Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap

by Julie Anne Long

  Avalon, for that matter, had never felt obliged to be a sissy of any kind.

  He found coffee cans for them to drop the worms into, if and when they found them, and set them loose in his garden, about a quarter acre of tomatoes and peppers, and he kept an eye on them, because he simply couldn’t help it because they were just so little, and how did parents not panic when they set these reckless, energetic, gleeful little creatures loose in the world?

  He did his own worm hunting. He found only one.

  He could see the house from this field, and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Avalon peering out at them from the balcony. With binoculars. Even from where he stood he could imagine her grinning.

  He didn’t have time to be incensed because he felt obliged by his sheer size and adultness to watch over his charges as surely as if he were a sheepdog. He was a slave to some sort of atavistic protective instinct.

  They never stopped talking. Never. It was like being trapped in an aviary. Peep peep peep peep peep peep in their little high-pitched voices. A ceaseless bombardment of often startling incisive questions, sprung from minds so alarmingly quick and sparklingly new it made him feel like a dullard, like every bit of his thirty-two years. They shrieked in triumph when one of them found a worm, and they plucked with surgically delicate fingers, and showed him every single one.

  He had to admit, they were better at this stuff than he was.

  An hour had gone by in an eye blink, and yet it felt like he’d been sprinting that entire time.

  And they’d found ten tomato worms.

  That was a damn good hour’s work.

  He gave each of them a beautiful ripe tomato. As solemnly as if he were bestowing badges. And as it turned out, he kind of was.

  They accepted them with touching awe and great care into their cupped hands.

  “Girls!” Avalon had her hands cupped to her mouth like a mini-megaphone and was now shouting through them. “Snack time!”

  He pivoted and marched toward Avalon. Unbeknownst to him, he looked like a general leading a miniature parade. They followed him at top scurrying speed toward Avalon.

  Avalon had set up a long picnic table neatly arrayed with shiny craft supplies, the kind that crows would just love to steal. A golden heap of hot dog buns and bowls of plastic-wrapped something or other and a cooler with juice and sodas poking up out of the ice were at the other end.

  Off in the distance near the driveway, willowy Eden Harwood was moving at a brisk mom-jog, one of those giant ubiquitous mom bags slung over her shoulder, heading straight for the picnic table.

  The girls broke ranks and swarmed upon all the food and shininess with their typical gusto.

  “Hang on, ladies,” Avalon commanded. “We’re going to do this politely. Remember how you need to earn your good manners badge? Say good-bye to Mac.”

  They paused to wave. “Bye, Mac! Thank you, Mac! Bye! Bye! Bye!”

  He waved, charmed by the thank yous and the utter cluelessness to the chaos they had imposed upon his world. They took for granted that their needs would be accommodated. Happy little tyrants.

  He smiled, despite himself. Albeit tautly.

  Because he was not well pleased at how Avalon Harwood had engineered the disruption of his day.

  “Hey, Mac. You kind of looked like a mama duck there with your little posse. You seemed to be having such a great time I hesitated to interrupt.”

  “Avalon,” he said pleasantly. And casually transformed his waving hand into a single upraised middle finger and rubbed his forehead with it.

  Avalon noticed. But she just grinned at that as if she’d won an Olympic medal.

  “We’re going to make friendship bracelets out here on the tables. And then have a sing-along. And games. Involving mallets and balls. Care to join us for hot dogs and fruit smiles?”

  He could vividly imagine a day’s worth of shrieking. Croquet balls hurtling through his windows. Little feet trampling the well-tended landscaping. Unannounced visits while he tried to work on his tractor or the lawn mower.

  “No. Thank you. I’m good.”

  Her hair was piled in a ponytail on top of her head, and it fluttered in the breeze like the tail on a fox. She was wearing a perfectly ordinary dark pink T-shirt and a perfectly ordinary pair of faded jeans, rolled up a little at the bottom, but the way they smoothed so perfectly over her curves made her look more edible than a “fruit smile,” whatever the hell that was. He imagined resting his hands in those sweet notches of her waist, and he would bury his face in that little hollow beneath her ear and whisper dirty things and explicit compliments . . . and . . . and . . . lick her.

