CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella) (8 page)

CONWAY

There wasn’t much in life I hated as much as I hated arguing with Erin.  We didn’t fight often.  She wasn’t like the other girls at school, always finding a reason to wallow in stupid drama games that no one could win. 

I’d startled her when I came through the window.  I could tell that right away.  She shoved something into her desk drawer before turning on me all wide-eyed and guilty.  No guy had a right to know everything about his girlfriend, but I wasn’t used to feeling like Erin might be hiding something from me.   Even though I had shrugged it off right away, now that I was walking alone through the dusty streets of Emblem it bothered me. Maybe whatever she’d shoved into that drawer had something to do with why she was so irritable.   

Or, maybe after having a night to sleep on it, she’d talked herself into being angry at me for yesterday.  I had to admit I felt guilty for what I must have put her through.  If she was sore about wandering around Emblem for hours, worrying over my fate, then she had every right.  But then when we found each other in the parking lot of Dino Gas everything seemed all right.  Erin had run to me full of kisses and love and relief.  The only sore point was that she refused to believe that the whole mess had been my fault and not Stone’s. 

Stone had been equally cranky this morning.  He was that way even before Courtney, his non-girlfriend, called and lit into him for not paying enough attention to her, which was kind of an eye-rolling complaint all around.  After all, she already knew what kind of a jerk Stone was when it came to girls so I don’t know what she was expecting when they hooked up.  I’d never seen Stone go nuts over a girl, never afflicted with the kind of heart-singing passion that got a guy’s pulse racing and his mind fuzzy.  He’d never felt the way about anyone that I felt about Erin.  I really hoped someday he would. 

I couldn’t help but grin to myself over the thought of Stone getting knocked over by a grand old-fashioned case of love sickness.  It would take some kind of exceptional girl to manage him but with all the billions of females in the world there had to be at least one who could manage the job. 

When I set out for the pool I’d been in a crappy mood and I’d planned badly.  No water, no towel, no swimming trunks.  Just me stomping through the streets of Emblem in my flip-flops and getting thirsty.  I could get away with the gym shorts as a swimsuit and in this dry heat towels weren’t a necessity.  But it would be nice to have a way to clear the dust out of my throat.  Around here kids got used to toting around their own water bottles by the time they hit kindergarten. 

Reaching into my pocket, I was pleased to discover three rolled up singles.  It would be enough to let me duck into Dino Gas and grab a couple of waters before heading to the pool.  

Main Street loomed just ahead.  Lately I’d been looking at it with more cynical eyes.  I’d grown up thinking that the center of Emblem was quaint and homey and familiar as the back of my hand.  Now it just looked demoralized.  Shabby.  Here was the rickety Dirty Cactus where the local bikers strutted their badass selves before peeling out in a blur of noise and leather.  Over there was the squat structure of Earnshaw’s Drugstore where there was always a bowl of stale lollipops on the back counter.  Carson’s Garage was beyond my line of sight all the way at the north end but I figured it looked how it always looked, greasy and run-down.  Other than a smattering of eateries, a hardware store, and a beauty shop, plus the police station and jail, there wasn’t much that would make visitors take a second look.  Besides being home to the state’s largest prison, Emblem’s only claim to fame was a brief status as the territorial capitol sometime between the Civil War and the decade when people started driving cars around.  In honor of the town’s semi-historic past, a shuttered bank had been repurposed into a pathetic museum that showcased curled newspapers behind dingy Plexiglas. It was always manned by curator Mrs. Albomerit, who was roughly two hundred years old and smelled like that chemical shit my mom poured on her head whenever she treated herself to a home perm. 

That was about all there was to Emblem.  Yet, for all its shortcomings it was still home.  The idea of moving up to the more exciting scenery of college town Tempe had its appeal.  But no matter where I went or what happened Emblem would always be in the back of my mind.    

