When he went to school events, like the time when Cooper starred in the ninth-grade production of Dracula Spectacular, all the girls would giggle and gasp when he walked in with his family in tow. For girls on the cusp of womanhood, he was the forbidden fruit they all wanted to taste. For grown women, he was what fantasies are made of—masculine and oozing testosterone as he rode around town on his Harley Davidson, wearing his Kings of Mayhem cut, and a mask of pure coolness on his handsome face.
That’s probably why the last time I came home for a visit, I kissed him.
On the mouth.
With tongue.
My body pressed up against his.
But it was an unrequited kiss.
He broke it off, and I ran off without a word.
My cheeks warm with the memory. However, the humiliation is just as real today as it was then. Now, two years later, he still looks good. Long hair. Scruffy jaw. Big, muscular body. Leather cut and worn motorcycle boots. The years have only made him more delicious.
I take another sip of coffee and pray he doesn’t remember the last time we saw each other because it’s nice to come home to a familiar face.
And right now, I need some company to help keep the shadows at bay.
After some small talk over a cup of coffee on Jack’s porch—during which neither of us brought up the night I mauled his mouth with mine in a moment of complete craziness—I let myself into my childhood home with the spare key he gave me.
Just inside the door, I drop my bags and look around the pale-yellow kitchen, taking in the smells and familiarity of home. It’s good to be back, like stepping back into a time when everything was safe.
Nothing has changed in two years—the wallpaper, the wooden dinner table, the clock above the stovetop, even the magnets spelling my name on the refrigerator door are still there.
I walk through the little house soaking in the familiar comfort and wait for the pain to break through the happy memories and twist its knife in my heart. Because coming home always reminds me of Cooper.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t been home in, what? Two years?
Yeah, the Christmas you tried to tongue-kiss Jack.
Again, I push the memory back.
This is my home.
My sanctuary.
Where all my sunbeams and shadows live.
Here I can relax.
When I was four years old, my mama brought me here for an overnight stay and never came back. She died with a needle in her arm ten years later. By then, I pretended her death didn’t affect me. She’d always been gone, so how could I miss something I’d never had? But in truth, the hurt runs deep because my very own mama chose to abandon me, and my angry little heart never understood why.
But for whatever failings my mother bestowed on my life, my feisty grandma made up for it tenfold. I always considered it a blessing to have her raise me and for having the Dillingers living next door.
I can still remember the day they moved in. I was six years old and excited to have new neighbors. From the porch swing, I had watched them unload their belongings from the rented U-Haul and take them inside the house that had been vacant for almost two years because crazy old Mr. Fratts had died in his chair in front of the television and, according to my grandmother, no one wanted to live in a house where someone did such a thing.
But as I watched the new family move in, I figured she was wrong.
The small blonde lady with the pretty eyes and kind smile didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she looked like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was exceptionally pretty, and I found her fascinating to watch. She wore her jeans tight and her tank tops low, and you never saw her without red lipstick. Rosanna—it was the prettiest name I’d ever heard, and she was sweet and kind and had a voice like honey.
Then there was Jack, and he was like nothing I’d ever seen. A tight T-shirt straining over a wide chest, ink-covered arms thick with muscle, black jeans, and worn motorcycle boots. Back then, he was like a giant with big strong arms and shoulders so wide, he looked like he could carry the world on them.
But it was the little boy who stole my heart.
Cooper William.
The little boy with big black eyes and dimples in his chubby cheeks.
I caught his attention by wrapping a note around a small garden pebble and used a slingshot to send it over the garden fence and onto the porch where he was busy drawing. We should be friends, the note said. It never occurred to me that he couldn’t read yet. That he was almost eighteen months younger than me and hadn’t even started school.