I don’t dace well enough to be considered good at it, but luckily neither does my partner. He introduces himself as Joe Luebeck the third, born and raised in Salt Gap, Texas. “I’m Robin Carter,” I say in return. “I was born in Texas but raised in Houston.”
“That’s good enough, I suppose. A Texan is a Texan. You know I used to know a Carter.”
“Oh yeah?” I remember the photo in the counter at the diner. “Who?”
“Ol’ Joe Carter. We had the same first name but we couldn’t be more different. My daddy spoiled us but he was poor and worked for every damn thing he had.” My heart almost stops as I hear this new information. Out of all the people in this town, I’ve stumbled upon one who knew my grandfather. How many Joe Carters could there be in Salt Gap? It has to be him. “I didn’t have to work much, you know.” He smiles at me as we shuffle around the dance floor.
“That was my grandfather,” I say.
“No kiddin’?”
I shake my head as we dance to the slow country song. “Did you know him well?”
“Naw, not really. He was older than me. We had the same name though so that’s how I knew him. He was a good man. What happened to him?”
“He started a real estate business in Houston.” I swallow, gripping the old man’s boney shoulders as we traipse around the dance floor. I catch Tyler in the corner of my eye, still sitting at the bar watching me. I look back at Joe. “He passed away a couple months ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Darlin.”
When the song ends, Joe leads me back to the bar. I hold on to his elbow and he seems to really like that. We walk up to Tyler and Joe grabs my hand, placing it on Tyler’s arm. Then he pats my shoulder and gives Tyler a piercing stare. “You take care of her, ya hear? This girl’s a real lady.”
Tyler nods. “Yes, sir. Will do.”
I roll my eyes as soon as Joe is out of earshot. “Old people are adorable.”
“He’s a character,” Tyler says, signaling to the bartender. “Ready for another?” he asks me. I shrug because yeah, I do want one, but no, I’m not sure I want him to pay for it. But he does. And when he hands me a second beer all I can do is thank him and wish that things didn’t feel so awkward. There was a time when I liked men buying me drinks. Now, well, now I don’t know what I like.
“So how’s the apartment?”
“It’s great,” I say, thankful for something to talk about. “I don’t like not having cable television but that isn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head. “You tourists are all the same. You can’t waste your life watching TV, ya know.” He nudges my arm with his cold beer bottle. “You’re young. You should be out doing stuff.”
I lift an eyebrow. “I do stuff.”
“Yeah?” I watch his lips as they slip over the bottle and take another long drink of beer. “Like what?”
“Like…stuff.” I can’t stop watching his lips long enough to know that my answer was stupid.
Tyler sets the bottle down, thank god, and leans forward. His smile hints that he knows something I don’t and I am dying to figure out what it is. “Oh yeah? Stuff?” he says as his eyes settle on mine. “Stuff like go on a date with me?”
I am silent for an entire five seconds. You’d think my hesitation would make him retract his offer, but he doesn’t. My mouth opens and I stumble over my reply. “I don’t exactly…date…”
“People you rent apartments from?”
I shake my head. “No, just…anyone.”
“Really?” He frowns. “Can I ask why not?”
I look at the bar and run my fingernail down a scratch in the polished wood. “It’s just a thing I started doing ever since I was in this situation where I was engaged and well…it didn’t work out.”
He smiles, tilting his head when he looks at me. “Ah, okay. Well I know how that is.”
“You do?”
“Well, no. But I get it. You have to do what’s right for you.”
I nod and gulp down half of my beer at once. Tyler laughs and signals for the bartender once again. “Now that I’ve made this sufficiently awkward, how about another drink?”
I hold up my bottle and we clink them together in a toast, although I’m not sure what we’re toasting to. “Sounds like good plan. I’ll ignore the elephant in the room if you will.”
I swear I see his tanned cheeks blush. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Consider it ignored.”
