Sweet Talk Me

by Kieran Kramer

There was a second of taut silence.

  “It wouldn’t have made any,” True said. “It’s just that friends don’t tease friends.”

  “They don’t? Who made that rule?” He followed a service road around to the back of a yellow Butler building, a hangar for a couple of Learjets. “You got a lot of rules, True. And the truth is, I don’t recall us particularly being friends anymore.”

  What the hell. Let her feel a little embarrassed at dumping him. This was an opportunity he’d no idea he’d been seeking, but now that it was here, it felt good to get some things off his chest.

  She pursed her lips. “I thought that by now—”

  “I am over it,” he said, and pulled the car into a parking space. “Which is why we can talk about it. You’re never gonna leave Biscuit Creek, and I’m never going to tie myself down.” He shut the engine off. “Got it.”

  “Harrison—”

  He ignored her and opened his door. The photographer had already exited the Volvo, camera ready, the bag still on his shoulder. “Take a picture of me and my old friend together, Charlie, and I’m going to make sure my team puts you in the back row of every single press conference I give from here on out. And about the rock on her finger, it’s not from me. I’m trying to get her home to her beloved, whoever the poor sap may be. Is that clear?”

  “Got it, Mr. Gamble.” Charlie didn’t look the least bit fazed. He was a real pro.

  “Dubose is not a poor sap!” True said from behind Harrison at the same time, right on cue. “And I resent you for saying so.”

  “You resent me? So what’s new?” Harrison kept his eyes on Charlie and winked. “And you’re kidding me about Dubose Waring, aren’t you? He’s a putz.”

  “No, he is not,” she slammed.

  He looked back at her in all her quivering, self-righteous glory. God, it turned him on. “When are y’all getting married?”

  “None of your business!”

  He pretended to be properly chastened, but from the withering look she sent him, she knew damned well he wasn’t.

  “How about a couple snaps of you alone, Mr. Gamble,” Charlie interjected with a grin, “looking travel-weary. Is there a guitar in the backseat?”

  “No.” Harrison sighed. “But since you came all this way, you can grab a few shots when I get out—and then you leave.” He glanced at True. She was clawing at her dress a little, wiping her palms on it.

  It was odd, to say the least.

  “Do you—do you have a paper bag?” she asked him in a squeaky voice.

  “No,” he said, wondering what was going on.

  “Nothing?” Her pupils were dilated.

  Uh-oh. Not a good sign. Was she taking drugs, his True?

  Surely not.

  “True, baby, what’s wrong?” he asked her, his pulse speeding up.

  She wasn’t his baby and never had been. But for one night he’d pretended she was.

  True shook her head and fumbled for the door handle, her hands shaking. “N-nothing.” She got it open, stepped right on her giant purse, and jumped out, leaving the door wide open.

  Harrison was already around the front of the car. “What is it?” When he caught up with her, she was shaking like a leaf, walking around in circles. And then a damned book fell out of her dress, a strange event he’d choose to ignore. He knew she liked to read, but this took the cake. “Are you diabetic?”

  He held a finger up at Charlie. It meant, Stand by. Just in case this is a real-ass emergency.

  Charlie didn’t move. His camera dangled from his hand.

  True swallowed, crouched on her haunches, and cupped her hands around her mouth. She breathed in, then out. In. Held it. Then out.

  Harrison put an arm on her back. “I’m with you.”

  Her forehead was sweaty. Her spine curled, the muscles in her back trembling.

  He pulled out his cell phone.

  “No!” she cried.

  “Yes.” His tone was ugly. He’d never been able to remain cool in a crisis. “We can’t mess around. You’re pale. Shaking. Something’s seriously wrong.”

  She shook her head. “Let me breathe into my hands,” she said into her hands. Loud. So he could hear. Which was awfully considerate of her since he was now out of his mind with worry.

  “Give me your camera bag,” he yelled to Charlie.

  Charlie came running with it and handed it directly to True.

  She grabbed it and put her whole face inside.

  “What the hell is happening, True?” Harrison’s heart slammed against his chest.