  She tipped her head and studied him. “You look more like you’d like to drink a fifth of Jack for lunch.”

  He said absolutely nothing. Because he couldn’t yet. Thanks to the previous unbidden reverie, his head was as light as if he’d sustained another blow to the head by a tractor bumper.

  “Next week we thought we’d have a campout. Games and songs and activities. All. Day. Long. We’ll maybe do it once or twice a week. Maybe even forever.” She whispered that last word like a Marvel Comic villain.

  He was silent.

  And grim.

  Honestly, lickable or not, there really was only so much a man could take.

  “You really want to do this, Avalon?” he asked idly. His tone said: bring it.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She laid her hand delicately across her sternum, as if that’s where an invisible rope of pearls was draped.

  He fought the impulse to look below the hand at the boobs.

  “Those girls found ten horn worms on my tomatoes. Pretty useful. Best thing that could have happened to me today.”

  “Huh.” He could tell it took a good deal of self-restraint for her not to ask what had become of the worms, even though the Harwoods of course had a garden when she was growing up and hornworms had likely met a similar demise back then. He saw the flicker of worry anyway, and he knew a shocking surge of tenderness and impatience that made him curl his fingers into his palms and dig his nails in a little.

  “They can be quite a . . . handful . . . don’t you think?”

  The question had begun as a sardonic little test; oddly, it ended on a different note. She was asking a genuine question.

  And all at once he understood something: part of why she seemed so attractive now was that she was literally glowing. When he’d found her flat on her back outside the gate a few days ago, she’d been tense and pale and nervy; he knew now it was because something had made the light go out of her. Some element of joy she’d always radiated had been missing. But it was back now.

  How did she veer so far off course?

  How did the two of them veer so far away from each other?

  Had she seen something in him that warned her of disaster, or heartbreak?

  “They didn’t bother me in the least.” He gave it an ironic lilt. To make it sound like a lie.

  But there was a peculiar, surprising ache in his chest.

  They locked gazes. Something in her eyes told him that she knew he wasn’t entirely lying.

  “Avalon . . . why aren’t you a teacher?”

  She blinked. Her eyes widened in surprise.

  She looked back toward the table, at all the little girls, the tomatoes, the friendship bracelets in progress.

  “GradYouAte is kind of a school,” she said vaguely, finally.

  He didn’t know quite what to say. “Right. Sure. Of course.”

  She didn’t turn around to look at him again.

  So he just said, “I’ll see you around, Avalon.”

  She smiled faintly. “You very likely will.”

  She’d noticed then that Eden was watching this little tableau from about twenty feet away at the picnic table, where everyone was busily making friendship bracelets. A shiny red orb glowed at each place setting. A tomato.

  He’d been great with the kids, even though he’d
once claimed to loathe them.

  In all likelihood, what he didn’t like was being responsible for the feelings of another being.

  She moved over to her sister. She actually kind of wanted to make a friendship bracelet, too.

  Annelise was giving Eden a rapid-fire recap of the afternoon. “Mom! We totally caught tomato worms!” Annelise informed her.

  “Oh no! You caught tomato worms! What are the symptoms? Do they make you . . . ticklish?”

  Annelise doubled over with gales of laughter as her mom went in for a good tickle, then ran off to join her friend.

  Eden pulled Avalon toward her by looping her arm through hers.

  “If that guy looks as good from the front as he does from the back, then I have no idea what you’re doing hanging out with the Hummingbirds and me, Avalon.”

  Avalon dodged that. “How’s the Sacramento scion? Was he sent off with appropriate flowers?”

  “A wreath of gladiolas and ivy shaped like a dollar sign.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “It’s ‘what he would have wanted.’” Eden made air quotes. “And I provided it. They were happy. At the very last minute. Which means I’m happy.”