Chapter 5
I sit on the back porch steps and watch the bluebonnets sway in the breeze. Beyond the vast field of blue lies a small pond and then an old barbed wire fence. The Texas land is mostly flat and I can see for miles, but the patch of bluebonnets is more beautiful to me than miles of what lies beyond it. Marcus said they would all die soon because of the approaching cold weather and this makes me a little sad. I can’t imagine the back yard without all the blue. Still, even empty it would be more beautiful than my view of buildings and public transportation busses from back home.
Just thinking about it makes me depressed. Before long, I realize I’ve been sitting here with my toes in the grass, staring at bluebonnets and contemplating the meaning of life so long that it’s yielded no epiphanies and just a whole lot of depression.
I can’t get a job around here because I’m only qualified to sell real estate and there isn’t much of that happening around here. I don’t have many friends yet because I’m unemployed and don’t meet anyone. What I need is a hobby. Hobbies could lead to friends and maybe even a job. At this point I would take almost anything because it doesn’t matter how much money it made. I just need to tackle my to-do list and get a grip on my new life already.
I hear footsteps from inside the house which means Miranda probably came home for lunch again, although I can’t fathom ever getting tired of the diner’s food. Maybe she’ll have an idea for a hobby I can take up to help me pass the time. Something other than back-porch-sitting, for which I’m already incredibly talented. Unfortunately, back-porch-sitting doesn’t give me any intellectual stimulation. If anything, it makes my situation worse.
“Randy, I need a hobby!” I yell, calling Miranda by the nickname she hates as I bounce through the back door.
“You could try fishing,” a voice calls back. “But my name’s Tyler.”
I stop short at the sight of him standing in my living room, in a clean pair of dark jeans and black T-shirt. He holds a tape measure in one hand and a strip of floor molding in the other. “Sorry for the intrusion,” he says, taking a carpenter pencil out of his back pocket. “I just talked to Miranda and she said you wouldn’t be home and I could stop on by.”
“Sure thing,” I say, pulling open the refrigerator door and burying my face inside to help me cool off from what I’m assuming is a flushed face. Miranda knows I’m home today and that I’ll be home all day. I bitched about it as she was getting ready for work. She did this on purpose. Mentally, I vow revenge then grab a soda so I don’t look like a freak with my head in the fridge. “You want a drink?” I ask him.
He’s on his knees, nailing in that last floor board. I lean against the counter and watch him work. I could get used to this view. “No thanks,” he grunts. “I’ve got a beer in the truck.”
“Lucky,” I mutter under my breath as I walk past him and sink into the air mattress pretend couch. I’d love to stare at his ass all day but that’s never gotten me anywhere in life. I’d also love to have a beer, but again—that didn’t work out too well for me last time I had a drink since I was asked out by my hot landlord and then denied him like an idiot.
“So, you coming fishing?” Tyler asks, dusting his hands on his jeans.
“You were serious?”
He nods. “I was about to hit the lake back there. I have an extra fishing rod if you’d like to join me.”
“I’ve never been fishing in my life,” I say. Somewhere in the back of my mind, my libido is jumping around and telling me to shut the hell up and let him take m
e fishing. But I’m pretty sure that my clumsiness and lack of know-how when it comes to anything remotely outdoorsy will only make him run away screaming and never talk to me again.
“There’s no better hobby on earth than fishing.” He holds out his hand to help me get up from the air mattress and I take it instinctively. He smiles and a million dirty things run through my head. He thinks fishing is the best hobby in the world? I bet I could show him a few things that would change his mind.
My feet wobble unsteadily on the dock. It’s a floating dock. Not like the kind of thing I’m used to where a pier juts out into a lake and is firmly rooted to the ground. No, this one is attached to the ground by a measly rope that Tyler used only for a few seconds so he could push us out into the middle of the pond.
If I wasn’t on a mission to impress the pants off him with my charm and wit—the literal pants, I mean—then I would most likely be kicking and screaming and begging to get off this thing. I keep picturing it flipping over and dumping us into the brown water where some kind of loch ness monster will then devour us with its big gnashing teeth.