  “It’s just a panic attack.” Her face still in the bag, she fell back on her bottom. But it was a controlled fall, as if she was getting herself together again.

  Harrison felt a slight—very slight—lessening of worry.

  She lowered the bag. “I’m afraid of flying,” she whispered and flinched once. Twice. Like a bird that had hit a glass window.

  And then she burst into tears.

  “Shit,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He sat next to her and pulled her close.

  She put the bag back to her face. “I thought I could handle it.”

  Even muffled, her voice did something to him, especially those little hiccups. “You always think you can handle it.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. Her arms looked so skinny, and her neck was just a twig, dammit.

  “That’s right,” he said roughly. “It’s about time you just shut up and breathed, Maybank. Let the world run without you for a few minutes.”

  Charlie backed away, his shoes making gritty sounds on the rocky asphalt.

  Harrison rubbed his hand up and down True’s arm, which was warming up a little, and waited. Waited for her to perk up. Waited to feel remorse that he’d reconnected with her.

  But it didn’t come.

  Here he was comforting a woman who didn’t think he was all that special. In fact, she was sure he was the opposite. She believed he—Harrison Gamble, number one right now on the iTunes country chart—had major flaws.

  Who’da thunk it?

  “Don’t let my book get away,” she ordered him from inside her camera bag house, then added, “Please.”

  But it was a feeble please. She was getting back to her old bossy self.

  A jumbo jet coasted in for a landing above their heads, its wheels locked into the down position. Welcome back to real, Harrison thought, the smell of diesel in his nostrils. He might write and sing about the ordinary, the substantial—the stuff of life—but he’d been running from all that reality crap for a long time.

  Funny how it managed to find him anyway here on a hot gravel parking lot with a mixed-up bookworm named True. He was sure after their effed-up good-bye ten years before that he’d be glad never to see her again. But he didn’t want to leave her this time, either.

  Damn, that surprised him.

  Sort of.

  He cast a sideways glance at Miss Priss with her knees hitched up, ankles touching, and eyelids closed. Her arm was tanned, her knuckles white as she gripped the camera bag. But her lashes lay thick on her cheek, like the old days, the really, really old days, when she’d join him on the trailer park dock and tilt her face up to the sun to bask in its warmth.

  He remembered the first day she ever caught a crab on that dock. She got so rattled, she tilted the net and the crab dropped out. It ran sideways, a little tap dancer, straight over her feet. “Ooohhhaaghh!” she’d shrieked, and fallen backward into the water.

  In the Atlanta sunshine, he chuckled at the memory, threw a pebble, and watched it bounce. Nah. It didn’t surprise him at all that he wanted to stay.

  CHAPTER TWO

  So True’d had a panic attack in front of Harrison. La-di-dah. She’d even cried for a minute, but those were tears of frustration. She never saw them coming, these unfortunate episodes—that’s what her doctor called them. Each time she was sure she was going to die. She just wanted to breathe, to stay alive, and she always felt like such an idiot
afterward …

  But she refused to care this time.

  As far as she was concerned, Harrison could see her do other embarrassing things, too, like wearing white shoes before Easter—or worse yet, adding dark meat to her mama’s prizewinning chicken salad. She wouldn’t even blush. And why should she? Right now he looked like a roughed-up Brad Pitt, weary from a honky-tonk brawl or a night of hot sex. Or both.

  “Thanks for getting my book.” She imagined him punching a drunk guy in the jaw and sending him sprawling across a table covered with beer mugs, poker chips, and playing cards.

  “Not a problem.” He spanked all the grit off the cover and handed it back to her with one brow quirked and the tiniest vertical line on his forehead, right above his nose.

  True couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She was secretly aghast that he’d seen her freak out—not the Entertainment Weekly A-Lister, but the guy who’d brought her to wild and utter completion on a beach when she was eighteen years old. It irked her that Harrison was the only person who’d ever witnessed her out of control.

  Ever.

