One True Thing

by Lynne Jaymes

  “Isn’t that sweet?” Her mom tilts her head at Jenna. “You’ve never brought me a pie before.” She smiles warmly at me and I say a silent ‘thank you’ to Mom. “Why don’t you take your things to your room, honey. Are you two hungry? I know Gram is working on a mess of food next door and we’ll eat around seven. Moving Sunday supper to Saturday hasn’t thrown her at all.”

  Jenna nods her head down a dark hallway, so I turn and follow her. We come to a door that has a purple J painted on it and she stops before opening it. “You have to promise you won’t laugh. Everything is still exactly the same as when I left home—it’s like a time capsule.”

  “I won’t laugh.”

  She looks skeptical.

  “I swear.”

  With a sigh she opens the door and I immediately see Jenna how she was a few years ago—the purple checkered bedspread on the white twin bed, the desk still stacked full of books, several ballet posters on the walls and a mirror with pictures stuck all around the edges. “Cute,” I say, picking up a white stuffed unicorn from the foot of her bed.

  “Don’t mock Oliver,” she says, setting him back down in the very same place.

  “Oliver?”

  “Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No.” I shake my head. “No problem at all.” I walk over to her mirror to look at the pictures. There’s Jenna’s official cheer photo, yellow pom poms in her hands, a bunch of group shots of interchangeable girls. “Where’s all the old boyfriend pics?”

  She grins. “No boyfriends. Not in high school anyway.”

  I peer at the pictures again. Jenna was beautiful, even in middle school. It looks like she didn’t even have an awkward phase. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Jenna walks over to join me. “Totally true.”

  I glance at her, remembering what she said about not being with a guy all year. There’s no way I’m the first one. “But there have been others, right?”

  “Yes.” She nods her head slowly, examining the photos on the wall. I wait, wanting to see if she’ll say more.

  “A few. Only one real ‘boyfriend’ though,” she says, putting the word ‘boyfriend’ in air quotes and I don’t miss the bitterness in her voice.

  I feel a mixture of jealousy and relief. “Sounds like somebody needs an ass-kicking,” I say.

  “At one point, I would have taken you up on it.” Jenna turns and walks back across the room.

  “Anyone I know?” I should drop the subject, but part of me really wants to know.

  “No. It was stupid,” she turns to me with a wry smile. “This guy named Jake last year. A senior, on the football team. I know, it’s so totally cliché it’s embarrassing.” She sighs. “And I made the mistake of believing everything he said.”

  It feels like I’m in deeper territory now but I have to know. “What happened?”

  Jenna laughs. “The usual. Told me I was the only one for him…even talked about getting married at one point.”

  An image forms in my mind and I’m sure he looks exactly like the kind of guy Gramps would love—big and blond, athletic and probably knows how to drive a tractor and skin a deer. The all-American boy. I feel a pang of jealousy that I have no right to own. “Sounds serious.”

  “I thought so. But apparently I was the only one. Turns out Jake had a habit of saying the same thing to a lot of different girls in a lot of different cities.”

  “Ouch. Sorry,” I say, feeling guilty already.

  “Our entire relationship was nothing but lies,” she says. She laughs, but I hear the sadness in her voice. “Long story short, it sort of put me off guys for awhile.”

  Jenna didn’t date for a year because of lies. And the most basic things she thinks about me aren’t true. The bedroom door is partway open, but I can hear her mom in the kitchen at the other end of the house.

  “I should throw Jake a fucking party,” I say to her with a smile.

  “Why?” Her face is confused, almost hurt.

  “Because if he’d told you the truth, you might be Mrs. Jake right now and I wouldn’t be standing in your bedroom at this very moment.”

  Jenna smiles and bites her bottom lip in the way I love. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. I guess you’re right—maybe I should write him a thank-you note.” She looks up at me and crooks her finger. “Come here.”

