by Lucy Score
“Bow, it’s fine,” I said, climbing to my feet swiping at the dirt on my legs. Scarlett appeared at my side with June on her heels.
The bonfire crackled in the silence that followed.
“What the hell is goin’ on?” Scarlett demanded.
“The timer went off,” June announced, walking obliviously into the circle. “We can leave now.”
Bowie shot me a look, gave me the once-over. I pleaded with my eyes for him to let the moron live.
Reluctantly, Bowie released Blaine. “Watch yourself,” he warned him, turning his back and heading in my direction.
Uh-oh.
Blaine straightened his shirt, and I saw the look he telegraphed to a couple of his bigger, drunker friends.
“Let’s go home,” Bowie said, reaching for my arm.
I don’t know if he saw the attack coming or not, but there wasn’t time to shout a warning. Blaine came running—or staggering real fast at him. I side-stepped Bowie and stepped in front of the charging Blaine. There were fights all the time in Bootleg Springs. Good, clean fights. But nobody attacked from behind. It just wasn’t done.
It might have been a fist or an elbow or one of Blaine’s stupid friends’ appendages, but I took the first shot right in the chin.
“You stupid son of a bitch!” I lashed out with my foot and caught a drunk jackwagon still wearing his sunglasses right in the balls. Bowie’s fist was busy plowing its way through Blaine’s face. Then I heard Scarlett’s legendary battle cry. Jameson and Gibson, the other two Bodine brothers, appeared and entered the melee, throwing punches indiscriminately.
It was a free-for-all as the rest of the Bootleggers present joined in good-naturedly. Some of them were throwing punches at each other just for fun.
I threw an elbow into the ribs of one of Blaine’s pals and watched Hester kick a guy in the stomach.
June waded in and grabbed me. “It’s time to go,” she said.
“June! I don’t care about the goddamn timer!”
She pointed at the flashing red and blue lights as our dad’s patrol car rolled through the grass.
“Ah, hell.”
There was an unspoken truce between law enforcement and the Bootleg Bonfire community. As long as no one drove home under the influence and there were no fights or property destruction, the cops pretended that these bonfires didn’t exist.
I’d broken the truce.
Sheriff Tucker climbed out of his car, all long legs and silver mustache. I knew better than to call him Dad when he was on the job. He shot me a disapproving look as he hustled into the melee, a portly deputy named Bubba wading in behind him.
It took both of them and Gibson to pull Bowie and Blaine apart.
Scarlett bebopped over, fixing her hair that had gotten disheveled in the fight. “He fought for you, Cass,” she whispered breathlessly. She had dirt smudging her chin, and the sleeve of her blouse was torn. “Y’all are one step away from diamond rings and babies.”
Bowie had punched out another guy over me. Was Scarlett right? Did he do it because he cared? Or was it reflex?
“Shut up, Scar,” I hissed.
“I mean, come on. He totally overreacted to that stupid jackass messing around with you—as if you couldn’t handle yourself if necessary. It was like he was claiming you!”
I watched as my dad pointed Bowie to a picnic table before slapping restraints on Blaine.
“Why the fuck am I being cuffed and he’s just sitting there?” Blaine whined like the privileged brat he was.
Bowie shot him a smirk that had Blaine fighting against his restraints.
“We’re gonna give you a ride home,” my dad said amiably. “And you’re going to promise your parents that you aren’t gonna be starting any more fights in my town. Or I’m gonna slap you with a $500 fine for disturbing the peace, underage drinking, and public drunkenness.”
He handed the squirming, whining Blaine over to the deputy. My dad’s gaze skated over me again and then on to Bowie. He stroked his fingers over his mustache before heading in Bowie’s direction.
“Dad looks unhappy,” June mused. “Did you do something to upset him?”
“You mean besides starting a fight and drinking underage?” I asked with sarcasm. “No, I can’t think of a thing.”
“Huh. Maybe he’s constipated again.” June didn’t get sarcasm.