  Yes, that meant the big O had never happened with Dubose. He didn’t notice, and she didn’t care. That was what a vibrator was for. It was a poor substitute for the real thing, but the real thing with Harrison had been a fluke. Right? An utter freak occurrence, like a 75 percent off sale on boots the same day your best pair gets chewed up by your dog.

  “Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” Harrison asked. “We could stop off for a quick beer—”

  “No, thank you.” After the barroom brawl, he’d probably kiss a girl up against a wall. Feel her up, too, while he was at it, his long, golden-brown hair hanging like a curtain to block the view.

  “A Coke then?”

  “I wish.” A bead of sweat popped out on her brow, and she swiftly wiped it away. “But somebody’ll recognize you in the drive-through. Chicken nuggets will go flying, and mothers will leave their children in the play area just to catch a glimpse of you. I’m fine, Harrison. Thank you.”

  “I hope so.” He pulled out a pair of sunglasses and put them on.

  Sickening. Truly sickening how good looking he was!

  She picked up her book. “I really don’t like the page corners getting bent.” She didn’t like her life getting bent, either, so he’d better not try.

  “Then put it back in your dress,” he said. “I don’t care.”

  “Fine.” She knew she sounded starchy. But not caring was her new theme. Especially now that she knew he didn’t care. She looked pointedly at him and stuffed the musty paperback down her high scooped neckline.

  Shoot. It wasn’t very comfortable. It felt somewhat akin to a mammogram plate wedged between her breasts. But the book would warm up, she was sure.

  A hand would feel better. A big, warm male hand.

  “There.” She hitched her shoulder and tried to think of Dubose. Washboard-ab and well-endowed-in-every-way Dubose—who had cold hands. But it wasn’t his fault. He got it from his mother Penn’s Puritan side of the family. “You can’t be too careful with print books these days. Heck, this could be worth some money in a few years.”

  Harrison shook his head and held the passenger door of his car open.

  True slipped inside and looked up at him. “Been in any fights lately?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No reason.” She wouldn’t dare ask him how many girls he’d kissed up against honky-tonk walls since he’d moved away from Biscuit Creek.

  “I’ll drive you home.” He got in the cream leather driver’s seat and put the car in reverse.

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling guilty. Then remembered it was his idea to take her home in the first place.

  “Not a problem.” He flicked on the radio. Then flicked it off immediately. His latest number one hit was playing: “Snack on This.”

  “That’s a sexy song,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “But people like it because it’s funny, too.” Like Harrison. He was flirty and fun. Real. Adorable, even—and she saved that word for special occasions. “The part about the Fig Newtons is cute.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled back.

  She’d forgotten that he’d never taken compliments from her well. “How’d you come up with it?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Of course.”

  He gave a little chuckle. “Late one night, I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and had a handful of Oreos and some milk. I’d just drifted off when pow”—he made his fingers do a fireworks burst—“next thing you know, I was sitting up in bed singing, ‘That damned tootin’, Fig Newton, highfalutin girl of mine—”

  “Junk food lover, undercover—” True sang.

  “—I’m her Twinkie, and she’s MoonPie fine.” His velvety twang wrapped around True like a caress.

  “Wow.” She felt short of breath. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  He grinned. “It’s your lucky day.”

  Her heart pounded like crazy. “I heard a bunch of kids singing it yesterday. Yelling it at the top of their lungs coming out of Sunday School.”

  Harrison stuffed a bunch of papers under his seat. His ear was red. “Some people might look at it as racy, but it’s meant to be pure fun, okay? That’s something you’ve never understood too well.”

  True felt her whole face heat up. “I do, too, get fun.” Had he forgotten? She’d shimmied up and down his body like he was a stripper pole that night on the beach. She’d been so fun that it had scared her.

  Harrison finished adjusting his mirror and looked over at her. “It comes off you in invisible waves. You and your mama both. Some sort of disapproval of the rest of the world.”

  “That’s nonsense.” She felt it again—the old gap between them. Nothing had changed after all these years, and it made her sad. “I’m as fun as they come, Harrison.”

