For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) (2 page)

We spend all morning setting posts and stringing wire. It’s hard work, and the early spring weather is already hot. We don’t talk much, and little by little, I feel the pain of hearing Joss’s voice bleed out of me. I resolve to leave it behind, there in the dirt and scrub grass of the Texas plains. Once we’re done, we trundle back to the main house, ready for some of Leanne’s cooking. When we pull up, there’s a car I’ve never seen before in the drive.

"Wonder if we’ve got a new guy," Mike says as he pulls the toolbox out of the truck bed and heads toward the storage shed to stash it.

"I don’t know, man. Ronny didn’t say anything about getting someone new, but it could have been last-minute I guess."

Mike grunts at me as he walks back from the shed and we amble on inside the house.

Leanne runs her domain like a fucking military camp. Workers come in the back door, then through the kitchen so she’ll know how many she’s serving, and finally on into the big dining room, where everything is set up to feed as many as two dozen hungry guys. But in Leanne’s dining room, there’re no hats, no swearing, and no belching. Let’s just say that Mike had a period of adjustment when he started staying here.

As we walk through the utility room toward the enormous kitchen, I hear her chatting to someone, her homey Texas twang carrying clearly through the space.

"He’s been doing real well. Such a lovely guy. I’m sure he’ll be happy to see a friend from home."

"So no one else has been to visit him?"

I stop dead in my tracks, a handful of steps from turning the corner into the kitchen. Everything inside me goes boiling hot and then frigid cold in a matter of seconds. My heart feels like it’s stopped inside my chest before I bring my fist up and pound—hard—to get it to start beating again. Mike, who is a few steps ahead of me, turns the corner at the same moment I halt, and I hear him say, "Oh fuck."

There’s silence for a minute, and then Leanne clears her throat uncomfortably. "Uh, Mike, I guess you know Walsh’s friend?"

I’m breathing hard now, and I’m not sure I can keep standing. It feels like my damn heart is going to pitch itself out of my chest onto the floor. I bend over and put my hands on my knees, praying that they can’t hear my raspy breaths from inside the kitchen.

"Uh, yeah," Mike answers tentatively.

"Is he here?" the visitor asks. I hear the hope in the voice—and the false bravado that only I would pick up on.

Mike turns his head slightly to glance at me over his shoulder, but I can’t look him in the eye. I’m working too hard at being able to stand up straight and breathe.

"I’m not sure—"

"Mike, please," the guest interrupts, that bravado slipping and a certain desperation leaking through. Even after all this time, I can’t stand to hear that need. I’m compelled to comfort, make it better, find a way to bring the hope back.

"It’s okay, Mike," I say hoarsely as I finally step forward to stand next to him in the kitchen.

I stop, taking in the scene, like a frozen tableau, all eyes on me—one pair waiting for me to freak the fuck out, the second questioning what the hell is going on, and the third—ah, the third. I look into the depths of those eyes, remembering all the hours I spent lost in their velvety texture, their warmth, their love. The love I thought was mine to hold forever. Those eyes in the face of the person who committed the greatest hurt I’ve ever felt in my twenty-eight years. The eyes that looked at me every day for months on end and lied. The eyes of the woman I still, very reluctantly, love to this day.

I blink, take a deep breath, and say, "Hi, Tammy. What brings you by?"

Tammy

I
T’S FUNNY,
you know. Most women I’ve met say that they’d die if they were to end up with a guy they dated in high school. They all tease each other and make fun of the guys they picked for boyfriends when they were fourteen.

I have to admit, far back in a little corner of my mind, there was always a voice that asked, "What’s wrong with me? Why do I still love the boyfriend I had when I was fourteen?" Now, as I stand looking at the man who was once that boy, I know that, if there’s something wrong with me, I don’t want it fixed. Seeing him at this moment gives me the same ridiculous rush through my stomach, up into my heart, and then straight between my legs that I felt the very first time I laid eyes on him in freshman algebra class in Portland, Oregon.

It’s the second day of school at Rose City High, but our first meeting of Algebra I. I hate math, so I’m dreading this. I also hate having to go into all these classes for the first time. I was "an early developer," as my mom says. I’ve been five feet eight, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and a C cup since I was twelve. I hate being so big. In middle school, all the boys were shorter than me. They talked to my tits and made up names about me like Tamazon. So I sort of hate boys too, and as I stand in the doorway, I can see that there’s a boy blocking my way to my desk. Dammit. I’ll have to talk to him, and he’ll be a jerk and look at my chest the whole time. School sucks.

As I get closer, I see that he’s wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and a pair of jeans that really should have a belt, his boxers showing out the top of the waistband. I feel my breathing get faster, and I tell myself that it’s just adrenaline because I don’t want to have to talk to him, but it might also be because he’s taller than I am. Like, by a lot. He’s also got broad shoulders and really nice, thick reddish-brown hair. It makes me want to dig my fingers into it.

I walk toward my desk. He’s leaning with one hand on the back of my chair, talking to a dark-haired guy who’s sitting in the next row.

"Dude, I’m telling you, Joss can get us tickets. We just need your mom to drive and we’re set."

