One Reckless Summer

by Toni Blake

  He nodded solemnly against the pillowcase. “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  Then he reached out to touch her face. “Thank you. For last night.”

  She simply shook her head. “Don’t have to thank me,” she said softly.

  He swallowed visibly. His eyes looked less haunted now, but somehow seemed filled with truth, a stark honesty she’d never quite witnessed there before. “I do,” he insisted. “Not many people have…been that good to me, Jenny.”

  “You deserve goodness, Mick,” she whispered. “As much as anyone else.”

  He sighed, still looking unduly tired. “You’re sweet.”

  “Are you hungry? I have bacon and eggs.”

  He nodded, hesitantly at first, but then more vigorously. “Yeah—yeah, that’d be nice.” And it hit her—maybe even just an offer of breakfast seemed an unusual act of kindness, one he wasn’t used to getting, or accepting. Then he looked down at himself, naked but for the sheet pulled to his waist—and tried for a small smile. “Better go find my clothes, though, or I might scare your neighbors if I walk past a window.”

  She grinned in return even if his smile hadn’t quite reached his eyes. “They’re all in the dryer downstairs.”

  He looked taken aback. “You washed them?”

  She nodded.

  “When?”

  “In the night. I’m sneaky that way.”

  His eyes turned uncharacteristically gentle. “You never stop surprising me, pussycat.”

  She wanted to smile, but couldn’t seem to make it happen. He was clearly trying to act normal, strong, yet he still looked so sad. “Is there…anything I can do to make this easier, Mick?”

  “You’re already doing it, honey,” he said, reaching out to glide his hand onto her stomach over the polka-dot cami she wore. But then he sighed and glanced over his shoulder toward the lake—toward his old home, she supposed. “Things just…don’t feel right, don’t feel…finished.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He gave his head a self-deprecating shake. “I just…put him in the ground and left him there. That was it. Guys a lot worse than him at least get…a funeral of some kind, you know?”

  Jenny sucked in her breath. So many facets of this—of Mick helping his brother die—that she hadn’t thought about. “Maybe…you and I could have one for him,” she suggested.

  His brows knit, and he looked slightly disbelieving. “We could?”

  “Sure.”

  “How?”

  She wasn’t sure, either. And she hated funerals—because of the one she’d had to go to at thirteen. But for Mick, she would do this. “Well, let me think.” She lay on her back, turning it over in her mind. “Did Wayne have…a favorite song?” Maybe she could get a copy of it and they could play it at the makeshift funeral.

  Mick considered the question a minute, then replied. “‘Highway to Hell.’ AC/DC.”

  And Jenny sighed. She might have her work cut out for her.

  Shafts of sunlight angled down through the foliage above to shine like heavenly beams on Wayne’s grave. Then Jenny hit a button on the boom box and the first hard-driving notes of “Highway to Hell” filled the air. A moment later, the unmistakable voice of the late Bon Scott joined in, and heaven and hell got a little closer to one another next to the grave in the woods by Blue Valley Lake.

  After breakfast, she’d left Mick at the house to go to Sue Ann’s to pick up an old cassette her friend had of the Highway to Hell album, which worked out fine since the boom box from the living room closet was old enough to have a working cassette player. She’d also dug up some flowers from the yard—a few clumps of bright pink dianthus and some of the white impatiens she’d planted back in June. Both were always labeled as annuals at the garden store, but in Jenny’s experience, they grew back and spread nicely if you put them in rich soil—plus, it was the best she could come up with on short notice. After grabbing up the old Bible that had been a part of “the shrine” and adding it to the cardboard box of supplies she’d assembled, they’d taken Mick’s rowboat across the lake, despite the possibility of being spotted. It was a quiet weekday morning, so the chances were blessedly slim, and she was pretty sure they’d made it unnoticed.

  She’d wondered all her life—in a vague way—who was buried in the cemetery behind the Brody house, and now she knew. Looking around, she took in head-stones, some crooked, others aging, all bearing the names of various Brodys going back to the turn of the last century. There were only a dozen or so graves other than the one they stood beside, but clearly a long line of Brodys had occupied this craggy, sunless land.

