by Cora Brent
“Great.” I bobbed my head. “Yup, just great. One of the girls on my floor jumped off the balcony and now she has to go home to Portland. Oh, and my ex-husband is enrolled as a freshman. He lives upstairs.”
Antha and Dhaval exchanged a look. They’d been married for three years and I couldn’t think of a more perfectly matched couple. They were equal partners in everything they did and sometimes I swore they were capable of communicating telepathically.
“That’s unfortunate,” Dhaval said in a kindly tone. “I hope things improve soon.” He pointed to my plate. “Sugar always makes the day better though. Give it a try.”
I picked up my scone and took a bite, welcoming the sweet taste with a hint of lemon. Suddenly I did feel a little better.
“Hon,” Antha said, addressing her husband. “I think the dough for the latest batch of cinnamon rolls has probably risen.”
“I’ll check on it right now,” Dhaval said quickly as he started for the kitchen. “See you later, Cecily.”
“Bye.” I waved and then took another greedy bite of the scone. “So how’s the baby?” I asked Antha.
She’s smiled. “He’s perfect. He’s starting to crawl. You should come over this weekend and see him. But stop trying to deflect. We were talking about Bran.”
I sighed and pushed my plate away. Sadly, there wasn’t a scone on earth capable of eclipsing the image of Bran Hickey’s smile.
“Do you still hate him?” Antha asked quietly. “It’s understandable if you do.”
“I don’t know. No. Maybe I never hated him. I was hurt and furious and there were moments when I might have whacked him over the head with a baseball bat if I had one handy but I’d already figured out that we were just two incompatible idiots playing at adulthood. So no, I don’t hate him, but I don’t exactly forgive him either.” I paused, feeling an ancient ache in my chest. “I loved him, Antha. I know we weren’t together that long. I know we didn’t have a real marriage, not like you and Dhav. But it still hurt in the end.”
“I know it did,” my best friend said. She did know, better than anyone. Antha was the one who dropped everything and flew out to Ohio to help me pack up. Antha was the one who would call me every single night for months and desperately try to make me laugh during a time when I huddled in a strange city and dropped an alarming amount of weight.
Sometimes I forgot how much I had once adored Bran, how I used to crave the sound of his laugh or trace pictures on his chest with my fingertip as we sprawled in bed after a marathon round of sex. Bran had been my first lover. Before he touched me I didn’t even know what passion was. Then in less than a calendar year I went from graduating high school without ever having had a real boyfriend, to being swept off my feet by the local hero, to exchanging wedding rings, and finally enduring a painful divorce.
“You don’t owe him anything,” Antha pointed out. “Not a god damn thing. It doesn’t matter what he expects or whether he has hidden motives for showing up in your life. You owe him nothing.”
“You’re right, I don’t,” I agreed. “But I can’t just pretend he isn’t around. Sooner or later we’ll run into each other in the laundry room. Why should I always be looking over my shoulder in fear of his hulking shadow? Maybe it would feel good to tell him off after this time.”
“Maybe it would.”
“Cathartic, you know?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve always wanted to call him an egotistical duplicitous douchebag with bad hair.”
“Bad hair?” She frowned. “I don’t remember Bran as having bad hair.”
“No, he totally didn’t but he was vain as hell about his hair. Therefore the insult would really cut.”
Antha snorted. “Then it’s perfect.”
“Hmmm.” I sipped my green tea. “It’s very short now, his hair. Military style I guess.”
Antha watched me. “And how did the rest of him look?”
I put my cup down and made a face. “Gorgeous. Intense. Excessively masculine.”
“Sounds like Bran.” Antha grew thoughtful. “You know, sometimes I wonder if I neglected my best friend duties all those years ago. I knew how devastated you were when your dad ran off and took your college money. And I knew you never wanted to stay in Hickeyville.”
A sour taste entered my mouth over the recollection of a betrayal even crueler than Bran’s. “Yeah, I haven’t had great luck with the men in my life.”
Antha winced. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pile on. But then when you got together with Bran I remember thinking, holy shit, sometimes the fairy tale really does happen.”
“The king of high school falls for the introverted artist,” I said wryly. “No one’s ever heard that story before.”
Antha cocked her head. “When you said you were going to marry him it didn’t occur to me to try to talk you out of it. It should have occurred to me.”
“No one tried,” I said, shrugging. “Our parents didn’t even try. My mother seemed almost relieved, like she thought having Bran might make up for what my father had done. Anyway, I doubt anyone could have talked us out of anything. We thought we knew what we wanted. We didn’t know shit.”
Antha reached over and squeezed my hand. She didn’t say anything. It was good to know she was there though.
I didn’t stay for too much longer because I had a financial modeling class to get to. As I sat in the lecture hall listening the graying professor try to make capital expenditure schedules sound interesting I found it impossible to focus. Even under ideal circumstances it was a struggle to care about capital expenditure schedules and I’d been feeling less than ideal for the last forty-eight hours.
I left class early and idled on the busy quad as twilight approached. It was still hot. The heat would linger for hours after the sun set. Yet there was a hint of mugginess in the air and thunderhead clouds were forming in the west so it was possible one of the brief, violent monsoon storms would cool things off.
