HDU #2: Dirt (7 page)

“
This
is where we’re spending the
weekend?” Amanda breathed in awe, barely waiting for the car to park before
jumping out and running down the brick path, the sound of Liam’s laugh fading
as her sandaled feet carried her further away from him.
 
The gust of wind she created blew her
hair back.
 
“This feels like a
movie!” she exhaled.
 
“I feel like
I should be wearing a Victorian dress while churning butter or something.”

“If that’s how
you want to spend your birthday.”

Amanda spun
around, the excitement on her face prompting Liam to break into a grin.
 
“Honestly, all I want for my birthday
is to hang out in this gorgeous house, do nothing and have the most mundane
weekend ever.”

He laughed.
 
“Dream big.”

“I told
you.
 
I need to load up on calm
before we go back to New York.”

“Fair
enough.”
 
Hoisting the heavy bag
over his shoulder again, Liam wrapped his free arm around Amanda’s waist,
giving her a quick kiss on the top of the head before ushering her toward the
front of the house.
 
Amanda closed
her eyes for a split second, relishing the breeze as it blew through her
hair.
 
It was odd — she felt
strangely at home on Verbena Road and she was fairly certain that she’d never
been anywhere so instantly relaxing.

Savor every second of it here
, Amanda
told herself, taking in the sight of Liam retrieving a house key from his
pocket and opening the front door.
 
This is as peaceful as it gets.

~

“This is going
suspiciously well.”

Amanda eyed the
other shoppers while muffling her giggle with the sleeve of her hoodie —
or rather, Liam’s amazingly soft hoodie that she had decided to claim as her
own within the first few minutes of wearing.
 
He didn’t seem to mind.

Paired with the hoodie
were leggings that Liam had packed for her and one of his baseball caps, worn
low over her eyes.
 
It was their
best attempt at a disguise and it was actually working.
 
Thus far, not one person at Bellevue
Heights’ new grocery store had looked at her.
 
She couldn’t say the same for Liam though — nearly every
female who passed him gave him the eye for as long as she could without feeling
rude.
 
But in his U.S Air Force
apparel, they seemed to assume that he was one of the local servicemen in their
small military town.
 
Just an
astonishingly tall and gorgeous one with a visibly perfect jawline under the
blue hoodie he wore over his falcon logo baseball cap.

“Don’t jinx it,”
Liam said under his breath, all the while piling about a half dozen cans of
condensed soup into their basket.

“What’s up with
the cream of mushroom?” Amanda asked curiously, reaching up to hook her arm
around Liam’s.
 
The moment she did,
she felt her eyes fly to the image of their interlocked elbows as they strolled
up aisle five of the store.
 
It was
a first.
 
The elbows, the grocery
shopping.
 
A very mundane first,
but still.
 
It felt oddly
wonderful.
 
Glancing up, Amanda
noticed the little curve at one end of Liam’s mouth as he too gazed down at
their arms, a mixture of amusement and delight in his dark eyes.
 
It took him a few seconds to tear his
eyes away, though when he did, his giant smile remained.

“I don’t
know.
 
Buying it for Logan even
though he isn’t here,” he laughed.

Amanda
snorted.
 
“I’m so confused.”

“Campbell’s soup
was a pretty big staple of my childhood because Logan discovered that if you
dumped a can of it into a pan with three bags of whatever was on sale that
week, you could feed two growing boys for four days.
 
On less than five bucks, which was about…” Liam squinted.
 
“A quarter of of our weekly budget for
food.”

Amanda felt her
eyebrows lift under the bill of her cap, grateful that Liam couldn’t see.
 
Piece by piece, she was beginning to
put together the fact that he had grown up without much money.
 
She had never considered it
before.
 
The prospect of Liam ever
having been in a financial struggle was hard for her to imagine for some
reason.
 
“So, basically a week’s
worth of casserole,” she said, distracting from her surprise.

Liam laughed,
scratching his capped, hooded head.
 
“Yeah.
 
But I for some
reason didn’t realize it was casserole till middle school.
 
