by Ryann Jansen
“Yeah, how’d you manage to snag him?” Josie asked, laughing. “Caleb’s notorious for staying single.” She bumped her sister’s shoulder. “Many have tried. Many have failed.”
Caroline made a face at her. “Bite me.” She said.
It was hard to say if I had Caleb. Maybe I did, though I was still mystified as to why he would like me. But the electricity between us was undeniable. Just thinking about him made my heart beat speed up. These girls didn’t need to know that, though.
“We’re just good friends.” I told them. That was diplomatic enough. They all three stared at me, and it seemed as if they wanted to say something else, but nobody made a peep.
“You want a bottle of water or something, Audrey?” Natalie asked, taking the conversation away from my love life. I was beginning to really like this girl.
I looked where she was pointing, behind Josie on the lower bleacher. They had a little cooler filled with water and a sack filled with packs of sunflower seeds. I nodded.
“Sure, it is getting kind of warm out here. Thanks.” Caroline handed me the bottle, and I took a long sip, realizing I was actually pretty thirsty.
“You guys come prepared, huh?”
“Yeah.” Natalie laughed. “The guys are usually dying of thirst when they’re done with practice.” She rolled her eyes when she said the words, but she grinned, showcasing deep dimples in both cheeks.
“Look, Audrey, Caleb’s up to bat.” Josie nudged my shoulder and pointed toward the field. Caleb was striding to the plate, bat in hand. He looked incredible, with the sun shining onto his already tan arms and the muscles in them even more prominent as he clutched the bat.
This little idea to attend baseball practice was not so bad at all.
...
“That was awesome!” Caleb said for the seven hundredth time at supper that night. He was like a three year old, practically bouncing up and down in his seat. He had hit two homeruns in a row at practice, and he couldn’t quit talking about it. It wasn’t irritating, though. Listening to his voice made me feel protected and removed from anything stressful.
“Tell me how you knew the first one was going to go again.” I said, leaning back against my chair and watching him. The crinkles at the side of his eyes matched the ones in Anna’s face. Hers were out in full force, too, as she listened with pride.
When Caleb was finished with his story, Anna stood up and began gathering the dishes. I scooted back my chair and grabbed them before she could get too many in her hands. I wanted to help her out, and I knew I had to act fast.
“I’ll do this tonight. Why don’t you go sit down and relax?” Maybe my smile would convince her. Anna didn’t like others to help her too much, that I had already figured out.
Caleb jumped out of his seat. “I’ll help Audrey, too. We’ll get the dishes, you go do something fun. You know, read a book or something. You’re always saying you don’t have time to read anymore, and I got you that Kindle for Christmas. Go use it.” He tried to shoo her off but she looked at us like we had blocks for heads.
“Are you two okay? Well, not so much you, Audrey, you help quite a bit.” She turned to Caleb. “Do you have a fever? Come here and let me feel your head.” She stood straight and wrinkled her forehead. I had to suppress a giggle at sweet Anna trying to look stern. My heart swelled. This home was so much fun, full of so much love. As much as I would have hated to admit it only a couple weeks earlier, I was lucky to be here.
Caleb looked at her, his eyes stretched wide. “Who me? I’m not sick. I’m fine. I want to help.”
“You want to help like you want a pet pig.” Anna said. The laughter would not be controlled at that point.
The chair provided my balance as I crouched on the floor laughing so hard tears were rolling down my cheeks. Caleb walked over and pulled me up.
“Very funny. Ha. Ha.” But he wore a smile on his handsome face. “Seriously, Mom, you work too hard around this place. Having Audrey here…I see how much you do, stuff that I guess I kind of took for granted before. I want to help you. Go rest.”
Anna walked over to him and touched his face with the palm of her hand. “You are a good boy, son. I am so very lucky.” Then she turned to me. “And you are very quickly becoming the daughter I never had, Miss Audrey.”
Warmth surged through me. I inhaled, never wanting this moment to pass. “Thanks.” Happiness coursed through my veins.