I tuned out June’s erroneous observations and watched my father lay a hand on Bowie’s shoulder. It looked like a deep discussion, and I wished I could hear what was being said. Bowie looked at me, his gaze connecting us across the space. His face was unreadable. He nodded at something my dad said and then looked down at his feet.
My dad clapped Bowie on the shoulder again. Bowie nodded once more and headed in the direction of the parking lot.
“Where’s he going?” Scarlett wondered.
“Bowie,” I called after him.
“Cassidy Ann Tucker.” My dad looked even more disapproving in his uniform. His mouth was pressed into a firm line under his mustache.
I was already trying to juke my way past him to go after Bowie. “Dad, I need to talk to Bowie—”
“Leave the boy alone,” he said wearily. “I think you’ve caused him enough trouble. Now, explain to me how you started an all-out brawl when you promised you were just going out for an hour or two to hang out with friends.” His voice raised at the end of the sentence, cueing me in to the fact that my easygoing, implacable father was five seconds away from blowing a gasket.
“It was a misunderstanding,” I told him, shifting gears into Downgrade Hurricane Dad. “A simple misunderstanding. Blake was just messing around.”
“Blaine,” June corrected me.
“Blaine was just messing around, and Bowie thought I was scared and he stepped in. That’s all.”
“I wonder if Blaine thought Bowie was going to prevent you from having intercourse with him?” June mused.
My father and I shot June twin looks of horror.
“June! What’s the rule? What’s the one rule?” I snapped.
My sister furrowed her brows, working her way through her memory banks. “Ah. Don’t discuss intercourse with Dad. I forgot. Can we go home now?”
6
Cassidy
I texted Bowie as soon as I got home. Dad and June and I struck a deal. We girls would walk home, and Dad would pretend we had nothing to do with the mess at the bonfire. We all preferred to tiptoe around Mom and her hour-long family “discussions” on responsibility and adulthood. I don’t think Dad wanted to sit through another one any more than Juney and me.
It wasn’t like she wouldn’t find out through the grapevine, of course. But by then it would be so blown out of proportion Bootleg style—did y’all see Bowie break that boy’s leg with a spinning roundhouse kick?—that it would be easy to write off as idle gossip.
I got no response to my text. So I called. It went straight to voicemail. Bowie always took my calls.
I washed the makeup off my face in the bathroom that I shared with my sister and glared at the bruise blooming on my jaw. This was all that stupid summertimer’s fault. He was lucky the Bodines didn’t do any serious damage.
My mind started spiraling out of control. Did Bowie really fight for me? Did it actually finally mean something? Did I mean something to him?
My brain clicked into spin cycle as the possibilities danced through my mind one after the other.
He’s in love with me.
He thought Scarlett was in danger.
He thought I was in danger.
He hated Blaine’s stupid shirt.
He has feelings for me.
Wandering into my bedroom, I flopped down on my bed and texted Scarlett, hoping for some insider information.
Me: Is Bowie okay?
She responded immediately, thank the Lord.
Scarlett: He’s shitfaced. Passed out on Gibs’s couch. If he thinks this means I’m sleeping on the floor, he is sorely mistaken.
I sat down on the edge of my bed. Bowie never, ever drank to excess. Jonah Bodine, their dad, was a no-good drunk. So Gibson didn’t drink and Bowie moderated. Who knows what Jameson did. He was the quiet type. Scarlett was blessed with the metabolism of a linebacker and could outdrink almost anybody in the county and their brother and still show up to work the next day. But Bowie drunk? What in the hell had gone down?
Scarlett: How’s your face? You took quite the wallop.
I headed back into the bathroom and snapped a picture of my black and blue glory.
Me: Is it noticeable?
Scarlett: Holy shit. That guy’s lucky Bowie didn’t smash his head in for pulling a stunt like that.
Me (after a good long deliberation): Why did Bowie jump in like that? There wasn’t any mortal danger.
