by Stacey Keith
Now Ryan was looking at her strangely, as though he could read her thoughts.
“I’m getting hungry,” she said. “Can we eat now?”
They found their restaurant and went inside, but something had changed between them. It annoyed her that Ryan automatically labeled Brandon bad news without considering the bigger picture. And it really stuck in her craw that Ryan thought she was too innocent to look out for herself.
She ordered her favorite dishes—filet of sole in butter-lemon sauce, boiled potatoes with parsley, and for dessert, a scoop of chocolate mint ice cream. Their table was in front of an enormous picture window that gave onto the river. Dozens of boats bursting with partygoers sailed by. She found herself wondering how many of them were pretending to enjoy themselves, too.
On the drive home, April clicked on the radio and tuned it to a station that played old country songs. Ryan talked about hunting with his cousins from Louisiana and April made all the appropriate listening sounds. She was so busy listening, she didn’t even notice that they were idling in front of her house until they’d been there a few minutes.
Ryan shifted into park and gave her a gentle smile. “Did you have a good time tonight?”
She knew what she was supposed to say and made herself say it. “Yes, and thank you for dinner.”
He leaned across the seat and kissed her. His lips were warm and the kiss wasn’t unpleasant. But…nothing. All she felt was the same old familiar impulse to jump out of the car.
“I like kissing you, April,” he said. “I like a lot of things about you.”
April flashed him what she knew to be a tepid smile. Without even kissing Brandon, she knew it wouldn’t have been like that. Brandon’s kisses would make her knees weak. They would have scored her open and left her raw and quivering. She wouldn’t be thinking about getting out of the car. She’d be trying to wrestle him into the backseat.
“Look,” Ryan said. “I’m not going to ask to go inside, even though I want to. It wouldn’t be right.”
Thank goodness for that. It was the way he said it, though, that made her curious. “What do you mean it wouldn’t be right?”
“You know.” Ryan made a visible effort to find the right words. “You’re a good girl, April. You’re not like that.”
She had a vaguely uneasy feeling. “Like what?”
Ryan gave her a sheepish grin. “You’ve never…” He waved his hand around vaguely. “You know.”
The shock hit her at once, square in the middle, like a scream that couldn’t get out. At first, she thought Brandon had told everyone, but gossiping didn’t seem to be his style.
“Who said that?” she asked.
Ryan passed one hand over his head. He’d been doing that a lot tonight. “It’s just general knowledge, I guess. Everyone knows. You’re not upset, are you?”
Upset. She felt violated. Suddenly, it all made sense—the repeated attempts to fix her up. Jacey insisting all April needed was a boyfriend. Her most personal secret was out there, hanging on the laundry line like a padded bra or crotchless panties, for everyone to gawk at.
“I have to go.” She shoved open the heavy door.
“Hey!” Ryan said. “Don’t be mad. Let’s talk about it.”
“I just need to be alone right now. Please. We can talk about it later.” April hurried up the walkway toward her house.
“You’re acting like it’s a bad thing,” he called to her. “But you’ve got it all wrong. I respect you for waiting.”
Respect, she thought, blinking back tears of humiliation. To hell with respect. Did he really think that women who hadn’t had sex were more valuable than women who had?
I’m not a virgin to earn your respect. It has nothing to do with you.
She fumbled her way inside and leaned shakily against the door.
How would she ever look anybody in the eye after this?
* * * *
“Think you can fix it?” Long Jon peered at what was left of his Harley Softail. He tossed his bent carburetor on a sad stack of other twisted metal. “I know there ain’t a lot left to work with.”
Brandon shook his head. “How the hell did you walk away from this?”
“Flew right over the handlebars,” Long Jon told him. “If I hadn’t landed on the grass instead of the asphalt, they’d still be scraping chunks of me off the parking lot.”