  I bend down as she lifts her face to mine and our lips meet. We’ve only kissed a few times since that first night, and the sensation is so powerful and new. I kiss her, gently at first, and then parting her lips with my tongue as her body responds to me. In one motion, I pick her up and deposit her on the stuffed animal covered bed, one knee in between her thighs as she reaches up, lacing her fingers around my neck and kisses me back, her tongue tapping mine and darting around my lips. I can feel my erection growing as she wraps her legs around mine and locks her feet, pressing her thighs against my legs.

  “You make me want to do dirty things,” I whisper in her ear.

  “You make me want to let you,” she whispers back, just as her mom bangs something on the stove.

  Damn. She doesn’t make this easy—there’s nothing I want more right now than to pick up where we left off weeks ago. The side of her bed sags from our weight, so I shift the two of us more toward the center. “Gonna be hard to fit on here tonight,” I tease.

  Jenna smacks me in the arm. “I wish. Mom is going to set you up real good on the couch,” she says. “I’m a little amazed that she’s lifting the ‘no boys in your room’ rule.”

  Just then her mother calls from the kitchen. “Jenna! Why don’t the two of you head on outside until supper’s ready? You can show Tyler around.”

  “And that’s Mom’s way of getting us out of the bedroom,” Jenna says, sliding off the bed as I reluctantly let her up. I’m being good. We’re taking it slow. It’s like I have that on repeat in my head.

  Chapter Twelve (Jenna)

  “Not much to see really,” I say, as we walk through the screen porch out back. It looks a little rundown now that we’re here, not like the expansive acres of grass I remember from being a kid. There’s no fence dividing the two yards and Gramps has a whole fleet of rusted-out machinery lined up next to the house. He’s not a hoarder exactly, but whenever someone gets a new tractor they call him to pick up the old one to add to his collection. As long as something can be fixed or parted out, it’s useful.

  “Looks fun,” Ty says looking at the huge tree in the middle of the big yard, with the rope swing hanging from it and a wooden platform nestled into the branches maybe twenty feet off the ground. I can’t picture Gramps even climbing the ladder these days, but he scrambled up it easily when I was seven, showing me how to pound the nails and use the level to get each board perfectly straight. It was so much fun I was almost sad when our project was over. For some reason, that was the last thing we ever built together. Gramps got busy at the shop and then his back hurt too much to pound nails with me anymore. He seemed to get old overnight.

  “It was.” I sit down on the swing and kick absently at the grass. Mom used to push me as high as this swing would go, daring me to kick the clouds with my feet. “All of the kids used to come over here because Gramps always built the coolest stuff and Gram had cookies or cakes or something baking in the oven.”

  “Sounds like something out of the movies.” Ty grabs onto the ropes and gives me a little push. “We don’t really have a backyard,” he says, looking around at the grass as far as the eye can see. “Just a tiny cement square out back with some pots in it. I would have killed for a place like this.” On a back swing he catches hold of the ropes again, and bends down to kiss my neck. Just the sensation of his breath on mine causes shivers to course through my whole body.

  “Now I’m picturing sad little Tyler running a Hot Wheels car over a patch of cement,” I say. I wonder what he looked like as a baby, or as a little boy. Maybe I can get him to dig out some photos one of these days.

  “It wasn’t like t
hat,” he says.

  I must look skeptical.

  “No, really. We had the whole city to play in. By the time I was eleven, we were riding busses all over the place—Golden Gate Park is huge and it was only two transfers to get to the beach.”

  All I can picture is a tiny kid’s face dwarfed by the huge window of a bus as it speeds through the city. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “No.” He looks like he doesn’t understand the question. “Of what?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Of getting lost. Of bad guys.”

  “Nope. It’s easy to get around—by the time I was twelve I knew every inch of the city.”

  “You’re braver than I’d be,” I say. Unless you count the school bus, I’ve never really ridden one in my life.

  I hop off the swing and walk toward Mom’s vegetable garden to see what she’s planted so far this year. Over the years it’s expanded from one row to probably half an acre.

  “What is all this stuff?” Ty asks, bending down to take a look at a pea pod.

  “Vegetables mostly,” I say. “That’s garlic over there” I point to some tall plants with lacy flowers on them. “And these are peas and potatoes. Those tiny things there are corn—in a couple of months it’ll be taller than you are.”

