My First - Jason & Katie (2 page)

He then proceeded to shoot her a smile that she would later come to know had gotten him anything he wanted since he was an infant. And with good reason, it was one helluva doozy of a smile!

As much as Katie wanted to act like the smile didn’t affect her, she knew the heat she felt in her cheeks meant that they were bright red. Dang. No way could she hide the evidence.

Still, that didn't mean she had to acknowledge it. So she did what any super-cool eleven year old girl would have done when faced with Nick Hunter’s dreamy proposal.

She shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever.”

“Sweet,” he smiled,” I'll be here at 7:45 so we can walk to school together tomorrow.”

He then jumped off her porch before she could say another word. She slowly closed her front door and, once it shut, started to scream and run around in circles until she fell on her couch in utter exhaustion. Katie always did lean towards the dramatic.

Katie had no way of knowing then that the relationship she had just entered would last for the next six years of her life, and end in tragedy.

The summer after Nick and Katie's senior year of high school, Nick had been out late one night joyriding and had tragically driven his truck off Spencer Point.

Hours later, when the police pulled the truck out of the steep embankment, they found a nearly lifeless body inside. Nick had lain in a hospital bed, deep in a coma, for three weeks following the accident. Katie and his family had been by his side every moment that the hospital staff would allow them to be.

Finally his parents, Mike and Grace, had made the most horrific decision any parent could ever have to make. They took Nick off life support.

His funeral was held three days later, and Katie had left that very same night to go stay with her grandmother in Chicago. She needed to escape, and she'd been running ever since. That had been the last time she had set foot in Harper's Crossing.

Until today.

As she turned the corner onto Harper Lane, the street she had grown up on, she was amazed at how it looked as though nothing had changed. It was as if time had stood still on her street.

Not the rest of Harper's Crossing, though, that was for sure! On the drive in, Katie had barely recognized the town that she had spent most of her childhood in. The last time she had been in Harper's Crossing, it contained two traffic lights and one four way stop. Today there was a traffic light or four way stop at every intersection!

The field that Katie had learned to ride her bike in when she was five, played tag in, had attempted and failed to smoke a cigarette in when she was thirteen, and had spent almost every Friday and Saturday night parking in with Nick after he turned 16 and got his black Chevy truck...was now a strip mall.

The quaint, one story hospital that she had been admitted to when she had been suffering from chicken pox and had a temperature of 104 at age six, had her tonsils removed in when she was eight...and had spent three weeks practically living in when she was eighteen, keeping her vigil beside Nick’s motionless body as he lay in a coma...was now a four story hospital that looked to be straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest. And, if the exterior was any indication, it was now state-of-the-art.

She had counted four McDonald's, three Burger Kings and two Taco Bells since she had entered the city limits. This was quite a contrast to her days in Harper’s Crossing, when there had only been one fast food restaurant in town – a Dairy Queen – and it had been the local hang out for all the pre-teens and teens in town. Katie had noted sadly that the Dairy Queen, which was another place that held so many of her teenage memories, had also been obliterated at some point in the past decade. Replaced by an Office Depot.

Nothing had changed on Harper Lane, though. Certainly not the houses, which were still all painted in one of three color combinations – blue and yellow, green and white, or blue and white.

And judging by the few neighbors that she had seen out on their lawns, the people hadn’t changed, either. Mrs. Belmont still watered her yard in that same pink and green moo moo she had worn since Katie could remember. Mr. Peters still mowed his lawn in white shorts that were two sizes too small and black socks that he pulled all the way up to his knees.

As
she pulled up in front of her aunt’s two-story home (painted in the white with blue trim option, for that Mediterranean flair, Katie thought with a small smile) she felt a confusing combination of relief, nostalgia, sadness, and anxiety. She had always known that at some point she would need to come home and face her past. She’d just…been busy.

After she graduated from law school at Pepperdine University she had immediately started working at Wilson, Martin, Gregory and Assoc., a very prestigious law firm in San Francisco.

The first three years at the firm went by in a blur. Katie worked 80+ hours a week and even worked every holiday, including Christmas. She'd barely had time to breathe, let alone go out of town.

Last year, even though she was on the fast track to make Junior Partner, she had taken a vacation.

Well, vacation might be a bit of an exaggeration. It was two days off, tacked onto a weekend...and she hadn't gone in on the weekend, which was her normal custom. So, it was four blissful, unscheduled days all to herself.

Katie had spent her ‘vacation’ in her apartment, so it was really more of a ‘staycation’ - but still. She cleaned, cooked, slept and had a Julia Roberts movie marathon, but she had indeed taken time off.

At the end of the four days, she had felt herself starting to take stock and think about dealing with her past, so she had been MORE than happy to go back to work on Wednesday.

Now, as she opened the door to her rented blue Honda Accord, Katie took in a deep breath and let out a cleansing sigh. The air smelled of a familiar combination: sweet from Mrs. Greyson’s beautiful flower bed, and fresh from the trees that lined the street. Katie was home.

She moved to the back of the car, popped open the trunk, and reached for her suitcase. She was stopped cold in her tracks by the sound of a man’s voice.

“Need a hand Kit Kat?” a deep voice sounded from behind her.

A shudder rippled through her body and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her carry-on slipped from her shoulder and dropped to the cement ground of the driveway.

“Jason?” she said, her voice a whisper of disbelief.

Katie had known that she would have to face Jason at some point on her trip home. He was, after all, the best man in Sophie’s wedding - and seeing as how Sophie was marrying Jason’s little brother, Bobby, well let's just say it was inevitable that their paths would cross. She just thought she would have a little more time to prepare herself before she came face to face with him.

