Just A Little Taste (Moments in Maplesville)

by Farrah Rochon

  The sincere regret in her eyes gave Trey hope. If she were sorry for leaving, maybe she would be willing to stick around the next time.

  And the next time. And the next time.

  “So, can we talk about it now?” Trey asked.

  She pulled in a breath so deep that her chest expanded with it. “Yes,” she said, “but I think I’m going to need a drink first.”

  She headed through a square archway, leaving him alone in the tastefully decorated living room. Trey turned around in a slow circle, taking in her home. It was exactly the kind of place he’d expect her to live. Not too cluttered, but not particularly sparse, either.

  He walked over to a six-tier shelf in the corner and studied the framed photographs. There was her high school graduation picture, and one he assumed was from her college graduation. There were several of her standing outside the Catering by Kiera building during different phases of its construction, and then the one with her, Mason and their parents. Kiera must have been about eight or nine years old at the time. Trey remembered it being on her dresser back when they were dating.

  His stomach tightened when he spotted a shiny black rock on the second shelf.

  He picked up the onyx pebble and rubbed it between his fingers. He turned at the sound of approaching footsteps and held the rock up to Kiera.

  “You’ve kept this all this time?”

  She nodded as she handed him a bottle of water. With a delicate shrug, she said, “How could I bring myself to throw it away?”

  “I remember that day,” he said, rolling the cool stone around in his palm. The two of them had been out at Ponderosa Pond, sitting on the tailgate of his dad’s old truck. It was the first time he’d told her he loved her.

  “We need to talk about the other night,” Trey said.

  “I know,” she said. “But not yet.”

  “Kiera—”

  She put up both hands. “Okay, fine. Eventually, yes, we’ll need to talk about the other night and about how I’ve acted like an immature ass by avoiding you for the past five days. I really am sorry about that, Trey. But could we not talk about that right this second? If we do, it will only kill my buzz.”

  He took note of the excited gleam sparkling in her eyes. “What’s got you buzzed?”

  She held her phone up to him. “My recipe was chosen as a finalist! The email came while I was in the kitchen!”

  “Holy shit! Congratulations, Slim!” Trey said, picking her up and spinning her around. He set her down, but didn’t let go of her waist. It felt so damn good to hold her again. “We’ve got to do something to celebrate.”

  Her brows drew together as a hint of distrust entered her eyes. “Exactly what do you mean when you say ‘something.’”

  His grin grew so wide it made his cheeks hurt. “That’s not what I was thinking,” Trey said. “I’ve got something else in mind.”

  ***

  Kiera slurped the last of the creamy root beer float, and frowned at the bottom of her cup. She eyed Trey’s, which was still half full and sitting next to his hip, while his upper body lay stretched out on a mechanic’s creeper underneath a red ’69 Camaro that was hitched up with a hydraulic jack.

  She’d had to laugh when, after buying celebratory floats from Hannah’s Ice Cream Parlor, he’d continued going east to Gauthier and, twenty minutes later had pulled into Decker Anderson’s auto service garage. What girl wouldn’t choose a repair shop that hadn’t been used in years as a place to celebrate?

  But Kiera wasn’t complaining. This place held some of the very best memories from her carefree teenage years.

  Perched on a table in the center of the shop, Kiera crossed her feet at the ankles and swung her legs back and forth. “Are you going to finish your float?” she asked.

  “Yes!” Trey called. “Don’t touch my cup.”

  “Not fair. I’m the one who’s celebrating.”

  He rolled the mechanic’s creeper from underneath the car and looked up at her.

  “You’re also the one who insisted on getting the smallest size because you’re watching your waistline.” He snorted. “As if you’re not skinny enough.”

  “Hey! It’s not my fault I have an accelerated metabolism.”

  “I’m not complaining,” he said. “I like you slim, Slim.”

  “What if I’d packed on an extra thirty pounds over the years, huh? What would you have to say about that?”

  Trey regarded her for several moments. Finally, in a decidedly husky voice, he said, “I would tell you those pounds are perfection on you.”

  A delicious warmth cascaded through her, both at the words he’d spoken and the enticing way he’d said them.

  “You’re just saying that to make up for not sharing your root beer float,” Kiera said in an effort to stave off the heat that was steadily building in the air around them.

  Trey pushed himself up from the cradle of the creeper. “I’m saying that because it is the absolute truth. No other reason.” He handed her his cup. “Drink up. You deserve it.” He hoisted himself up on the table. “Although, come to think of it, I’m celebrating a bit, too.”

  Kiera glanced over at him with a raised brow.

  “I had a really good day out with RJ today,” he explained. “We worked on his school project, and talked about him possibly trying out for band next year.” He let out a soft chuckle. “We even talked about this girl in his class that he sort of likes.”

  “Uh oh. Don’t tell me daddy gave him pointers about women.”

  The smile that traced across his lips was just short of devastating. Goodness, but he was gorgeous.

