Met Her Match (Summer Hill 2)

“Three, huh?”

“If you’re going to make fun of me, I’m leaving.” But she didn’t move.

“Let’s see. There was the NFL player here at the lake. Who else?”

Terri looked astonished for a moment, then grimaced. “I’m going to kill Della Kissel. I thought I saw her spying on me.”

“Why’d you break up with him?”

“He lives in Pittsburgh.”

“Steelers?”

She nodded.

“What about the other two?”

“What’s caused this interrogation?” she asked.

“Just curious. I’ll tell you about all the women in my life.”

“I can’t imagine why you think I’d want to hear that. Okay! I have a quirk in me that says I want a brain with a body. It took me years to find out that brains and brawn rarely go together. But then, those years were...” She smiled in memory.

For a moment they stared at each other. They could hear a boat motor outside; otherwise it was quiet. But the images in their minds were very loud.

Terri and Nate locked eyes and she could feel herself leaning toward him. Thoughts of honor and integrity, commitment and promises, weren’t in her mind.

Nate broke the contact, abruptly. He stood. “I have to get up early tomorrow. I better...” Swallowing, he gestured toward the bedroom.

“Me too,” Terri said, and she stood, as well. “Widiwick. Booths.”

“Yeah. I, uh...” With a quick nod of good-night, he hurried down the hall to his bedroom and shut the door firmly.

* * *

The next morning, as soon as Terri opened her eyes, she knew that Nate was gone. The house had an emptiness that she felt in her bones. She pulled the covers over her head and wished she could go back a few days. Go back to when the smell of coffee woke her, to a time when she’d stumble into the kitchen, yawning, and Nate would be frying bacon.

But she’d known it was all temporary. Only on that first day had she had about an hour when she thought she and Nate could be... Could be more than friends. She’d bragged to her father that it was better to love and lose than...

“Oh hell!” she muttered, and got out of bed. She had to look to the future, not the past. Someday Nate would be married to Stacy Hartman and they’d all laugh in fond memory of these past weeks.

“Yeah, right,” she mumbled. She got dressed. It was early, the sun just rising. Today was the opening of the festival and she’d be inundated with work. Good. And where would Nate be? With Stacy? Laughing together as she told amusing stories about her adventures in Italy?

“One time I had a flat tire on the way to Richmond,” Terri said under her breath. Changing that on the side of the highway with seventy mile an hour traffic had been a real adventure.

As she walked into the kitchen, she saw that Nate had taped a piece of paper on the fridge. It was a drawing of the back of a muscular man wearing a towel and holding a rugby ball. Hank Bullnose, prop forward, says he’ll meet you in the dressing room at noon. Bring sausages.

Terri knew the cartoon was supposed to make her smile, but instead, it brought tears to her eyes. She ran across the room, threw the door open and went outside to fall into one of the chairs. Her chair. The one next to Nate’s. Where the two of them had sat in the evenings and on weekends. Where they’d shared meals and laughter and confidences.

The lake was beginning to come alive. She saw lights coming on, heard a couple of shouts and motors.

It was Widiwick, she thought. It was a festival that had been started by an eleven-year-old boy with a heart as big as the earth. A boy the town came to love to the point where he was their ideal of perfection. WWBD. What would Billy do? they asked one another. It became a motto. Something to achieve.

All through school Terri had been too busy to think about the things other girls did. She wasn’t interested in the dances—unless they were to be held at the lake. Then her concern was feeding people and getting them across the docks without falling in after they’d had too much spiked punch.

She’d heard the girls giggling over beautiful Billy Thorndyke. Who was he going to date when he ever did? He couldn’t spend his entire life studying and playing sports, could he?

Because Terri had always been exposed to the sexual shenanigans that went on at the lake, she knew more of the world than the townies did. She truly believed Billy was gay. It made sense. He was always with boys, never alone with a girl. Girls threw themselves at him, but Billy ignored them.