  Or she wanted to be. Hadn’t he seen long ago how her life had been locked into place, and there was no room for maneuvering—except maybe once in a lifetime? That night on the dunes at the Isle of Palms had been her once. The cool sand, the full moon, the scudding clouds, his salt-spiked hair, her prom dress flung over a clutch of sea oats …

  They’d had fun, all right.

  “I like ‘Snack on This,’” she said. “A lot. So does the whole world. You’re the king of hick hop, and you’re gonna win a CMA easy with that one.”

  “Thanks.” He stared out his own side window for a long moment.

  She could tell he heard compliments all the time. It must suck not to suck—at least at something. She prided herself on being hopeless at whistling. And making cookies. They always burned. And she was short-tempered in the worst way. That was a biggie—not that she was proud of it.

  “Can you get me home by five?” she asked, hoping to distract him from the funk that seemed to settle over him.

  “I’ll have you there by quarter to four.” He sounded a little peppier.

  “But you can’t—you’d have to—”

  The sports car took off like a shot. It was a manual shift. No country boy worth his salt drove an automatic. They all learned to drive on tractors, as True had, as a matter of fact.

  “I know a back way off the interstate,” Harrison said. They’d returned to normal, whatever that was. “The paparazzi will never find us.”

  “Are you sure they’re looking?”

  “They’re always looking.”

  A car was better than a plane, True reminded herself as they took a curve at a ridiculously high speed. And it was impossible to have two panic attacks in a row, wasn’t it?

  She sure hoped so.

  “You okay?”

  Her eyes popped open. “Sorry. Yes, I’m fine. There’s a couples wedding shower for Dubose and me at seven in Charleston. So we have to leave by six, and if I factor in time to fix my hair—”

  “I’ll get you home in time, so stop worrying. I want you to tell me about what’s going on in Biscuit Creek. But h
ow about resting a few minutes first?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “I’d rather you try.” He flung her a quick look. “Whatever happened to you back there took a toll. Your voice is a little thin. Close your eyes again. Relax. We’ve got several hours to catch up.”

  “Okay,” she said, “but only for a minute or two. I can’t sleep in a car.”

  “That’s fine.”

  She put her hand on the door rest, took a moment to be proud of the French-tip manicure she’d given herself—she hadn’t had a real manicure in years—and closed her eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eighteen years earlier, True was on the porch with her father, which was her second favorite place to be. The honeysuckle bower at Sand Dollar Heaven with Harrison was her first. Harrison was her secret best friend. They’d met in front of Wyatt’s Pharmacy under the awning. Mr. Wyatt never turned kids away, even the ones like Harrison who didn’t always have money in his pocket to buy candy.

  “Cumyeah, birthday girl,” Miss Ada called to her in her Geechee accent. “Time for your favorite dinner.”

  Lunch was called dinner, and supper was the preferred name for the evening meal around these parts. True was excited about her pimiento cheese sandwich, sweet pickle, and potato chips.

  “Give us another minute, Miss Ada?” Daddy asked their housekeeper. “I was just about to tell my girl something mighty impoh-tant. She’s ten today, old enough to heah some things.”

  Daddy spoke with the same Lowcountry drawl as Miss Ada. So did Honey. They were white, and Miss Ada was black, but it didn’t matter. Lowcountry born and bred—your words stretched like taffy, curled like smoke, and lingered … saltwater sounds. For True it was like listening to a fairy language. Her people said “boe-at,” for boat. “Fohd,” for Ford, “coat” for court. And don’t ask them to say the letter H. “Ey-yuch” is what you’d get.

  “Better make that birthday speech quick, Charlie Maybank.” Miss Ada had known True’s father since he was a baby. “True’s got to ride her bike to choir practice.”

  “All righty, then.” Daddy stood up from the bench they were sitting on, and beckoned True to follow him to the top of the house steps. True leapt up and raced to his side. Her father surveyed the property with a look of utter contentment. “You got yourself a special piece of the world right heah,” he told her. “Better’n any birthday present your mothah’s gonna buy you on Main Street.”