  “I just told him to be himself. RJ is a pretty cool kid, he doesn’t need to pretend to be anything he’s not,” Trey said. “He’s thinking of asking her to their fall dance.” He ran his hand down his face and let out a sigh. “This stage came way too quickly. I’m not sure if I’m ready to be the father of a kid who dates. I sure as hell won’t be ready to have this conversation with Rachel.”

  “This is so adorable.” She laughed. “And a bit hilarious.”

  “What?”

  “The thought of you, of all people, being an overprotective dad.”

  “Shit. You know what, I’m starting to understand where Mason was coming from. If Rachel ever brought home a guy like me, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “You weren’t so bad.” He sent her a wry look. “Okay, you were bad enough, but you’ve changed.” Kiera nudged him with her elbow. “It looks good on you, you know? Being a dad, especially one who’s so concerned.”

  He shrugged. “They make me want to be better.” He glanced over at the root beer float in her hand. “Damn, that looks good. I knew I should have kept it.”

  Laughing, Kiera handed him the drink.

  He held it up and peered at the nearly empty cup.

  “Thanks a lot.” His dry tone only made her laugh harder. Trey took one sip and tossed the plastic cup into a rusty oil drum. He toed the engine hoist, moving its steel leg back and forth along the roller. “Being here really brings you back, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah. I became pretty familiar with this old place that summer. It’s as muggy as ever, too,” she said, peeling off the shirt she wore unbuttoned over a tank top.

  “That’s because Decker didn’t believe in conventional things like air conditioning. The only reason there’s still electricity is because it’s tied to the house. Corey doesn’t have the heart to close it up yet.” His eyes roamed around the space. “The place is still in pretty good shape. It wouldn’t take much to get it up and running again.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he would give any thought to taking over the garage, but Kiera didn’t want to kill the relaxed mood between them, and she knew if Trey didn’t say the answer she wanted to hear, her mood would be shot to hell.

  He was leaving. She’d come to terms with that over these past five days. He would be done with her truck in less than two weeks, and then he would be gone. />
  She thought the safest course to guard against falling for him again would be to stay away, but she’d already fallen. Staying away from him this week had done nothing but cost her five extra days she could have spent with the man who had always owned her heart. Kiera decided that she would enjoy having him back in her life while she still had him, and deal with whatever heartbreak that followed once he was gone.

  She’d done it before; she could do it again.

  Kiera lifted her shoulders up to her ears and pulled in a deep breath. The air was redolent with fragrant memories from her past. “I won’t lie, Trey, I used to love coming here with you.”

  He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Shaking his head, he said, “That was way too easy, Slim. I’m not even going to touch it.”

  Kiera thought for a moment then slapped his arm. “Stop making everything about sex. It wasn’t all about sex.”

  Trey lolled his head to the side and stared at her, a knowing, amused expression lighting his eyes.

  “Okay, fine,” she conceded. “When I followed you out here to Decker’s, nine times out of ten it was about sex.”

  “Ten times out of ten, Slim. If the old cars in the lot behind this garage could talk...”

  Her cheeks heated with the memories of that summer. How many times had they snuck away while he was working here at Decker’s? Way too many to count. It was the place where she gave him her virginity. And the place where she’d continued to give herself to him over and over and over again, whenever they could steal away the time.

  “It’s a good thing those cars can’t talk,” Kiera mused. “I think Mason would kill you if he ever discovered half the things we used to do here.”

  “God knows he spent enough time looking for a reason to kill me. He’s probably hiring a hit man as we speak.”

  Kiera’s shoulders slumped with her sigh. “I swear, my life would be so much less complicated if the two of you could just get along.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “Why not?” She asked with an earnest plea. “Would it be so hard for two grown men to even pretend to like each other?”

  “Kiera, the hate between your brother and me is not an act,” Trey said. He kicked at the hoist with enough force to send it sailing across the garage floor. “Mason spent that entire summer doing everything he could to show me that I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “It wasn’t just about you. He would have been distrustful of anyone I dated.”

  He gave her that sardonic look again, but this time there was no humor behind it. “Somehow I have a hard time believing he would have objected to you dating Chase Thomas or Desmond Hamilton or one of those other guys who grew up in a big house over on Dogwood Drive.”

  “Yes, he would have,” Kiera insisted.

  Trey’s answer was a grunt.

  “Look, I know Mason can be a bit irrational when it comes to you, but he has always had my best interest at heart, Trey.”

  “Your brother wants to control you. He always has. Shit, that’s the reason you came sniffing after me in the first place. Or don’t you remember?”

  “Of course I remember, and yes, I know that Mason has always been overprotective—”

  “Controlling.”

  “Concerned,” she corrected.

  “Yeah, well, you need to stop allowing your brother to be so concerned about everything that goes on in your life. As far as I can tell, he still thinks he has the right to have an opinion about everything you do.”

  “Look, I’m not giving Mason’s tactics a pass, but the motives behind them have always been pure. And it looks as if he was right to warn me against you, doesn’t it? Just look at how things turned out.”

  Several weighty moments ticked by before Trey’s frustrated voice broke through the silence. “You still think that was my fault, don’t you? That’s the reason you left the other night after we made love, because you still blame me for us breaking up.”

