18

Part of me had never really believed TJ would say yes. When he did, I had to scramble to cover my dumbfoundedness. Then Kendall immediately popped into my mind. How would she take it? What did it mean that he’d accepted my invitation without hesitation after worming out of plans with her? Should I cancel and then show up anyway, hoping to catch him in the act of God-knows-what and get it over with already?

I nixed the last idea for purely selfish reasons, knowing if I busted him too soon, I’d never get my lesson in making leather jewelry.

I’d also received my first assignment from Sara Mendez regarding Jordan: she wanted me to follow him the next time he went to a Templeton football game. I accepted, since it was about the most convenient idea she could’ve come up with.

As I stared at my phone deciding the best way to break the news about my Friday plans to Kendall, it buzzed in my hand.

Did you ask yet?

Sometimes I swore the girl had my brain tapped.

I wrote back, What did you suggest that he turned down?

Dinner. Why?

With that, my phone started to ring. Before I could even say hello, Kendall greeted me with, “He said yes, didn’t he? You’re shitting me. You’ve got to be shitting me.”

I sighed. “I’m not shitting you. He told me to come over when he gets off work.”

“Damn it, Marisa. I hate him!”

And then she started to cry. Not a drama queen cry, not an I-want-attention cry. Real, heaving, heartbroken sobs. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

“Kendall, I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry. Listen, I won’t go, okay? This is reason enough to break up with him as far as I’m concerned. We can stop right here. Say the word and the investigation is over.”

“N-no,” she gulped. “I n-need answers. I want to know w-why. I need to know who. I need to make him p-pay for treating me this way.”

“Um, now we’re getting a little sinister.”

“Stop, Marisa. You know what I mean. We have to keep going. I’ll never know what happened to our relationship if I break it off now.” She sniffled and blew her nose.

“It’s your call, but are you sure? I hate seeing you get hurt.”

“I’m sure.”

If she wasn’t sure, she faked it very well. I thought about making an excuse for TJ, pointing out that he didn’t get off work until six, but unless he was really a seventy-year-old inside a seventeen-year-old’s body, six o’clock was still plenty early for dinner plans. I couldn’t come up with a good way to explain his behavior, so I didn’t. Instead I said, “I’ll let you know what happens.”

• • •

It didn’t make sense to be nervous on my way to TJ’s house, but I was anyway. I knew it wasn’t a date. Technically, we weren’t even friends, but we were hanging out on a Friday night and he’d picked me over Kendall. I hoped he didn’t have the wrong impression. Although, that was sort of the point.

When I pulled up to TJ’s house, the barn windows were lit from within and I breathed a sigh of relief that he’d spared me the über awkwardness of having to say hello to his family. Then again, he’d probably spared himself too. My parents definitely would’ve asked questions if I brought a random guy over while dating someone else.

Things only got weirder when I stepped into the barn. TJ greeted me with a warm smile and a “hey.” His hair hung in damp curls around his forehead, and he had that wonderful, freshly showered boy smell. The kind that used to make me want to bury my nose in Jordan’s neck and bite it and—

My eyes dropped involuntarily to the soft-looking skin near TJ’s collar. Jesus Christ, stop it right now! This is no time to think about neck biting!

I was mortified at myself. A few months with no action, and a little soap and cologne had me foaming at the mouth. Pathetic.

“Hey,” I said weakly. “Thanks for doing this.”

“No problem. Come over to the stable before we start, I want to show you something.” He started toward the nearest stall and I followed. Then he stepped aside to let me in. On the right wall hung a framed picture of a man and a little boy standing next to a regal-looking brown-and-black horse with a white patch down the center of its nose. The man held the waving boy in his arms and both sported riding boots and matching grins.

I looked back at TJ and smiled. “Is that you?”

“That’s me and my dad with Molly, his horse. I was five in that picture. I think she died the year after.”

“She’s gorgeous. That must’ve been so sad for both of you.”

“Yeah, it was. Shirley, my uncle’s horse, died a few months later.” He turned and pointed to another picture on the opposite wall. “My dad said I was inconsolable. I sat in the window every day for a month watching the field, waiting for them to come back. I think that’s why we only farm trees and pumpkins. We haven’t even had a dog since.”

He touched the glass over the photo, a far-off look in his eyes, and I let myself watch him for a few beats. I couldn’t reconcile the sensitive, nostalgic TJ in front of me with the picture that Kendall had painted of him. The idea that he’d willfully hurt her didn’t fit at all.

“You’re sure you don’t have a talking goat stashed in here?” I said, hoping to lighten the moment.

“I wish! We’d be loaded.”

We laughed together and I took one last look at the picture. Next to it hung a shiny plaque engraved with Molly’s name beneath an etching of a horse’s profile. Below that, in smaller print, it said, “Thomas J. Caruso.” Below that, “Jumping.”

“So I’m guessing the T in TJ stands for Thomas?”

“You guess correctly. Same as my dad.”

“And what about the J?”

TJ looked at the floor. “My parents have a weird sense of humor.”

I couldn’t imagine what that meant. “Your middle name’s not Jesus, is it?”

He chortled. “No. It’s, um, it’s Jones.”

“Thomas…Jones? Like Tom Jones? As in the old-school singer with the Afro and the camel hump? Oh my God, why would they do that to you?”

TJ looked stricken. “It’s my mom’s maiden name.”

Open mouth, insert foot. “Oh.”

A huge grin spread across TJ’s face and his shoulders shook with laughter. “Marisa, I’m totally kidding. The J stands for James. I wish you could see your face right now.”

If it hadn’t been so nice to see him let loose a little, I would’ve wished for some horse poop and a shovel to fling it at him. I told him as much.

“You’re always so serious at school,” I said as I took a seat on the stool he pulled up to his worktable for me. “I was almost afraid to talk to you.”

