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Flemming
If Flemming had to guess where she’d wake up after being hit by a moving moving truck, she would’ve guessed a human hospital or maybe the sickroom of a local healer. She did not expect to blink her eyes open to remnants of pain and the sky above her front yard. The kitten remained bubbled in her hand, so she clutched it to her chest while dropping the spell.
“What happened?” she muttered, trying to put the pieces together in an order that made sense. Cradling the kitten carefully as she struggled to sit up, she realized she’d sustained no injuries. Had she managed a bubble or healed herself or—
“You okay?” the driver of the moving truck asked. Up close, she noticed something really important about him. She’d bet he healed her on every last strand of the red hair on his head.
“I mean, now I am, yeah,” she snipped. The small bundle of fur in her hands began to purr. The driver guy was handsome, too, the kind of witch her mother would’ve wanted Flemming to fall for, if she had her druthers. The fact that he was so perfect managed to grate Flemming’s already raw nerves to throbbing fury. She spat, “I would’ve been fine entirely if you’d been looking at the road instead of that phone or whatever you had in your hand when I waved frantically for you to stop.”
A kid in a bright striped shirt and cutoff jean shorts ran into the yard, yelling, “Hey, are you trying to steal my cat?”
She fumbled a bit trying to scramble to her feet only to find the driver catching her and balancing her. How did he go from from kneeling next to me to on his feet that quickly?
Telling herself to pay more attention to the moment, she noticed his warm hands wrapped around her elbows, the backs of his long fingers just grazing the sides of her breasts with her every inhalation. The sensation was far from unpleasant. “Erm,” she mumbled, “I’m good. Back up.”
Immediately he obeyed her, marking at least one dim checkmark in his favor. He held his palms up and ducked his head a bit, the body language implying he’d intended no offense. Her lip curled, the ghost of a smile despite the circumstances. “You’re very unexpected, moving truck driver.”
“Bruh, gimme back my cat,” the kid demanded, holding a single hand out impatiently.
“Your cat stumbled into traffic and nearly got squashed by a truck,” she explained, handing over the kitten. “Probably he’s a little young to be outside by himself.”
“Whatever,” the kid said and flicked her off as he ran back into his own yard.
“Should I have mentioned I got hit by a truck saving his cat, do you think?” Flemming said aloud.
Just then, her fiancé rushed out their front door, phone pressed against his ear. She turned to him, relieved to see a familiar face. “Babe, you won’t believe what just happened—” she began, holding her arms out toward him.
“Yeah, cancel the ambulance. No, seriously, this wasn’t a prank.” His eyes narrowed on her, and a look of such dislike carved its way across his features, her head jerked back as if from a physical slap. “You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain.”
Flemming’s hands dropped, but he didn’t see it since he’d already turned away from her. With only those words, Leo stalked back into the house, slammed the door, and from the otherwise silent front yard, Flemming could clearly hear the turning of a lock.
Her fingertips covered her lip as if to hold the emotions inside as her mouth gaped in shock. At first, Flemming just made a weird choking noise, because words didn’t come. Finally, she managed to whisper, “What even just happened?”
“Uh, he said to give you this when you woke up,” the driver said. He didn’t meet her searching gaze; his eyes remained firmly closed, and his head turned away from her. The strong fingers of one hand wove into the thick waves of his hair as a muscle in his jaw clenched in profile. The other hand offered a single white envelope with her name scrawled in black marker in her fiancé’s handwriting.
It felt like some scene from a movie, not her real life. Look, he’s even dramatically ignoring my agony, just like some character. Maybe this is all a dream?
She took the envelope, glancing around in confusion. Nothing made sense. She’d gone out for the day with her friends, walked down the street, gotten hit by a moving truck, and... It made more sense if it all was a nightmare rather than reality. Her finger shook as she ripped the envelope open, giving herself a papercut on top of everything else.
She sucked her fingertip, glad of the distracting pain as she read the words on the page. She forced herself not to think about the fact that pain and blood weren’t usually parts of dreams.