  “Of course I blame you,” Kiera said. She put her hands up. “Leaving you the way I did the other night was childish. I’ll own up to that. It was cowardly and immature, but that’s part of the problem, Trey. When I’m around you I feel like that silly little love struck girl who let you in and had her heart broken.”

  Looking straight ahead at the empty tire racks lining the wall, he said quietly, “You weren’t the only one whose heart was broken back then.”

  Kiera sucked in a shocked breath. “Are you saying I broke your heart? You’re the one who left! You left with zero explanation, just some bullshit about how this wasn’t going to work. The next thing I hear, you’re in Texas.”

  “And you never tried to find out why I left,” he said.

  “Why should I have? I would have looked like a fool running after you after the way you left me.”

  “Why don’t you ask me now, Kiera?” he said, his hushed voice goading her. “Ask me why I left.”

  She scooted off the table and walked over to the shelves littered with tarnished cans and broken tools. She crossed her arms over her chest and said, “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Maybe to you, but I don’t care enough to want to know.”

  “Yes, you do,” Trey said. He walked up alongside her and assumed the pose she held. Staring at the rusty remnants of the place that had been such a meaningful part of their past, he quietly said, “You can’t tell me that it hasn’t bugged you all these years. You want to know why a lowlife like Trey Watson, who should have thanked his lucky stars that a girl like Kiera Coleman would even give him the time of day, had the audacity to just walk away.”

  She swallowed past a lump that had formed in her throat. “You know I never thought of you that way.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  She turned to him and frowned. “Why would you ask me something like that? I never treated you as if you were beneath me, not even once. And I think it’s a shitty thing for you to insinuate that I did.”

  His nonchalant shrug only infuriated her more.

  He reached forward and picked up a couple of corroded lug nuts from among the derelict items strewn across the shelf. He rolled them around in his palm before tossing them back on the shelf. Stuffing his hands in his front pockets, he pivoted on his heel and headed back toward the center of the garage.

  After several awkward moments passed, he finally spoke. “Do you remember the weekend you moved into your college dorm?” He turned, looking at her over his shoulder. “Your mom was supposed to help you move, but you convinced her you could do it on your own? Then I sneaked and helped you instead.”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  “When Mason found out I was the one taking you to school, he went ballistic.”

  “He tended to do that often when it came to anything concerning me and you,” Kiera said.

  “True.” He paused. “Did you know he came to see me that same weekend?”

  “No, he didn’t. He was studying for the LSAT. That’s why he couldn’t drive in from Baton Rouge to help me move.”

  “Yeah, well, he found some time away from his studying once he discovered I was the one bringing you to school.”

  Kiera dropped her face into her palms. “Please don’t tell me you two had a fight I never knew about?”

  “No.” Trey shook his head. “In fact, the smug bastard was gloating. He told me that he’d been waiting for the day you left for school, because it didn’t matter that you were only going to be an hour away, once you got on that campus and had your first taste of college life, you would forget about me.”

  “You know that wasn’t true, Trey. We talked about it before I left for school. Nothing was supposed to change. We’d already made plans—”

  “Yeah, I remember,” he said, cutting her off. “We’d made plans to see each other every weekend. I’d drive out to New Orleans, or you’d come home to Maplesville. The couple no one thought should be together would show everybody just
how much they were meant for each other.”

  His mocking tone made Kiera flinch. “I was serious when I made those plans with you,” she managed to get out past the hurt squeezing her throat. “Apparently, it was all a joke to you.”

  He twisted around to face her. “You think I’m the one who made a joke out of our relationship?” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. After another pause, he continued. “I received several other visits from Mason during those first couple of months after you left for school. He hated—absolutely hated—the fact that we were still together. He tried to order me to leave you alone, as if that had ever worked before. Then he tried to pay me off.”

  Kiera’s eyes slid shut. “God, Mason,” she whispered.

  “But, you know me,” Trey said. “Money has never been all that important to me. But that didn’t stop your brother from trying to use it to get me away from you.”

  “So, are you telling me Mason is the reason we broke up? You let him run you?”

  His brown eyes darkened as he stared at her.

  “Mason vowed to hurt me for touching you from the first minute he found out we were together. Do you think I would let him run me?” He shook his head. “Mason wasn’t the one who ran me away, Slim. You were.”

  “Me?”

  “You were the only person who could make me leave.”

  “That is the biggest load of bull—”

  “You remember the weekend of your nineteenth birthday?” he asked.

  “You mean my nineteenth birthday when I was sick and waited all day for my loving boyfriend to call and wish me a happy birthday?” Kiera bit out through clenched teeth, her body practically vibrating with anger. “I didn’t hear from you until the next day, when you called to tell me you’d taken the job at that auto body shop in Houston, a job you told me that you weren’t going to take,” she said, unable to hide the hurt from her voice.

  “You were supposed to come home your birthday weekend,” Trey said. The calmness in his tone grated on her nerves. He was acting as though this wasn’t one of the most traumatic events of her life.