  Ty squints and looks down the length of the rows. “They eat all this?”

  “Not all of it. Some Gram puts up for the winter and then they have a stand at the edge of the road down there where they put extra and people leave money in a little wooden box with a slit cut in the top.”

  Ty turns to face me. “So they put vegetables out and people just leave money? Like the honor system?”

  “Sure.” I shrug. “They’ve been doing it that way as long as I can remember.”

  “And nobody steals the vegetables? Or the money?”

  “No.” I guess I’d never really thought about it.

  He grins. “What a crazy place.”

  I pull a couple of pods off the vine and crack them open revealing the row of tiny round peas attached inside. “Here, try a couple,” I say, scraping them out with my thumb.

  “Raw?” Ty asks, cupping some in his hand.

  “The best way,” I say, popping them into my mouth. They burst with an earthy, sweet taste all over my tongue that reminds me of home.

  “Pretty good,” Ty says, chewing his. He bends down to get another pod, but jumps back quickly. “Holy shit!” He grabs me and pulls me out of the row. “There’s a rattler down there!”

  I see a thin, gray body curving through the plants. “That’s not a rattler.” I shrug off Ty’s hand and step toward it. The snake isn’t going anywhere in a hurry, just lazing through the garden soaking up the sun. I stand very still and then jump on it, pinching it behind the head and lifting it off the dirt. It’s only about three feet long—must still be a juvenile.

  “Oh my God!” Ty says, taking a stumbling step back. “What did you do?”

  I hold it out to him as it opens its mouth and tries to twist its head around. “It’s just a rat snake.”

  Ty stands his ground. “That thing’s huge! Put it down!”

  I can’t help but laugh at him. “It’s just a baby. Seriously—rat snakes get up to six feet long.” When I hold it out the tail barely grazes the ground. “I can’t believe you’re scared of it.”

  Ty puts his hands on his hips and stares at me. “I’m not scared of it,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go all Crocodile Dundee on the thing and capture it with my bare hands.”

  I wiggle it at him and he flinches. “Bull. You’re scared of a little snake.”

  His eyes go wide. “I’m not scared. But just put it down.”

  I take a step forward. “Touch it first.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Just touch it with one finger and then I’ll let it go.”

  Ty shakes his head but takes a step forward. “Fine.” He reaches out one hand to touch the tail so I shake it again and he jumps back. “Stop that!”

  “Sorry.” I try my best not to laugh at him. “I’ll hold it still. I promise.”

  He glares at me, but reaches one finger forward and strokes the snake quickly on the back. “There. Now let it go.”

  “Nice job,” I say and then walk back to the row of vegetables to let it go. The snake doesn’t seem to be scared, even after its harrowing capture, but just flicks its tongue as it disappears through the leaves. “All gone,” I say, holding my hands up. “You big baby.”

  “Right,” Ty says. “You come to San Francisco and I’ll drop you off in the Tenderloin. We’ll see who’s a big baby then.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” I say, brushing past him. We walk toward the big garage that straddles the property and holds the giant tractors that Gramps has collected over the years.

  “That’s cool,” Ty says, pointing to an old green John Deere. We walk over to it and Ty pats the metal seat with the yellow paint, faded from many years sitting in the sun. “I’ve always wanted to drive one of these.”

  “You’re easy,” I say. I climb in the seat, press the clutch and turn the key that’s sitting in the rusted ignition. The whole machine shakes like a wet dog as it comes to life. “Go ahead,” I say. “Take it out.”

  Ty climbs up beside me and I stand up to let him sit down. “Hop on,” he says, patting his leg.

  I grin and sit sideways on his lap as the machine jerks into motion. I’m not sure if it’s just the fact that I’m sitting on him or the vibrations of the tractor, but I can feel his hard-on blooming before we can even cross the yard. Ty drives the tractor in a wide arc around the grass and parks it back by the garage, the whole thing shuddering as he turns the key. He starts to get up, but I press him back against the seat, turning around to straddle him as I lean forward to kiss him. I’m more than aware that there’s only a thin layer of fabric between us as my hand burrows under his shirt and grazes his rock-hard abs.

