My head was always in the clouds after seeing Tate. She burst into my life like a giggle in the middle of a prayer meeting—unexpected, but a welcome retreat.
I never thought I’d get a second chance with her.
I thought my shot at loving Tate had been buried with those messages in bottles.
That Thursday morning had been amazing and I’d let it carry me through the moments of the day.
I could feel the heat of her hands on my face and against my chest. The subtle lull of her breathing still rocked me to sleep nights after. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the contours of her body as they fit right into the concaves of mine.
Like she was made to be held by me.
Like I could hold her forever.
I could still smell her on my hoodie, vanilla and honey. It reminded me of the honeysuckles that grew on the hills.
As stupid as it sounded, Tate Halloway tasted like the finest honeysuckle jelly that my mom used to make in the summer.
I felt open and alive.
Maybe for the first time.
She’d cracked through my core.
I would spend the rest of our lives thanking her for not giving up on me.
I missed her even before I left her.
Thursday and Friday I hit the books, for no other reason than boredom. The room was actually quiet now that West had bob-tailed his quest to be the rowdiest student on campus into the most studious. It was eerily quiet.
I was probably too worried about West. He’d probably just grown up and realized that it was now or never with college. Stockton wasn’t going to pay for him to fart around forever.
By Saturday afternoon, I was reeling for something to do and some fresh air.
I intended to make my way onto the field and people watch. It was a perfect day for it. Sometimes, I felt like I knew people well just by watching them. The way they looked at others, the way others looked at them. How people act and the words they say when others aren’t watching often reflects their true character.
That’s when something hard and sharp hit me in the jaw.
“Sorry, man.” A guy yelled after me.
“That’s okay.”
I picked up the object of my demise, a Frisbee, and pathetically tossed it back to him.
“Wanna join in before the serious players get here?”
The guy was dressed like an athlete, built like an athlete, but talked like he was straight out of a comic book.
“There are serious Frisbee—ers?”
“Yeah, man. Ultimate Frisbee.”
The only ultimate thing I liked was an ultimate cheeseburger.
“No thanks.”
Deciding that the field was more dangerous than I thought, I went to the student union instead. A postcard in my mailbox told me I’d received a package from Cami.
“You have to sign for it.” The girl behind the counter pointed to a line with an X.
I didn’t want to sign for it. If I signed for the package, then Cami would know I received it. And if she knew I received it, I would have to lie about how good the contained baked goods were.
“You know,” the blonde girl whispered as she leaned over the corner exposing a lot more than her knowledge of postal codes. “The policy changed. They only allow pre-packaged food now. No homemade treats.”
I jerked at her statement.
“How did you know?”
She blushed and took her place again on the other side. “I’ve seen you here before. You open the box and throw out the food—cookies mostly.”
“I do that.”
“Open it. I bet there’s nothing that didn’t come from a store.”
Graciously, she handed over a box cutter and I sliced through the layers of tape. Cami might not be able to cook for shit, but she could duct tape a box like nobody’s business.
Looking inside, I breathed a sigh of relief. No burnt bricks, only store bought cookies, chips and candy. And Stockton, because he’s an ass, sent the bracelet I was working on. The charms were almost done. The only one left was a rose gold Christmas tree I intended to put on the bracelet at our first Christmas together.
Christmas needed to be special for her—for me.
I don’t know why he felt the need to send that.
Because he was Stockton and he was nosey.
On my way back to the dorms, my path back was blocked by the university police. They’d blocked off the sidewalk and the common area for tailgaters.
A smile took shape on my face. I knew that the way I had to go back home rounded the corner by Tate’s dorm.
My chest warmed as I thought about sleeping next to her again. It wasn’t something I wanted—or knew I wanted.
I did. I wanted all of Tate—always. For once, with a girl, I could speak my mind and not be chastised for being too sappy or too clingy. My heart could open up and let loose all the things I felt for her—without fear of her stomping on them later.
“Hey!”
West rounded a corner with a backpack slung lazily over his shoulder. I didn’t know West owned a backpack. Yes, I did. That was a lie. But the only reason he owned one was because Cami brought him back to school shopping like he was entering the third grade.