Anna was on the staircase then. “I think I’ll head upstairs and take a nice long bubble bath. With my Kindle.” She winked at Caleb.
“Yeah, don’t drop that thing in the water.” He called after her. He trained his gaze on me then, his hands hitched in his pockets. The button down he’d put on when we got home floated around his body just right. I would have loved nothing more than to bury myself in his arms, taking comfort cradling my head against that strong chest.
“Let’s do it.” He said.
“Huh?” My breath caught in my throat and I had to grip the chair.
Caleb raised his eyebrows and tilted his head. “The dishes, Audrey. Let’s do the dishes.”
I relaxed. “Right. Dishes.”
The two of us cleared the kitchen table and threw the leftovers into the garbage. Then I got to work filling the sink with warm sudsy water as Caleb stacked plates and cups along the counter beside me. When the sink was full, I picked up the first dish and began cleaning it. Caleb stood beside me, ready to rinse and dry.
Instead of feeling suffocated by the silence, like I had so many times before, this time it calmed me. It felt natural. Scrub, rinse, dry, repeat. Over and over in an easy cycle. There was a window in front of the sink, facing into the backyard, and Anna had turned the floodlights on. The catfish pond was so still it looked as if you could walk on it. I rubbed my neck as memories of Caleb holding me scorched my brain. I couldn’t even look at the swing set. When I realized I had just covered my throat with suds, I started to wipe them off. Before I could, Caleb was behind me with the dish towel, running it delicately over my skin.
“What would you think about meeting at the pond tonight?” His quiet breath tickled. “After Mom goes to sleep.”
Electricity jolted through my body, lightning bolts scorching my face and blinding me. “Sounds like something I might be interested in.”
“Might be?”
“Mmmhmm.” He was still behind me, his body only centimeters from mine. So close, yet so far away.
“Okay. Well, say around midnight? Maybe I’ll see you out there if you’re still interested.” His voice was low, seductive. Every inch of me throbbed with excitement and nerves.
I put the last dish in his side of the sink. Turning, I smiled at him, praying my skin was still its original color and not blood red.
“Maybe.” I left him standing in front of the sink, his eyes following me as I moved up the stairs. When I finally got to my room and closed the door, I leaned against it, my chest heaving. There was three hours until midnight. How would I ever wait?
Chapter Seventeen
I tried to watch the stars, hoping to calm my jumpiness. As I looked at them, my mind wandered to the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. Not exactly sexy, but putting on pajamas had felt too…slutty. Since when did pajamas feel slutty? All I knew was that the other night I had felt half naked. I was kind of worried that Caleb would be expecting me to be dressed like that again. Actually, ever since I’d come upstairs I couldn’t stop thinking about what exactly he was expecting. We hadn’t even known each other that long. As if that was going to happen. I didn’t care if it was prudish. When you had a mother like mine, you saw that sex wasn’t a game. As a result, my virginity was still firmly intact. It wasn’t even like I had time for a sex life anyway. Only now…I wanted Caleb. There was no denying that. But I wasn’t ready to want him, much less act on it.
Finally the clock read midnight. Smoothing the t-shirt, I opened my bedroom door. Caleb’s was wide open, and when I crossed by he was nowhere to be found. He mus
t have been outside already. Waiting for me. Anna’s door was closed. Dang it. I wanted to look inside and see if she was asleep in her bed. What in the world would she think if she caught us outside together sneaking around? We shouldn’t even be sneaking around. We weren’t doing anything wrong. Anna would probably be over the moon at the thought of me and Caleb dating.
But we weren’t dating. Well, not officially. I hushed the critic inside of me. Maybe not officially, not yet. Every sense felt on edge and magnified as Caleb’s face flashed through my mind. His touch—my body almost quit working as I remembered it.
I crept downstairs and out the door. He was seated next to the pond. He must have turned the floodlights off, because the only illumination came from the crescent moon high in the dark Alabama sky. As I started across the stone walkway I noticed he was still wearing his day clothes, too. Relief flooded through me. For some reason I thought he would greet me in boxer shorts and nothing else. My face burned as I imagined it, making me incredibly grateful for the cloak of night.