  “Good on ya.”

  “So who’s the guy?” Eden gestured.

  “That’s the groundskeeper.”

  “Whoa. Are you kidding me? Does he have a name?”

  Avalon hesitated. “His name is Mac.”

  Eden frowned faintly; the name was clearly tickling the memory banks.

  And then she seized Avalon’s arm as if she were about to fall off a cliff. “SHUT. UP. Mac Coltrane?”

  Avalon sighed. Then nodded, resignedly.

  Eden was silent and frozen, clearly mulling the ramifications of this. She maintained a grip on Avalon’s arm.

  “You were going to let him touch your boob,” she finally said on a hush.

  They both stifled an eruption of giggles.

  She had indeed confided this to Eden one breathless summer night, and they had discussed it with all the seriousness of a peace treaty negotiation. Eden was all for it, though she’d rather superciliously admonished at the time, “You should be careful because you tend to get carried away, you know.”

  That was funny. Eden could be such a priss back then.

  When you store up all your wildness and don’t release it a little at a time, you are bound to accidentally let it all out at once the first time a truly hot guy comes around and get mysteriously knocked up.

  “I think he still wants to touch your boob,” Eden said sagely. “He had that look about him.”

  “Shut up! You only saw the back of him.” The back of her neck was hot now.

  “I saw the way he turned around just then. All huffy and . . . sexy.”

  “What? How the hell does anyone turn around ‘sexy,’ Eden?”

  Eden ignored this question. “And macho. And your heads were practically touching when you were talking.”

  “Were not.” Were they?

  Edie was grinning. “I’m teasing. But boy did you ever take the bait.”

  Avalon snorted. “We were arguing. It wasn’t anything sexy at all.” Which actually felt like a lie, because, let’s face it, she told herself, everything he did felt sexy. “He’s an arrogant—” She recalled she was around a passel of ten-year-olds and refrained from saying “SOB” aloud. “He’s arrogant. And he wants to buy this house. He apparently tried to buy it at auction. He’s not well-pleased that I bought it.”

  “You’re not gonna let him, right?” Eden knew her sister.

  “Of course not. But he owns Devil’s Leap. The part with the swimming hole. Turns out these are two different parcels.”

  Eden took this in and wisely didn’t editorialize. “Did you know that going in?” She attempted to be neutral but there was the faintest whiff of schoolmarm about that question. “Wait. Don’t answer. You’ll get that land from him somehow.” Being a mom had edited Eden’s schoolmarmy impulses a little. “You talk to Corbin yet?”

  “Nope. Texted him once and told him to stop texting me. I bought myself at least this week of time away from the office. He’s going to just have to keep handling things.”

  Eden could gauge her mood. She wisely didn’t pursue that line of questioning.

  Avalon lowered her voice. “So what’s up with you, Edie? Going to let anyone touch your boob?”

  “Sure. I think I have ten minutes next Wednesday between the time I pick Annelise up from school and her guitar lesson for some stranger to cop a feel. Maybe we should send out a press release.”

  Eden didn’t date. She claimed she didn’t want to. It was pretty clear she didn’t have time to, given her work and her devotion to Annelise. Avalon was pretty certain guys went out of their way to order flowers and buy various gewgaws from her shop just for a chance to talk to her. Eden probably didn’t notice.

  “I’ve almost forgotten the point of men.” Eden shrugged. “I’m getting it done, aren’t I? The momming, the shop, everything? With a little help from my friends?”

  Two cars pulled in one after the other to pick up the Hummingbirds.

  More moms would be on the way soon.

  “Sure,” Avalon said, after a second, because now was not the time to advance her theory that Eden was kidding herself, at least about the man part.

  Although that could, of course, make two of them.

  About twenty minutes later, all the little Hummingbirds had gone home with a mom or a dad, and that included Eden and Annelise.

  “Bye, Auntie Avalon! Bye! Bye!” Annelise walked backward blowing kisses at her. Little goofball.

