NANA’S CARE PACKAGE NESTLED safely on my lap, I pick at the edges of the grocery bag housing the leftovers. Walker rolls the truck to a stop next to my car parked outside the church. He kills the engine, his elbow resting against the middle console.
“Thanks for the ride,” I tell him, arranging myself in my seat so I can see him without craning.
He looks different this afternoon. His frown lines aren’t dug as deep, his jaw relaxed instead of looking like it was grinding his teeth into oblivion. Even as his family gave him boatloads of crap as we left Nana’s, he didn’t seem as ready to kill any of them.
“It was on my way,” he notes.
“Seriously, Walker?”
“What?”
“It’s okay for you to admit you wanted to drive me to my car,” I prod. “It won’t make you less of a man.”
“It was on my way,” he insists. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have volunteered if it wasn’t.”
“I could’ve ridden home with Peck. And both of your brothers offered.”
He snorts, shaking his head. “Oh, I bet those fuckers did.”
“I was leaning towards Machlan, but Lance seems a little gentler,” I grin.
“It’s the glasses and it’s a ruse,” he laughs. “Lance is as rough as any of us. He was actually the only one to get thrown out of school before we hit high school.”
“Lance?” I laugh. “For what? Charming the pants off his teacher?”
“It had to do with pants, but there wasn’t much charm involved,” he chuckles.
Our laughter mixes in the air, my high, feminine sound swirled with the bite of his rasp. The leaves blowing in the breeze outside the truck window, the sun pouring in the glass, it’s a moment I could fall in absolute love with. Maybe a man I could fall in love with too, if I tried.
He fiddles with the button on the cuff of his shirt. “I know you said you weren’t coming in to Crank anymore . . .”
“I say a lot of things. Besides, Delaney is basically gone, and other than mostly being on hiatus for a little while anyway, I do most of my design work at night. My creativity comes out after dark.”
“I’ll remember that,” he winks.
The plastic bag rattles as I wind the top around my finger.
I look at Walker. There’s a level of uncertainty mixed with the way he’s twisting his lips together that sparks something inside me. Not roots, not that at all. But maybe a branch extending to him that I want to see if he takes. If he holds on. If it breaks.
“I don’t really have any plans for what to do now,” I tell him, gulping back a hot swallow. “Maybe I could help you out until I get my life sorted? I’m going to have to switch some gears around now that I’ll be working by myself and I need some time to wrap my brain around that.”
His brows lift to the sky, his hand stalling against the sleeve of his shirt. “You don’t have to, Sienna. Really.”
“What if I want to, Walker?”
It takes a full five seconds for the grin trying to spread across his lips to actually form. But once it does, he lets it go and I realize—I’ve never seen a full smile from him before.
My heart hiccups, skipping a couple of beats, as I absorb the warmth radiating off him. He lays his arm on the console and rolls his palm over so it’s facing up. Like a rip current drawing things its way, my hand drops into his immediately.
“You’re so weird,” he laughs.
“Me? How do you figure?”
He laces our fingers together, watching them intertwine. My pink fingernails look odd against his torn knuckles, my ivory skin almost unreal against the dark, stained, almost olive-y hued tone of his. He works them back and forth, taking them in from every direction like it’s some kind of anomaly.
Ignoring my question, he squeezes my hand one final time before resting them on the console. “Does this mean you’re coming by tomorrow?”
“I’m still not cleaning the bathroom.”
“I can deal with that.”
There’s an unsteadiness to his eye, something that makes me think maybe he’s gone too far in one day.
Blowing out a breath, I squeeze his hand before slipping mine from his. “I better get going. I have a lot of things to think about.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Besides be a distraction?” I laugh, reaching for the handle.
The door is partially open, the scent of evergreens whispering through the air, when he speaks.
“Sienna?”
“Yeah?”
Looking over my shoulder, I can see the uncertainty in his eyes. He stills for a split second before leaning across the console. I meet him somewhere near halfway.
He takes my face in his hands and presses a sweet, simple kiss that dizzies me as much as if he deprived me of oxygen for days. When he pulls back, he’s no more certain but seems resolved.
“See you tomorrow,” I whisper.
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
I slip out the door and into my car without breathing or looking back. The light is brighter, the birds happier, the colors in the stained glass of the church more vivid as I buckle myself in and start the engine.
Walker watches me, one arm over the steering wheel. I wave. He holds his hand in the air in some guy version of goodbye, the engine ripping alive before he pulls out of the parking lot and heads in the opposite direction of my house.
I sit for a few minutes, trying to get my bearings. I can still smell his cologne on my skin. The deep, dark tones linger and I take a deep breath and hope they stick around for a while.
Putting my car in reverse, I pull out of the lot and onto the street and head to the left. Disappointment flickers when I don’t see him in my rearview mirror.
A loud ring belts from my bag. Stopping at a stop sign at the end of the block, I fish around until it vibrates in my hand. “Hey, Delaney.”
“I was just checking on you. Making sure those Gibson boys didn’t have you for breakfast . . . although I can’t say that would be a bad thing necessarily.”
Sighing happily into the phone, I pull away from the stop sign. “I think we had a breakthrough today.”
“Tell me more,” she laughs.