Scarlett: Someone’s on a fishin expedition.
She even texted Southern.
Scarlett: He slapped the crap out of the idiot because the idiot had his hands on you. Now hurry up and get married already!
Scarlett’s opinion carried weight. After all, she’d known Bowie her entire life. But why in the hell would he suddenly go and develop feelings the second I decided I wasn’t ready to take the man for a test drive? Or was my mental tally correct and he’d had them all along for me?
I needed answers. I just wasn’t sure I could survive them.
Flopping back on my bed, I pulled a cheery yellow pillow over my face. If I didn’t suffocate by morning, I’d go and have myself a little chat with Mr. Bowie Bodine.
Against my college student nature, I woke early. It had been a restless night of tossing, turning, and practicing exactly what it was I was going to say to Bowie. My phone was still annoyingly free of text messages, so I was going into this blind.
Yanking on a pair of running shorts and a sports bra, I decided to jog over to Gibson’s. Being a criminal justice major, I was starting to realize that there was something to be said for keeping my body in shape. I didn’t want to be wheezing asthmatically after a perp…or a neighbor if I got my wish and got hired on here in Bootleg.
I was tugging a tank top over my bra on the way downstairs when I ran into my mom.
“Cassidy Ann Tucker, what in the hell happened to your face?”
My mother paused her descent in her blue-checkered pajama top. My dad wore the bottoms. While I made a show of pretending to barf over the grossness of it, I’d always secretly hoped that someday Bowie and I would be sharing a pair of pajamas.
Mom’s hand was cool on my cheek, but her green eyes flashed. Someone had messed with her little, almost-adult girl and she didn’t like it.
I may not be the adult I wanted to be, but I could lie better than my teenage self.
“Juney and I were walking home last night, and damn if I didn’t run face-first into a tree branch hanging out over the sidewalk. Does it look bad?”
Just because I was a better liar than I used to be didn’t mean my mom was dumber than she used to be. “I already heard about Bowie and that summertimer,” she said, flicking my nose smartly.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” I asked, exasperated. Nothing got by my mother. She may still look like the beauty queen she’d been as a teenager—Miss Olamette County 1980—but motherhood had honed her instincts to a needle point. Her hair was more blonde and less dirty than my own. She kept in shape with power walking and old Jane Fonda videos. She was the apple of my father’s eye and the heartbeat of our little family. She’d rip anyone who threatened any of us a brand-new asshole before church on Sunday.
“Maybe I wanted to make you squirm a bit. You’ll help me with your father later?”
No one crossed Nadine Tucker. Since I was busted, I was automatically pressed into service to aide my mother’s revenge plot on my father. Those were the fun kinds of family games we played.
“I guess,” I sighed.
“So?” Mom looked at me expectantly.
“So what?”
“What does this mean?” she asked, poking my bruise. “With Bowie?”
“I honestly don’t know, Mom. But I’m going to go get some answers now.”
My mom looked like she wanted to tell me something and then changed her mind.
“What?” I demanded as we plodded down the stairs together.
“Be careful okay?” she said, studying me as she pulled the coffee supplies out of the kitchen cabinet.
“Mom, it’s Bowie. What’s there to be careful about?”
My mother’s look spelled it out for me. There was no fooling her here either. But she was nice enough not to humiliate me by voicing the fact that I’d been in love with the man my entire life.
“Will you be back for breakfast?” she called after me as I headed toward the back door.
“I guess it depends.”
I hated running. I’d much rather work up a sweat in a boxing class or pedaling like demons were chasing me on a bike. But running the six blocks to Gibson Bodine’s apartment would give me a chance to shake out the jitters and get in a workout.
What if he told me he loved me?
What if he thought he was looking out for a friend?
What if I puked on his shoes and he never talked to me again?
The blocks blurred as my thoughts swirled. I almost tripped over Mona Lisa McNugget, the little free-range chick that had adopted Bootleg Springs proper as her backyard. I vaulted over the chicken, calling a quick apology over my shoulder and soldiered on.