Hey,
So, this isn’t working for me. I packed up all of your stuff, and it is in a moving van headed back to your parents’ house in West Virginia. Here’s the contact information for the moving truck, if that destination isn’t what you want.
Best,
Leo
“What the actual fu—?”
“I don’t feel like that’s a question,” said the moving truck driver. “But I also get the feeling you’re having a really bad day. Want to get a coffee and talk about it?”
Flemming glanced up at him again, completely baffled. “Are you asking me out while I’m reading the letter where my fiancé not only dumped me, but packed up all my stuff and you’re being paid to haul it across the country?”
The guy shrugged. “Apparently. If that’s how you want to look at it, I guess.”
Flemming glanced back at the house again. Was it ever home? It never really felt like home, or at least not her home. It was Leo’s house, and she’d agreed to move in with him after they’d dated long distance for over a year.
From a distance, we really worked. Weird to think that a few years into a relationship, but...
Sure, they hadn’t been happy together, not lately. She’d been distracted by the feeling something was off, and he’d been busy at work.
He worked a lot. Like a lot a lot.
“Was he cheating on me?” she asked aloud.
The driver glanced back at his truck as if it were a lifeline just out of his reach. “Um,” he said.
“I’m Flemming,” she said, brushing her hand off on her jeans as if to clean it from contact with the lawn before offering it to him. “Flemming Fletch.”
“Seth,” the driver replied, accepting her hand in his massive palm. His hand wasn’t meaty, nor was it sweaty. It felt like a good hand, and then Flemming shook her head at her own ridiculous train of thought.
“Hiya, Seth. I’ll take you up on that coffee.” Her thoughts swirled as if tossed in a furious tornado. She needed the time to think, to figure out what was happening, and just...
That has got to set the record for the shittiest way to dump someone in history, Flemming thought. Not a call, not an awkward dinner, just...packed my shit up, and sent it toward my parents’ house. I didn’t even deserve the dignity of notification.
The tears hit unexpectedly, a hot flood of shame and hurt and otherwise horrible feelings that poured down her cheeks and soaked the neckline of her tee. Seth used the hand he still held from introductions to reel her in like an ungainly fish when she started to crumple. Instead of gentle shushing and soft pats, though, he thwacked her back hard, as if she were choking.
The unexpected thump made her suck in a breath and turn her tear-stained face up at him in shock.
“Don’t let him see you like this,” he said bluntly. After a glance at the house, he returned his glass-bottle green gaze back to her face. “I’m sure he’s watching from the windows, waiting to see how you respond to his grand scheme. Don’t let him win. The guy didn’t even care when you got hit by a truck; he doesn’t deserve your tears.”
With a hiccupping gulp, Flemming swallowed hard. “Okay, coffee,” she managed to say after another hiccup of air.
Tears still poured from her eyes, but she stiffened her spine and straightened her shoulders. So long as she kept her back to the house, he wouldn’t see the tears, and the driver was right—he didn’t deserve them.
She allowed him to lead her to the passenger side of his truck and then accepted his hand for support as she climbed up into the thing. Once in the seat, she buckled her safety belt and stared forward blankly as he got in the driver’s side and put the vehicle in gear.
She didn’t ask where they were going, because she wasn’t sure it mattered. She could probably crash at Savannah’s house, despite the fact they already had a full house with Sadie in town for a visit. She had other friends she could call...
When did it all go wrong? Her thoughts headed down the spiral again without the slightest hesitation. When she’d met Leo, she was a small-town witch who wanted adventures. They met in online, through mutual friends on social media. Short getting to know you texts soon became long conversations, then late nights spent talking instead of sleeping.
He always said just the right things...
They met in person—once. A date she planned, when she heard he’d be in the area with family for a visit. They walked hand-in-hand through the Smithsonian American Art Museum together, and she told him stories about the artworks. He responded with interest, quips, and seemed so engaged. Afterward, they had dinner at a fun nearby Peruvian restaurant. He’d kissed her before getting into his ride, and it seemed like she’d finally found The One.
