sir, stand up. I need to move you,” a policewoman said. “Over here, please.”

  He told his legs to move. Tilting forward, he crawled, eventually getting his feet beneath him. When he stood, his legs shook so badly, he could hardly support his weight.

  He should have done something. He should have helped. Maybe CPR. Something.

  But he knew. God, he knew. CPR wasn’t going to work. He knew this the same way he knew the sun would set that evening.

  Sobs shook his shoulders. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

  The policewoman tugged his elbow. “Sir, let’s get someone to check you out.”

  “No, help her. I’m not hurt. I’m okay.”

  But he wasn’t okay.

  Rhett Bryan would never be okay again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mangham High School

  Moonlight, South Carolina

  April 2003

  Summer Valentine watched Mr. Wilson, her AP Calculus teacher, discreetly pick his nose before wiping whatever he found under his desk.

  The man was totally disgusting.

  Not only was Mr. Wilson hygienically challenged, but he’d sprung a calculus pop quiz on the AP class twenty minutes ago, earning a huge groan, if not a push for all-out anarchy, from the class. He was not a well-liked man, especially that day. Lucky for Summer, she had reviewed the material last night. She was the first to hand in her quiz, and Molly Dorsett shot daggers of hatred at Summer as Summer nearly tiptoed back to her desk.

  Summer and the head cheerleader were locked in a dead heat for top of the senior class. Molly had spent last night decorating for prom rather than studying. Summer had first-period physics with the bouncy blonde and had heard all there was to hear about the miles of shimmering fabric and etched lanterns festooning the gym. Molly also had other attributes besides being smart going for her—like curly hair, a tiny waist, and the heart of the Mustangs’ star pitcher, Hunt McCroy.

  So, shouldn’t Molly let Summer have something in life? Like the title of valedictorian?

  Summer knew she should work on the rough draft of the five-paragraph essay due in AP European History, but Rhett Bryan sat two desks over from her, and if she pretended to be drawing on her notebook and held her head just so, she could covertly watch him bite his clickable pencil and frown at the quiz.

  Rhett was M. T. Mangham High School’s hottie patottie.

  With sandy hair that curled at the tips, a strong jaw, and baby-blue eyes that netted him extra fried chicken from the lunch ladies, Rhett was at the top of the high school food chain. And to make matters even worse, he was actually nice.

  Yeah, most popular guy in the school, and Rhett did things like talk to the special education students when their aides brought them out for break and smile at plump girls like Summer. The guy deserved a medal—the “decent to rejects” award.

  If he’d been remotely nasty, she wouldn’t waste her time mooning over him, but Rhett was . . . every girl’s ideal. Even dorky Summer’s.

  “Pencils down.” Mr. Wilson interrupted her study of Rhett’s perfect lips wrapped around his pencil. How could lips be so pretty? On a guy?

  Another collective groan from the class.

  “I’ve told you young people that your job every night is to review the material. I will elect to give periodic checks to see if you’re doing as instructed,” Mr. Wilson continued, knocking a knuckle on Rhett’s desk and motioning for the rows to begin passing the quizzes forward. Summer eyed the hand Mr. Wilson had used to pick his nose. She hoped he didn’t touch Rhett with it.

  “While I waited on many of you to deliver what I’m sure will be rather uninspiring computation, I glanced at Miss Valentine’s quiz. She got all five problems correct. Studied the material last night, eh, Summer?” Mr. Wilson’s bushy eyebrows danced like twin caterpillars as he turned his regard on her.

  She immediately bloomed a vicious pink.

  “Summer?” Mr. Wilson prodded for an answer.

  She managed a nod.

  “All right, then, let’s move on to derivatives. Again.”

  More sighs. Summer pulled her eyes away from Rhett, but not before he caught her eye and gave her a smile, making her turn the shade of ripe strawberry. She cursed her fair complexion and smattering of freckles before turning her gaze to gross Mr. Wilson. God, she had to stop being such a goober every time Rhett smiled at her. After all, the guy smiled at everyone.

