by S. M. Parker
“Sixty-seven fastback. With a three-ninety, right?” My voice inadvertently takes on the tone of grease monkey mechanics, men with toothpicks wiggling between their teeth. Why can’t I just be normal, be myself? But that’s the thing about meeting Alec here today—just seeing him makes me think there might be a whole other normal for me, one I don’t even know yet. I shift on my feet, my toes nervous with this uninvited newness.
“Um . . .” He laughs. “Unexpected.”
“What is?”
“A girl who knows muscle cars.”
A blush heats my face like wildfire combing underbrush. “My dad,” I say, as if that’s enough of an explanation.
He nods, but doesn’t press for details.
I feel a sudden need to thank him. For not prying. For not pushing.
“I’m glad you came,” Alec says.
“Yeah?”
He reaches a tentative hand toward me and I take it. His fingers spider around my own.
His eyes ask, Is this okay?
No, I think. It’s crazy. Holding hands at the park with a boy. Like a sixth grader. I spread my fingers, let them relax enough to pull away.
But then I see his blush and remember the way he listened without judging and reassured me things would be okay with Gregg. My fingers reposition, locking against his.
He smiles. “Seesaw? Or shall we shake it up a bit?”
“Feeling brave enough for swings?”
His laugh validates me in a way that baffles. “A fine choice. Oh wait. I almost forgot.” He drops my hand and I’m shocked by how the cold pierces in his absence. My fingers feel different from the rest of my body now, not fully mine anymore. I shake the nervous energy down through my arms and shove my hands into the front pockets of my jacket.
I think of excuses to bail as I watch Alec jog back to his car, pop the trunk with its vintage squeak.
“A picnic,” he calls, holding up a wicker basket.
His enthusiasm makes me nod, bite on another smile. And stay.
We walk together and I scan the familiar grounds, the monkey bars, the rickety swing set. “I used to think swinging was the closest you could get to flying,” I say. “When I was a kid I’d close my eyes and pretend.” All the while knowing Dad was there to catch me if I lost my wings.
“That’s how I feel when I’m on the ice. Like skating is the closest thing to flying.” Alec nods at his basket. “You want to swing first or eat?”
“I could eat.”
“Yeah? It’s not lame?”
“Not lame.”
His smile beams as quick as a child’s and I feel myself drawn to his innocence. He sets the basket onto the ground, removes a checkered cloth, and we float out the corners into a perfect square. “I’m glad you came.”
“You mentioned that.”
He blushes. “Five minutes in and I’m already redundant. What a lame date.”
My gut dips. This cannot be a date. I cannot do complicated right now.
Alec looks at me softly, his eyes apologizing. “No . . . sorry. I just meant . . . it doesn’t have to be a date. Not if you don’t want it to be.” He drags his fingers through his hair. “Christ, I sound like an idiot. What is wrong with me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I sound like a twelve-year-old around you.”
I chuckle.
“It amuses you that I’m a bumbling twelve-year-old?”
“No,” I say, laughing.
“All I’m trying to say—as inarticulately as is humanly possible, apparently—is that I’m glad you’re here.” He looks down, bashful. “Shit, that is actually the third time I’ve said that now.” He unwraps a tuna sandwich and hands me a square. “I might not be displaying it so brilliantly at this moment, but I think you’re easy to be with. I like talking to you.”
“I’m sure you know lots of people who are easy to be with. I see you talking to people in school all the time.” I bite into the soft bread and taste the unexpected crunch of celery and red onion.
“School chat’s easy. It doesn’t have to mean anything. I miss real friendships, you know?”
“I can’t imagine moving to a school without Lizzie.” And Gregg, I almost say Gregg.
“It’s been the hardest part. Leaving the buddies I was tightest with.” He takes a bite of his sandwich, settles back onto an elbow.
“So why did you leave your school?”
He squints against the sun and finds my eyes. “Why, Zephyr actually, that’s a fairly sly way to ask if the rumor is true.”
I feign indifference. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
He sits up, looks off into the distant ball field. “The true part? I had a girl in my room after lights out, which was an expulsion-worthy offense.”
This revelation translates to Complicated with a capital C. I should have gone to Gregg’s instead. Worked things out with him. What am I even doing here with this other boy?
He meets my eyes. “The tricky part is that this girl was my roommate’s girlfriend. She was there with him. Not me.”
“Then how come you got expelled?”
“I took the blame for it, said she was with me.” He picks away the crust along his sandwich. “Honestly, I didn’t even really think about it. I knew my buddy couldn’t take the fall. He was on scholarship and would’ve lost everything. I figured I’d be fine, since colleges only want me for hockey, not my grades.”
Okay, so not totally complicated. It’s more—“Selfless,” I say.
Alec pulls two bottles of water from the basket, opens one and hands it to me. “Not entirely. I mean, he would have done the same for me. Besides, I’d been wanting to come home for a while and saw my chance.”
“I can’t imagine ever wanting to be in Sudbury.”
“That’s because you’ve always been here.” He takes a sip of water. “And it’s not Sudbury, really, I just missed home. My mom. Or . . . I miss the way she used to be.”
“Used to be?”