Ebbie Crack was behind the register in Dino Mart.  That was her real name.  Once I asked her if she was ever going to change it and she’d stared at me all puzzled and bewildered as if I’d started serenading her in Russian.   She was somewhere in her mid twenties and was probably born to be an Emblem lifer, not that there was a thing wrong with that.  Emblem was full of more good people than shit people, even if it was easy to forget sometimes. 

I nodded a greeting as I set the water bottles on the counter and handed over my money. 

“You know the Gentry triplets?” she asked as she painfully counted out my change, all in nickels.  “Saw you hanging around with them last night.” 

“Sure,” I smiled proudly.  “They’re my cousins.” 

Ebbie frowned.  She dropped the nickels into my palm.  They felt sticky.  “Thought they were fucking kings in high school,” she muttered as her lazy eye roamed the potato chip display.   

“Oh,” I said.  It was a rather useless syllable but there was really nowhere else to go from there.  I started to pocket the nickels, then changed my mind and dropped them into one of those plastic collection boxes that promise to cure childhood diseases.  Then I grabbed my water bottles and left as Ebbie Crack stared in several directions at once and flared her nostrils. 

Once I was outside I downed a bottle of water in about six seconds.  A pair of girls, babyish freshman types, passed me and tittered. 

“Hi, Conway,” one of them giggled. 

“Hi,” I answered.  I was pretty sure I’d never noticed either of them in my life. 

The Emblem pool was right next to the high school, which was one of the few good looking buildings in Emblem.   It was all brick with white trim, an architecture utterly mismatched to the southwestern stucco and adobe of the rest of the town.  I could get to the pool in five minutes by crossing to the other side of Main Street right here and cutting through the back parking lots.  But in order to do that I’d have to pass by Earnshaw’s Drugstore, where my mother worked. It wasn’t like I thought she’d coming running out to screech at me on the street, but the idea that she would be glaring at me from somewhere within as I passed the wall of glass windows was just too much to take.  Instead I stayed on this side of Main Street and waited to cross at the single traffic light.   

There’s nothing worse than what you come from. 

My fists clenched.  I wished there was a way to safely remove certain moments from your memory.  That one would haunt me, of that I had no doubt. Still, it was the closest Tracy Gentry had ever come to admitting out loud that the question of my paternity, and Stone’s, was up for grabs.  I wondered if my cousins had ever heard the rumors that we might be more than cousins.  Maybe one day I would get around to asking them about it. 

The pool was crowded already.  Somewhere along the way I’d kind of lost my enthusiasm for swimming.   Plus now that my head was cooler I regretted snapping at Erin.  She’d apologized for her comments about Stone and when Erin said she was sorry she meant it. I shouldn’t have gotten all irritated that she didn’t want to tag along to the pool today.  The girl had a right to keep some time to herself without explaining it to me. 

Anyway, at this point I didn’t much feel like hanging out with the belly floppers and the doggie paddlers and the sun bathing attention seekers, but hell, I’d walked all the way down here.  And it was hot.  Might was well take a dip and cool off. 

I quickly shed my shirt and shoes and dove into the deep end, shooting like a torpedo beneath kicking legs and flailing arms as I traveled near the floor of the pool.  By the time I reached the concrete wall on the other side my lungs were bursting so I moved to a shallow area to catch my breath.  I relaxed and closed my eyes.  I liked being here.   The pool was in need of a lot of expensive repairs but I felt happy here.  This was almost the exact spot I’d been hanging out in two years ago when the girl next door strode casually into the water and got my attention.  She’d kept it ever since.  

Thinking of Erin and about the pool led to thoughts of Erin
in
the pool.  That led to thoughts of Erin in a bikini.  Which led to thoughts of Erin
without
a bikini.  Which of course led straight to a stiff boner. 

I flattened my back against the concrete wall of the pool and crouched in the water, trying to tame my own mind and body.  Some little kid in green goggles and a duck-shaped donut float paddled by and I felt like a high-ranking pervert, cowering in the Emblem public pool with my dick at full salute. 

