Here With Me

Obligation.

Fuck that.

Last Christmas Mindy wanted to leave. She wanted to move to Dallas and pursue her art career. She didn’t go for some reason she never shared… Probably her Ma, but I know she has dreams and ambitions that are bigger than this small town.

I step back as she squints up at me. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, I’m going to make you tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking I’d better get moving if I’m going to fix that flat.”

“I’ll be here if you need any help.” She turns, continuing to the pond, and I hesitate a moment, watching the sway of her cute little ass in that short dress.

Yeah, I’d better get back to work.

5

Mindy

I close my eyes and remember Sawyer in high school, his hair

dark and shaggy around his head, his body tall and lanky. He didn’t get muscular until after that horrible winter.

Everybody in town helped them. Ma was best friends with Penny LaGrange, their mother, so she took their care personally. We were over at their house every day making sure everyone ate, clothes were clean, homework was done… hugs and comfort was administered.

The best thing about my ma is she has plenty of affection for an army of kids. None of us felt left out of the love—if anything, we got too much.

I was eleven. It’s an age where you’re still too young to be taken seriously, but you see and feel things deeply. I understood the seriousness of what was happening to them. I knew what a big responsibility had fallen on Sawyer’s shoulders, and I think I fell in love with him then, before I knew what love really meant.

He was only sixteen, but he seemed so strong and solid. He got up early and went to the meetings with the grown men, talked to them like he was one of them. He wasn’t like any boy I ever knew before or since…

Sitting on the pier now, I think of him at twenty-one… He was a man with lines of muscle tracing across his chest, down his arms, that V dropping into his jeans. It felt so cruel we couldn’t be together until I was eighteen, and I did everything I could to wear him down.

I should’ve known anyone who could take on what he did was strong enough to hold me at arm’s length, at least a few years.

My hand moves over the sketchpad, and I trace out a line for the bank. Below it I’ll fill in the lake with sparkles of light tipping the surface. Above it, I’ll add the heavy brush where he would sit and fish, watching the water so quietly.

He’s always been that way, quiet, patient, waiting. It made his groans in my ear when I’d straddle him and kiss him, even more thrilling. It was like I’d made it to a place nobody was allowed.

Dropping my hand lower on the page, I draw a curved line for his broad shoulder, following it to his muscular biceps. His arm is bent, and his hands clutch my shoulders. I quickly sketch them, narrow and raised. My chin is raised, and his head is lowered. Our lips are almost touching, a breath apart… Closing my eyes, my body heats as I feel it.

“Sawyer said you got stuck?” Leon’s loud voice makes me scream and toss my sketch pad.

“Leon, what the hell!”

“Holy shit…” His voice breaks off with snorts of laughter.

Just like his brother, Leon is long and lean with dark shaggy hair, but he’s always been full of mischief.

“Sawyer said you’re working on the Peach Festival poster?”

Reaching down, I scoop my pad off the pier thankful it didn’t land in the water. “I was trying to. Until somebody broke my concentration.”

“Is that why you jumped a mile in the air? All those peach trees?” His dark eyes twinkle.

“Do you need something from me?”

“Not really. Sawyer went to town to get a new tire. I figured I’d come check out the damage. Saw you sitting up here gazing at the lake like Aquaman’s about to show up or something.”

“I was not. I was thinking about my sketch.”