Hey Sunshine (16 page)

But we would someday. Of that I was now sure.

Maybe I needed more nice underwear.

“Hi,” he said, his dimple peeking at me from a small smile. I was accustomed to seeing him in a diner shirt and full apron with his hair tied back, all of which he pulled off with unprecedented appeal. But in regular clothes, it was a million times better.

Today he was wearing simple, well-fitting jeans worn in all the right places. His boots were broken in and loosely tied, and his dark T-shirt accentuated his arms and shoulders. His longish blond hair was dark, still wet from a recent shower, and casually combed back away from his face. Two days of stubble decorated his face and brought out the strong shape of his jaw. He was beautiful and I loved looking at him, especially now that I could do it without feeling guilty.

My guilty feelings were replaced by lots of other feelings now, and those were likely written all over my face. I felt his eyes roam from the tips of my toes to the top of my head quickly but intently, like he was trying to memorize me.

“Hi,” I said shyly. There were two choices whenever I was with Fox – tongue-tied or word vomit. Today was the former.

He gestured to the truck. “Are you ready to go?”

I grabbed my bag from its hook and closed the front door tightly behind me. Fox offered an outstretched hand and I took it without a second thought. He laced his fingers tightly through mine as we walked the few short steps to the passenger side of the truck, where he unlocked the door and helped me inside.

He let go of my hand to shut the door and jog around to the driver’s side, and I felt the loss immediately. I was fairly certain it was just a chivalrous reflex that coincided with helping me into the truck, but it seemed more intimate than that. If our new friendship step was hand-holding, I wasn’t mad about it. I relished that Fox was sitting next to me in the cab, filling it with his cedarwood and soap smell.

Turning to me, he slipped on his sunglasses. “School first?” he asked.

I’d set my bag down by my feet when I got into the truck, and I quickly rummaged through it to make sure I had the folders I needed. “That’d be great, thanks. I have a quick study group to catch.”

Fox flashed me his dimple. “You’re doing me the favor by accompanying me. I’m yours all day.”

How about forever?
Wait, what?
Get a grip, Avery
. “Okay,” I smiled.

There wasn’t much in the way of scenery between Brancher and the campus, but that was fine with me because Fox was much more fun to look at. With my sunglasses on I felt more daring, like I could openly stare if I chose, but instead I snuck glances at him as we bounced around in the roomy cab of the old truck, admiring the way his hand flexed on the steering wheel or the casual slouch of his shoulder as he rested his elbow on the window sill.

“I like you like this,” I blurted impulsively.

He took his eyes off the road for a second to look in my direction, his quirky Fox half-smile on his lips. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Relaxed. You’re usually kind of intense, you know?” Here comes the babbling. “I mean, you’ve said so yourself. It’s not a bad thing. You’re so focused and dedicated, it makes sense…” I trailed off.

Fox laughed once, that rusty chuckle. “I suppose you’re right.”

“It must be exhausting,” I mused, thinking of what it was like for Fox to be constantly on alert. “Is it?”

“Sometimes.” He looked over at me again quickly, but his expression was unreadable behind his sunglasses.

When he didn’t say anything else, I nodded, leaning my head back against the seat, and looked out the window. The flat, barren West Texas land stretched on for what seemed like eternity, but I knew we were only about ten minutes from campus.

“I like it here,” Fox said suddenly, breaking the comfortable silence. “It feels like normal life.”

“Boring life, you mean,” I laughed.

He shrugged. “Ordinary can be underrated.”

I immediately thought about the video he'd made of Annabelle in the diner, how he took regular things and made them look like something amazing. It was a perspective I greatly admired.

“Do you often make video clips like the one from the other night?” I asked.

“I used to. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the job and forget what’s around you – there’s still beauty in devastation, you just have to find it.” He glanced over at me and smiled at the way the open windows whipped my hair around in the cab. “I don’t have that problem here. There’s a lot to pick from.”