  Thirty minutes later, the bell sounded and everyone started shoving books into their bags. Summer liked to leave the classroom last—she hated getting trampled—so she took her time packing up.

  As she made her way toward the busy hallway, she noted Rhett stood at the door . . . waiting on her?

  “Hey, Summer,” he said, cute-as-a-button grin in place.

  She stutter-stepped and tried to ignore the butterflies thrashing in her stomach. “Hey, Rhett.”

  “Man, rough quiz for me. Guess not for you, huh?”

  Summer lifted a shoulder and lied. “I had to guess on a few.”

  “You’re trying to make me feel better about bombing it. Senior year’s supposed to be easy. What happened to that?” Rhett made a face and Summer tried not to focus on his lips. Instead she zeroed in on that little dip at the base of his throat. There had to be a name for it. She couldn’t recall what it was, though.

  “So I wanted to see if you had some extra time to help me out in calculus. I’m not doing so hot, and Coach told me to get a tutor.”

  Summer’s butterflies fainted. This was it. The classic plot to countless movies she’d vegged on for years. The hot guy asks the smart, geeky girl to help him with a hard class and then once he gets to know her, he sees beneath the bad fashion sense and subpar haircut to the special girl beneath the frumpy sweatshirts. There were half a dozen of these plots floating around, so there had to be some universal truth to them, right? “What did you have in mind?”

  Lord, she even sounded more sophisticated. She might as well be dangling a champagne glass and blowing cigarette smoke from the side of her mouth. What do you have in mind? Derivatives or me, big boy?

  “I have baseball practice until seven o’clock every night. Can’t blow that off if we’re going to make a run at district, but I can skip out on prom committee. You free tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “If you can’t—”

  “No, I can. I just have to figure out what to do with Maisie, uh, my sister. My mom and dad have church leadership tonight.” She could get her next-door neighbor, Gretchen, to watch her ten-year-old sister while she helped Rhett. If she promised to clean Gretchen’s kitchen or something. Gretchen was an opportunist.

  “I can come to your place if that helps,” Rhett said, taking her elbow and moving her out of the way of the onslaught of freshmen pouring out of the gym.

  Summer felt tingly where he touched her. That totally meant something. She knew because she’d read every romance novel in the Vaughn Memorial Library last summer.

  But she didn’t want him at her perpetually cluttered house, which was decorated in last-decade harvest gold. With her parents coming in from Bible study and wanting to chat with him. Lord have mercy. “How about we meet at Butterfield’s Grill? It’s quiet there after the early-bird rush.”

  “It’s a plan,” he said, tossing her another grin before adding, “You rock, Summer.”

  Then he was swallowed up by the students hurrying to their next class.

  “Hold. The. Phone. Were you just flirting with the Rhett Bryan?” Vanessa Clair Rafferty asked, skidding to a stop right before she sla
mmed into Summer.

  “Flirting? No. Talking. Yes,” Summer said, ripping her gaze from where Rhett had disappeared and focusing on the girl who’d been her BFF since sixth grade. Nessa was small, almost elfish, but could eviscerate even the most confident underclassman with her acerbic tongue. She wore a skater dress and high-top Converse. When she could get away with plopping a porkpie hat on her inky locks, she did. Nessa said it made her interesting, like the Winona Ryder of Mangham High. Nessa had a thing for Reality Bites and Mermaids . . . and any other Winona Ryder movie.

  “What did Boy Wonder want?”

  “To meet me in the back booth at Butterfield’s at seven o’clock tonight.”

  Nessa pinched her. Hard.

  “Ow.” Summer slapped at her friend’s hand, noting that Nessa wore the black polish her preacher father railed against.

  “I’m just making sure you know you’re not dreaming,” Nessa said, moving toward the art class they both had.

  “For tutoring, Nessa,” Summer clarified. “Just for a little calculus tutoring.”

  “Which could be code for stick your tongue down my throat,” Nessa teased, riffling through her backpack and pulling out her portfolio. “Or maybe that’s what he uses with Graysen . . . ’cause his tongue is always down the pageant queen’s throat.”