I sat down beside him, crossing my legs and facing the pond. “Hey.” I said softly.
“Hey.” He looked over at me and smiled. It paralyzed my heart. It just stopped beating. No, of course it didn’t. Then I’d be dead. But it sure felt like it did.
“So. What do you want to do?” He asked. No sense beating around the bush, I guess. Even in the most deliciously terrifying moments, like now, there wasn’t a point. It was only more validation that we fit together just right.
Caleb put an arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him, so I lay down and rested my head on his outstretched thigh. “Just this.” I said. “This right here is just perfect.”
It was perfect. A huge chunk of me wanted to stay right there forever and forget every one of my worries. When I was with Caleb, the rest of the world seemed to fade to black.
We sat in the dark for the longest time, listening to the still water ripple every so often. Crickets sang their sweet lullabies in the dewy grass surrounding us, and a breeze flitted through the trees. The sounds of the country night filled my heart as the simple touch of the boy capturing it steadied its beat.
“What was your mom like, Audrey?” Caleb asked after a while. The sound of his voice startled me. I opened my mouth, then closed it again, not sure how to describe the woman I so loved and hated at the same time. Would that even make sense to him? He had Anna for a mother, he probably wouldn’t be able to imagine life with someone like my mama. But Caleb understood me. It felt like I could share anything with him and not have to be afraid of judgment, so I decided to tell the truth.
“She was a beautiful mess.” I finally said. “She was the kind of person who could get just about anything she wanted handed to her, but instead of using her charisma and charm to her advantage to take care of me and my sisters, she let it go to waste and got consumed with drugs.”
I stopped. I didn’t know if I could keep going. Thinking about mama brought everything back, every heartache, every feeling of despair and loneliness. It washed over me like a tidal wave, sinking me into the bottom of an ocean of emotions I never wanted to feel again.
“What else?” Caleb’s voice was gentle. His fingers glided along my arm and sent tingles up and down my body. Sitting to look at him, the sincerity I saw in his eyes helped me go on. My eyes closed and everything just popped out.
“She slept with men for money.” I’d never said it out loud. It felt like it made it real when I did. I’d always known it, but that was the first time I had ever admitted it to anyone. Then again, it was also the first time anyone had cared enough to ask.
“Ouch.” He physically winced beside me.
“Yeah, tell me about it.” I looked up at the moon and wished it were all some story I was making up. But it wasn’t. It was my life. And it had sucked until I moved in with Anna and Caleb. Until then I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been fighting off depression. Now I knew with every fiber of my being that I’d been about to snap. Mrs. Golden evicting us probably would have been the straw that broke me. The thought that losing my mother, her being murdered, had turned my life from horrible to wonderful, tortured me. But it was the truth.
Caleb’s hand found mine in the darkness, and I forced myself to continue, even though it was really the last thing I wanted to do. I needed to let it all out, to cleanse myself of all of the demons I’d been hiding for mama. They weren’t mine, but they haunted me, too. Not anymore.
“She started coming home later and later as we got older. Sometimes…she would bring the men with her. There was only one bedroom in our apartment, so Sierra and Sadie and I, we’d be in the living room trying to sleep on the pull out couch while the sounds…” I stopped, swallowing hard.
The vivid pictures rolled in my mind as tears rolled down my cheeks. The scenes played out in my head; me, huddling over my sisters, hoping against hope, praying to a God I wasn’t even sure existed that there wouldn’t be a time when one of these men saw three teenaged girls and thought it would be fun to have a party. Now I knew there was a God, because that had never happened. Maybe God knew that if any of those skeevy men had ever tried to lay a hand on Sierra or Sadie I would have grabbed the nearest sharp object and sliced and diced his manhood. God probably hadn’t wanted me to spend the rest of my life in jail.
“You don’t have to tell me anymore.” Caleb had pulled me into his lap. I shook my head and took a few deep breaths.