  As she stood peering down at the rough-and-ready cross Mick had fashioned from pieces of two-by-four, feeling strange, somber—and a little surreal due to the music, she noticed a small grin playing about Mick’s lips. The unexpected sight made her smile softly up at him. “What?” she whispered.

  “I was just thinking how much Wayne would like this—having AC/DC blasting at his funeral.”

  She laughed a little, at the irony of it all. “Good—I’m glad.”

  When the song finished, Jenny stopped the music before the next song began, which, if she recalled, was one about having sex in a backseat.

  “So, what now?” Mick asked.

  She looked up at him. “Is…there anything you want to say?”

  Mick thought briefly, then replied, “Wayne knows I loved him and I’ll miss him. That’s enough.”

  “I didn’t know Wayne,” she said, “but if you loved him, I’m sure he was a good guy.”

  He tilted his head. “Well, that might be a stretch. Let’s say…he never meant to hurt anybody, and he did his best.” He looked back down at the grave. “What now?”

  “Do you want to…pray or anything?”

  He looked completely out of his element, answering in a hushed tone. “I don’t know. I don’t know how. I never have.”

  And for some reason, that made her a little sad. “Want me to?”

  He nodded slightly. “Okay.”

  So Jenny took Mick’s hand in hers and bowed her head, closing her eyes. “Dear heavenly Father, we come here today to commit Wayne’s spirit into Your loving arms. We ask that You give his brother, Mick, the strength and courage to leave him in Your care, confident in Your promise of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

  She opened her eyes to find Mick staring at her in utter amazement. “Damn—that was good. Where’d you learn to do that, pussycat?”

  “The Destiny Church of Christ.”

  “Ah.”

  “I”—she stooped down and reached into the box at her feet, into a tote bag she’d stuffed the Bible into—“thought I could read a little something, too.” And after thumbing through to find what she was looking for, she recited the twenty-third Psalm.

  Afterward, they both stayed quiet a minute, until Mick said, “That was real nice.” Then, “What now?”

  “Want to plant the flowers with me?”

  He nodded, and together they knelt and put the dianthus and impatiens in the ground, atop the grave, in the loose dirt. “This’ll help a lot,” he said as they worked. “I mean, since there isn’t a headstone. It’ll kind of show…you know, that somebody’s here, even after that cross falls over or rots away.”

  They worked in silence then, the only sounds a few twitters from birds and the buzz of a passing honeybee. Jenny tried not to think about what lay under all this fresh, dark earth—a coffin Mick had had to build himself, a body he’d had to lay there on his own. When all the flowers were planted, she said, “I brought a watering can, too—if you can show me to a faucet or spigot, I’ll water these before we go.”

  She started to stand up, grabbing for the watering can in the box, but he suddenly said, “Wait,” and she looked down to see him still kneeling over the burial spot.

  She dropped back down onto her knees, too, across from him. “What?”

  He peered down at the cross. “There’s somet
hing else I want to say.”

  “Okay,” she said on a nod.

  She watched as Mick swallowed visibly, his eyes still on the grave. When he began to speak again, his voice had dropped an octave. “When I was little and I was scared of something in that house—noises outside, or my mom and dad yelling—Wayne would put his arm around me and tell me it was okay. He was a good big brother back then.”

  Jenny bit her lip and forced herself not to cry as she reached out across the fresh dirt to grasp Mick’s hand—then she focused on the cross, too, to say, “Rest in peace, Wayne.”

  When Mick told Jenny he had some work to do inside the old cabin, he offered to take her back across the lake and return on his own, but she insisted on helping. Mainly, he told her, he wanted to pack up Wayne’s clothes and used bedsheets in trash bags to haul away in his pickup the next time he went to town, along with some other things.