“She was softer when I was a kid. That probably sounds ridiculous.”
“Not really.”
His eyes lock on mine, hint at trust. “Since my dad’s been working overseas, my mom’s all aggressive and hyperfocused on her company. My coming home hasn’t changed that. Not like I’d wanted it to.”
“My mom’s been the same way since my dad split. Like she’s overcompensating.” This fact is out of my mouth before I realize.
“No small burden. When did your dad split?”
“In June.” On my eighteenth birthday echoes in my head. When the kitchen smelled like lemon basil because Mom took cuttings from her plant to make my favorite pasta sauce. “He wrote a letter to my mom saying he couldn’t do it anymore.” The minute the words are out I want to shove them back into silence.
“Did he write to you?” Alec asks.
“No.” It is a hard word. A hard truth.
“Shit.”
The air feels hollow then, like it did that day. Like breathing is no longer an option. “I used to think my dad was perfect. Until he wasn’t. You know?”
“I do.” His eyes throw me a soft smile and it feels like he really might know.
“My mom’s been trying so hard to hold it together that I think she’ll shatter. It makes me nervous about leaving for college next year. I mean, what if she loses it? Has a breakdown or something?” I don’t tell him how I’m really afraid I’ll never even get into college because I fear I’m deeply flawed and that’s why my own father didn’t want to stick around or at least give me a letter explaining why he left.
“I think we can make ourselves crazy thinking about all the what-ifs.”
“Yes. Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m doing. But somehow it feels easier to stress about the future instead of really looking at the past. Like maybe I don’t want to see what was there.”
“That sucks, Zephyr,” Alec says, and I’m surprised by my laugh. “What?” His eyes brighten.
“
Nothing, it’s just . . . well, you’re right; it does suck. It did suck. Everyone’s been saying they’re sorry and it’ll get better but no one’s ever called it out for what it is. Sucky.” I take a drink, trace the open top of the bottle with my finger. Marvel at how easy it is to expose my private thoughts to Alec. “And now my dad’s back and that’s sucky too.”
“Like back back?”
I shake my head. “He’s somewhere. My mom’s talking to him I guess.” I hope he doesn’t hear the way my voice cracks, falls through that sad space.
“Have you seen him?”
“No. I can’t.”
“I get that.”
His three words are so much bigger than just three words. They are a space in which I am understood by another person. No questions asked.
“I’m glad you told me.”
I’m glad too. And relieved. And relieved. Listening to Alec talk about his family is different from talking to Lizzie, whose dad was killed in Afghanistan, or to Gregg, whose parents are the definition of Happy Couple, completely devoted to their six kids and each other. Alec’s dad has been making a choice to be away from his family. Same as mine.
Empathy exchanges between us like a pact.
When we’re finished eating, Alec extends his arm and offers me an escort to the swing set. He effortlessly guides my body into a slung rubber seat and I am a wave carried on his current, surprised by the warmth his breeze of a touch sends through my body. He steadies the chains with his outstretched arms while straddling my legs. Our knees are only inches apart. If I moved the tiniest bit they’d be touching, connected. Just thinking about it sends a fear-filled bolt of electricity through me. I draw in a deep breath to steady my nerves but my senses fill with the sharp mixture of his sweat and cologne. Somewhere in the distance a toddler screeches. And then sound gets pulled into a tunnel and all I can hear are the words falling across Alec’s lips.
“Can I tell you something?” He holds the chains, his chest and arms closed around me. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Promise.” My nerves cause laughter to tickle across my lips.
“You promise you won’t laugh, but you laugh while you’re promising?” He shakes his head in mock disappointment but then catches my gaze, holds it. He is looking in me. Through me. He doesn’t even blink. It’s all I can do not to look away.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you after seeing you here yesterday. Wait, no, that’s a lie.” He rubs at one of the metal links with his thumb. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you after you didn’t know the answer to nombre dix.” His jaw bites back a laugh, but one bubbles right over my lips.
“Ah, so that’s why you wanted to meet up today. You need French pointers.”
He squats in front of the swing, rests his forearms across his thighs. “Please tell me you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“I don’t.”
“Okay, wait. Are you telling me that because I told you to tell me that, or do you really not have a boyfriend?”
“No boyfriend.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Not like that.”
He considers. “See, now that’s strange. I would’ve thought you’d have a million guys falling over you, based on your French prowess alone. It’s a highly effective mating technique, you know.”
I smile. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Check out Discovery Channel sometime. Butchered French is a primal mating call.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously though. How can you not have a boyfriend?” The air falls still around us.
“I haven’t met the right person.”
Alec smiles. “Until now. You’re supposed to say . . . until now.”
“Oh, is that what I’m supposed to say?” I push the toe of my shoe into his and he presses back.
We are touching shoes.
The tips of our shoes.
I can see this. Know this.
So why does it feel like bees buzz under my skin, whirring a demand to touch more of him? I pull my foot away. It leaves me empty in a way that is new. The craving to touch more of Alec is beyond intense. And I want to push it away. Tame it.
Alec plucks a square of bark mulch from the ground and turns it between his fingers. “This has never happened to me before, you know. It’s like they say, about attractions being chemical and all. Okay, maybe that does sound Discovery Channel primal. Forget it.”
