Rafe (Arizona Vengeance 6.5)

* * * *“I can’t believe this is still here...untouched.”

I glance at Rafe as he gazes out over Old Man Podden’s pond. It sits on the back of a large tobacco and corn farm at the edge of Wake and Franklin counties. He’s surprised because the capital city of Raleigh has been expanding outward, and all the country farms have been sold off to real estate developers.

But Podden’s pond remains, and it’s a well-protected secret. Podden sold off most of his farm but kept a small portion of land, about twenty acres with the original homestead. I have unfettered access to it because my dad has been Podden’s mechanic for decades. The pond itself is a hidden treasure, secluded by a copse of pine and oak trees, an old, abandoned dirt road the only way to access it.

“Raleigh is growing so fast,” I agree before tipping my beer back to drain the rest.

I backed my Pathfinder up to a cleared spot near the edge of the pond. It’s close enough that if we had fishing poles, we could cast right from the rear where we’re now sitting.

Rafe mimics my action, emptying his bottle. We’ve always drunk beer at the same rate...not too fast and not too slow. Granted, it wasn’t like we drank a lot, but we had our ways of getting our hands on it, even back then.

He reaches behind him to the cooler we grabbed from my parents’ garage, which we filled with ice and beer from a convenience store as we traveled up Route 1 to the pond. He pulls out two more bottles—our second beer each—twists off the caps, and hands me one.

It’s weird how, without thought, we both automatically tap the glass necks together and say, “Cheers.”

It’s what we always used to do when we slipped away to the pond with a picnic basket and ice-cold Cokes.

Rafe spares me an awkward smile. I can see in his expression that he knows perhaps the fond memory might provoke more bitter feelings within me, a potent reminder of what’s been lost.

Quite the opposite happens, though.

I feel the need to reminisce. “Remember my senior skip day?”

Rafe chuckles, and his smile becomes relaxed. “How everyone headed east on I-40 to the beach, but we came here instead?”

I give him a look of faux reprimand. “You were home visiting from Green Bay and said it would be romantic, but really...you just wanted to get me alone so you could get in my pants.”

Rafe snorts. “It was romantic, and let’s be honest...you wanted in my pants just as much.”

I giggle because it’s true. Once we relieved each other of our virginities at age seventeen—even though he’s almost ten days younger than I am—we couldn’t get enough of each other. The only problem was, being next-door neighbors with our parents’ noses always in both our businesses, our opportunities to be together were not plentiful.

So senior skip day was a golden opportunity. While my entire senior class headed to the beach for a day of frolicking and fun, Rafe and I wanted nothing more than to be together.

Intimately? Yes.

But more than that. We were settled—really at our happiest—when it was just us.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t go to the beach that day,” I muse, taking another long pull off my beer.

“No kidding.” He laughs, and I join in.

That turned out to be a very bad idea for a lot of students. Turned out the underground plan for every senior to skip class on a coordinated day in favor of spending the day at the beach with a whole lot of underage drinking didn’t turn out so well for those who went. Our vice principal, Mr. Henkel, had somehow intercepted the plan. He was waiting at the high-rise bridge that crossed to Topsail Island with a list of every person’s make and model of car.

He made a note of every single one and then managed to track down every party on the north side of the island at one of the public beach accesses. There, he handed out detention slips and called everyone’s parents.

Sure, I skipped that day too, with Rafe at my side, but we weren’t busted at the beach with beers in hand, dealing with subsequent calls to our parents.

Instead, we enjoyed a quiet day to ourselves, fishing on Podden’s pond, eating ham sandwiches and drinking ice-cold Cokes, and we made love in the back of his car without a care in the world. It was one of the best days of my life, honestly.

And not something I really should be thinking of.

Rafe and I sip at our beers, and finally, I poke at him a bit. “So, what’s the deal with tearing up your mom’s flowerbed in the back yard today?”

It’s a roundabout way of me asking him how he’s doing, and he knows exactly what I’m angling for as his eyes meet mine, his expression not one of forthcoming information but questions of his own.