  “We should go,” Ty says, and I can see he’s starting to lose control.

  The Connolly’s across the street pull into their driveway, so I sit back on his knees. “I’ve never been more turned-on by a tractor,” I say with a grin. The doors to the Connolly’s truck slam and I slide off him, waving as they call hello.

  Ty gets up, and I can see his knees shaking from the effort of holding back. I’ve never felt more powerful in my life.

  

  The screen door slams behind me as I carry the crock pot of beans over to Gram’s. I’ve lost track of Ty while I’ve been helping her and Mom make supper and I hope he’s okay, not sitting around somewhere with nothing to do.

  “Here you go,” I say, setting it on the counter. Gram’s working the assembly line for her secret-recipe buttermilk fried chicken, getting everything ready before she pops the first batch into the sizzling oil. “Have you guys seen Tyler?”

  Gram jerks her head to the left. “Last I saw him he was out back with your Gramps.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, picturing him trapped under one of Gramps lectures on the dissolution of God and country. “I’m going to find him.”

  “Okay,” Mom says, opening the oven a crack to check on the biscuits. “But we’re going to need your help in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be back,” I say, heading to the porch. I can hear voices coming from around the side of the house and when I turn the corner I see Gramps leaning over the open hood of his truck, the sleeves of his work shirt rolled up past his elbows.

  “You see anything?” Gramps asks. I look around, but I don’t see anyone else out here.

  “Yeah,” a muffled voice calls from somewhere. There’s a metallic banging and then Ty slides out from under the truck, a smear of black grease on his forehead. “Looks like the return spring’s broken. You should probably get her up on the lift at the shop to take a better look.”

  “I will, son,” Gramps says. “I was thinking it was a bent brake shoe, but that makes a helluva lot more sense. My old mind must be going.”


  “Gramps!” I call, walking out to them. “Why are you putting Ty to work already?”

  “It’s not work,” Ty says, sitting up and wiping his hands with a dirty rag. “This is a 1956 Ford F-100. It’s an honor to get a closer look at her.”

  “I know what it is,” I say. “I learned to drive in this truck. And you’re a guest here—he has no business making you climb under it.”

  “Now you just leave him be,” Gramps says. “The boy just wanted to help out an old man and I’m nice enough to accept.” He unhooks the hood and slams it down. “Who knew a city boy would know so much about old machinery anyhow?”

  Ty looks at the truck in the exact same way he looked at me in my room. “She’s a beauty. My dad has a few vintage cars—a ’65 Thunderbird and a ’59 DeVille most recently, and we used to work on them together back when I lived at home. He dug out a garage under our house so that he could keep them off the street.”

  Gramps winks at me. “I like that kind of dedication. Seems like your dad and me would get along just fine.”

  I shake my head, knowing when I’ve been beaten. “Well you’re going to have to clean up in about twenty minutes,” I say. “Gram is going to have supper on the table and you know how she is when you come in full of dirt and grease.”

  “Don’t you worry,” Gramps says gruffly. “I’ll get your boyfriend here scrubbed up good before supper.”

  Boyfriend. The word sends a jolt through me. I know that’s what we’re pretending to be, but is it more than that now? I glance at Ty, but he doesn’t react at all.

  “Fine,” I say. They seem to be getting along okay, so I guess I’ll leave them alone. “Twenty minutes.”

  I hear them laughing about something as I walk back into the house. And I’m relieved. But not surprised I guess. Ty seems to be able to get along with everyone.

  Chapter Thirteen (Ty)

  I roll over to face the back of the couch, my feet kicking one armrest while my head butts up against the other one. Jenna’s mom set me up with a soft blanket and a feather pillow, but I have a feeling that I’m not going to get much sleep tonight. I’m listening to the hum of the fan in the corner of the room and my eyes are starting to close when I hear the soft click of a door opening and I turn to see a dark figure in the dim light from the hallway.