Bad Cruz

I should have just grabbed Bear, shoved him in the car, and moved to another state. There was no way Fairhope was going to let me be.

“She assaulted him!” Mrs. Underwood had cried from the other side of the street.

“Punched him in the throat!” Mr. Thomas had whimpered.

People had begun rushing from the parade toward my front lawn. I’d retreated, feeling my cheeks flush.

Great.

Now I was getting into trouble without even leaving my doorstep. I really was a lost cause.

They’d helped pick Cruz up and asked him if he was okay. I’d rushed inside and closed the door, peering through the peephole, my face so hot with mortification I’d thought it was going to explode.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, honey, what did she do to you?”

“I’m so sorry. She’s always been a hellion!”

Cruz just nodded and sulked, staring at my door like he’d known I was behind it.

So, you see, this was the infamous throat-punching incident.

Totally called for.

Now let’s move on, please.

“A chance.” Cruz rubbed at his square stubbled chin in the maintenance room.

“What?” I asked.

“What I deserved, what I came to talk that night, was a chance. The chance you gave him instead of me. Not a kiss. And not anything beyond that. A simple chance.”

For a moment, I just stared at Cruz, stunned. I thought he’d wanted the chance to bang me, not the chance to…ask to bang me?

He stared at the floor as he rubbed at his cheek, continuing, “I wasn’t trying to pull any funny business with you. Truth was, I’d always had a bit of a crush on you.”

“Umm, what?”

“I’d been waiting to tell you at the Fourth of July parade when I got home from med school. Thought you’d be there, since you’d never missed it, no matter what. I didn’t really care about your reputation at the time. Figured I couldn’t let a bunch of strangers dictate what I could or couldn’t do with my life. At first, I’d waited for you to show up. I had a beer, and then another one, and then another. The fourth was overkill, let me tell ya, because that’s when things began to go sideways, and I moved to shots. The road to finding myself slurring something offensive on your front porch was short from there, and we all know how it ended. But at the time, I came to you because I wanted to see if you’d have dinner with me. And I wanted to see if you’d have dinner with me not because I wanted to embarrass you, but because the entire time I was away, in med school, every time I kissed a girl, I always thought to myself—I wonder what Tennessee tastes like?”

I’d thought he’d come for the one thing the town hadn’t offered up on a platter—the one thing his friend had gotten that he hadn’t—me.

“You didn’t say any of that. You said I had great tits,” I accused, tears prickling my eyes.

He bit on his inner cheek. “I take it back.”

“Oh?”

“They’re not great. They’re perfect.”

“You expect me to believe you really wanted to ask me out?” I cried out, emotional all of a sudden, and not the good kind.

I’d have said yes in a heartbeat, my anger and hurt toward him be damned. But now, now too much water had gone under that bridge, and it was no longer an option.

All the women he’d dated.

All the rumors I’d been subjected to.