There was obviously a chance he could be referring to the endless landscape, the colorful sunsets, or even the somewhat majestic longhorn herds that decorated the pastures, but I doubted it. My cheeks reddened slightly, and I was glad I couldn’t see his eyes right then, or he mine. For a man who seemingly only spoke when it was absolutely necessary, he certainly had a way with words.

A long strand of my hair drifted close to him, brushing his cheek, and he caught it, sliding it through his fingertips as he turned back to the road.

“Your hair is like sunshine.” The timbre of his voice combined with the sight of his fingers tangled in my hair was an emotional overload. From anyone else’s mouth, that sentence might not have worked but from Fox it was perfect.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I grabbed his hand after it slipped through my hair. He intertwined his fingers with mine and didn’t let go, even bringing my hand with his as he downshifted when we exited off the highway.

Sometime yesterday we’d crossed the boundary between just friends and something more. It was terrifying and exciting at the same time, if my jumpy heart and trembling fingers were any indication.

Quickly, too quickly, we arrived on campus. Fox pulled the truck into a spot near the library and turned off the engine, reaching over the steering wheel so our hands could stay clasped together. I felt like there was a huge neon sign pointing to our hand-holding, and it was blinking and pulsing out of control while we both tried to act like things hadn’t shifted in the last five miles of our drive.

“Is here okay?” he asked softly, indicating the library with a nod of his head. His thumb slipped back and forth over mine for an instant, rough but so warm.

“Perfect.”
The parking spot, you, today, all of it.

I was twenty-two years old with a child, and yet holding Fox’s hand for mere minutes was undoubtedly the most affected I’d ever been by a man. I’m not sure what that said about my previous relationships – likely that they were crap. Fox had already left his mark on my life in just a few short weeks.

Reluctantly, I released his hand to unbuckle my seatbelt. Fox slid his sunglasses to the top of his head and watched me fumble with the door handle as I tried to exit. Two seconds later, a strong, tan arm reached past my chest, just brushing my tank top. He unlocked the door and pushed it open in a smooth motion.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. Maybe having him drop me off wasn’t the best idea. I was about to join a Communications study group and I was sort of having a hard time with the communication part right now.

Heather had laughed every time I told her how much Fox flustered me.

“It’s good for you,” she’d insisted last week.

“How is that possible?” I grumbled.

“You’re kind of anal about keeping it all together,” she said dryly. “It’s refreshing to see you so… unnerved by someone.”

After that conversation I’d known I really had to let it die with Chase. And I had, and now here I was, sitting mutely in the truck with the door cracked while Fox looked at me with his half-curious, half-amused expression that I’d come to think of as the one he reserved just for me.

I cleared my throat, an awkward sound in the silence of the cab. “I’ll be back in an hour, okay? The cafeteria is right around the corner if you want to grab a coffee or something.”

Fox reached under his seat and pulled out a thick dog-eared paperback. “I think I’ll just sit outside and enjoy the sun.”

He likes to read. He likes to
read.
This new discovery brought fifteen questions to my mind but I didn’t have time to ask any of them – the usual ones like “What’s your favorite book?” and “What did you read before this?” and the all-important “What’s your
least
favorite book?” because you can tell so many things about a person by what they’re into in a literary sense.

Fox’s big hand was obscuring most of the book’s cover, but I made a mental note to ask him all of those questions later. For a brief second I allowed myself to fantasize about a weekend sometime in the hopefully not-so-distant future, where Fox cooked breakfast for Annabelle and me and we spent a lazy morning curled up with books and puzzles. Maybe he would read the paper and pass me the sections he thought I’d like, or even pick a book for himself out of my massive collection and we could discuss it afterward.

Forget the fact that he was super hot, mysterious, and inherently kind. The man liked to read and that was plus eleventy billion points in my book, no pun intended. My inner nerd was jumping up and down while my outer, slightly cooler exterior sat there with a weird expression on her face, still trying to recognize his book from the back cover. No luck.