  Damn, but she was alone. Not that she wasn’t before, but the sudden influx of light and joy made everything seem a trifle fuller in contrast. They all seemed to have taken just a little bit of her with them when they left. Surely that was an illusion.

  She sat down at the picnic table, which could stay right where it was for now, and rested her chin in her hands.

  She’d been buzzing from the pleasure of bedeviling him and from being around her family and the kids. But Mac’s question bothered her. It burrowed right in and felt almost like an accusation, an existential quiz. Why aren’t you a teacher?

  He’d sounded genuinely troubled.

  She plucked up the friendship bracelet Annelise had made for her and twiddled it in her fingers.

  She gasped when a squirrel hopped up on the table.

  Her heart gave a happy skip. They really were characters, sparkly little individual souls, with their smooth gray coats and plump white tummies, their curving tail plumes. She’d rescued and nursed a squirrel back to health. Trixie had lived with Avalon for almost a year, and Avalon had loved her with her whole heart. She’d passed away in her sleep in her cage for mysterious squirrel reasons, and to this day the memory was an ache. Funny how something so small could take a divot right out of your heart.

  Avalon found a scrap of hot dog bun on the bench next to her and held it out. The squirrel leaned delicately forward, snatched it and ran off with it in its mouth.

  And she was alone again.

  Get a grip, Avalon, she told herself. This maudlin ruminating is ridiculous.

  She knew exactly how she intended to spend the next couple of hours.

  Chapter 12

  When Mac headed out to the mailbox one afternoon, Avalon was there. She was holding what looked like mail in one hand; in the other arm she was holding what appeared to be a large, dusty cotton ball.

  A bathroom rug? An exotic lampshade?

  “Hey, neighbor . . .”

  “Yikes!”

  The fluffy thing had stirred in her arms. It turned what was apparently its head to look at him. It had the happiest eyes he’d ever seen. Little glittering brown beads of joy shining from a nest of fluff trimmed away from its eyes.

  Good God above.

  Whatever it was, it was almost upsettingly cute.

  “What. The hell. Is that,” he said by wa
y of greeting.

  He was alarmed by the compulsion to lean over and snorgle his face into its blond fluff.

  And he didn’t know what “snorgle” even meant but words adorable enough to discuss this creature hadn’t yet been invented. On some level his brain knew this and was making them up.

  “She’s a dog. I got a dog!”

  Two pairs of brown eyes were sparkling at him now.

  He pressed his lips together and studied it a moment longer.

  “Are you . . . are you sure?” His voice creaked a little.

  “Quite sure,” she confirmed.

  There was a little silence.

  “That’s not a dog.” He said it firmly, as if he could make it true with adamancy. “A baby chicken, maybe. A baby chicken and . . . and . . . something took a startling turn in its DNA.”

  “I got her at the animal shelter,” Ava said. The dog tipped its head back and looked up at her adoringly, as if she was a movie star. “Her name is Chick Pea. Go on. Pet her.”

  He sighed so gustily the fluff around the dog’s eyes shimmied. He pressed a tentative fingertip to the plush place between its eyes. His finger vanished into fluff. The dog’s little tongue darted out to taste him. Lap lap.

  He retracted his hand before his heart caved in like an overripe apricot, permanently, dangerously softened.

  “Chick Pea is like one bite for a coyote,” he assessed gruffly.

  “I prefer not to think of her in terms of bites.”

  “Bite,” he repeated. “Singular.”

  Ava studied him for a wordless moment. “Are you worried about Chick Pea?”

  “No. I’m frowning because I’ve never seen a bunny dog before and it’s upended my view of the world.”

  This was a lie. He was actually worried about both of them. Because the day they’d buried her squirrel had been a bit like falling down a well in the dark. That sort of helplessness was a first for Mac Coltrane. He’d wanted something that he couldn’t have, which was for Avalon’s heart not to break. And to know what to say to take her pain away. He could only provide a velvet shroud, a heart-shaped rock, and his aching silence. It was all he’d known to do.