“There really isn’t much left to tell. That was our life. Day in, day out, for years. Then, she didn’t come home one day. Instead, Mrs. Anderson came, and the cops. And they’d told us she’d been killed. And here I am. With you.”
“They don’t have any idea who did it?”
“No.” I didn’t tell him about my call to the police station. There was no point, really. Nothing had come of it.
“They don’t know and they probably never will. There are so many men it could be, her customers, drug dealers she probably owed money to. People who were just passing through town driving to Birmingham or Montgomery. It’s like a needle in a haystack.”
“But you survived coming here, right? You’re happy?” Caleb shook his head. “I feel bad even saying that, but I don’t want you to be sad. It’s just such hard situation. I know how I felt when my dad died, and I was a mess. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling.”
I turned my head and met Caleb’s eyes. “Yes, I’m happy. It sucks that I lost my mom. She’ll always be the only mother I ever had, and I’ll always love her.” My throat felt swollen but I somehow got the words out. “I thought it was the absolute worst day of my life when Mrs. Anderson came to take me to foster care. But she brought me here. She brought me to you, and to safety.”
Deep pools of sympathy washed over me as I stared at him, my pulse quickening. Funny how one gaze could change my entire emotional spectrum, turning the kaleidoscope of blues and grays to warm yellow happiness and red hot desire in the span of seconds.
Then I felt his warm mouth overtake my own, and the pain seeped further out of me. I twisted in his lap, interlocking my hands behind his neck. Soft strands of hair brushed through my fingers as the crickets chirped around us. His strong arms lifted me so that I was facing him, and his muscled hands ran up my arms and into my hair, his fingers tangling themselves into it. I felt weightless, like a soft cloud was carrying me into oblivion.
I sighed into him, and he held me tighter. Our lips parted at the same time, and I didn’t know what was a part of me and what was a part of him. All of the want and longing and loneliness melting out of me churned into our embrace and disappeared into the night. Our heartbeats, our breathing patterns, were the same as we lost ourselves in the kiss. I’d never imagined what passion could feel like, but this was a million times better than anything I could have ever dreamed up. There was only one emotion pulsing through me. Want.
I pulled back, my chest heaving up and down. “Caleb…”
Every part of me was on fire. Tr
ying to calm myself down was a task I wasn’t sure I could complete. He licked his lips and then wiped them on his hand. His own torso was moving steadily.
“Too fast?”
“Yes.” The word came out in a gasp. I couldn’t meet his eyes. Part of me felt like a tease, but that was the last thing I’d meant to do. It had been so easy to get completely swept up in the touch, the taste, the need.
“Yep. I know.” He answered.
He did? Just when I thought I couldn’t get any better, he did it again. He somehow understood me more than I understood myself.
I slid off his lap and onto the cool grass, welcoming the feeling of his arm sliding around my waist. We calmed together, our breathing becoming more even with each passing minute.
“Sorry.” He said finally.
My head whipped around in his direction. “It wasn’t your fault at all. I…wanted you to kiss me. To more than kiss me.” I’d needed it, even. He made me feel like I was whole again, instead of there being little pieces of me floating around with nowhere to go.
I ran my fingers through my thick mane and tucked it behind my ears. I could feel him looking at me.
“Believe me, I wanted to do more than kiss you, too.” He paused when I sucked in my breath.
“But not yet.” He continued. “I don’t want to mess anything up by rushing it. I’ve seen that happen to my friends a lot.”
I looked up at him. “Yeah, right.” Okay, maybe he was too good to be true…
Caleb shook his head. “Guys talk a good game, Audrey. Yeah, yeah, we think about sex every six seconds or whatever it is, so what. Girls think about it too, don’t you dare try and say y’all don’t. But there are guys out there who want more than that too, you know.” He shrugged. “One night stands aren’t really my thing.”
“Me neither.” It was the epitome of an understatement.
Caleb laughed. “I didn’t really peg you for a one night stand of girl. Anybody who’s been through what you have…not a chance.”