Two days pass at a snail’s pace, yet the memory of his arms, the pressure of his hug, still lingers on my skin. When I close my eyes, it intensifies, like fiery swirls below the surface, burned into the nerve endings. Since the accident, the faintest of human contact has crawled over my skin like angry scorpions.
Not his.
But I didn’t hug him back. Instead, I planted my arms flat against my sides, waiting for the knee-jerk reaction that never came.
Or maybe I was willing it to come, because that’d be easier than the alternative.
What if I could like this boy?
I shake my head. No. Hell no. Not going to happen.
Letting anyone in is dangerous. That whole “loved and lost” crap really loses its sting if you never love in the first place. Can’t lose something you never had, so I’ve made it my life’s mission to keep everyone at arm’s length, cordial enough to not be considered a loner freak with hidden terroristic plans but far enough away so no one can make me lose my balance. It’s why I can agree to a sleepover with Gin but not call my best friend in the whole world. Gin is a new face, and our relationship is superficial and will probably remain that way. How close can you actually get to someone over a summer? Besides, I never asked to be exiled here anyway, so I might as well slap on the happy face and play along.
But Jett. One look in my direction, one twinkle in those green eyes, one infuriating smirk, and my barriers breech. I hate him for having that power, but I hate myself most for wanting more—more of his time, more of his attention, more of him.
It confirms what I already know. Jett Ramsey is trouble.
The good kind. That’s what Gin said.
I flip the book I’m reading closed and whack it against the deck railing. “Nope. There’s never a good kind.”
“Never a good kind of what?”
I lurch forward on the folding chair, dropping my book to the wooden floor with a thud. Drowning in my obsessive thoughts, I didn’t hear anyone approach, and now I can’t help wondering how long he’s been standing there. I grab my book and jump to my feet, turning around. Jett’s at the top of the stairs, arms folded across his chest, smiling with his gold-toothed glint.
“Uh…spider. No good kind of spiders. I just squished one.” I pretend to flick guts from the back cover.
He pinches his shoulders up with a little shiver. “Yeah, I don’t like ‘em either.”
My eyes rove over him, from his white muscle shirt to the frayed ends of his jeans. A rip across the thigh exposes a tiny portion of his bronzed skin. So, he does wear something besides jeans all the time. An image of Jett in swim trunks skips through my mind, and my breath catches in my throat as heat circulates in my cheeks. I glance at him, his head cocked in my direction, brows furrowed like he’s reading my thoughts.
“Where’d you even come from?” I mumble.
“My house.”
“I mean, I didn’t expect you’d come to the back door when there’s a perfectly good front door that way.” I point toward the house.
“I knocked on your front door. Rang the bell, even. Turns out you can’t hear it back here. So, I walked around. I know—genius level stuff. I’m good like that.”
I laugh in spite of myself, shaking my head. “You’re such a jackass.”
“My parents think so, too.” He plants his thumb in his chest. “That’s my middle name.”
“Jett Jackass Ramsey? What great foresight they had.”
“Exactly. That’s where I get the genius stuff from.” He walks past me to my bedroom’s glass French door and peers in. “So, this is your room? Miss Bessie said something the other morning about giving you your own space on the first floor.”
“Yeah, at least for the summer.” I join him and lean against the siding. “So, what is it really?”
He looks over at me, eyebrows furrowed. “What?
“Your middle name?”
“Why? You gonna run a background check on me or something? It’ll be clean…” He pauses and looks skyward, clicking his fingers. “Except for that one incident about a year ago…”
I give him a playful shove on the arm. “Shut up. You brought up middle names. I was making small talk.”
“It’s Dodge.”
“Like your car?”
“Exactly like.” He presses his nose back into the glass, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare. “Nice décor, by the way.”
“It’s not mine. Memaw gets all the credit.”
The edge of his lips curl. “Well, nice panties then.”
“What?” I squash my nose to the glass as Jett points to a stack of my freshly washed laundry laying on my desk, waiting to be put away. Shit. I meant to do that earlier.
He pulls back and nudges me on the shoulder. “Just playing. I’m gonna get started downstairs. You gonna bring me some of that lemonade Ms. Bessie promised?”
I smirk, heading toward the kitchen’s sliding door. “I’ll see what I can come up with. I make no promises.”
By the time I pour a glass and head down the steps, the cement pad under the house resembles an accident scene, the big brown boxes of the swing, two Adirondack chairs, and side table scattered in a crumpled pile of cardboard. The wood and metal pieces, all singularly wrapped in cellophane, lay grouped together in specific areas as Jett kneels in front of a battered red toolbox, scrutinizing the page of directions and laying out appropriate tools. He glances up, screwdriver in hand, as I walk down.