I just thought it was something Logan
invented because he was a fucking culinary genius.”

“So you never
got sick of it?”

“By freshman
year I wanted to throw myself out of a window if I saw a can of soup.”

Amanda burst out
laughing as they wandered absently in the cereal aisle, Liam plucking boxes
from the shelves only to gaze at them for a few seconds and put them back.
 
She smiled quietly to herself as she
watched him.
 
He’d look almost like
any ordinary shopper if he weren’t built like a superhero.
 
She couldn’t help noting how small
cereal boxes looked when he held them.
 
“So what was the next solution?” she asked, throwing a box of Cinnamon
Toast Crunch into the basket.
 
Liam
glanced at it, nodding with serious approval.

“There wasn’t
really a solution.
 
Logan spent a
month trying to figure out some new recipe that would last but we were
teenagers by then and we played football and were over six feet tall so we
required about eight pounds of food per meal.”

“Naturally.”

His eyes gleamed
from beneath the bill of his cap as he recalled his memory.
 
“Logan ended up teaching himself how to
cook.
 
And he got a part-time job
once he turned sixteen so he could buy good shit every once in awhile.
 
Steak.
 
Fresh produce.
 
Cheese that was made of actual cheese.”

“There’s cheese
that isn’t made out of cheese?”

“Yes.
 
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“Kind of
gross.”
 
She bit her lower lip as
they made their way to the checkout lanes, feeling her immense curiosity
fighting her tact.
 
It was only a
matter of time before the former triumphed.
 
She grimaced prematurely at herself before blurting out her
question.
 
“So, where were your
parents throughout all this?”

Liam eyed her
for a few unreadable seconds as they unloaded their basket onto the
counter.
 
Amanda felt her heart
pound but finally, he broke into his usual smirk.
 
“You don’t have to look terrified, it’s not some traumatic
subject.”

“Oh.”
 
Amanda exhaled with both relief and
embarrassment, forcing a smile at the ponytailed cashier who appeared to squint
at them with a hint of recognition.
 
Pursing her lips shut, Amanda fell silent, hoping Liam would follow
suit.
 
Please don’t make small talk, his voice is completely recognizable
,
she prayed silently — but of course, to no avail.

“Don’t think
I’ve seen y’all before.
 
Just move
into town?”

Shit
, Amanda cursed.
 
But without missing a beat, Liam
answered.
 
“Yup, right over on
Verbena.”

Amanda gaped at
him, though for a different reason than the cashier.
 
It was his voice, which had adopted a Southern twang so
smooth and natural that she wasn’t sure whether to be thrown off or utterly
charmed.
 
It was, she realized, an
adaptation of the accent of his
Soldier
costar, Cameron Troy, who was from somewhere in Texas.
 
Amanda glanced at the cashier, chewing
on her lip as the girl’s surprised eyes narrowed once again with further suspicion.

“Wowee.
 
My dad’s been an airman for fourteen
years and he sure couldn’t afford one of those houses.”

“Dang, well he’s
got a good ten years on me,” Liam said good-naturedly, rubbing the stubble on
his chin and making a scratchy sound.
 
Amanda could only watch the conversation in silent awe.

“I hope you
don’t mind my asking then, but how the heck’d’cha afford one of those houses?
They’ve been on the market for God knows how long ‘cause who’s gonna pay two
million dollars for a place in Bellevue Heights, I mean really?”

Liam laughed
— a rich, even-lower-than-usual laugh that made Amanda bite her growing
smile back.
 
“I guess you’d hafta
ask my wife that question ‘cause it sure wasn’t my money.”

The cashier
raised her eyebrows at Amanda, her suspicion finally melting into something of
genuine curiosity.
 
“Wow.
 
Whattayou do, if you don’t mind my
asking?”

Amanda stared at
the girl before shooting a glare at Liam, who looked at her expectantly.
 
But underneath his casual expression
was about the most maddeningly mischievous glimmer in his eyes.
 
I’m
going to kill you, I hope you realize that,
Amanda thought, willing him to
hear her.