I managed to shove away thoughts of my naked girlfriend.  It wasn’t hard, mostly because I’d never actually seen her naked.  Erin was shy.  To me, it was part of her charm.  In fact I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her in a bikini.  Generally if she came swimming she kept her t-shirt on, complaining that the sun was too strong. 

I had just managed to tamp down the fire in my shorts and was hanging out there minding my own business when Kasey Kean sidled up to me. 

“Hi, Con-man,” she said with a head tilt and a brilliant smile that she probably practiced in front of a mirror at least four hundred times a day. 

“Hey, Kase,” I said, friendly but not overly enthusiastic, careful to keep my eyes away from the bobbing boobs that were barely contained by her American flag string bikini top.  I’d known Kasey since kindergarten.  She was okay but since I’d also hooked up with her in a major way before I got together with Erin I made a habit of keeping my distance from her. 

Kasey, on the other hand, seemed determined to close that distance.   Right now. 

“Erin not here today?” she asked with fake honeyed sweetness as she glanced around and floated to my side. 

“Nope,” I shook my head, staring at the water, at my own feet, anywhere but at the display of supple, suntanned skin that was only inches away.  “Not today.” 

“You guys have a fight?” 

Goddamn, girls were fucking supernatural sometimes.  I felt myself flinch at the question.  No, Erin and I hadn’t fought.  Not exactly.  But I didn’t like how we’d left things.  We weren’t one of
those
couples, the ones who barked at each other and sulked and endured epic break up soap operas.  We weren’t one of them because what we had was better than what the rest of them had.   

“No fight,” I said, keeping my voice even.  “She was tired and I had some time to kill.” 

I could feel Kasey nodding.  “That’s good.”  She tilted her head back and closed her eyes.  “God, it’s so hot.” 

“It’s Arizona.  In the summer.” 

“Yeah.”   Kasey started doing something with her top.  She was fussing with the straps and had gotten close enough that her arm brushed mine as she examined herself.

“I hate tan lines,” she pouted as she pulled the strap over her left breast away and left it barely (BARELY!) covered.   

I tried not to look.  I tried. 

Fuck. 

Failure. 

I looked.  And just like that there was a party in my shorts once more. 

“I hate them too,” I said even though tan lines were one of the last things I gave a shit about, right down there in the bowels of my concern list with stuff like knitting.  And cat memes.   

Kasey smiled at me, all dimples and sex.   Mostly I wanted to jump right out of that pool and run like hell away from the hot girl.  But from somewhere deep and primal another part of me ordered me to stay where I was. 

That part
liked
looking at the hot girl with all the nice skin. 

It
liked
the dirty ideas that Kasey’s smile promised. 

It
liked
the hand that was touching my-

Wait a fucking minute. 

There was a hand on my dick. 

There was a hand on my dick that didn’t belong to me.
 

The hand on my dick certainly didn’t belong to my girlfriend either, the girlfriend I loved and who wouldn’t appreciate someone else’s hand doing what it was currently doing.

“Remember this?” Kasey purred. 

“I gotta go,” I said, shoving away the hand with a splash and hauling myself up and out of the pool.  I didn’t look back, grabbing my pile of shirt and shoes on the way out.  I didn’t even pause to put my flip-flops on until I stepped on a sharp rock in the parking lot and cursed in pain. 

“Nice going, asshole,” I said to myself and it could have applied to anything I’d done in the last twenty-four hours. A nearby old lady who was power walking down the sidewalk in purple active wear gave me a stern look. 

There’s nothing worse than what you come from.

As I pulled my cotton t-shirt over my head I had a bad taste in my mouth.  For the rest of my life I would remember those words.  I would remember that my own mother had said them and meant them. 

I needed to go home.  Now.  I didn’t mean home to my mother’s house, where it was clear I was only grudgingly welcome at this point.  But Erin was home to me.  Stone was home to me. I needed to be where they were.