He shrugged. “I keep to myself. When you know more about growing trees and tanning leather than you do about football and booze, you learn to keep your mouth shut until you’re around the right people.”

“So I’m the right people?”

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

At that moment, I wanted so badly to ask how he and Kendall wound up together. They seemed like polar opposites, and yet he’d obviously deemed her “the right people” at some point. And she wanted to be with him until she had concrete proof that she shouldn’t, which was the reason I was even there. Only I couldn’t ask, because TJ had never once mentioned having a girlfriend in front of me.

So I flashed an appreciative smile and said, “Should we get started?”

TJ agreed and went to one of his shelves. When he came back, he had a bracelet-sized strip of cowhide, which he placed on the board in front of me.

“I thought we’d make Charlie’s bracelet first, since you know exactly how you want it.” He went back to the shelf and grabbed a bottle of purple dye. The same purple we’d talked about in the yearbook classroom, when he’d more or less told me the color looked good on me. I glanced down and stifled a gasp.

I’d worn a purple shirt. Holy hell, I hadn’t done that on purpose, had I?

TJ put the bottle down next to me. “The type of dye I use is for vegetable-tanned leather. It can be a little harder to color, but it’s a lot more natural than some of the other methods and way better for the environment. I’m all about being eco-friendly.” He dragged a hand through his hair and shook his head, revealing red-tinged ears. “Now you know why I keep my mouth shut.”

“Because you’re ashamed of your ability to carry on an intelligent conversation?”

His lips turned up, embarrassed but grateful. “Thanks. I appreciate that.” We smiled at each other for what felt like an awkwardly long time, even though it couldn’t have been more than few seconds.

I started to say I didn’t know vegetables could be used to tan leather at the same time as he said, “So anyway, this is the color I used for my mother’s bracelet.” We both stopped and laughed.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m the student. I should be listening.”

“No, it’s a good question. Vegetable tanning is one of the oldest methods—the oldest, I think. It’s done with extracts from tree bark and plants instead of chemicals, and the leather ends up nice and flexible. You can stamp it with designs too, which reminds me—do you want me to put Charlie’s initials on it?”

My face lit up. “You can do that?”

TJ grinned, clearly proud of himself. “Sure. I have the tools and the letter stamps. It’ll take two seconds. Unless one of her initials is P, then you’re SOL. I dropped that one weeks ago and still haven’t found it.”

I laughed. “She’s Charlotte Grace Reiser. Not a p in her entire name.”

“Excellent. Hey—that reminds me. Did you ever find the rest of your ankle bracelet?”

I frowned and shook my head.

“Damn, that’s too bad.”

TJ returned to his shelves and came back with a plastic case full of small square letters, a thin metal tool that reminded me of the instrument my dentist used to clean my teeth, and a mallet. He dropped the C, G, and R on the table, then flipped the leather over and lined up the C near the edge of the strip closest to him. Leaning in, he placed the tool over the square and positioned the mallet above it. There was an ease to his stance that told me he’d done this a hundred times before but the lines of his profile grew serious with concentration, like he took every time as seriously as the first. His work seemed to put him under a spell. I felt like I shouldn’t breathe for fear of messing him up.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Without my permission, my gaze roamed from the curls at his temples to the slope of his nose to the curve of his lips and the long, slender lines of his fingers, up his arms, and back again. Watching his hands made me wonder what it would be like to touch them. Which led me to think of them touching me and—

I jumped a mile at the first smack of the mallet.

Suddenly I didn’t believe him when he said there were no chemicals in the leather. It was the only explanation for my complete lapse in brain function.

I fidgeted on my stool, while he pounded in the rest of the letters, and tried to purge my mind of the images that had flooded in out of nowhere. I might’ve been successful too, if not for the next step.

“Now we’re ready for the dye,” TJ said, unscrewing the cap to the bottle of purple liquid. He brought over a dauber that looked like the one I used to take nail polish off my toes and handed it to me. “Coat this with the coloring and then we’ll apply it.”

I did as he instructed, holding the dauber above the bottle to let the excess drip off.

That’s when he covered my hand with his.

The unexpected warmth startled me, and droplets of dye from the dauber sprayed all over the table. “Oh! I’m sorry!” I leaped off the stool to inspect my clothes, trying and failing to fight the blush speeding up my neck.

“Did it get on you?” TJ looked me up, down, and sideways, which didn’t help my blushing situation. “I don’t see any on your clothes. I think we’re good.” He pulled the stool closer and helped me back on, his hand holding mine the entire time. When I’d gotten comfortable again, or as comfortable as I could be considering I wanted to bolt out of the barn like a bull at a rodeo, he lowered our hands over the leather. “You want to spread the dye over the whole surface using a circular motion, like this.” He guided my hand with his own until the entire strip of leather had turned a gorgeous purple hue. When he finally released me, my whole body relaxed.

TJ grinned. “Good work! That wasn’t so bad, right?”

I agreed with enthusiasm but thought, Speak for yourself.

Somewhere along the line though, I finally started to chill out. By the time we finished the next bracelet—Nick’s, which I opted to have embossed with his first name on account of TJ’s missing P—we were chatting and laughing like there hadn’t been any weirdness at all. And maybe there hadn’t been. Maybe I’d mistaken my digesting dinner for butterflies in my stomach. That totally had to be it.

Except when TJ walked me to my car, he touched my hand again. It was only once, for the briefest moment—so brief I didn’t know if he’d done it by accident or on purpose. I only knew that it felt more like a promise than a parting of ways.

And I didn’t like that at all.

As I shut myself inside my car and waved goodbye to TJ, my stomach sank like rock. TJ and I had been together for hours, and I hadn’t done a single solitary bit of investigating.