He drew the line at the lunchbox.
“Cami sent us cookies.”
“Why did you accept it? Throw the damned things away before someone hurts themselves.”
Some passerby students chuckled at our exchange.
“They came from the store this time. No harm.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Back to the dorm. They’ve got everything blocked off for the game.”
“Me too. Give me the chips.”
West went after the chips like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. People fluttered all around campus with their school colors on, faces painted, and war cries ready. I could smell the telltale bar-b-que fare all the way from the stadium. We had never been a football family. We spent Saturdays working. My dad had always said that the Lord gave us six good working days and only guaranteed us one day of rest.
Plus, football would require cable.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized we weren’t really a sports family at all.
The way around was a long one. We had to walk all the way around the girls’ dorms, as well as the art museum, awkwardly sitting on the side of campus.
“Oh, so convenient that this path takes us right past your girl’s dorm.” He waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively.
“It is convenient. I didn’t do this on purpose. She’s spending the weekend with her mom anyway. It’s not like I can even see her.”
“Her mom?”
West asking questions seemed off. He was never this inquisitive unless it had to do with him directly.
“Yeah, her mom and her sister too, I think.”
In one swift movement, West jumped in front of me and got so close to my face that I could smell all forty-seven seasonings on his cool ranch chips. Most of said seasonings were stuck in his teeth. “Let’s go to the union. I need something to drink.
I pushed him out of my way. “Shut up. Get a drink from the machine in the dorm.”
“No, I hate drinking from a can. Let’s go back to the union. You’re pissing me off. You just want to walk past her dorm so you can yell at her window like a love struck fool.”
Love struck fool? There was a fool all right, but it wasn’t me.
“Fine.” I turned around and he threw his arm over my shoulder like we were seven and six again and he’d put a dead toad in my pocket.
That’s when I heard it.
It wasn’t her voice—it was her laugh. I could pick her laugh out of a crowd at a comedy club. It came from deep down inside her. She had no shallow one. There was her true laugh or none at all.
I turned around, desperate for the sound to reach my ears again and my eyes scouring the grounds around me for one glance. I was in that deep. One glance would satiate me for a while. A glimpse. That??
?s all I needed to quench the ever growing thirst for Tate.
A bass sound, resounding and unnerving, replaced her laugh in my ears when I saw her. It blocked out all the noise around me and cut off my other senses.
She was wrapped in a blanket and my legs’ and arms’ first instincts were to run to her. Then I saw two hands, one curled around her dainty waist—the other encasing both of her legs. Someone was holding her. The dead grip of the bass pounded harder and soon evolved into a piercing beep.
I could barely contain the shaking that wracked my chest as realization poured its icy knowledge down my back.
It was a man holding her—the way I had.
It was a man whose words had caused the laugh I’d so selfishly claimed she only gifted me.
It didn’t matter—he was holding her and I wasn’t.
Because she said she couldn’t see me.
Because she said she would be with her family.
The bastard was my age, his hair shaved so close to his head. I could only tell that it was light in color. He smiled down on her like she was the sun. She was the sun. She was the planets and the stars and the galaxy itself.
He stumbled, almost dropping her and she slapped his shoulder with the same hand that had, not two days before, laid on my chest while I promised her that we could get through anything.
Anything.
I promised her we would work through anything.
Her laugh rang true. It was the only thing I could hear clearly.
He dumped her into the passenger seat of a worn pickup truck. It was the most beat up truck I’d ever seen, worse than Stockton’s old piece of crap. She rolled her eyes while he put on her seatbelt and kissed her cheek. With great care, he swiped a piece of untamable hair from her face.
Maybe no part of Tate was tamable.
Didn’t he know that?
“It’s not what you think. Back up and walk away.” West was growling in my ear. I could barely comprehend his words over the constant drumming.
My gaze couldn’t be torn from her if my life depended on it. Her feet were bare, the boots she loved to wear dangling from his hands. That may have been the greatest betrayal of all, those boots in his hands. Only a piece of her red hair could be seen from beneath that same sweatshirt she’d worn before that now rested against the stranger.