Gibson was renting a two-bedroom shit hole over a retail space that changed hands every six months or so. It was currently a dingy card and knick-knacks store that was only patronized by summertimers.
Bowie’s SUV was parked on the side street, and for a second I thought I’d keep running. But there were questions that I needed answers to.
I opened the front door and jogged up the musty staircase that led to the second floor. I could hear them inside, the easy Bodine banter. Ribbin’ and rilin’, Scarlett called it.
I wondered if they’d all be this close if their parents hadn’t been so bad at raising a family.
The door opened before I could even raise my knuckles to knock, and Scarlett blinked at me. “Well, hey there. Holy hell. Look at your face!”
“‘Zat Cassidy?” Gibson called from somewhere inside.
Jameson was sitting on the couch, a game controller in his hands. He glanced up, gave me a nod, and went back to whatever game he was playing.
I clapped a hand over my jaw. “Is Bowie here?” I asked.
Scarlett got that hopeful look on her face. “He is. Bowie Bodine. Get your ass on out here.” She stepped back from the door to make room for her brother.
He looked as rough as I felt. His hair was standing up in all directions. His eyes were redder than Moe Daily’s bloodhound’s. He was still in his clothes from last night.
“What do you need, Cass?” he asked, not quite meeting my eyes. There was a coolness in his tone that I wasn’t used to. I couldn’t say that I cared for it.
“I need to ask you something,” I said quietly.
He read the importance behind my words and stepped out onto the landing with me, shutting the door behind him. He was still having trouble looking me in the eye, but he did take notice of the spectacular bruise blooming on my jaw.
“What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his eyes with one hand, and bracing the other against the wall.
“Why did you go after Blake last night?” I asked, not able to keep the words inside one more second.
“Blaine,” he corrected me. “I thought he was giving you trouble. Didn’t think he was being respectful.”
These weren’t the answers I’d wanted. Or feared.
“Bowie, you went after him like it meant something.” Like I meant something.
He looked away. “Look, Cass. What do you want me to say? I didn’t like the way he was handling you and look what happened.”
Bowie reached out and angled my chin so he could get a better look at
the bruise. I wanted to melt into his touch. I wanted to throw myself on his mercy, ask him to show me what love was really like. He could teach me. I was a quick study. Eventually I’d pick up the pieces of the heart he’d definitely break.
“You should pick your boyfriends more carefully,” he said, his voice rough.
“He’s not my boyfriend. Bow, I need to know. Is there more to it?”
I saw his jaw clench and release. “More to what?”
My swallow got stuck in my throat on the words that were wedged in there tight. “Us.”
It was an energetic two-step my heart was hammering out in my chest. I’d never been more scared or hopeful in my entire life.
“Is there more to you and me?” I asked softly.
He looked me in the eyes, his gray to my green. And I saw a flash of pain and then nothing. He was so quiet I thought maybe he wasn’t going to answer me. Maybe the answer was as hard for him as the question had been for me.
“Cass,” he sighed. “You’re like a little sister to me. That’s all.”
My heart cleaved in two like he’d taken an axe to it. I could feel myself bleeding out on the inside. “That’s all?” I repeated.
He nodded briskly and rubbed a hand over the back of his head.
“Look. I’m sorry. I’m hungover as shit. I was concerned that he was too rough with you last night.”
And yet it was Bowie who was being too rough with my delicate heart.
I’d always believed we’d end up together. When the time was right. When we were ready. How could I have been the only one with these feelings? How could I have been so wrong about his?
I turned away from him, something like a fever burning up my cheeks. But he grabbed my hand before I could race out of the building.
“Cass, it has to be enough,” he said earnestly. His eyes were telegraphing something that I didn’t understand. Did hurting me hurt him? Good. Then he should be on the floor in the fetal position with a pint of mint chocolate chip and a mountain of used tissues. Because that’s where I was planning to be.