From there, all of her plans focused on moving across the country to be with him. He encouraged her, showed her pictures of his place. They talked about happy ever after, and he proposed to her via a video chat unboxing of her ring. Sure, before they met, she had personal goals and plans, but once she found The One, wasn’t it smarter to focus on ensuring they could be together than all that other stuff?
“I can’t find anything on my maps that’s open for coffee,” the driver—Seth, she corrected herself. He had a name and rescued her, so she needed to remember he was a person rather than an occupation.
Then again, maybe she shouldn’t focus on him as a person, as wasn’t that where things went wrong with Leo? She focused on feelings rather than solid logic, and look where it got her? They’d moved in together and, sure, it wasn’t all hearts and flowers and romantic walks. Instead? It was the logistics of combining their possessions and which side of the bed did they each prefered. At the beginning of any relationship, though, there’s got to be a certain amount of getting to know one another, figuring out where they fit and how their schedules meshed, right?
“I think you’re processing a lot right now, and so I have an alternative suggestion to coffee,” Seth said, interrupting her thoughts again.
“Okay,” she said agreeably, trying to focus on him and the conversation rather than the utter chaos of her life falling in tatters and chunks of rock and mortar all around her.
“He paid me to take your stuff to your parents’ house, right?”
She blinked at him, and opened her mouth to ask how he knew, but he shook his head and shot her a rueful glance before she could form words.
“I read the letter,” he admitted. “Upside down and shaky isn’t easy, but you stared at it for a really long time. And...he didn’t write much.”
“Yeah,” she muttered, rubbing her hands over her face. Where were so many tears even coming from? Could she get dehydrated from crying?
She wondered what Seth thought of her situation—what kind of a monster did he think she must be, to deserve such a cold and brutal break up? From his perspective, his client hired him to move out an ex. He then hit the ex with a car, dealt with his angry client shoving a letter at him, and then...
“Was I badly injured?” she asked.
Seth glanced at her then down at his hands on the steering wheel before again focusing on the road ahead. His voice came out gruff and low, an intimate stroke of sound. “I will never forget the sound of the truck hitting you. In regard to your injuries, you got hit by a moving truck. I was going about thirty miles an hour. It wasn’t great.”
“Thanks,” she said. After a couple of awkward sentences, she added abruptly, “For healing me, I mean. Not for hitting me. But, yeah. You get it.”
He glanced at her, one side of his lush lips curling in a sexy little smile. She shook her head. What a garbage thing of her to notice at a time like that! She should be ashamed of herself.
But, still, she slid her eyes back up for another peek at the grin. So she had a pulse and her emotions were heightened due to trauma. No biggie. Didn’t hurt to look. He finally drawled, “I do get it. So, before you go back to processing what just happened, my suggestion is this—I’m driving to your parents’ house because he hired me to do so. I’m a private business, so although I’m sure my insurance company would find it problematic, I’d like to offer to give you a lift there as well. You’ll have the road trip to figure out what you want to do next, and he paid in advance, so I’m fine with it.”
She opened and closed her mouth like a fish, then thought about it. Her car? It wasn’t actually her car. The lease was in his name, despite her making all the payments. She sure as hell wasn’t paying for it for him to come repossess it whenever the mood struck him—and she suddenly thought him entirely capable of that kind of douche-baggery. Did she leave anything in the car? No. So everything she owned—or owned without taking the police to his place to try to find, if he decided to steal anything—was already in this vehicle.
She had a car charger in her purse from the boat ride earlier. She was a witch, too, so in regard to self-defense...
Unless he wanted to find himself turned into a fish on land, she figured she didn’t have to worry about the driver. “I would appreciate that, Seth.”
He passed her a small pile of blue shop towels. “Here, I’ve been through a couple of breakups in my day.” Once she accepted the shop towels and used one to mop at her face, he passed her a bottle of water. “If you want to talk it through, I’m here. If you want silence, take it. If you want to switch it up, whatever you need.”
The navigation voice came on and told him to merge onto I90 for thirteen hours and twenty-nine minutes, and she sniffled out a giggle. “Thank you.”