My doubts wrangled in my chest. She wouldn’t. There’s been a mistake.
“She…” I couldn’t have coaxed my throat to form another word if I wanted it to. Every emotion held my words in place.
“Come on before you come unglued. Trust me, it’s not what you think.” It was the second time he’d spoke those words, but they wouldn’t resonate for a while yet. West took me by the shoulders and jerked me backwards until I complied, giving up on the scene for sanity’s sake.
Before I knew it, West had taken us on an unknown path behind buildings and around dumpsters, we were back at the dorms.
I didn’t even know if I had breathed since I’d seen Tate.
Maybe I hadn’t.
Maybe I would never breathe again.
I sat down on my bed, even it protested against my plopping down in distress.
“I’m going home.” I breathed to no one in particular.
“Cool off Bridger. Let her explain. This is bigger than some petty jealousy. All of this.”
I was burning from the inside out. My heart was wrestling with my mind. It was winning.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Pushing past an all of the sudden attentive brother, I barely shucked my clothes off before turning on the shower and yelling at the rapid temperature change. Our dorm showers had two temperatures, boiling and iceberg. I needed iceberg. I needed the dousing of freezing forgiveness.
West was right. Damn him to hell, he was right. There had to be a reason. She wouldn’t do that. She swore it to me and unlike any other person in my life, I believed her.
But more than that, I promised.
I promised her we would work through anything.
I’d taken and broken her trust too many times in my life not to give her the benefit of the doubt now.
In order to love Tate like she deserved to be loved, I had to rid myself of the constant doubt that plagued me.
I had to love her with the fury of ten year old Bridger and the depth of twenty-one-year-old Bridger.
And give it all the room it needed to grow every day.
That I could do.
A rabid laugh broke free from my chest and reverberated around me in the tiny shower. It echoed and anyone in hearing distance would think a lunatic had taken up residence in the hall. It was a simple thing to do. So much easier than creating a story out of what could be nothing.
Loving Tate was easy.
It just meant letting go.
“Bridger, don’t make me come in there. You sound like that stabby clown guy.”
West watched too many horror films.
“I’m fine,” I shouted and turned off the water. I grabbed a towel and walked out feeling like nothing could hurt me. I loved her with every pulse of blood in my veins.
She wouldn’t do that to me.
She wouldn’t.
What was that called?
Trust.
I trusted Tate, which might just be more important than these first sprigs of love.
“She’s fine, Bridger.”
“I know, West. She’s fine.”
“Just a few more weeks and you’ll see, she’ll be back to normal.”
He faltered in his pacing which he’d taken up when we got to the dorm.
“She’s normal now, West. You’re the one who’s not normal.”
He didn’t laugh. Usually, not only would West laugh, but he would value being not normal as a compliment. He made a habit of showing off his non-normalcy daily.
“I’ll never be normal, Bridger. But you will and she will.”
I kicked his chair and then dug around in my dresser for boxers and a pair of jeans.
“What is up with you? I swear, ever since we got back from home, you’ve been acting strange.”
He got out a stack of books as if to prove my point. “Acting strange? Really? We are in school Bridger. What, I’m not the screw-up brother anymore? You don’t know how to act unless you’re playing father figure to the dumbass sibling?”
That came from left field.
“You’re ridiculous. Don’t act like you’ve been a model student all this time.”
He turned around and got into my face. “Have you seen my grades? Or do you just assume I’m a dumbass?”
“You’re not stupid, West. You just cut up too much.”
“Maybe I’m done with cutting up. Maybe I realize how short life is, and I’m ready to grow up a little. Maybe you should too. Tate has never done anything to earn your mistrust.”
I squinted. “I know. I overreacted. I’m over it now. Don’t think your turncoat life all of the sudden gives you the right to get in my shit.”
He swiveled around on his heel and looked out the window. “I have to tell you something, Bubba.”
West hadn’t called me Bubba since we were in overalls at the creek. It wasn’t uncommon for siblings in the south to call their older brother Bubba. It had been a long time. We never called Stock the term of endearment, but West and Willa had always called me that until they got too big for their britches.
“West?”
“You’d better sit down.”