It was hard not to wince. Long Jon was an experienced rider, too. But all he had was a piece of gauze on the left temple of his weather-beaten face and some new scabs on both arms from the road rash. With the big muscles and scary tattoos, they just made him look like more of a terrorist.
“I can’t believe you laid it down in a parking lot,” Brandon said. “That’s sad.”
“You’re tellin’ me. Goddamn cement thingymajiggers. I never see them.”
“Parking blocks?”
“Hit one dead on.”
Brandon studied the bent rims and dented muffler. “Even with the friends and family discount, it’s going to cost you a lot to fix it.”
“No problem,” Long Jon said. “I’ll just stay with you until it’s done.”
Brandon scowled at him. “Christ. All you’re gonna do is drink my beer.”
“You’re damn straight I will,” Long Jon said, grabbing a can of Miller out of the refrigerator. “There’s some guy in town, I hear, who might have good used parts. Think his name is Dick or Don or…no, it’s Doak. Doak Roby.”
Roby. Brandon hid his smile. No getting away from that name in Cuervo, was there? It seemed like the harder he tried to not think about April, the faster those thoughts came flying at him. He’d even dreamed about her last night. Called her name.
“Let’s see what I can do before we start scrounging around for parts,” Brandon said.
“It’s good to know the best goddamn mechanic in Texas.” With his beer hand, Long Jon gestured toward the half-dozen disassembled motorcycles in the garage. “Looks like business has picked up quite a bit.”
Brandon rifled through his tool chest for something to pry off that stuck rotor bolt. He’d never worked harder in his life than he had these past few days. Instead of saying no to bikers who came to him looking for repairs, he now said yes.
April wasn’t getting Matthew without a fight. They’d skip town if they had to. He’d take his brother down to Mexico before handing him over to some asshole foster family. Matthew would have to give up motocross though, and that would be one big suck sandwich.
“I hear Doc’s looking for someone to do a little freelance work,” Long Jon said casually.
Brandon scooted under the bike and assessed damage to the generator. “Doc’s an asshole.”
“That mean you’re not interested?”
Interested in getting hauled back to prison and Matthew being sent off to foster care? Brandon missed the days when he had no worries.
“Knock yourself out,” Brandon said. “It’s only ten to twenty upstate. No big deal.”
Long Jon propped up an aluminum lawn chair and then sat in it with his legs crossed at the ankle. If Brandon knew anyone he considered a real friend, it was Long Jon, but a man had to decide for himself what was right.
“You’ve changed,” Long Jon said. “Time was, you would’ve jumped on that bank job. Now, not so much.”
“I have my own shit to deal with,” Brandon muttered. Part of that shit was trying to purge himself of April. He kept seeing her face when she’d found him lurking on her front porch. He kept thinking about what she must look like naked.
But it was more than that. Something about her pulled him in and made him stupid. Doc kind of stupid.
“I know you miss the old days,” Long Jon said. “Hell, I miss the old days. But things change. You got a house now and Matthew to look after.”
“I’m doing a shitty job of it,�
� Brandon admitted. He examined the compression damping, which helped the suspension absorb road shocks when the wheels moved upward in the stroke. Long Jon’s was completely blown. “I don’t cook and the kid rarely gets a decent meal, especially these days.”
“All these women come through here and not a one of ‘em can make you dinner?” Long Jon chuckled. “Guess you ain’t bringin’ ‘em home for their domestic skills.”
April probably cooked. Brandon remembered her piano with the sheet music and her hand-painted coffee cans with the pretty flowers in them. April was a hopeless nester. Since when had he been attracted to a woman with a smiley-face sticker on her mailbox?
Matthew’s dirt bike revved in the distance, which reminded Brandon that he needed to talk to the kid. He got up and wiped his hands on a shop rag. “Gimme a minute.”
Long Jon saluted him with the beer. “I’ll be here keeping the dirty side down.”
Brandon headed out across the field behind his house. There was an area next to the tree line where Matthew practiced jumps. As far as Brandon could tell, the land didn’t belong to Farmer Bill, but it always worried him, just like everything else did these days.