But I can’t. It’s as if he’s in my head. Humming under my skin.
A soft breeze guides a curl across my cheek and Alec moves to catch it. He tucks it behind my ear, brushing my lobe with his fingers. Something inside my chest skips, like there’s a heart racing inside my heart.
“Would you go out with me?”
He can’t even know how his words paralyze. They tie and bind with a commitment I can’t give after living in the aftermath of my father bailing. Or the mess that is my relationship with Gregg since his kiss. I can’t do complication.
“Alec, I . . .”
Alec’s face waits on my words, patient and forgiving even though he appears to sense what I’m going to say. A small boy scrambles into the swing near us, reprimanding his mother’s offer of help. “I do it!” he shouts at her.
Alec smiles at the boy’s independence, his fierceness, and that is when the word slips out of me. “Yes.”
“Huh.” Alec lets out an enormous sigh, threaded with laughter. “I wasn’t exactly expecting a yes after that enormously elongated hesitation, Zephyr actually.”
“Me either.” My cheeks redden. His blush reveals understanding.
Alec moves behind me and gives me a gentle push. My feet leave the ground. My legs extend.
When I return to Alec, he catches my hips and holds me, suspended for the briefest second. His fingers lock onto each hip. A spiral of heat climbs inside me, pours into my blood, coats my skin. My whole body alights. Then, he whispers furtive words in my ear: “I used to space out in Latin all the time.”
He lets go. My insides curl.
I return to him with a gentle swoop. He grabs hold. “I’m not so bummed about being the new kid at Sudbury anymore.”
I swing.
“Not since I found a girl who digs muscle cars.”
Swing. And I smile.
“A girl I’m with and might already miss.”
Swoon.
I am lost on the cloud of his words until the little boy screeches. He’s figured out he can’t swing without his mother’s help so he gets down, scrambles toward the sandbox at the opposite side of the park. I watch him angrily hurl a red pail onto the grass when his mother lifts his wriggling body and starts toward their car. Then we are alone—the approaching dusk our only company. I curse the day for not being longer. Stretching out for miles like a summer afternoon.
When I see the wafer moon begin its rise over the ball field, Alec halts my swinging and twists my seat. He rubs the length of my fingers, follows each to the tips where they are wrapped around the cross of the chains. His touch lights my flesh, fire coaxing more heat.
“I have to go,” he says.
My body jolts. Go?
He slips his phone out of the front pocket of his jeans, checks the time. “I have a preseason game tonight.”
Tonight. Dinner. Mom. Oh shit . . . Lizzie. A visit to Gregg’s. All the things I spaced on today.
“I wish I could stay.” Alec takes a tentative step closer, whisper close. I smell his familiar cologne, that faint waft of mint. He brings his hand to my face and brushes the gentle rise of his knuckles along my jaw. My breath catches as he spirals a long strand of my hair around his finger. His touch drops to my neckline and I pull back. The heat of him too intense. His face flushes red and he spins me so that he’s standing behind me. I wait for him to push me one last time, but his hands slide along my shoulders until he gathers my ponytail, moves it to the side. Heat tightens my stomach into a fist.
The autumn air licks my neckline with a crisp draft. Every inc
h of me wants to feel his lips on the curves of my neck—soft and unhurried. And every inch of me thinks I should leave. Now.
But my flesh tingles. And begs.
I lean into him. He lifts my hands high on the chains and closes my fingers around the spot where he wants me to hold on.
“You smell like vanilla,” he tells me.
You feel like a dream. I don’t even know the me who thinks these words.
His hands trace along my outstretched arms, his broad palms smoothing over my coat but feeling closer, like warmed lotion against my skin. I allow my back to press into him, this stranger, this boy. My breath seizes as he cups the warmth of my neck. There is a spiraling ache between my legs, foreign and demanding. It is the same ache that tells me to run.
But I don’t.
I turn my head. I let my lips meet his. Alec’s mouth tastes of spearmint and flight, without a hint of complication.
Chapter 7
Driving home from the park, laughter bursts from me so free and light—a laugh I can’t remember laughing since Dad left. Somehow, Alec’s made me feel like me and someone wholly new at the same time. Like I’ve stepped out of my own shadow.
Parts of me think it’s absurd. Meeting Alec, having a picnic, making out. But other parts want to do it again.
And again.
I turn onto Ashland Drive with my phone in my hand, ready to text Lizzie for an emergency meeting. But when I pull up to the house Gregg’s truck is parked out front. My hands squeeze tight around the steering wheel and my breath goes shallow. Even though this is what I’ve wanted—Gregg and me going back to normal—I can’t help my stomach from knotting.
I park, slip my phone into my pocket, and enter the kitchen where Gregg’s sitting at the island, thumbing through one of Mom’s fall bulb catalogs. His posture rests easy, like it’s the most natural place for him to be. There’s a small stack of dog treats on the counter, and Finn is alert at Gregg’s feet, gazing up expectantly. Gregg was with me when I got Finn from the pound and Finn adores Gregg. Then again, who doesn’t love Gregg?