She also thought she would have the buffering (protective?) shield of a room full of people surrounding them.

Nope. Here they were. About to be face to face, for the first time in a decade. Alone.

She stood frozen with her back to him, staring down at her pink and black suitcase, wishing with all her might that she could just climb into the trunk and hide. That, however, was probably not the most mature response to this encounter...and also, shall we say, not the most subtle.

As the realization sank in that the extra time and buffer-people she so desperately needed to get through this encounter with Jason WERE NOT FLIPPING FORTHCOMING, Katie felt as though the air was literally being sucked from her lungs.

Great. Panic attack number two, here we go. And right in front of him. So, yeah. You could say this visit was not going well.

Jason Andrew Sloan had chestnut brown hair, whiskey-colored soulful brown eyes, and a smile that could, as her Aunt Wendy always said, “melt butter in a freezer.” He was also the first person Katie had met in her kindergarten class at Harper's Crossing Elementary.

23 Years Ago

It was the first day of Kindergarten and Katie was paired up with a boy as a table buddy. A BOY! Could this day get any worse? The class’ first official assignment as kindergartners was to write their names on the white paper sitting on the desk in front of them and then tape it to the back of their seats.

Katie wrote her name in all capital letters and rainbow colors and taped it on the back of her seat, just as she had been instructed to do. She was proud of finishing her assignment in time to go out for recess. She noticed her table buddy (THE BOY!) had not.

After the first recess, when the kids came back into the classroom, she saw a few of them standing around her chair laughing. As she walked up behind them to sit in her seat she saw that the 'ie' at the end of 'Katie' on the nameplate she had been so proud of had been crossed out, and the word 'Kit' had been written in front of the 'Kat' that remained of her original creation.

She was so embarrassed. Why would anybody ruin her name paper? She looked over to see her table buddy Jason (THE BOY!), smiling a toothless grin from ear to ear as he patted her chair “I think this is your seat, Kit Kat,” he said.

All the kids started laughing and Katie just slumped down in her chair, furious
at her table buddy aka THE BOY aka Jason Sloan.

Jason never admitted to being the one who had defaced her beautiful rainbow colored name paper but she knew deep down in her heart that he was the culprit. And she would never forget it, just like no one ever forgot the nickname. From that day on Katie Lawson was Kit Kat. Well, to all the kids in Harper’s Crossing Elementary, anyways.

Present Day

His voice interrupted her thoughts now.

“Wow all this time and you know it’s me without even having to turn around. I guess that means I still got it,” he said with his usual cocky tone. A tone that had always amused Katie, not that she would ever let him know that. His ego was big enough!

Jason had had girls swooning over him for as long as she had known him. In fact, Katie believed that even their sixth grade math teacher Mrs. Carson had a crush on him. Whenever
Jason would turn on the charm, usually to get out of detention for not completing his homework or being tardy, Mrs. Carson would just smile as her cheeks turned a light shade of red and say, “Oh, Jason if you were just 10 years older…”

Mrs. Carson never finished the sentence but Katie always knew what she meant, and Jason never got detention…at least in that class.

But, it’s not like his charm only worked on older women. Jason had always had girls eating out of his hand and he knew it. There wasn’t a single girl in Harper's Crossing that wouldn’t do just about anything to get Jason’s attention.

Well, there was one girl. Katie.

“Oh yeah, you still got it, Mr. Sloan,” Katie said sarcastically, trying to buy herself even a few more seconds before she would have to face him, “If by 'it' you mean the maturity of a five year old, then yes, you definitely still have 'it.' There's no other explanation for why you would still call me by that stupid nickname.”

All of the oxygen seemed to have disappeared around her. Deliberately and methodically, she slowly breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, trying desperately to remain as calm as possible. She HAD to be calm in hopes of staving off panic attack #2. She absolutely couldn't think about how humiliating it would be to fall to pieces in front of him, of the maddening satisfaction it would give him, or fear would take over – her heart would start to race, her breathing would quicken...and it would all be downhill from there.

“Come on Kit Kat...you know you always loved that nickname,” Katie heard Jason say playfully, but his voice sounded as if it were coming from a long distance, across a great expanse. She felt his hand grasp her arm, and then she felt her body being turned in his direction.

As Jason’s fingers wrapped around her arm they were causing tingling sensations in places located much lower south and not nearly as innocent as the place where he was touching her. Hmm, that wasn't a very good sign. It also wasn't doing a whole helluva lot to help her in the campaign to keep her heart rate under control and slow her breathing. Nope. Not one little bit.

As she turned, her eyes alighted on a broad chest that...oh my, yes...filled out his white t-shirt quite well. Her mouth instantly filled with saliva, like one of Pavlov's dogs. Hmmm, she thought...so this is what they mean when they say something looks 'mouth-watering.' She didn't disagree! In an effort to avoid drooling, she swallowed, but to her own ears it sounded like a shockingly loud gulp.

Slowly, Katie moved her eyes up the length of the solid, strong, statue-like figure standing mere inches away from her. She paused momentarily to admire (against her will) the smooth, olive skin at the base of Jason’s neck. It just so nicely contrasted with the stark white color of the t-shirt's v-neck it was peeking out of, she couldn't help herself!

Unconsciously, she licked her lips and saw the pulse on Jason’s neck jump. Her eyes darted up to meet his chocolate brown ones, which caused the aforementioned tingling places to start pulsing.

Katie felt her heart beating so hard she thought it might beat right out of her chest. And the mantra began.

You can breathe. Just breathe. Breathe in and out slowly. You can breathe.

--- ~ ---

As Jason stood in front of Katie, who was wearing a simple grey tank top and blue jeans, he was momentarily paralyzed with shock at the effect that she had on him.