  She was stunned at how small the cabin was inside, and she tried not to think about what it must have been like to live here with parents who’d treated him badly. She also tried to ignore the ramshackle appearance of the place. Some of the interior walls were unfinished—not falling down from age and neglect, but had never been finished so that the beams and two-by-fours were bare. It made her family’s small cottage look like a showplace, and also made her realize what a warm, pleasant little home it really was—something she’d perhaps taken for granted this summer.

  None of that, though, was what made her begin to feel so hollow inside as they worked. As she held a trash bag for Mick while he cleaned food out of a mini-fridge that was either outdated or “Wayne’s,” she began to feel a little faint, short of breath. And she wished she could blame it on the heat—dear God, it must get overwhelmingly hot in here—but since the rain had come, almost two weeks ago now, the weather had been warm but quite tolerable, so…Ugh, what the heck is making me feel this way?

  And as she stood across the rented hospital bed from Mick, helping him strip off the sheets, her chest tightened and she had the urge to cry. Oh brother—what was happening here? What was wrong with her?

  It got even worse when she helped him stuff Wayne’s clothes—mostly T-shirts and shorts, and one pair of jeans—into another garbage bag. “I’d give these to Goodwill,” he said, “but he was…you know…sick in them. So I’m not sure anybody would want to wear them if they knew.”

  After that, he cleaned out a small pantry—shelves with a ragged curtain covering them. “Hate to throw out these peaches,” Mick said over his shoulder. “But I don’t ever want to see another peach again. You want ’em?” he asked. He explained that peaches were among the last foods Wayne had felt like eating.

  “Maybe I can use them in pies or cobblers or something,” she said, still fighting to hold back tears. “And if not, I’ll put them in a food drive when the holidays roll around.”

  He turned to face her, saying, “I should’ve known you’d have some good idea like that, pussycat,” but that’s when he finally saw her distress. His eyes darkened. “What’s wrong, honey? What is it?”

  Oh hell. She still wasn’t sure. So she said, “Funerals. They…get to me.” It wasn’t a lie.

  His gaze softened in understanding. “Makes you think of your mom’s, I guess.”

  She nodded. “And…and…I guess I just don’t like the idea of you being alone in the world, without any family at all.” Also not a lie. A stark, brutal truth, in fact.

  He looked as strong and tough as usual, as strong and tough as he had before the last couple of days, and she was glad to see him starting to bounce back. “Wayne said something like that, too. But I’ve…always felt alone, mostly,” he explained as if it were nothing.

  She blinked, surprised. “What do you mean?”

  He only shrugged. “Well, my mom and dad…I’ve told you about them. And I loved Wayne, but…he was different than me. He had a dark side. I followed him down that path for a while, because he was all I had, but we weren’t all that much alike deep down inside. So…I’ve always sort of been on my own.”

  She swallowed back the tears that still threatened. “Well, I don’t like that.” She really didn’t. She hated it, in fact.

  Then his eyes changed, just a little. “I haven’t been alone lately, honey,” he said softly. “Since I met you. You’ve done a lot to help me through this.”

  “But now it’s over.” Oh Lord. That was it. That was the thing making her want to cry. Oh God.

  “Don’t worry about me, pussycat. I’m a big boy—I’ll be fine.”

  But maybe I won’t. Helping him pack up Wayne’s things had felt so…final, made it so clear that his mission here was complete now, and this was…well, this was him getting ready to leave, plain and simple.

  So she decided to open up to Mick a little more than she already had and tell him what was weighing on her heart right now. Not all of it. Not the part about him. But some of it. “Maybe…maybe this is hitting me…because I feel kind of alone in the world, too.”

  Mick’s expression held comfort tempered with doubt. She could easily understand why. She had so much more than him. He set aside the can of peaches he’d been holding in his hand all this time and lifted his palms to her face. “How can you feel alone, honey? You’ve got your dad, and your friend, Sue Ann, and all those other people across the lake who care about you.”

  “You’re right,” she said, feeling a little silly. Compared to him, she had tons of people in her life. “But…I guess I feel like the people I love the most are always…abandoning me. Even if it’s not their fault. My mother. Terrence. Snowball.”