When he spotted Matthew fishtailing out of a turn, all he could think was how happy the kid seemed, and here he was, Matthew’s own brother, ready to shit all over everything. Brandon and his biker buddies had gotten together to build Matthew a makeshift track with hills and ramps. Matthew barely left it long enough to eat.
Now Matthew would have to go to school, and there wasn’t a damn thing either of them could do about it.
Brandon signaled to Matthew, who laid down the bike and ambled over. The kid must have known something was up because he crossed his arms in front of him and scowled.
“You gotta go to school,” Brandon told him. “There’s only two months left, I think. But you gotta start.”
“I knew it,” Matthew said. “As soon as that social welfare lady came around, I knew you’d roll over.”
Brandon’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t roll over.”
“Yes, you did. You want to bang her. So screw the fact that I hate school.”
He’d had no idea it was that obvious. Well, no point getting mad at the kid for telling the truth. But that wasn’t the real reason, of course. “If you don’t go to school, they’re going to take you away.”
“You hated school just as much as I do. How come I have to go and you didn’t?”
Brandon felt bad enough telling Matthew he’d have to go sit inside four screaming walls, eight hours a day, five days a week. But there was no way Brandon was going to admit the truth: only fuckups like him barely made it through school. And Matthew wasn’t a fuckup.
“Do you want to end up in juvie?” Brandon said. “Or big boy jail when you’re eighteen?”
Matthew stared at the ground.
“Exactly,” Brandon said. “You’re going to school again, starting tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
Brandon suppressed an urge to choke the kid. “Okay, Monday.”
Matthew’s mouth turned down at the corners, which only made Brandon feel like more of a dick. “Look, let’s play this out and see where it goes,” he told his brother. “If you make enough noise on the circuit, maybe we could afford to get you a tutor or something instead of school.”
“I won’t have any time to ride now,” Matthew said. “You’re taking away the one thing that I care about.”
Fuck.
Didn’t the kid know what kinds of sacrifices were being made for him? Brandon had pretty much hung up his spurs for this—the house in the country, the practice track, the cable bill. All so Matthew could get the leg up he needed to live a better life, one without grease under his fingernails.
Now Matthew hated him for laying down the law. For being the heavy.
It was just another way Brandon felt he was screwing this up. Another way he was failing his brother.
Chapter 7
“April, you’re making too big a deal out of this,” Jacey said as they walked past the shops on Main Street. “Nobody cares that you’re a virgin.”
Easy for you to say, April fretted. Even now, humiliation squirmed inside her stomach. This must have been what Cassidy felt years ago when the whole town discovered that she was pregnant. Except that April wasn’t being judged for having sex, just for refusing it.
You couldn’t win with people. Not if you were female, and especially if you were a Roby. April knew what folks were saying: poor little April. Her sisters married up, you know. But that girl’s such a lost cause, she’s still a virgin.
April signed a bunch of swear words that made Jacey laugh.
“I know you feel like…” Jacey swerved to avoid stepping in a pile of dog poo that Alice Connors’ dog, Schnoodles, must have left. Alice was notorious for not picking up after her animals. “Well, a big pile of that. But the truth is people are too self-absorbed to care what you do.”
Maybe so, but April still wanted to punch someone in the face. When did not having sex become a source of secret shame? Not so long ago, women were supposed to be virgins. Now, people saw it as a disease you had to be cured of. Even Jacey had known, but was too weirded out to say anything.
Sure enough, there was Alice Connors smoking a cigarette in front of Ed’s Hardware. Schnoodles sniffed the sidewalk around her feet. April knew better than to say anything about the dog poo, because Alice was a yell first and refuse to apologize later type of person. One time, she actually put a sack of poo on the mayor’s doorstep. She was mad about not being chosen as a judge in the pie-eating contest. He’d stepped in it, too.