If I closed my eyes I could imagine I was in a greener place a thousand miles away, where early September nights were often still humid as summer wheezed its last gasps before surrendering to a new season. I could imagine lying on an old wool blanket and reveling in the feeling that something vital was being awakened inside of me by a boy I’d watched forever yet never dreamed of having.
“I’m saving that, Cess.”
Yes, I remembered it all.
Everything.
I wondered if he did too.
CHAPTER FIVE
Branson
She never was on the hunt for attention and that might be why I noticed her. In those days there were always girls all round me, clamoring and competing and reaching out with their need to be acknowledged.
Yet Cecily Barnett barely glanced in my direction. She didn’t have a whole crowd of friends, wore little makeup and dressed in clothes that didn’t show much skin. Her most striking feature was the honey-colored hair she wore long and loose. She took honors classes and spent her lunch hours in the art room, a fact I knew only because Kayla Watts used to drag me in there sometimes and force me admire whatever weird ceramic cat thing she’d made lately.
The only gossip I’d ever heard about Cecily was that she’d smacked Todd Besten for snapping her bra strap during a pep rally and she earned a week’s detention for turning in a sketch of an obscene gesture on a geometry quiz in Mr. Craven’s class. She probably felt vindicated when Mr. Craven was fired soon after for hiding in a stall in the girls’ bathroom.
If she’d ever given me a hint that she was interested I would have made a move on her but as high school drifted to a close I wasn’t exactly lacking for company.
Things were shitty at home but I was used to that. After my brother died my parents split up. My mother didn’t try very hard to get me to move to Denver with her. I wouldn’t have gone even if she’d begged. Neither of my folks were involved parents but somehow I always blamed my mother a little more for brushing off Caden’s wild, reckless behavior
that lead to his death. My father was slightly easier to forgive because he was so baffled and destroyed. I didn’t object when he took up with Nell. Even when he shoved a ring on her finger and she moved into our house with her bitchy daughter I didn’t have anything to say about it because I wasn’t planning on sticking around for long.
All I needed to do was go through the motions until graduation and I could leave Hickeyville and its bad memories behind. In the meantime, I had football, a scholarship offer at Michigan State and I could fuck just about any local girl I wanted.
I heard it said once that the disasters occur when they are least expected and that was true in my case. The course of my life changed on an ordinary Friday night.
I was in the passenger seat of Becker Purdy’s truck and feeling pretty good after downing some beers and getting a satisfactory blow job off Elena Barnes at a spring bonfire party out by the reservoir.
Becker was telling some filthy tall tales about a pair of sophomore cheerleaders and paying little attention to the road when he suddenly screamed like a girl and cut the wheel a hundred and eighty degrees. The driver of the oncoming delivery truck blared his horn and we missed colliding by inches, instead careening off the road and right into a buckeye tree. My side bore the brunt of the impact and that was it for Becker’s truck and my right knee. I endured two surgeries, months of physical therapy and a guarantee that I’d never play football again.
My scholarship was lost but my dad would have scraped together the money for college anyway. I just couldn’t bring myself to accept that kind of help from him. Plus, the idea of higher education kind of lost its appeal without any sports glory to go with it. I moved out of my bedroom and into the dusty apartment over the garage. I drank a lot. I fucked a lot. I agreed to take a job down at my dad’s car dealership because I had to do something after graduation.
Meanwhile, Hickeyville was continuing to hollow out in the months following my high school graduation. Everyone in my class who had somewhere else to go was leaving.
Then Becker Purdy made a passing remark that he’d seen Cecily Barnett working at Berto’s, the lone Mexican restaurant in town. Becker was only talking about Cecily because he was a pig and had something dirty to say about her tits. To get him to shut up I elbowed him sharply in the chest and pretended it was an accident. Yet for the rest of the night I kept thinking about the girl who’d caught my eye a long time ago.
The next day I came into work early because I knew it would please my dad and keep him from complaining when I took a long lunch.
Cecily was wiping down tables when I walked into Berto’s just as an elderly couple was leaving. There wasn’t anyone at the hostess desk and Cecily didn’t notice me even after I cleared my throat so I wandered over to the empty bar and took a seat on a worn wooden stool.
Then she did look up, straight at me. She was wearing a white peasant-style blouse and a long, brightly colored skirt that swayed gently with every move she made. She looked good, damn good.
“Hi there, Cecily,” I said, because she was still just staring at me.
“Bran,” she managed to say. “Hi. I’ve never seen you in here before.”
“That’s because I haven’t been here in a long time.” I pulled a stool out. “Why don’t you sit down with me?”
She twisted a towel in her hands. “Um, I’m working.”
I took a pointed look around. “Seems like I’m your only customer.”
Cecily crossed her arms and frowned slightly. “You know, you’re really not allowed to sit at the bar. If Berto comes out here he’ll know you’re not twenty one.”
“How will he know that?”
“Because everyone knows you.”
I leaned in her direction and winked conspiratorially. “Then don’t tell on me, Cess.”
She bit the corner of her lip and took a tiny notebook out of a pocket in her skirt. She was flustered, blushing. I loved that. I wanted to find out what else would make her blush.