  His indulgent smile held sympathy, too. “Pussycat, Snowball wasn’t a person.”

  She sighed. “But I loved her so much at the time.” She lowered her eyes, gave her head a short shake, and felt truly foolish now. Like the little girl her father had wanted to make of her ever since she’d come home. She supposed that on the inside, part of that girl really did remain. And she supposed it was getting clearer all the time, to both her and Mick, why she’d never gotten another cat.

  But what it came down to was—now Mick was going to leave her, too. Mick Brody had become such a large part of her life that his absence was going to rip her heart out all over again. And she was feeling the rip already—the slow, painful tear—as he packed up this house and got ready to pull away from her.

  Despite her best efforts, a tear finally snuck free, rolling down her cheek amid the shadowy confines of the little cabin in the woods. Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop this.

  But now, Mick was there for her, stepping forward to wrap her in his strong embrace. “Come here,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pulled you into this so much—Wayne dying, coming over last night the way I was.”

  Yet she immediately drew back enough to give her head a vehement shake. “No, Mick. I wanted to help you through it, any way I could. It’s probably…one of the best things I’ve done for anyone in my life.”

  Their eyes met, held, and she melted in the light of his gaze until he softly brought his mouth down on hers.

  Mmm, God, his kiss moved all through her, like energy, like pure electricity. And when it was over, he whispered in her ear, “It’s the nicest thing anybody’s done for me, pussycat. Thank you for that.”

  She worked to sniff back the rest of her tears. The kiss had helped. “Are you…coming back across the lake with me? Staying the night?” she asked—and she hoped like hell it didn’t sound needy, but she’d suddenly found herself wondering if maybe he planned to leave immediately, today, now that Wayne was gone. Since they’d never talked about his precise plans, and the place was sort of a crime scene, after all.

  When he nodded, relief flooded her body, especially when he said, “I liked sleeping with you. All night, I mean.”

  She smiled up at him. “I liked it, too.”

  “But tonight,” he said, “I don’t plan on just sleeping.”

  When Mick pushed his way into her slickness, it felt like…coming
home. Which was kind of an alarming thought, but there it was. He’d grown accustomed to being with her. And he felt so damn safe with her. Hell—he didn’t even know what safe really felt like, but he knew he felt it with her. “You’re so hot, baby,” he whispered. With Jenny, he could feel safe and totally turned-on at the same time.

  She bit her lip, met his gaze, and lifted her body against his, taking him deeper. He groaned, his every muscle tensing with pleasure, his erection going even harder inside her.

  As he moved in her warmth, he couldn’t take his eyes off her face—her sweet eyes, glassy from arousal; her lush lips, looking lightly swollen from kisses. It made him kiss her again.

  He was connected to her, more than just physically now. He was connected to her in a way he could barely fathom. He’d felt close to her already, but after what she’d done for him last night, and then today…He couldn’t have let any other woman take care of him that way; he couldn’t have let any other woman see him so…broken. But with her, he hadn’t even weighed it—he’d just gone to her when he needed her. And she’d been there, with open arms.

  She was different than any girl he’d known. So sweet and loving. So…giving. And sex, the real heat of it, usually faded for him after the first few times with a woman—but with Jenny, that hadn’t happened. It just changed, just got hot in different ways.

  As he drove into her tight, welcoming moisture again, again, his strokes growing harder, he just wanted…to make her feel them, feel him. He wanted to be tangled up in her, in her body, in her mind. He wanted her so much, in ways he couldn’t even understand.

  Except then—oh God—maybe he did understand.

  He’d just never felt it before.

  But now it was hitting him hard, like a ton of bricks.

  “Aw…aw, baby,” he groaned, “now. Now.” And then he came in her, hard, deep, eyes shut, teeth clenched, the orgasm stretching through every molecule of his being, delivering a pleasure so powerful it nearly swallowed him.

  And as it finally passed, he peered down into her eyes, lifted one hand to her cheek, and said what he’d just figured out, what had just struck him with sudden and undeniable certainty. “I love you, Jenny.”