Second Wind

by Aimee Nicole Walker

  “Do it, Rush,” Lincoln Huxley said. “Who cares ’bout them.”

  I looked into his dark-brown eyes and believed I could do anything. Even at seven years old, I knew he was special. We were the same age, but Lincoln looked much older because of his unusual height. I loved Lincoln with all the pure innocence of a child, especially when he acted as the lookout so I could wheel Jules’s bike out of the garage and down the driveway.

  “I don’t know how to ride,” I said fearfully. “What if I fall?”

  “You get up and go again,” he replied without pause, sounding like an adult. “You can do it, Rush.”

  Lincoln was the only one besides Jules who believed in me. Mama wanted to, but she was too afraid of what Daddy would say if she stood up to him. I recognized the whipped-dog expression in her eyes, even if I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to please Lincoln so he would love me like I loved him. I’d heard my cousin Nancy say that she wanted to kiss a boy named Derrick. She said she loved him the minute she saw him and knew they would get married someday. I loved Lincoln from the moment he moved into the house down the street from mine two years before, and even though I didn’t know what it meant, I wanted to kiss him and marry him too. I hated any day that didn’t include him in it. I would tell him someday, perhaps after I rode the beautiful bike.

  “Climb on,” Lincoln said, holding the bike steady for me.

  “Okay.”

  The bike started to wobble to the right, to the left, and back to the right again, so Lincoln placed a confident hand on the back of the seat to steady me. “I’ll hold on and run beside you. That’s what my daddy did when he taught me to ride.”

  “Okay,” I said nervously.

  “I won’t let go ’til you say so.”

  “Okay,” I said, sounding a little braver.

  “You have to pedal.”

  This was it! The moment I’d been waiting for since Jules got the bike for her birthday. I was seconds away from seeing those streamers blowing in the breeze and earning Lincoln’s approval. I pedaled slowly at first, trying not to squeal when the bike felt like it was going to tip over.

  “I got you,” Lincoln said, jogging alongside me. “You can do it.”

  “I can do it!” Feeling braver, I began pedaling faster.

  “Go, Rush!” Lincoln cheered.

  “Don’t let go, Lincoln,” I said fearfully.

  “You’re so good, Rush. Don’t stop.”

  I felt it, the moment that he let go. The bike wobbled and shook, but I kept it upright as I gained more speed. I rode into the wind with the breeze stealing my breath, but I was too excited to be scared. I was riding a bike! A pretty bike with a basket and streamers. My attention shifted to the pink and silver streamers floating on the breeze, wishing my hair was long enough to flow behind me when I should’ve been paying attention to the cracked, uneven sidewalk in front of me.

  “Rush!” Lincoln called out from behind me, snapping me out of the daydream, but it was too late to avoid disaster.

  I hit the huge gap in the sidewalk and flew over the handlebars, landing on my back awkwardly. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, and I gasped in panic, trying to pull air back into my body.

  “Rush! Rush!” Lincoln said, dropping to the pavement beside me. He cupped my face tenderly and looked at me with worried, dark eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I tried to answer him but couldn’t. Lincoln shifted his gaze away from my face to see if I was hurt anywhere.

  “Oh no!” he said at the same time I felt a horrible, burning sensation in my arm.

  The pain was so severe that I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t manage even a squeak. Mrs. Johnson rushed out of her house to see if I was okay.

  “Oh, honey,” she said tenderly, running her hands over my buzzed hair. “Lincoln, you run back to his house and get his parents. Tell them to bring the car. Rush needs to go to the hospital.”

  Hospital? I raised my head to look at my arm, but Mrs. Johnson wouldn’t let me. “Don’t you worry, little lamb. You’ll feel better soon.”

  I was too scared to cry, or at least that’s how it felt. My dad was going to be mad at me for stealing the bike. I heard the car pull up and the doors slam shut as my parents raced over to my side. My mother started to cry, but Dad told her to be as brave as I was. For the first time in my life, my dad looked at me with respect. All because I was too traumatized to cry over my broken arm. “He’s showing what a strong man he’s going to be someday, Alice.”