“So what’ll you have?” she asked, staring down at her notebook.
“You serve hamburgers here?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll take a beef burrito. And a few minutes of your company.”
Cecily disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a minute later, fussed over pouring me a glass of water and setting out a bowl of chips before quickly scurrying away once more. When she reappeared with my food I tried again.
“I thought you would have taken off by now,” I said. “Weren’t you supposed to be going to some art school in Chicago?”
She stiffened. “Weren’t you supposed to be running around on a football field in Michigan, chasing the Heisman trophy?”
I was a little startled by her tone but before I could figure out what I’d done wrong she sighed and plunked down on the bar stool beside me.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Bran. I didn’t mean to snap at you. Yeah, I did have a scholarship at an art school in Chicago. But it wasn’t enough to cover everything, even with some pretty hefty student loans, and six months ago my father skipped out on my mother, taking the contents of my college account with him.”
I felt like an ass. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
She touched the tile pattern on the bar. “All those years of saving and he took it just like that because his mistress in Akron needs designer shoes or something. My mom found out when she happened to open a bank statement, which she never does. She screamed at him and he took off in his old Bronco without explaining a thing. A week later I received a Cleveland Indians postcard that said ‘Sorry’ with a not very convincing sad face. He signed it ‘Dad loves you’.” She shook her head and hissed. “Such bullshit. I set fire to it with a kitchen match and watched it burn in the sink.”
I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to interrupt her anyway. I liked listening to her talk.
Cecily took a tortilla chip from the bowl but then just kind of rolled it around in her fingers without eating it. “My mom keeps bugging me to enroll at community college but it’s twenty miles away and the bus stopped running through Hickeyville some time back. So I’m here. I’m lucky to have a job I guess but Berto’s an old friend of my mother’s. At least when I’m busy running back and forth to the kitchen with hot plates balanced in my hands I’m not thinking about things.” She looked toward the door with a troubled expression. “God knows I never planned to be stuck in Hickeyville.”
I nodded. “Believe me, I get it. I didn’t plan on working for my dad. It’s not a dream come true to sit in a car showroom all day so I can pounce on the next sucker who walks through the door.”
Cecily focused on me suddenly and her eyes widened. “Damn, I’ve just totally unloaded on you with my entire sob story. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t usually talk this much.”
I grinned. “I know. You’ve said more to me in the last three minutes than you have in the last decade.”
She groaned and covered her eyes. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here crying on Bran Hickey’s shoulder.”
I nudged her. “Cry away if you want. It’s a good shoulder.”
Her hand dropped away and we locked eyes. “It is a good shoulder,” she agreed and the way she looked at me got me feeling bold enough to risk brushing my fingers across her knee.
When she shivered at my touch and didn’t move away my dick got so hard I had to shift in my seat. I wondered if she was a virgin. I wondered if she was looking to alter that status in the near future.
Suddenly Berto emerged and Cecily hopped right off the bar stool. The owner eyed me sitting there at the bar but he said nothing.
“What time do you get off tonight?” I asked as Cecily started to move away.
She hesitated. “Eight.”
“Good. I’ll be waiting for you in the parking lot.”
She looked at me doubtfully but she didn’t tell me not to come. Maybe she figured I was messing with her and that she shouldn’t take me at my word.
&nbs
p; She was wrong.
I was standing beside my truck when Cecily Barnett walked outside at eight fifteen.
She stopped cold when she saw me and then broke into a happy smile that ignited something strange and different in my chest. I held the passenger door open for her and then drove thirty miles to Marlboro because there wasn’t much entertainment in Hickeyville. Since I insisted that she pick the movie I found myself suffering through a cotton candy chick flick and then decided it wasn’t half bad. Afterwards we sat in a coffee shop and talked like we’d always been great friends. We traded stories and gossip about the people we’d grown up with.
Cecily was smart and she had a biting wit that shined through at unexpected moments. I found myself doing more than staring at her lips and wondering what they’d feel like. I actually liked hearing everything she had to say and I already knew I wouldn’t try to get her naked, not tonight anyway.
We kissed good night at her front door. I’d kissed scores of girls since I was thirteen but kissing Cecily was different. She seemed to melt right into me and I got a little too hungry, pressing myself against her until she could feel how much I wanted more. I moved down her neck, kissing and sucking and when I realized how much she liked it I sucked harder, leaving a mark intentionally. Then I stopped because I was about to do something really nasty and I didn’t want to be nasty, not with her.
“See you tomorrow, baby,” I whispered before I tipped her chin up and looked soulfully into her eyes. I was pretty good at reading girls but I wanted to know more than just the easy things when it came to Cecily. She had the power to surprise me and I liked being surprised. There was a sweet, reserved quality to her but she was also nobody’s fool. Cecily could hold her own and I respected her for that.
“Will you?” she challenged me and I could see a little bit of stubbornness in her gaze. She was wary of me, unsure. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. I knew my own reputation.
“Absolutely,” I promised and kissed her on the forehead. Then I had to turn around and leave or I’d be tempted to go further than I should. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted this girl to trust me.