“I don’t know what happened. He was mad as hell that I was at church and even madder that I went with Peck over to their Nana’s for dinner.”
“You little rebel!”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yes, it is. You flaunted that right in his face like a good girl.”
I roll my eyes hard as I take a left on the road to take me to Merom. “Hardly. I told Nana I’d go and then Peck was insistent and I kind of wanted to give him an opportunity to say whatever he had to say. He did come out to get me yesterday,” I shrug.
“Peck’s hot. He can insist whatever he wants with me and I’ll play along.”
Laughing, I picture Peck with his hands in dishwater as Walker and I left Nana’s. “He’s hot if you like that tall, lanky, blond, loves-his-grandma kind of thing.”
“I do. Sign me up,” she giggles. “So back to Walker. What happened with him?”
“I’m not sure . . .” Taking a deep breath, letting the spicy signature of his cologne soothe me, I work out how to explain something I don’t really understand. “I don’t know what happened, Delaney. We went outside and I told him I was tired of the way he’s so hot and cold. There was a treehouse . . .”
“And you got hot and dirty in the treehouse, didn’t you, you little minx?” she rushes. “I didn’t know you had it in you, but damn it, I’m so proud.”
“I didn’t have sex with him in his childhood treehouse,” I laugh. “He kissed me and whatever it is that drives him to be so wishy-washy came roaring back. But he communicated that with words and not scowls per usual.”
“What do you think it is? Guys go gaga over you, Sienna. I can’t take you anywhere without at least one date offer. I think it’s so odd that he fights himself about you.”
It’s the exact same question that’s been rolling around in my brain for days now. A question I wish I had an answer for.
“Maybe he’s had his heart broken,” I offer. “Maybe he didn’t like me at first.”
“Nah, it’s more than that. It has to be, doesn’t it?”
Shrugging, my buzz from the afternoon evaporating like a puddle of water in the desert, I sigh. “I don’t know, Delaney. Maybe I’ll figure it out after a shower and pie.”
“Okay. I gotta go anyway,” she says, reading my need to stop talking about it. “Talk to you later.”
“Bye.”
My phone lands on the passenger seat with a thud.
WHY DIDN’T I THINK of this before?
A dog would cure not all, but a lot of my problems.
They’re loyal. Don’t complain about anything as long as you feed them and give them some attention. They don’t ask for much or have unrealistic expectations and when you let them out to piss, they always come back.
“Yeah, but so does Peck.” Running a hand through my hair still wet from the shower, I pad through the dark house until I hit the kitchen. The light comes on, shining brightly across the room that I need to remodel first. When I get to it.
The thought irks me and I shove it out of my mind and focus on the good. It’s not often I have good to even think about, and today is about as good as it can get. Sienna’s beautiful face takes the place of the dingy linoleum in my mind’s eye and I find myself grinning as I take out a mug and pour a glass of root beer from a two-liter bottle.
There’s no ice because I forgot to buy it on my way home from Nana’s, and I’m too lazy to go back to the gas station to get it. It’s times like these that make me think I should just sell this place on the edge of town and move to a city that at least has a grocery store.
Sipping the room temperature pop, I lean against the counter. For a moment, I consider packing all my shit. I think about what it would be like to start all over again in a new space, maybe even a new zip code, and just leaving everything behind. I only consider it for a second, though, because I know as much as I tell myself it’s what I should do, I can’t.
What would happen to Nana? Who would make sure Machlan remembers to mow around Mom’s mums in the front yard of his house? Who would listen to Lance’s stories from the trenches of dating women he meets online? Who would keep Peck in a job?
As great as starting all over again sounds, I know I couldn’t leave. Every morning I stop at Goodman’s and get a cup of coffee just like Dad did. It’s stupid as hell; that’s not lost on me. But there’s something about the routine of it, the carrying out a tradition of the old man, that seems like in some ridiculous way it keeps his memory alive. Some mornings I see Dad’s old buddies and we stop and shoot the shit. Sometimes I’ll hold the door open for a woman Mom sang in the church choir with, and she’ll tell me how much I look like my father and that my mother had the best voice this side of the Mississippi.
Finishing the drink, I rinse the glass and set it on a towel by the sink. Some of the water splashes against my bare chest. Swiping a towel from a drawer next to the stove, I run the towel across my skin and remember what it was like to have Sienna’s hands on my body and the way she didn’t seem to give a damn about anything other than enjoying the moment with me.
With me.
My mind goes into overdrive at those two little words. What would it be like to be with a woman who is with me? Who doesn’t think Crank is a waste of time and energy? Who doesn’t look at a relationship like a one-sided event? Who gets along with my family, doesn’t mind Nana’s demands for Sunday dinner, doesn’t find Peck to be an annoying weight on their existence?
I still think, after all these years, that’s why Tabby left.
If Sienna is a blessing or a curse, I haven’t figured out, but pushing her away is pointless. It’s like pushing a ball up a hill and thinking it’ll stay. It won’t. Gravity doesn’t care you want the round ball to sit on an incline and it doesn’t care that I need Sienna to stay away.
The grandfather clock in the living room chimes, sending a chill down my spine. I toss the towel in the sink and head to bed.