I reach out, still not sure if this is a trick. I take his hand and electricity shoots through my fingertips and up my arm, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. I tug my hand away from him, feeling the telltale blush of embarrassment rushing up my face. “I gotta go.” I turn on my heels and walk as fast as I can.
I risk one look back when I reach my intended doorway. Luke is still staring at me from down the hallway, that same smile on his face. I wrench the door open and make myself forget about it.
Guys like him don’t look at girls like me.
CHAPTER FOUR
LUKE
PRESENT DAY
“You about finished up in here?”
I nod and wipe the sweat off of my brow with the back of my hand. “Just about.” I swipe paint across the bottom of the wall with a flick of my wrist. I’m so good at this by now I don’t need any tape to block off the baseboards I finished by hand. I hammer the lid of the paint tin back down and wrap the paintbrush in plastic wrap. I walk over to the industrial freezer and stick the brush in there.
I turn around and see Tim staring at me. He’s the owner of the ice cream shop I’m helping remodel. “You wanna hit the road with me tonight?”
“It’s Wednesday night, Luke.”
“Thanks, mom.” I walk past him to the front door of the shop. The sun is setting. I turn back around, twirling the keys around my paint-splattered fingers. “You coming or what?”
Tim locks up the shop and hops into my truck. I peel out of my parking space and speed toward the highway. “I didn’t shower or anything,” he says.
“Air conditioning is finally up and running. Trust me, we don’t need showers.” I see Tim staring at my paint-covered hands. I rub my jaw, feeling the stubble of several days growing on my skin. “Women love a guy who works with his fucking hands. Trust me. It won’t be an issue.”
Tim taps his fingers on the door of the truck. “Shop’s looking good.”
I nod. “Should be another few weeks and you can open up, I’d say.”
He leans back in his seat and puts his boots up on my dashboard. I reach over and push them off. “Sometimes I think you love this truck more than you’ve ever loved another human,” he retorts.
“It’s close, I’ll say that much.”
We make it to the highway, which is mercifully uncrowded. It’ll get worse as we fly toward Dallas, but I’m not worried. It’s past rush hour, and I know my way through back and side roads better than the people who actually live there. I make this trip four times a week, sometimes five.
“This thing must use up a lot of gas driving down here as much as you seem to,” Tim says. I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice light, the judgment out of it. He’s failing pretty miserably at that.
“If you’re worried about my budget you should pay me more for the work I’m doing for you,” I say. “So even a single dollar an hour would help out a poor guy like me.” Tim is my best friend. We grew up together. I’ve been helping him get his place set up for free, as a favor to him.
“Fuck off,” he says in his Texas drawl.
“Your momma better not hear you talking like that,” I say jokingly.
“My mom doesn’t need to know about my life.”
“I’m sure Tanya knows already. The whole town seems to know just about everything there is to know, I think.” I switch lanes to speed around a semi-truck, passing it on the right.
Tim laughs. “Woman has eyes in the back of her head. The joys of living in small town America, right?”
“Something like that.” We keep driving, talking about work and women, and I see the bright lights of Dallas come into full view. I speed around the city and park my car in a tiny parking lot with cracked pavement. I cut the engine and turn to face Tim. “Rule number one: don’t fall in love with any of them. Rule number two: same as rule number one. Oh, and I usually end up at the hotel down the road. You can’t find me? I’m there. I’m spending the night.”
Tim groans. “You didn’t tell me that. I wouldn’t have come; I’ve gotta be up tomorrow early for the code guy to do an inspection. Gotta make sure that you didn’t do something that’ll burn my place down.”
I punch him on the arm. “You need to learn to have more fun.”
“I will if you can promise me we’ll be back in Buxwell tonight,” Tim replies.
“Alright,” I say. “But when I disappear-“
“Hotel down the road. Got it. Just meet back at the truck by midnight, okay?”
