Love Story(45)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Hunter said you’d lost weight.” Tommy patted my tummy underneath my clothes. “Good thing you’re wearing that overcoat or you might blow away.”

On cue, icy wind gusted across the terminal driveway. I hadn’t known much about Kentucky when I moved here from California, and I’d been surprised by the tenuous winter that started in November: an overcast sky that spit tiny particles of ice instead of snow.

I wiped the wetness from my face. “Has my dad gotten here yet?”

“Your dad?” Tommy repeated, rolling the toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

“Or do you two have to stay away from each other? I shouldn’t have asked.” Tears stung my eyes. I could hardly see.

That’s why I was slow to understand the questioning look Tommy was giving Hunter, and the stony expression Hunter returned.

I think I might have gasped, “No!” and slapped both hands over my mouth. I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing besides staring at the sign beside the sliding glass doors, greeting visitors unfamiliar with the area with the various pronunciations of the city’s name: LOOAVULL. LUHVUL. LEWISVILLE. LOOAVILLE. LOOEYVILLE.

“Son—” Tommy began.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Hunter interrupted him. “Mrs. Blackwell wanted to see her and I didn’t know how else to get her on the airplane. Around here I could have slung her over my shoulder, but they frown on that in New York. Erin, come back.”

As I walked down the terminal sidewalk, I held up one finger to let them know—or at least to let Tommy know—that I needed a minute. Hunter couldn’t care less what I needed. I stomped down the sidewalk, tears mixing with the icy wind in my face. I would let the cold wind dry me out and then I would turn back. Except more tears kept coming as I thought about my dad. He had not done anything. Not anything new. Hunter had only scratched the scab off that wound. Hunter, whom I kept trusting for some reason. Why would I think he was on my side? He was swindling my grandmother. He could screw me over, too.

A shadow beside me made me turn my head. The Blackwell Farms truck crept backward along the curb, keeping pace with me. The window slid down and Tommy hollered, “Erin, get in the truck before Homeland Security crawls up my ass.”

I stomped a couple of steps more, but I was running out of sidewalk. UPS made Louisville one of the world’s busiest airports, but the passenger side of the airport was small, to match the city, and the terminal ended just ahead. I had no desire to wander through the industrial wasteland to the Ford plant.

I stepped over to the truck, jerked open the door, and tumbled into the backseat, shouting into the front, “Why did you tell me that, Hunter? What is the matter with you?”

Hunter leaned between the front seats to face me, sunglasses still obscuring his blue eyes on a cloudy afternoon. “It was the only way I could think of to get you here. Even the threat of going to Gabe with the stable-boy story wouldn’t get you to come back to Kentucky to see your grandmother, and she really wanted to see you. She was hysterical when I told her you’d gotten hit by a car. I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

He didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t even look particularly sorry behind his sunglasses. He admitted his transgression with no apology.

A lot like my dad.

“You mean, you didn’t have a choice if you wanted to stay in college on my inheritance,” I corrected Hunter. “I hope nothing this important comes up again, because the stable boy is all you have to coerce me with now. Baiting me with my dad only works once per lifetime.”

“Stable boy,” Tommy muttered, shaking his head.

Luckily the farm wasn’t far, so I wouldn’t have to sit in the truck with Hunter for long. Of course, I’d spend the afternoon, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning stuck at my grandmother’s house. I had sworn to her that she would never see me again and here I was, only five months later. Broke, too, or I would have told Tommy to drop me off at a motel.

Instead, he drove the truck off the interstate, turned onto the narrow blacktop winding through the hills to the farm, then pulled onto the grassy shoulder underneath a huge, fire red maple. “Get out, both of you,” he barked.

Tommy did not bark often. The ice shower had stopped, so I couldn’t use the weather as an excuse. I slid across the seat and onto the ground, drained of emotion and shivering in my coat, looking down at the feet of Tommy and Hunter, standing in front of me. I had nothing to be ashamed of—Hunter was the one who should be ashamed—but I was afraid I looked like hell after crying and I didn’t want him to see me like this. I was an idiot, which made me want to cry again.

“I’m not spending the whole weekend with you two sniping at each other,” Tommy said. “Erin, we’re going to solve this the way we settle things at the stable when your grandmother isn’t looking.” He nodded at Hunter. “Hit him.”

“Don’t make her do that,” Hunter told Tommy. “She’ll break her hand.”

“Ha! You think awfully well of your chiseled chin,” I said, but Tommy drowned me out, yelling, “Let her hit you or I will hit you myself.”

“This is excellent parenting.” Hunter emphasized his words with an okay sign of his thick fingers. His Rolex flashed in the sunlight before he put his hand down. “Here, Erin.” He closed his eyes and lifted his chin.

I edged toward him, balling my fist, feeling better already. “Open your eyes,” I said. “I want you to see it coming.”

“If I open my eyes, I’ll dodge you,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he was used to settling his differences this way with the other stable hands. He closed his eyes again.

I struck while I had the opportunity. Didn’t pause to think about technique or the proper position for my fist, thumb in or thumb out, just hauled back and hit him.

But in the split second before my hand connected with his face, I saw a flash of one of my family’s apartments in Los Angeles, an early one, because I glimpsed the ocean through the window across the room, and as the years went on we’d had less and less money and we’d moved farther and farther from the sea. I saw my dad hitting my mom.

I redirected my fist, only grazing Hunter’s chin, and stumbled into the side of the truck. A strong arm hooked in mine and kept me from falling. Hunter drew me to him, chuckling. “Are you okay?”

I shoved him away from me, slid back into the truck, and slammed the door. He wasn’t even sorry and I couldn’t even get revenge. There was no good in this. With a final sniffle I opened my history book, wishing I hadn’t come.

I don’t know what argument Hunter used outside the truck, but predictably he hopped into the driver’s seat, and Tommy took the passenger side for the short drive up to the farm.

A few minutes passed wherein the truck hummed, country music twanged on the radio, and I read the same paragraph in my history book four times.