"Excuse me?" I say, trying really hard not to sound like I give a shit if he notices me or not. "I think I’m supposed to sit here."

He turns, and I find myself staring into the softest, sweetest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. Looking into them is like being cocooned in something warm and plush. I feel safe, peaceful, and happy
—
things I don’t very often feel. He must see something interesting in me too, because we both just stand looking at one another for what feels like hours. His soft lips turn up on the ends and his smile is as gentle as his big brown eyes. He’s not looking at my chest and he’s not looking
up
at me
—
he’s looking
at
me. The real me, like I matter, and I think maybe I could have him look at me that way forever.

Then I hear the other boy’s voice. "Dude, she needs to sit down. Move your ass."

"I’m Walsh," he says, cutting to the heart of it all.

"Tammy," I reply.

He steps back as the teacher walks in and asks everyone to sit down. Walsh is assigned to the seat behind me, and for the entire class, I can physically feel him there, like a tantalizing brush of fingertips across my back. A buzzing, warm sensation that makes it nearly impossible to concentrate on quadratic equations, which, let’s get serious, I’m never going to need to know anyway.

By the end of class, I’ve decided—I have to have him. There is no doubt, no indecision, or need to consider it. Walsh Clark—I learn his full name when roll is called—is the one. The problem being, I don’t know exactly how to make him mine. Since I’ve hated boys for the last three years, I haven’t had much practice at getting them to like me. But I’ve always been a "woman of action," as my dad calls it, so I figure I’ll approach it like I do anything else—make a plan and follow it through until I get what I want.

I’m contemplating all of this as the bell rings and the teacher dismisses us. I pack up my stuff, disappointed when Walsh and his friend hightail it out of class before I can catch up. But when I reach the door to the hall, there he stands, leaning up against some lockers, a smile on his face as I walk toward him.

"Where’s your next class?" he asks, moving his books to the hand farthest from me.

"Art. Annex B. You going to walk me?"

"Yeah," he answers as he reaches over and gently lifts my backpack from my hand.

Now, as I stand in the kitchen of the Double A Ranch in Nowheresville, Texas, I look into those same eyes I first saw fourteen years ago, and I can see what the years have done. My beautiful boy is a man. A man who has suffered pain and seen things he never should have seen. Some of that pain I brought on him. Some of it I watched and didn’t do enough about. All of it I’ve felt in my own heart every day. Somehow, Walsh and I hurt each other—badly—and now I’m here to figure out how to make it right. If he’ll only let me.

Walsh

T
AMMY AND
I stand in Leanne’s kitchen staring at each other, and while I know somewhere in the back of my mind that we should speak, move, get the hell out the way—something—all I can do is drink her in with my eyes. As fucking terrifying as it is to hear her voice, see her face, acknowledge that she’s real and not just a figment of my overactive imagination, it’s also thrilling. Something inside me surges in a way that it hasn’t in six long months. It’s nearly debilitating, the power of my emotions and my physical responses when I’m confronted with her like this.

Leanne is the one who finally speaks. "Well, I’m sure y’all have a lot of catching up to do. All the boys will be here for lunch soon. Why don’t you go on in my parlor where it’s cool and comfortable?" She gently puts one hand on Tammy’s shoulder and gestures with the other toward a door on the far side of the room.

Mike turns and steps in front of me so I’m screened from the two women. "You going to be okay?" he asks, concern oozing from his very pores.

A chill runs through me from head to toe, and I shake it off. God, I’d kill for a drink right now. Just a small one to take the edge off. I know I’d be able to face her without losing my shit if I could just have a drink. I feel my hand shake and I clench it into a fist to try to stop the telltale sign of my weakness.

"I’ll be fine, man," I lie to Mike.

"I’ll be nearby. Just text if you need me. All right?" he offers.

"Yeah," I answer before I turn to walk to the parlor, where Leanne has taken Tammy.

When I get there, Leanne is offering Tammy something to drink or eat. Tammy declines, and Leanne leaves the room, whispering to me as she passes, "I don’t know what’s going on, Walsh, but go easy on each other." I nod.

Once Leanne’s gone, closing the door behind her, I’m left in the little old-fashioned room, nothing but a few antiques between me and the wrecker of my heart.

Tammy’s sitting on a small loveseat kind of thing, and she looks nervous as hell but incredible other than that. The last time I saw her, she was lying in a hospital bed hooked up to IVs, too thin, too tired, and in the midst of a guilt-induced emotional breakdown. With his usual proclivity for wrongheaded actions, Mike picked that moment to let loose with the story of Tammy and Joss sleeping together while I’d been in rehab. It was like something out of a damn telenovela. I punched Joss, Tammy screamed and burst into tears, and her sister, Mel, who was dating Joss, nearly fainted.

Through the whole thing, all I could think was that, if I didn’t get some alcohol in me, I was going to explode. Literally explode. This pressure started in my chest and worked its way up to my head, and it got worse and worse as I listened to Tammy scream and Joss try to make excuses. Since there was no drink to reach for, I reached for Joss—with my fist. The impact sent a wave of pain up my arm, and the pressure inside me waned just enough that I didn’t blow up in little pieces all over the bunch of them.