  “I know,” Summer said, trying to ignore the rude reality that Rhett had a girlfriend that looked like Britney Spears, only prettier. Deep down, Summer knew she didn’t have a chance with Rhett. All those movies she’d watched and romances she’d read were fiction for a reason. A hot guy falling for a girl like her—a girl whose own mother said she was “pleasant to look at”—happened once in a trillion. Or maybe not even that often.

  “Wear the new plaid shirt over the tight tank. You actually have boobs. Accentuate the positive. Isn’t that a song from a Disney movie?”

  Summer made a face. “The Jungle Book? Mary Poppins? I don’t know. All I know is that this is for math only, Ness.”

  “You so lack vision,” Nessa said, pushing into the art studio. “And for heaven’s sake, wear your hair down. The braid thing has to go. You’re not seven years old.”

  Summer pulled the brown braid over her shoulder. “I don’t want him to think I’m trying too hard.”

  Nessa dropped her portfolio on the big table where she sat next to Peyton Wilton, a redheaded obnoxious junior who liked to do stupid things like pull chairs from beneath people and talk about the size of all the football players’ penises. Nessa hated him. So she shot him a warning when he started leering at her like a lopsided jack-o’-lantern. “Just trust me. For once.”

  Summer closed her eyes and issued a sigh before heading to the back table.

  So she was challenged when it came to style? Wasn’t for lack of trying. She scoured fashion magazines, even spending her hard-earned babysitting dollars on purchases at the trendiest stores, but when she tried to wear what other girls were wearing, she looked stupid. Inevitably she’d rip off the necklace that had looked so cool in the store, or the flared jeans that seemed like they’d flatter her, in favor of her standby—dark T-shirt and well-worn Levi’s. Wearing her hair in a braid was sensible and suited her. But maybe Nessa was right. Perhaps tonight she should be a little bolder. Just in case.

  Their art teacher took roll and left them to their final projects, which were due in a few weeks. Summer had been working on a poetry collage mounted on canvas. She figured it would be perfect for her dorm room at the University of South Carolina in the fall. Two birds, one stone.

  But as she worked on painting the sunny rays to frame the Edna St. Vincent Millay poem she’d picked out, her mind drifted to the song she’d been working on for the past month. The second verse about the horse and crumbling trail didn’t match the intensity of the first verse. She needed to rethink the ending of the song, about how the cowboy never goes back for the girl. About how he plunges to his death. Or not. She still wasn’t sure.

  Her grandmother had given her a guitar for her twelfth birthday, and Summer found she had a gift for composing and picking out tunes. When she wasn’t studying or babysitting, she spent her time with Nessa talking her out of various insane ideas (like sneaking off to Columbia for a punk concert) and playing around with writing songs. Sometimes her dad sat with her and picked his own guitar, adding chords and suggestions. Those were her favorite times. In those moments, she wasn’t super-smarty-pants Summer. Or chubby, invisible Summer. In those moments her words swelled with life—stretching, growing, becoming something wonderful . . . something she could pin her dreams on.

  Which was the dream she usually didn’t allow herself to think about.

  Writing music and singing was a pipe dream. She’d never been one to sparkle, shine, or have the guts to sit in front of a crowd of people. Still, a piece of her wanted to chuck aside her college scholarship and give it a whirl. She’d spent hours reading about Nashville, studying her favorite songwriters, and imagining her transformation into a country music star. And then after three Grammys, she’d marry Rhett and have two children.

  When she accidently dipped her brush into a pot of green paint, she forced herself to focus on her project and stop daydreaming about singing at the Ryman Auditorium or kissing Rhett Bryan.

  When the period was over, Nessa appeared beside her like a pesky mosquito. “I’m going to my locker. Meet me by the tennis courts and we’ll plan what you shouldn’t say tonight to Rhett.”

  “I’m tutoring him, not going out with him,” Summer clarified. “He has a girlfriend.”

  “But it’s probably your only chance,” Nessa shouted before she disappeared into a herd of sophomore boys slapping each other on the back of the neck.