Tyler pops the lid off a plastic container in his hand. I catch a whiff of the most disgusting smell I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. And I once tripped in a pile of dog crap while taking out the trash to an overflowing dumpster. This is worse.
“Sweet baby Jesus, what is that?” I clamp my hand over my nose, and then the other one over my mouth for good measure. He laughs, but I can tell he’s holding back his gag reflex as well. He grabs a brown piece of the crap in the container, and for all I know it really is crap, and shoves it on his fishing hook.
“It’s stink bait.” He drops his fishing pole and grabs the hook of the pole in my hand. I watch in horror as he gets another piece of the stink bait and holds it up. “It’s made of meat bits and cheese and just all kinds of gross-smelling shit.”
I wave my hand and push him away. “I don’t need to see it up close, thanks.”
He baits my hook with the stuff and gives me back my fishing pole. “The catfish go crazy for this. The worse it smells, the more they like it.”
I look at my stink-baited hook from an arm’s length away. It’s not a normal fish hook, the kind I would picture when thinking of a fish hook with my limited knowledge of fishing. Instead of being shaped like the letter J, it’s a tripod of hooks, with three extremely sharp and dangerous-looking hooks poking out like a triangle.
“What kind of hook is this?” I ask, immediately picturing the poor fish whose mouth will get massacred with this thing and deciding that this will absolutely not be my new hobby.
“It’s a treble hook. It’s the best way to catch a catfish. Those things have really tough mouths.”
“Oh, so we’re cheating?” I say with a snort. “People in the old days didn’t have all this crazy technology and they still caught fish.” He raises an eyebrow and doesn’t look like he appreciates the joke.
“If you want to reach in there with your bare hand and catch a fish, then be my guest.”
I smile politely and shut up. Why do I always do this? I can’t just enjoy the moment with a guy I like and let him be the smart, knowledgeable one. My practicality and incessant need to question everything always makes me say some totally rude thing and insult the poor guy. Why, why, why, why? I can’t apologize and I can’t back track—that never works. So I just smile politely as the floating pier sways in the breeze. The motion mixed with the scent of stink bait in the air and the nervous way my stomach flips when Tyler smiles is sure to have me spilling my lunch into the lake today. I bet the catfish would like that.
“All you have to do is hold the pole like this,” Tyler says, swinging his arms back like he’s holding a baseball bat. “Then press this button to release the hook.” In a quick, skilled motion with those gorgeous arms of his, he swings and releases the hook and it plops into the water about forty feet away. “Then what?” I ask.
He gives me a sideways smile. God, his profile is perfect. Like some kind of Greek god. “Then we wait.”
“Okay,” I say, rubbing my hands together and then flexing my fingers in a pre-game stretch. “I can do this.”
What could possibly be better than casting my fishing line and spending time waiting with Tyler for a fish to bite? It’ll probably take hours. Hours upon hours, in which we will tell each other our deepest and darkest secrets. Maybe fishing really could be my new hobby.
I hold the pole in my hands the same way Tyler did, two-handed like a baseball bat and swing, but nothing happens. Unfazed, I pull it back again. Maybe I didn’t swing it hard enough. Tyler clears his throat and when I look at him, he mimics the pressing of a button with his thumb. Oh, right. I have to press that button as I swing.
I press the button this time, and swing harder with the energy boost I get from the desire of not looking like a total idiot. The reel makes a hissing sound as the line spits out and the hook soars through the air. I hold my hand as a shield from the sun and watch the lake for signs of my hook dropping in the water next to Tyler’s.
But when the sound never comes, I squint harder and try to see some ripples in the water from where it landed.
“Okay, don’t panic,” Tyler’s strained voice says from behind me.
“It must have gone really far?” I ask, still looking for my line in the water.