  “He’s just a child, Butch,” my mom countered, then cowered when my father pinned her with a stern look.

  “Sorry, Rush,” Lincoln said, kneeling beside my head. “I shoulda held on.”

  I shoulda held on. I shoulda held on. I shoulda held on. The words played on an endless loop as I walked inside the quiet brownstone home I shared with Travis. Maybe my life lacked the sense of adventure that I’d once had, but it was safe and reliable. Maybe Travis didn’t make my heart pound and blood race through my veins like a certain dark-haired boy once had, but neither did he have the power to hurt me. Lincoln Huxley was my best friend, my first love, and the boy who broke my spirit in ways that hurt far worse than any broken bone.

  “Are you ready for today?”

  I looked up from my computer screen to lock eyes with the woman who I’d shared my life with for more than twenty years. Her eyes were the same guileless blue they’d always been, but lately, I noticed that worry replaced the twinkle I expected to see in them. Ophelia Jenkins-Huxley leaned casually in the doorway, but the frown lines around her mouth contradicted her pose.

  “I was born ready,” I said with a flippancy I didn’t feel. I was the king of faking it until I made it. One could even say that I was fake, an absolute fraud. I offered her a reassuring smile, but the grimace on her face said that I’d failed to hit the mark.

  “We don’t have to go through with this deal, Linc. We haven’t signed any documents, nor have we given a verbal agreement,” Ophelia said softly. “It’s not like the universe needs another country club.”

  The deal she was referring to was the biggest one of our careers. If we succeeded, it had the potential to introduce us to the wealthiest clients California had to offer. If we failed, it could ruin us and destroy everything we had worked so hard to build. Every decision we ever made led us to this deal, and I wanted it so bad I could taste it. What kept me up at night was my concern that I wanted it for the wrong reasons. Did I pursue Maxim Detwiler because I wanted his business or was it because he made my dick impossibly hard, and I couldn’t stop imagining what he would look like naked over me or beneath me? I would never betray my wife by acting on the physical attraction I felt to him, but what if I was following my dick to certain financial disaster?

  I scrubbed my face with my hands to push the images away and focus on the conversation with my wife. “The Oasis is everything I dreamed of since we first stepped foot on California soil, Phee. Yeah, I’m stressed. We would be risking everything on this deal, but I want it bad.” The deal or the man?

  “There’s something about Detwiler that I don’t like,” my wife said. Ophelia had probably detected that the wealthy man returned my attraction. But unlike me, I saw in his heated gaze that he was more than willing to act on it.

  “Do you want to back out, Phee? Is that what this is about?” I would be disappointed if it didn’t happen, but I would never choose business over Ophelia. She was my wife, best friend, business partner, and mother of our two children. There was no one on this earth I respected more than Phee, and her business instincts were unmatched by anyone I’d ever known.

  “Back out? No. More like take a few steps back and reassess that this is the best fit for us. We’ve always been able to navigate the changes in the real estate market, but what he’s proposing is way out of our depth. This isn’t just us brokering a deal between two interested parties and collecting our commission. This project would require us to give up a huge chunk of our life savings to be
a part of a deal that I’m not sure fits us. We’ve come a long way since our college days, Linc, but we’ve never forgotten who we were or where we came from. What is it that we told our kids all these years? If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.”

  Truer words were never spoken. If I had been able to forget who I was or where I came from, we wouldn’t have built a life together. I would’ve most likely made different choices that led me down a completely different path with someone else. I can’t say that I would’ve been better or worse if I’d made other choices, because you can’t comprehend what you’ve never had. I was completely happy with the decisions I made and the person who shared my life. I had no regrets. I clenched my jaw when a tiny, but persistent, voice in my head called me a liar.

  “Is there something specific about the deal that’s bothering you, or is it just an impression?” I asked Phee, focusing my energy on her question instead of the doubt I couldn’t seem to stifle any longer.