I realized I hadn’t responded. “Okay.” Thankfully he couldn’t read my mind. If I could condense everything I'd just thought into a reasonably calm-sounding single word then I was doing pretty well. I hadn’t met a man yet that could handle the fifty different types of crazy I had running through my mind on the daily.

Maybe this one can, Avery. Don’t sell him short.
It was too soon to tell, probably. But in the back of my brain, I kept thinking it could be true. And now that I’d just had a complete two-sided silent conversation with myself, I was once again the picture of sanity. Shaking my head, I slipped out of the cab and headed toward the sidewalk.

I gave Fox an awkward wave as I hefted my bag onto my shoulder and turned in the direction of the library. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him leaning casually against the hood of the truck, watching me as I walked toward the three-story brick building. It took every ounce of my willpower not to turn and wave again, but somehow I managed.

Note to self: don’t let Fox drive you to any important school events where you are required to use your brain immediately upon leaving his presence.
Even in my deepest moments of infatuation with Chase, I’d never had a problem studying or taking exams. Today I had zero focus during a basic study group for a class I was acing. This was not good.

“You okay, Avery?” one of my classmates, a girl named Ellie, asked. “You seem distracted.”

“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “Just tired. Annabelle was sick last week and I haven’t caught up on my sleep.”

Half true, half lie. And so unlike “Most Organized.” Annabelle’s brief illness was not what was keeping me up at night lately. The part of me that felt guilty for blaming my kid warred briefly with the part of me that felt embarrassed by my inability to shove Fox out of my head for even an hour. The embarrassed part won, and I decided that was okay because when Annabelle had been an infant, I’d never used her colicky nights as an excuse for anything. She owed me, right?

Ellie made a sympathetic face. “That’s hard.”

The guilt resurfaced and I shook my head. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, I all but ran out of the library and skidded to a stop a few feet in front of the truck. Fox sat on the tailgate, his back to me, while a couple of pretty coeds I didn’t recognize attempted to engage him in conversation. I approached quietly, trying to hear what they were saying.

“So, do you know where that is?” one of them asked. She flipped her long, glossy brown hair over her shoulder.

“No, sorry. I don’t go to school here, like I said.” Fox’s voice was bored but still polite. I stifled a laugh.

“But, you’ve probably seen it,” her friend insisted. “It’s close to campus.”

“I don’t live here, either,” he replied. I scuffed my sandal against the sidewalk and he turned his head at the sound. “Excuse me.” He reached down next to him and grabbed his book and a couple bottles of water before sidestepping the girls and walking around the truck to meet me. My heart stuttered a little at the restored grace of his long stride and the way his shirt brushed against his flat stomach, but it was nothing compared to the way his face changed when he saw me. Happy, is how I would describe it. Happy and a little eager. I felt the exact same way.

“Hi,” he said, offering me a cold bottle. “How was your group?”

Over his shoulder, I could see the girls whispering to each other with annoyed glances at us before they walked away.

“Hope you can come by the party!” one of them called over her shoulder. Fox ignored her. They seemed completely mystified as to why he’d rather be talking to me than to them, but I was used to that. I knew I cleaned up pretty well but they were in a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader league that was way out of my wheelhouse. I raised an eyebrow in their direction, and Fox just shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.

“How was your book?” I asked. “Did you have a chance to read it, or…?” I gestured toward the two pairs of retreating cutoff shorts in the distance, a sly grin on my face.

Fox looked taken aback for a second until he realized I was teasing him. In one quick movement he tossed the book and his empty water bottle through the cab’s open window and reached out with both hands to grab my hips and pull me closer. Surprised, I lost my footing and crashed right into him, my palms flat against his broad chest. His arms immediately closed around me to keep me upright, and for ten seconds I forgot myself and melted into his embrace.

He hugged me tightly and rested his chin on the top of my head. I could feel his heart beating under my hand, slow and steady as the relentless Texas sun streamed down around us and the idle chatter from passing students faded into the background. All I could focus on was the familiar thump of Fox’s heart, and how my own heartbeat calmed from erratic and nervous to match his pace.