“Looks like a big job,” I say, eyeballing the mess.
He tucks the instructions in his back pocket and shrugs. “Nah, it won’t be too bad. Hour and a half, tops.”
“No way. I bet it’ll take you longer than that.”
“You bet? Now you’re speaking my language.” He shoves the screwdriver under his armpit and rubs his palms together. “How ‘bout a little wager?”
“A wager?”
“Why not? Let’s make this interesting.” He slides his watch off his wrist and dangles it in the air. “I’ll put 90 minutes on the timer.”
“Okay. So, what are the stakes?”
“How about we each set our own?”
This could be my opportunity to get rid of Jett—to purge him from my thoughts and my life—before all these puppy-eyed feelings get out of control and in my way. “I’m down. If the whole thing isn’t assembled in ninety minutes—and I’m talking whole, entire thing down to the last bolt—you, Jett Ramsey, have to quit partaking in this whole ‘set up’ business everyone has going on. No more following me in your car while I’m walking. No more spontaneous breakfasts. Nothing.”
He squints his eyes and twiddles his fingers on his chin as he considers it. “Fair enough. But if I win—and I will—you agree to let me teach you to drive again. I promise you’ll be behind the wheel by the end of summer.” He pulls the screwdriver from underneath his armpit, twirls it in the air and catches it again. “And you’ll get the awesome side-perk of spending all that quality time with me.” He leans in close to my ear, his breath tickling the skin. My heart flutters as he whispers, “Once you quit trying to fight it and realize what a great guy I am.”
I smile at the thought but disguise it as sarcasm. “Awful confidant, aren’t you?”
He winks and holds up the screwdriver like a trophy. “Always.”
“Fine. I’m game, so you better go set that watch. Time starts on my count.” I set his lemonade on a plastic plant stand, and while he’s turned around finagling his watch, I swipe a large eye-bolt from the swing pile and slip it into the pocket of my yellow shorts.
“Ready. Tell me when to press start.”
“Three, two, one, go!” I yell, then turn, walking back to the steps. He stops me on the third one.
“You’re not gonna keep me company?”
The way his eyes stretch out, wide and innocent like a child, makes me want to run back and plant myself on the concrete beside him. But surely that’d be counterintuitive to The Plan. The one that answers to the nagging voice inside, that insists alone is better. Easier and safer.
“You have a lot of work to do and not long to do it, so I’m going to finish my book on the deck.” I walk up another step, then stop to add, “And don’t even think about cheating. I can see your watch from up there.”
He crosses his arms and cocks his head to the side. “I don’t have to cheat. I always win.”
“We’ll see.”
On the deck, I pull out a beach towel from the brown storage cube and spread it out next to the railing. With book and phone in hand, I lay belly-down and prop on my elbows to read. Except there’s no finishing a sentence, because every time Jett moves, it flashes in my periphery, compelling me to watch the way his biceps flex when he lifts the larger wooden pieces or how his jeans hug his butt when he leans forward on his knees to grab tools from the toolbox. The way—
No. Nothing’s going to happen between us anyway. I have the insurance in my pocket, the silver bolt nudging through the cotton into my hip. I roll over onto my back and pull the book to my nose, blocking out anything and everything except the words on the page.
It works for a while, until he starts singing, so low at first, I mistake it for a radio playing somewhere. But as it gets louder, his distinctive tone shines through. A low country drawl, southern like mine but strung out a little more. Slower. Throatier, with a smidgen of gravel.
Still holding the book overhead, I roll my head to the side and cut my eyes to where I can see him bolting together the second chair, singing to himself, wagging his head to the tune. When he tightens the last bolt, he drops the wrench, stands up, and pulls his shirt over his head. Sweat glistens across his back.
A thousand fireworks go off, working their way up from my toes.
So not fair.
He twists his head suddenly over his shoulder, catching me mid-stare. I fumble my book, and it falls on my face, knocking my head into the wooden floor with a thump. My cheeks burn hotter than all my skin exposed to the blistering afternoon sun as I lay there silent and still, praying to be absorbed into the wooden deck boards.
After a few minutes, I slide the book from my eyes and peek over the edge. He bends over, hammering the side table’s leg, so I slink sideways off the towel, get up, and tiptoe toward the house, phone and book clenched in my hand, going extra slowly to make no noise. At the sliding glass door, I stop, easing down to a seated position.
Humiliating. I lay my book beside me and wipe the residue of salt air from my phone screen with the long sleeve of my T-shirt.
Twenty more minutes and then it’s over, CJ. You won’t have to worry about him—or yourself—anymore.
The self-coaching session falls flat. No matter how much I reason “what’s for the best,” I can’t smile at the thought of not having him around. My jaw locks tight, forbidding it. I’ll miss him, which is crazy since I’ve only known him a measly week.