The music in the strip club pounds around me, and I breathe in the smell of sex, alcohol, and smoke. The dull pain I always feel in my injured leg fades into the background as I look around at the women dancing and serving drinks. I have to pull Tim away; he’s staring slack-jawed at the topless woman onstage. She’s a blonde with perky tits and an ass that won’t quit. “Easy there. You don’t want the women thinking you’re a country boy.”
Tim is jerked out of his reverie. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only to people who have eyes,” I retort, pulling him toward a table next to the stage. I order two tequila shots and a Coke from a waitress with long, red hair and pink nipples.
Tim smiles goofily after her. “You know who she kinda looks like-“
“Stop,” I say to him. “No.”
Tim rolls his eyes. “It’s been eleven years, Luke. You ever gonna be over-?”
I cut him off. “Tonight is for fun, Tim. Not for strolling down memory lane.”
“Suit yourself,” Tim says, taking one of the shots from the waitress. “Bottoms up.”
I push the second shot of tequila towards him as if I can feel the pills rattling around in my pocket, warning me not to drink. I take the Coke.
“You sure?” Tim asks.
I nod. “I don’t drink anymore. I can’t mix painkillers with alcohol unless I want to be half-naked and bleeding in the alleyway behind this place with no recollection of what happened the night before.”
Tim knocks back the second shot. “That’s oddly specific.”
“Yeah, I didn’t make that scenario up. Happened about two years ago,” I reply with a smile. I keep staring at the redhead. She does look a lot like...I look away when I see Tim staring at me with a smile.
“Told you so,” he says without explanation.
I wave over twins and pay them fifty bucks to give Tim a lap dance. He deserves humiliation for bringing up old history and pushing the subject. The dance has the intended effect. Tim looks caught somewhere between humiliation and enjoyment.
“I can’t decide if I love you or I hate you right now,” he yells at me.
I leave him to the lap dance and take a stroll over to the bar where the redhead is talking to the bartender. “Hey,” I say, leaning up against the bar.
She smiles at me, blushing a little. “Hey yourself.” She even has a Texas accent the way I remember her having one.
“Five hundred dollars,” I say to her. “To go with me to the hotel down the street.”
She looks surprised and steps closer to me, her pale tits jiggling, her hair barely concealing them. “I would have done it for free, sexy.” She walks away, her ass wiggling in a neon green thong.
A half an hour later, we’re standing in a top-floor room of this five-star hotel that I just paid an unseemly amount of cash for. She’s wrapped in a trench coat and her black stilettos look less shiny in the full light of this room. She walks over to the windows and stares out at the city. A few minutes later, she turns around and smiles at me.
I pull out the cash and hand it to her. She smiles and slides it into her pocket, beginning to take off her coat. “No,” I say to her, my heart beating quickly. “Leave it on for now.”
She grins and tilts her head to the side, running her hands down my t-shirt. “Alright, we’ll start with you, then.” She pulls my shirt up and runs her hands under the fabric. “What’s your name?”
I have a ridiculous, absurd idea flash through my mind. “Luke,” I reply. �
�I want to call you something.”
She looks a little taken aback but recovers. “You can call me whatever you want.”
She pulls my shirt over my head and drops it on the floor. I reach down and untie her trench coat, pushing it off her shoulders. I realize she’s lost her underwear and is completely naked other than her high heels. I run my hands down her neck, over her shiny auburn hair, and down to her breasts, massaging them in my paint-covered hands.
She groans and it doesn’t sound artificial.
I move my hands down her sides and around, grabbing her ass. I reach between her legs. She’s already wet. I slide my fingers gently around her nub, feeling myself get harder with every touch. I slide my fingers into her and she gasps, closing her eyes and biting her pink lips. I lift her onto the bed and take my pants off, sliding on a condom and getting on my knees on the mattress.
I grab her chin and tilt her lips up to mine. “Ella,” I say. I haven’t said that name aloud in years. Maybe in my sleep, but I wouldn’t know. I slide into her and she screams in pleasure at my size.
If I close my eyes I can pretend she’s her.
Almost.