  “Why us, Linc?” she asked. “I’m not trying to undermine our success, but there are far more successful real estate brokers and developers Detwiler could’ve chosen. Why us? I can’t help but think that he has less to lose if he destroys our life, where the heavy hitters would hit back and take him down too.”

  She made an excellent point. The initial investment money should’ve been easy for Detwiler to come up with, so why did he even want partners? He’d said it was to introduce us to people who could change our lives, but there wasn’t anything wrong with our lives. Phee was right about the country club not being our thing. Why invest in something that we wouldn’t enjoy?

  “Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll view the evening’s activities through cynical eyes, and we’ll walk away if we don’t like what we see.”

  “Deal.”

  My phone vibrated on my desk, and our twenty-year-old daughter’s face smiled up at me from the picture I saved as her contact photo. It was a selfie she took of the two of us on graduation day. My heart swelled with pride and love. Kennedy might’ve been an independent young woman living more than two thousand miles away in Chicago, but she still called her old man almost every day.

  “Hey, baby girl,” I said into the phone. “How’d your exams go?”

  “Tell her that her mother loves her too and would like to hear from her sometime also,” Ophelia said loud enough for our daughter to hear her.

  “Put me on speakerphone,” Kennedy said. I heard the humor in her voice.

  “Hello, my baby girl,” Phee said after I pushed the button on my phone. “How are things going? Are you ready to come home for the summer? You haven’t given me a date to buy your plane ticket.” Kennedy was finishing up her second year at the prestigious Loyola University. We couldn’t wait for her to come home.

  “About that,” she said hesitantly. My heart sunk. “I didn’t want to say anything to you until I knew it was a sure thing, but I was offered an amazing opportunity to intern at Wright Creations in D.C. this summer. I’m going to miss you guys like crazy, but I can’t pass up this offer. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.”

  “As in our nation’s capital?” I asked.

  “That’s on the other side of the world,” Ophelia whined.

  “More like the other side of the country, Mom, but I know it feels farther.” Kennedy giggled. “I hear your fingers clicking on the keyboard. Let me guess; you’re looking up Wright Creations online.”

  “Damn right I am,” I replied without shame. “If you’re going to miss your summer with us then I want to make sure the opportunity is as good as you say.” Phee rounded the desk and read the screen over my shoulder.

  I immediately clicked on the “About Us” tab because I didn’t care about their list of clients or their testimonial. I wanted to know about the CEO and what his company stood for. When the page loaded, I was stunned. Two brothers, Grayson and Preston Wright, were the founders. The bios weren’t the typical ones you saw on most corporate sites. Sure, there was the usual data dump about when they began the company and some of the awards that they’d achieved. I knew nothing about marketing, but even I recognized they had achieved a lot in a fairly short period. That wasn’t what stood out to me though. It was the pictures of the men that accompanied the bios. Preston posed beside his wife and two children, as did Grayson with his husband and two children.

  “Oh, honey, this company sounds amazing. Look at all the charities they support,” Phee said.

  “I haven’t met them in person,” Kennedy said, “but I enjoyed talking to them during our Skype interviews. Grayson conducted my interview from his home office while his kids played with their toys on his lap until his husband came and wrangled them out of there. Apparently, they took advantage of Chase’s distraction when he signed for a delivery and let themselves into Gray’s office.”

  It was nearly impossible for me to swallow past the lump in my throat.

  “Daddy, you’re too quiet.”

  “I’m just going to miss you so much,” I said after clearing my throat.

  “Please don’t be upset. I’ll still be home for the family vacation in Cancun. I told the Wrights about our plans, and they wouldn’t dream of making me miss it.”

  Of course I let her think it was her absence that stole my breath and made my heart race. There was no way I could describe to her, or anyone, what I felt at the moment because I didn’t fully grasp it myself.

  “I’m not upset,” I assured her. I could never be that selfish and squash her dreams like that. “When do you move, and where will you be staying?”

