Captured(30)

The other boy hands the object over, and I hear him say, “If the fuzz show up, I’m out of here. Just sayin’.”

“*.” The kid with the cigarette dangling from his lips puts one foot up on the rim of the truck bed, pulls the cigarette from his lips, and holds it to the item cupped in his hands. “Go, go!” he shouts, hopping down, reaching up to grab his friend’s hand and jerking him down, pushing the rest into a run, tossing what I now realize are firecrackers a few feet away.

Derek noticed the kids show up and dismissed them, busied himself with tying a bungee cord through the loops of the plastic grocery bags and fastening them to the rungs on the bed liner. He misses the exchange with the firecracker. Before I think to alert him, the firecrackers go off.

CRACK!

At the first explosion, Derek is down, kneeling on the far side of the truck, back against the tire.

Crackcrackcrackcrack—

When the rest of the firecrackers go off, Derek identifies the sound and straightens to his feet. He’s shaken, pale. “Fuckin’ firecrackers? Jesus.” He grips the metal rim of the truck bed, braced and clearly struggling for composure.

I don’t think twice about putting my hand on his back, rubbing in slow, soothing circles. “You okay?”

He tenses at my touch, but doesn’t move away. “Embarrassed.” He barks out harsh, deprecating laughter. “Ducking for cover at some goddamn firecrackers like some green f*ckin’ rookie.”

“It’s a natural reaction—”

“Just get me the hell out of here. Too many people.” He pushes away from the truck, rounds to the passenger side, and gets in, staring out the window.

I point us home. After fifteen minutes of stony silence, I risk a hand on his knee. He glances at me in question. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Derek,” I say.

“My heart is still hammering. I’m f*cking sweating and shaking. Look at this.” He holds out his left hand, which is shaking violently, until he squeezes it into a fist, resting the fist on his thigh.

I cover his hand with mine. “The last time Tom came home, he was here over the Fourth of July. We went down to Houston, and we had this great dinner, took a walk through Memorial Park. Went to the Miller Theater for the fireworks show. I didn’t even think about it—how the fireworks would affect him. He played it tough, you know how he—how he was” —I have to emphasize the past tense still sometimes— “but he was a mess through the whole thing. When they started shooting off the cannons, he couldn’t take it anymore. He took off, and I found him in a men’s bathroom, sitting in a stall, just about hyperventilating. He wouldn’t let me in, so I crawled under the door to be with him until it was over.”

“Sounds about right.”

Both of us pretend that my hand isn’t still on his. I pretend that my heart isn’t rabbiting like a teenage girl’s, and I pretend not to notice that his hand still shakes every once in a while. He, in turn, casually unclenches his fist, relaxes his hand on his leg. He pretends not to notice that my fingers somehow, on their own, slip between his own. I pretend like it’s totally natural and normal to drive the rest of the twenty-mile trip with only my left on the wheel, even through the turns.

I pretend to myself that I’m not disappointed when the drive is over and I have to pull my hand away.

He, like a typical man, carries almost all of the grocery bags into the kitchen in a single trip, bags draped along his forearms, three or four clutched in each finger. He slams the tailgate closed as I grab the gallon of milk. He stops, one hand on the tailgate, his eyes meeting mine finally. “Reagan?”

I rest the milk on the bumper. “Yeah?”

“Just…thanks. For understanding. For not making me feel like a *.”

I smile at him. “You are literally the farthest thing from a *, Derek.”

He ducks his head and nods, not really agreeing, more acknowledging my statement. “Well, thanks.” He smacks the side of the truck with a palm. “Guess I’ll finish the barn now.”

I watch him go, and for the rest of the day I’m fixated on the memory of his hand under mine.





CHAPTER 9





DEREK





The next month is a strange, awkward dance. Reagan and I partially avoid each other, and partially seek each other out. I can’t erase the feel of her hand on mine, the gentle way she has about her. But it’s because of that inability to forget something so simple as almost-but-not-quite holding hands after my minor freak-out that I avoid her. I avoid her after we each finish the day’s work. She’s always sweaty, dirty, and sexy. It drives me f*cking nuts. Her shirt sticks to her chest and stomach, her shorts molded to her thighs and ass. Her hair hangs limp and tangled and sweat-pasted to her forehead and the back of her neck, her tanned skin flushed. I can’t not look at her, so I avoid her until she’s cleaned up. But that usually means she ends up bringing supper out to the barn, or leaving it on the kitchen table for me after I come down from the shower.

She’s never come right out and asked me to eat with them, so I don’t. It would be weird, sitting at that round table with Hank, Ida, Reagan, and Tommy, like some kind of faux-family unit. I haven’t sat down to a real dinner at a real table in years. Growing up in Des Moines, we weren’t a sit-down dinner family. My dad worked construction and was never home for dinner. My mom was a teacher, and she wasn’t home much after school. Hannah and I would usually just make PB-and-J, grilled cheese, or Kraft Macaroni, and eat it in front of the TV, watching Nick at Nite. There were holidays, of course, but those were f*cked-up formal affairs. Nana and Pop would come in from D.C., Pop and Dad would drink too much Johnny and get in an argument. Nana and Mom would sit in icy silence, while Hannah and I pretended not to notice, pretended to like Mom’s shitty pumpkin pie. We’d usually end up escaping the house, Hannah going to her friend Marybeth’s, me to Hunter’s. That only worked until Hunter’s folks died when we were in high school, but at that point we had our crew of football buddies, and we’d steal forties from the Seven-Eleven and play pickup football in the empty lot.