The next morning, my alarm clock rings bright and early but I ignore it. The only thing that gets me out of bed an hour later is my throbbing leg. I reach over to my nightstand and toss a few pills back. I don’t even need water to down them anymore. I hop over to the windows of my bedroom and throw open the curtains. The sun blasts my eyes and I realize I must be running late.
I shower with no time to shave, throwing on clothes and grabbing the lunch I packed earlier in the week.
I check my phone to see I have ten missed calls, all from different numbers. I sigh as I climb up into my pickup truck, the bright sun blasting my eyes. I almost drop my phone onto the dirt and gravel of my driveway as I attempt to juggle it along with my keys.
The first call is from Tanya, Tim’s mom. I press play on the voice message. “I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but we found a doctor-”
I crank the key and the engine roars to life. I love the sound of it, but it drowns out Tanya’s next words. I hit the next button and hear Tim’s voice as I pull out onto the crunchy gravel of my driveway, plumes of dust erupting around me in the shafts of morning light that fall through the trees.
“…barely got any sleep last night, but managed to be up in time for the inspection. Anyway, I’m guessing you’ve gotten calls from half the town at this point.” Tim takes a deep breath. “I thought you’d want to know. Ella’s coming home.”
I nearly drive my prized truck off the road in shock. I hang up the phone and breathe through my nose, my heart pounding.
Ella’s coming home.
CHAPTER FIVE
LUKE
ELEVEN YEARS AGO
“Y’all know a girl named Ella Hanover?” I ask the locker room. The sound of metal lockers snapping shut echoes against the painted cinderblock walls. I’m not sure anyone can even hear me between that, the sound of plastic buckles and pads hitting the floor, and the hissing of the shower heads.
“I know her,” says a blonde kid I recognize as being a freshman. “She tutors the freshman science classes.”
I crook my finger at him and his round eyes go wide. “Come here,” I say. I tap my bare foot on the worn wooden bench. “Sit. Talk. Tell me everything you know about her.”
“Uh, she’s nice, I guess,” he stutters.
“What the hell are you doing, Davis? Torturing this kid?” I hear the voice of Tim Wilkins call out across the locker room. I look up to see him toweling his hair dry.
“Just gathering some intel, that’s all Wilkins,” I retort, pulling off my towel and slipping on my boxer briefs. “Keep talking.”
“She’s really smart. Really, really smart. And she’s nice, too. She helped me when I failed my last test. I didn’t fail this time, though,” he says with an innocent grin.
“Who’s he talking about?” Tim asks, opening the locker next to me and pulling out his clothes.
“Ella Hanover,” I reply. “Or at least he would be if you didn’t keep interrupting him.”
“What do you want with Ella Hanover?” Tim asks with a laugh. “I saw you with her earlier in the hall. I thought you were going to pull a prank on her.”
I think back to earlier in the hallway when I stopped to help Ella off the floor. She’d caught my eye when Amy Waters had pushed her way past her. I know Amy well enough to know that she doesn’t bother fucking with people she doesn’t feel threatened by. And then I saw Ella’s red hair and her green eyes. And there was just…something. It was ridiculous. But it was like I was seeing her for the first time.
“Hello? You in there, Davis?”
Tim is waving his hand in my face. I shove him away. “Nothing,” I reply. “Just like to know who’s who on campus, you know me.”
“Trolling for prom king votes?” says a deep voice from behind me. It’s Dean.
“Shut it, Dean!” I yell back. “So what else? Likes, dislikes?”
The kid on the bench looks like he’s run out of ideas. “I think she likes sour candy,” he says.
“Sour candy? Like what kind?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I saw her eating some gummy worms after class one day. One of my friends brought her some. He has a crush on her. Who can blame him. She’s stacked.”
“Probably down to fuck, too. All the nerdy girls are. Desperate for attention. They’ll spread their legs for any guy who looks sideways at them in the hallway.” Michael Evans strolls by me, that cocky ass grin on his face that seems to be permanently plastered there.