“You got me,” Tyler says, his voice even more strained than a moment ago.
I turn around and fall to my knees in shock. Blood pours out of Tyler’s head, near his temple. It gushes over his eyebrow and into his left eye and it’s coming out of the side of his head where my treble fish hook has lacerated him. Oh my god, no. This isn’t happening.
“This isn’t happening,” I say aloud as my hands fumble in midair, not knowing that to do. Tyler sits remarkably still, a pained expression on his still beautiful, albeit bloody, face. “What do I do?”
“Look in my tackle box, get the pocket knife and cut the line.”
I do as he says, and gently slice through the fishing line a few inches away from his head. I only take one good look at the hook before I have to turn away. Two of the hooks are buried deep into his skin, that extra pointy thing they have making it impossible for it to fall out on its own. This is a million times worse than seeing a fish gobble it up and get stuck.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as my arms flounce at my sides and I try to keep my composure. “I can’t even apologize enough for this.”
A tiny smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Is it wrong that I’m kind of glad this happened?”
I blink. He’s crazy. He’s lost so much blood that he’s getting delusional. Oh, shit, what if he dies from blood loss? “You need a hospital. Can you walk? Where do we go?” I pull him to his feet and it only barely registers in my mind that we’re holding hands for a few moments. Drops of his blood spill on my arm as I hold his elbow and walk him off the pier.
He reaches in his pocket and hands me a set of keys. “You drive. I don’t think I can.”
“How far away is the hospital?”
“About an hour.”
“You’re kidding me?”
“I kid you not.” Tyler climbs into the passenger side of his old Chevy and I walk around to the driver’s side. I’ve never driven a truck before, but I can’t imagine it would be much different than my SUV. “I would never kid you, Robin.”
I laugh and he starts laughing too but then winces in pain. “Did you say you’re glad this happened?” I ask, remembering what he said on the pier.
“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in terrible amounts of pain right now. But I had this dinner thing tonight, and I’m glad I have an excuse to get out of it now.”
He hands me the keys and I almost drop them when I look over at him. He does something I can’t even fathom at first. He stretches out the collar of his T-shirt and gently pulls it in a wide berth over his head, careful not to let it touch the hook. As my jaw hits the ground, he rolls up the shirt and press it
to the side of his face to catch all the blood. He doesn’t just have nice abs. He has an actual six pack. In one second all of the air in my lungs disappears, leaving me gasping for a breath.
Keep it together, Robin. I can survive this without blabbering on like an idiot or letting him see me gawk at him like some old guy hanging outside a women’s yoga class at the gym.
I’ll just pretend I’m an ambulance driver taking a regular patient to the hospital. The shirtlessness of the patient is of no consequence to me. All I have to do is drive. I do not need to look over at him. So I put my hands on the steering wheel and crank the key. I can do this.
The truck doesn’t start. I try turning the key again, and the radio pops on but the engine makes no attempt to crank over. Even though I’m not supposed to look at him, I glance over at the patient helplessly.
He’s shaking his head and smiling. I hate when he does that. I also love it. “You need to clutch to start the truck.”
“Clutch?” All the blood drops out of my face. “I can’t drive a standard.”
“You can learn.” He winces and rests his head back against the seat. His eyes close. “I’ll teach you.”
Chapter 6
Tyler still manages to look cute with a big bandage taped on his head. He had to get eight stitches and a tetanus shot. I offer to pay for his medical bills but he assures me he has good insurance and it won’t be that bad. I struggle to believe that anyone in Salt Gap has good insurance.
Tyler drives us home from the hospital in half the time it took me to get us there. I guess not killing the engine at every red light has something to do with making a speedy trip. Although I feel like a total asshat loser for hooking him in the head with my fishing line, he’s taking it pretty well. He hasn’t voiced any regrets about taking me fishing with him, or hinted that maybe I should move back to Houston where I belong.
A Little Like Love (Robin and Tyler) Page 3