Jacey paused in front of a store window. “Oooooh. Maxine’s is having a sale.”
April crowded next to Jacey so she could see. Two faceless silver mannequins wearing pleated shorts and nubby macramé tops looked as though they’d been frozen in the act of being glamorous. Maxine had good stuff. Everyone in Cuervo waited for these sales.
Suddenly, Jacey spun and grabbed April by the shoulders. “We’re going to buy you new clothes!”
“What?” April said, flustered. “No, we’re not.”
“But there’s a sale. Refusing to buy clothes when there’s a sale is against the girl code.”
April stared inside the store window again. Past the mannequins she saw Maxine hanging sequined cocktail dresses on a garment rack. Maxine had grown up with April’s mother, Priscilla, and although Maxine made spandex, animal prints and teased hair her own fashion statement, she had a good eye and an even bigger heart.
Clearly sensing April’s hesitation, Jacey said, “Come on. Let’s give the losers in this town something to talk about.”
April followed her inside. There were a lot of hip retro styles and paisley and the entire store smelled like fabric sizing. Jacey marched right up to Maxine and told her what they were looking for.
“What fun! I’ve always thought you had such an adorable little figure,” Maxine gushed to April. “Why on earth don’t you show it off?”
“I tell her the same thing,” Jacey complained. “She never listens.”
“Just don’t give me anything that screams leave a twenty on the dresser.” April avoided the scary price tags. She thought about the blond woman Brandon had left the bar with. Did she shop here?
“I’m texting Priscilla now,” Jacey said. Tucking one leg beneath her, she sat on an orange couch. “After all, she’s the one who’s been pushing you to do this.”
Maxine clapped her hands together. “Your mama’s gonna love how pretty you look.”
April stifled an urge to scream.
“Let’s start with foundations.” Maxine herded her over to the wall where all the pretty bras and panties were. “Can’t build a good house without a firm foundation now, can we?”
Maxine must have said that a thousand times wh
en April was growing up. She held still while Maxine lassoed her with a measuring tape and then turned around to sort through a stack of bras. April thought the bras were too fancy for every day, but kept her mouth shut because all she knew about fashion was that she didn’t have any.
“Beige, white or pink?” Maxine asked her.
“You can’t ask April questions like that,” Jacey said from the couch. “She’ll take the pink.”
“I’m standing right here,” April said, annoyed.
Jacey’s thumbs flew over her smartphone keyboard. “She’s not allowed to get anything beige. Or khaki.”
“What’s wrong with khaki?” April asked. “It goes with all kinds of…stuff.” Her gaze went to the couture racks with all the gauzy summer pastels. Was she the only person who thought uniforms were a sensible career choice?
While Maxine whipped through another stack of bras, April checked out a pair of cute capri pants with a little bit of bling on the back pocket. She wondered if they were the sort of thing a person might wear on the back of a motorcycle. Then she realized why she’d thought it and felt herself blush right up to her roots of her hair.
But maybe this could be a new beginning for her. An upgrade. April Roby, 2.0. Maybe this new April wouldn’t overanalyze everything or worry what other people thought. She pictured herself all sassy and confident like other girls. A bit of a stretch but…
“Your mother’s on the way,” Jacey announced, waving her phone at April. “She says not to make any important decisions until she gets here.”
“Well then, we’re gonna have ourselves a party,” Maxine said, collecting outfits and draping them over one arm. “By the time you leave here, April honey, there won’t be a man in Cuervo who’ll be able to keep his eyes off you.”
“There might be one man in particular,” Jacey teased. “Tall? Wears a badge? Rhymes with cryin’?”
The bell above the door jangled and Priscilla Roby rushed inside. She’d obviously hurried to get there. Her hair, teased high like Maxine’s elaborate burgundy coif, had hairclips dangling from two spit curls, one on either side of her face, which meant she’d just bolted out of Hairitage beauty salon on Main.