My phone buzzes, and I swipe my finger over the screen.
<Memaw> Are you taking care of Jett? Be nice
<Memaw> Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Typical Memaw. Always pushing.
Instead of replying, I scour social media, accepting friend requests from both Gin and Bo and cyberstalking some of my old friends from back home. Trent’s relationship status still says “it’s complicated,” but his latest posts show him happy and smiling on the field in his baseball uniform. Emmalyn’s in the background of several of them, and I wonder if she’s dating someone on the team. I used to know everything about her. Now we’re more strangers than best friends.
Her page is a mishmash of the usual dance recitals, selfies in her bedroom, and even a few at the baseball field. Definitely a new boy in her life. Sad I don’t know who. Sadder I won’t have the gumption to ask. Scrolling farther down the page, a photo of Emmalyn, me, and my sister Noli-Belle flashes on the screen and stops me cold.
That night from last summer plays in my mind as clear as if it were yesterday. Emmalyn spent the night at my house, and my sister demanded to be included.
Mama came in, wagging her finger in the air. “Magnolia Belle Ainsworth, you let these girls have some privacy!”
But with all the ferocity of her 12-year-old firecracker self, she stood up, hands on her hips, feet planted firm. “Mama, I hate being called Magnolia. It sounds like an old lady. Besides, they said I could stay!”
Just a few weeks later, our entire world crumbled, and I lost every one of those people. Two never made it out of the mangled wreckage; one was collateral damage. A bone-deep shiver, defying the blazing overhead sun, creeps down my spine.
What the hell am I doing? How could everything good in my life be gone, vanished like it never even existed? How do I get over something like that?
I tilt my head toward the sky, sending up a silent plea to my mama and sister for guidance. For wisdom. For some sort of sign on how to move forward without them.
Clanging echoes below, and I glance down at my phone. Ten minutes left on the countdown. I creep forward on my knees, peering over the deck’s side. Jett rushes from box to box, shaking out cellophane, patting his pockets. To his right, both Adirondack chairs and the side table are completed, and on his left, the swing is completely assembled minus one arm.
“Where is it?” he grumbles, kicking a box across the cement. “It’s gotta be here somewhere.” He checks the watch, slams it down, then renews the search, his frenzied eyes sweeping over the mass of cardboard and plastic. As I lean farther toward the edge, the bolt in my pocket pokes into my thigh, and a swirling sensation kicks up in my gut, like mama is whispering her advice to my heart from the great beyond.
You can’t move on by standing still.
My breath catches in my throat. It’s as if her voice is audible, a strange blend of the wind through the palm fronds and distant roar of the waves. It reminds me how much I miss her; how much I need her here. How much she’d hate what I’ve let myself become. And suddenly, I know what I want to do—what I have to do—even though it’s everything I’ve railed against.
Darting inside to grab the lemonade jug, I then head downstairs. Jett’s still rummaging through the debris and doesn’t glance up, his attention focused on one goal. After filling his glass, I discreetly drop the bolt beside the Adirondack chair’s front leg then walk over and pick up his watch from the railing.
“Tick-tock, tick-tock.”
He narrows his eyes at me, then continues sweeping his hands across the cement, edging closer and closer to the chair. The minutes tick away.
Come on. Come on. Open your eyes, for the love of God! My stomach knots.
“Aha! I knew it was here!” His fingers wrap around the bolt, and he jumps to action, holding the arm in place as he twists the screwdriver.
“T-minus thirty seconds and counting…”
He glances at me, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. Come on, come on.
“Ten seconds...nine…eight…seven…six…”
“Done!” Jett jumps to his feet and throws down the screwdriver, which clangs against the toolbox lid. It’s the first time I’ve seen him bare-chested this close, and my breath catches in my throat at the sight of his long, lean muscles and how his coppery skin smooths over them.
He connects the swing’s chains to hooks installed in one of the wooden supports underneath the house, then stands back with arms folded across his chest, admiring his work.
“It’s only right to give her a trial run.” He nods his head toward the swing then grabs my hand and pulls me to sitting beside him on the wooden slats. With a rough shove from his feet, we sail backwards then forwards, and instinctively, I grab his arm, squeezing in close.
He leans in, sweaty and hot, and the only thing running through my mind is why this isn’t grossing me out. But it isn’t. In fact, the more the heat rises between us, the harder my heart thumps against my ribs.
“Aren’t you gonna congratulate the winner?” he asks with his signature cocky smirk.
“Congratulations,” I say straight-faced, then turn my head in the opposite direction to conceal my grin. From the way his arm slides against mine, it’s evident we’re both winners.