I grab his arm and shove him up against the lockers. He just smiles at me. “Do it, Davis. You know you want to.”
My heart is beating, and I hear the voice of my guidance counselor in my head warning me to stop what I’m doing if I have any chance of joining the Marines. I let go of his shirt and shove him back to where I found him. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stick of gum, chewing it open-mouthed like the asshole he is. “Just slip it into her already, Davis. You know you want to.”
Both Tim and Dean have to grab the back of my shirt to keep me from lunging after him as Michael leaves the locker room. “I hate that asshole,” I say, seething and resituating my shirt. I take a few deep breaths and nod at Tim and Dean. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Dean replies.
“Michael’s a real dick,” Tim adds. “His daddy’ll sue you so fast it’ll make your head spin. He’s not worth getting into trouble over.”
I slam my locker door shut and pull my duffel bag over my shoulder. “Yeah. But she is.”
CHAPTER SIX
ELLA
PRESENT DAY
The blue sky above Texas is as pure as I remember it being as a kid. I take a deep breath and inhale. It smells like cigarette smoke and old books. But that's because I'm still in the back of this taxi that is only going eighteen miles an hour through the straight, unobstructed roads. Well, unobstructed until a cow meanders out of the trees and stops in the road. The driver slams to a halt.
"Could we hurry this up?" I ask him, slipping him another twenty dollars.
"What do you want me to do? Get out and push her? I don't think she'll fancy that much," the driver replies.
I roll my eyes. "I mean once this cow moves." I tap my manicured nails on the armrest of the taxi. The fake leather is so worn it looks like suede. I rub my fingers against the black covering and enjoy the little flakes that pill up around my fingertips.
The cow finally moves and the driver accelerates another eight miles an hour.
"I said faster."
"This is faster. Sweetheart, we do things on our own time here in Texas. You'd best get used to that."
I open my mouth to protest that I'm well aware of how things proceed in Texas, since I was born and raised here, but I swallow my words. The air conditioner is blasting cold air but it's barely reaching me back here. Humidity is condensing on the
inside of the glass. I put my hand up to my hair and realize the curls I'd straightened out of my auburn locks sometime this morning, two time zones away, have returned with a vengeance. My foundation is running off my face as well.
Looks like I’ll be back to the curly, freckle-faced redhead I grew up being in a matter of moments. Texas doesn't care about transformations. It just wants you how it wants you.
The taxi finally reaches Buxwell, and my breath is ripped out of my chest by the familiarity. There's the diner where I kissed Johnny Marshall in the eighth grade. There’s the stone-clad library with towering cottonwood trees surrounding it. There's a cadre of red tricycles outside of the library and I realize it must be afternoon story time.
Nostalgia is rocking my body with waves that are more like tsunamis. I dig my nails back into the armrest like I'm trying to hold onto the person I’ve made myself into outside the confines of this tiny, tiny town. "Where to, again?" the driver asks.
I pull the crumpled letter out of my pocket and squint at the address like I haven’t had it burned into my memory. I grew up going to this clinic. I say the address out loud and close my eyes, wishing I could pretend I was somewhere else. But the taxi edges out of the falling-down, decrepit downtown and a funny feeling comes over me like someone just walked over my own grave. I open my eyes to see a glimpse of a tanned, muscular guy lifting lumber out of the back of his truck. I do a double take and nearly get whiplash turning to look.
It can't be him, though.
It can't be.
"Everything alright back there? We didn't pass it, did we?" asks the driver. I think about how far he has to drive to get back to Dallas after this.
"No, you didn't pass it. You've got quite a drive back to Dallas, don't you?" I ask him to change the subject.
He shrugs. "It's just time and tires, darlin'. Don't you worry about it."
I lean back, my heart still pounding at seeing his ghost in my wake. Or what I thought was his ghost. He wouldn't have come back here. Would he? "Make a right here," I say automatically as we drive by a dirt road.
The driver glances back at me. I'm nearly blinded by the blank compact disc hanging from his rearview mirror. "I thought you said you'd never been here before?"
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