  Boys were so stupid.

  Summer rounded the corner heading for her locker and nearly slammed into Graysen, Rhett’s aforementioned girlfriend. Speak of the devil.

  “Summer.” Graysen’s annoyance faded into a grin. “Rhett told me you’re going to help him with math. He’s been so stressed.”

  “Happy to help,” Summer said, tugging on a smile.

  Graysen wore a shirt with strategic cutouts highlighting her thin shoulders. Her layered and highlighted hair framed a square jaw and bright-blue eyes. “I’d totally come hang with y’all, but I gotta help with prom decorations. Only one more week. Are you excited?”

  “No worries. We’re going to work on derivatives. They’re boring.”

  “That’s why I don’t do all that upper-level stuff. I told Rhett not to take it senior year, but he thinks it will look better on his transcript.” She released an exaggerated sigh. “So who are you going to prom with?”

  Dreaded question of the week. “Prom’s not my thing.”

  “What?” Graysen stopped midstep, looking like someone had smacked her. “But you’re a senior.”

  “Correct,” Summer said, not wanting to have yet another conversation about her electing to skip prom. She’d already endured her mom’s woebegone eyes for the past month. But no one had asked her to go, and the thought of going by herself like some pathetic loser, or as her mother called it, “a confident girl,” didn’t appeal to her. Nessa was going with the saxophone player in the school jazz band. They both had a penchant for bad music.

  “But you have to.”

  “It’s not required, Graysen,” Summer joked.

  The blonde stopped in the middle of the hall, and the other students veered around them as if they were rocks dividing a stream. Graysen’s eyes narrowed, then her eyebrows lifted. “Oh.”

  Nice. Even a dim bulb like Graysen could figure it out.

  “I can totally get you a date, Summer. And I have a ton of dresses. You can borrow one.” Graysen’s eyes widened. “You know what we could do? We could do a makeover. I would love to do you.”

  And I would love to do your boyfriend.

  Summer shook her head. “I’m good. I don’t even dance.”

  “Prom’s not about dancing. It’s bigger. You can come with me
and Rhett. Everyone’s going.”

  Summer felt panic well inside her. She wasn’t a charity case who needed the popular girl to get her a date. Uh, much. “Truly, it’s fine. I got to run. See you later.”

  And with that, Summer did a fast run-walk thing away from Graysen like Ms. Thomas made them do in PE. Because she wasn’t going to stand there and argue with the Shrimp Festival Beauty Queen over not going to prom. What was the big deal with prom, anyway? The whole thing was an excuse to buy an expensive dress she’d never wear again, drink vodka mixed with fruit punch, and stagger around in high heels that pinched her toes. So not her thing.

  But Graysen’s words were almost the same ones her mother had uttered three nights before over a Weight Watchers enchilada casserole.

  “Come on, sweetie. It’s your senior prom. If you don’t go, you’ll always regret it. I can still remember my dress. I wore this long, flowing dress with a big ruffle across my bosom. It was lilac. So pretty. But your dad. Lord, he wore a powder-blue leisure suit.” Her mother laughed, sliding a glance over to Summer’s dad.

  “That was the style. And you weren’t complaining when I worked it better than John Travolta under that disco ball.”

  “You were the bomb diggity, Jer,” Carolyn said, reaching out to clasp her husband’s hand.

  Summer’s dad wasn’t much for smiling, but the memory of him doing the Disco Duck or whatever it was they did in the 1970s caused a crack in his stoic veneer. He looked over at Summer as she eyed the casserole her mother had dished onto their plates. “You really should go, Sum. Your mother’s right about regrets. I, for one, will never forget that night.”

  Her mother gave her father an intimate smile. Summer so didn’t want to know what it meant, but she suspected. Something gross, no doubt.

  Summer flipped an onion ring off her cheesy potatoes. “I won’t regret it. All kids do now is get wasted and get hotel rooms. That’s not me. Y’all know that’s not me.”

  “Not all kids drink alcohol and have s-e-x,” her mother said.