“Well…” she
started nervously, though it sounded more like she was saying “whale.”
 
Oh
dear God, what kind of accent am I even doing?
“I can’t take all the
credit… I had a bit of an inheritance and I ended up starting my own business
with that money after graduating college,” she answered, mostly in one long
exhale.
 
With fire in her eyes, she
turned to face Liam, whose lips were flattened into a smile that no doubt
contained the most smug and pleased laughter in the world.

“Oh, that’s so
nice! A businesswoman.
 
Where’s
your accent from though, by the way? Sounds different from his.”

“Oh, um…”
Screw you, condensed soup, get me out of
here
, Amanda groaned inwardly as the girl took her sweet time scanning each
and every can separately.

With a grin on
his face, Liam started bagging their groceries.
 
“She’s from Texas like me but…” he trailed off, shaking his
head and already laughing at himself for not having thought his answer through.

“I went to
school at Northwestern,” Amanda felt herself interrupt.
 
“And then I started my business over in
New York City and somewhere down the line, my accent got all sorts of muddled.
 
I didn’t even think I had any twang
left, actually.
 
My friends in New
York say I sound just like them now.”

“Oh no, honey,
you definitely have a twang.”

“Do I?” Amanda
beamed, shooting a satisfied look at Liam, who pressed the end of his fist to
his mouth in attempts to hide his giant grin.
 
“Well.
 
Guess
it’s only right that I match my sweet husband.”
 
She cleared her throat to suppress the snort trying to
escape the back of her throat.
 
“So, um, how much will that be?”

“Oh.
 
Sixty-eight dollars and fifty-two
cents, please.”
 
The cashier stared
down at their groceries as she bagged them.
 
“Wow.
 
Y’all
sure bought a lot of stuff.”

“Mm-hm.
 
Gonna cook a big ol’ dinner
tonight.”
 
Amanda whipped out her
wallet, eyeing Liam as she sifted through her bills.
 
“I got it, honey.
 
You can’t afford this.”

Liam raised his
eyebrows at Amanda with genuine surprise before shaking his head.
 
“Wish you wouldn’t say it in front of
the lady though.”
 
He slipped his
hand up the back of her neck, lightly tugging on a fistful of her hair.
 
“S’alright.
 
You’ll make it up to me later.”

Amanda shot him
a look.
 
“Now look who’s being inappropriate,”
she whispered, grabbing the bags from the blushing cashier before giving her a
look of feigned apology.
 
“Excuse
him, he can never behave himself in public,” she said, her accent mutating into
some bizarre British-Texan hybrid as she rushed out of the store, Liam and his
normal laughter trailing behind her.

~

With her plush
white towel wrapped around her body, Amanda knelt over the duffel bag that Liam
had packed.
 
Amanda smiled as she
pulled out all the new articles of clothing that he had purchased for her for
the trip — all stretchy, gauzy raglans and Lululemon yoga pants since she
had mentioned weeks ago that she intended on wearing only T-shirts and leggings
on her birthday weekend.

Of course he forgets to pack a bra
,
Amanda laughed to herself.
 
Shrugging, she pulled on a pair of cropped black fold-overs and the
least sheer raglan that she could find, gathering her wet hair over her
shoulders and in front of her chest.
 
Whatever Liam was cooking downstairs was beginning to smell too good for
her to care about what she was wearing.

A slow smile
crept upon her lips as she made her way down the spiral staircase, quieting her
step upon approaching the kitchen and the sounds of cooking — running
water, sizzling, clanking pots and pans.
 
Biting her lip back, she crept up to the open space, tucking her body
behind one of the white pillars and watching Liam cook with the type of
fascination that most people reserved for wildlife tours.
 
His plain T-shirt somehow looked like
chef whites as she watched him.
 
You have got to be kidding me
, she
laughed inwardly, studying him as he stood at the marble counter, his
fingertips carefully tucked as he chopped a head of red cabbage, his cutting
hand bringing the chef’s knife up and down so rapidly that all Amanda could
really see was a blur of silver and the perfect shredding of the reddish-purple
leaves.