  Phee and I listened as our daughter laid out her detailed plan. “I’m going to live it up next week with my friends before I pack up and move to D.C. for the summer.”

  “Live it up?” Phee repeated.

  “Not booze and boys,” Kennedy replied wryly. “I want to spend as much time as I can at Navy Pier. May is perfect weather in Chicago, and you know how much I love the pier. I’m going to miss that Ferris wheel.”

  I did my best to stay engaged in the conversation, but the mention of a Ferris wheel took me back to a place that I tried my damnedest to forget.

  “I don’t know, Linc,” Rush Holden said from beside me. I looked down at him and noticed the difference in our height. I’d hit another growth spurt over the summer and left Rush behind me. “That Ferris wheel looks really high.”

  “I’ll go with you, Rush. It will be okay.”

  “Like the time you taught me how to ride a bike?”

  “Better than that,” I promised him.

  Rush looked over at the guy operating the carnival ride. He looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week, his clothes consisted of dirty jeans and a concert T-shirt from some band that was too small to cover his belly. The man belched loudly and rubbed his stomach with a cigarette-stained hand before he returned Rush’s stare.

  “I changed my mind,” he told me. “Let’s go find something else to ride.”

  “You say this every year when the carnival comes to town,” I reminded him. “Every year you regret not riding it. What happened to you wanting to fly like an eagle?”

  “I know,” he said softly. Rush bit his lip while he looked up at the ride as it whirled in a big circle. He swallowed hard then turned and looked up at me again. His green eyes were wide with excitement and fear. “Let’s do it.” He nodded as if to convince me, but I knew it was really for himself. Then he looked at me with the same determination as when he stole Jules’s bike.

  Excitement flared in my chest at the knowledge that something big was about to happen. I thought it was my reaction to seeing one of Rush’s dreams coming true and happiness that I had a part in it. I just hoped that things went better than the last time I gave in to my urge to make Rush the happiest kid on the planet. It didn’t seem like anyone else cared about making Rush smile, but I did. In fact, I made it my mission to earn one of his beautiful smiles every day. I returned his nod and simply said, “Okay.”

  It seemed like we waited
forever for our turn. The wheel just kept spinning and spinning, never slowing down. I started to think that maybe the thing was broken or something, but then it started to slow down. When it came to a stop, the ride operator unloaded and reloaded one passenger car at a time. We were in the middle of the line, and I expected that Rush would change his mind before we reached the front, but I was wrong.

  Rush was nervous, I could tell by the way he tapped the toe of his right foot while we waited, but he slid into the car when it was our turn, sitting proudly and as tall as he could. He let out a little giggle when we rose high enough for the next car to unload and reload.

  “Oh man,” he said when we reached the very top of the ride. “It’s so beautiful up here.” Rush placed his hand over mine and squeezed before he slid his fingers between mine.

  I glanced around at the majestic Great Smoky Mountains, but they didn’t hold my interest like the boy who sat next to me. I looked down at our joined hands and felt that same fluttering in my stomach that I always got when Rush was near, but it was more intense after he touched me. Not even the roller coaster I rode the previous summer compared to the thrill Rush gave me. I was terrified of feeling that way about another boy but even more scared that it would stop. Rush gasped and clutched his stomach with his free hand when the ride started again, but by the time we circled back up to the top, he’d thrown his head back and delighted laughter shook his body.

  Rush released my hand and threw his arm around my shoulder. Then he leaned into me and said, “Thank you, Linc.”

  My stomach stopped fluttering because it fell to my feet. My heart thumped so loud that I was sure everyone could hear it when Rush looked up at me like I was Superman. I wanted the ride to last forever, but good things never lasted. All too soon, the ride ended. The greasy, gross guy opened the door of our car and looked down at the way Rush still leaned into me. The disgust I saw in his eyes made me feel bad. Dirty, like his clothes.

  “Let’s go,” I said, jerking out of Rush’s embrace and climbing off the ride.